Android Advanced Task Killer Should Be The First App you Install
By: Hillel Fuld
So, I started using Google’s famous Android mobile operating system a few days ago, and while I have a lot of feedback and questions for Google, there are some aspects of Android that really stick out. I apologize for mentioning the “I” word so early on in a post that is supposed to be about Android, but one of the main advantages Android has over iPhone is background apps. While this is true, and the iPhone, at least in its non jail broken state cannot run multiple apps simultaneously, when it comes to the way both platforms run apps, I actually prefer the iPhone over Android.
What I mean to say is that if we are comparing the two platforms and the way they perform out of the box, yes, Android can run multiple apps, but the user is not the one to determine what to run, the phone is. Apple’s main concern with running background apps, at least according to the experts, is the performance of the device and the battery life. Android, while the ability to run many apps at once exists, the battery and performance of the device is majorly affected, primarily because they seemed to have forgotten one word in the menu of Android apps, namely, Exit.
Naturally, when testing out the first apps on Android, I searched for an Exit button once I was finished trying them out, and it was nowhere to be found. Of course, I turned to Twitter with the question of how to exit apps on Android, to which I was told that I can’t, since Google’s concept was that you leave everything running, and we will take care of your task management. How typical of Google to want to take over and make decisions for the user.
OK, enough about Google and Apple, let’s talk about this app. What the app does, and the reason it should be the first app you download on Android is because it helps you take the decision process away from Google about what apps you want eating away at your phone’s memory and battery. The app enables you to see what is running in the background at any given time, a feature Google so conveniently left out. There is an option in Android to see the last apps that were running, but that does not show you all the apps that are currently being used.
Advanced Task Killer gives you a clear list of everything currently running, an option to select which apps to kill, as well as add certain apps you want to run all the time to an Ignore List. The UI is pretty basic with two big options along the top. One is Setting, which launches the app’s settings screen, looks like they were missing some space along the top so they called it Setting and not Settings. In addition to the Setting, there is the Kill Selected Apps button.
Below the two buttons, you have a list of all the apps running with a checkbox next to each. You can select an app, then click Kill Selected Apps to disable it. The Settings are also pretty simple with six options all together. You can choose to have an icon for the Advanced Task Killer app in the phone’s notification bar, which enables you to quickly and easily launch the app. You can also define whether the app launches when the phone starts up.
Here is where it gets interesting. You can view the app’s ignore list or clear it. The idea of the ignore list is to add apps that you know you will be using all the time, like in my case, the Gmail app, and have the Task Killer ignore it by not even displaying it as an option to kill. This is useful since 99% of the time, I simply select all the apps on the list and kill them all. From the Settings screen, you can view or clear your ignore list.
You can also define what the app does when clicking an app on the list. The options are automatically kill it, select it, switch to it, add it to the ignore list, view its details, or open the pop up menu to give you all the possible options. The same options are available for a long press of an app.
The app, in my opinion, would not even exist if Google had taken their users’ needs into account when building Android, but the fact of the matter is, they didn’t, and this app is a must have for any Android user who wants to use their phone for more than 4 hours a day. If you launch apps and let them constantly run in the background, you will lower your phone’s performance and battery life drastically.
At the end of the day, if I had to choose between a platform that lets me decide which app to run, even if it is only one, and a platform that decides for me, I would choose the former, what about you? Let me know in the comments.
Our Rating: 4/5
Developer: Rechild
