Seeing Running Applications

[Harley51]

Where can you see if an application is running on the IPhone5.

 

[ods42]

Double click the main button. Bet all your apps r open lol. This is one of the things i hate bout the iphones. Good workn phone


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[xman23]

After seeing the running apps you should shut them down to save battery power. Touch and hold a icon until they wiggle Touch the red x to close them one at a time. Yes close them all phone , mail etc. incomeing calls and mail will still work.


I had a android app that was on the home screen that was called app killer. It shut all running apps down. Does anyone knon if there is such a thing for the I ?

 

[ardchoille]

After seeing the running apps you should shut them down to save battery power. Touch and hold a icon until they wiggle Touch the red x to close them one at a time. Yes close them all phone , mail etc. incomeing calls and mail will still work.

I had a android app that was on the home screen that was called app killer. It shut all running apps down. Does anyone knon if there is such a thing for the I ?

Let's kill that myth right now, shall we? Killing tasks on mobile phones is bad for the system. I'm an ex-Android app developer and themer so I though I'd explain why a task killer isn't needed on a *nix-based system.

Activities
Android apps use activites to preform tasks. For example, if you use a file manager to send a picture via email, the file manager calls the send activity within an email app, passes the file name to it and the email app sends the picture.. not the file manager. This will result in seeing the email app as "running" even though the user didn't actually launch that email app.

Smaller apps
Using activites helps developers design smaller apps. A file manager app that contains every bit of code needed to do everything a file manager does would likely be so large that no one would want to install it. Developers know that an android phone more than likely has an email app so there is no need for the developer to include email code in his/her file manager to send a picture when he/she can call an activity in an existing email app to do the job. This results in a smaller file manager app since there is no need to include email code or any other code for an activity that can be done via an app that is already present on the phone. This also alleviates redundant code. When you install an app outside of the android market, also known as sideloading, the file manager app calls the package installer (already present in Android) to install the requested app.

System management
By default, every android application runs in its own Linux process. Android starts the process when any of the application’s code (activities) needs to be executed, and shuts down the process when it’s no longer needed and system resources are required by other applications.

If you see an app running that you didn't launch, it's most likely because an activity within that app was called by another app to perform a task. If you kill the app you didn't launch, the system has to relaunch that app in order to complete the original task. This is why some people kill a task and then see it immediately running again. Constantly killing that app creates a situation where the user is battling the system resulting in wasted system resources.

Also, I believe SkullOne posted facts about killing apps on iOS being detrimental to the system performance.

Sorry for the off-topic post but I felt it necessary to prove why the best practice is to learn about the system instead of performing work based on a myth.

 

[ardchoille]

Thank you ardchoille for providing that information. Lets hope it does stop the misinformation right away.

You're welcome. And, since iOS is *nix-based, I'm betting iOS does something very similar.

 

[ods42]

And the reason you hate this is because?????

If you think it's eating battery, that's not what's going on. Skull has done some research on this. Or do you have another reason you don't like this? Android runs apps in the background as well.

No that is not the reason at all. I just like being able to close an app from with in the app like blackberry or droid. As in a menu button then hav options to close or whatever.

But using the ip5 more and more ...... The phone just works really well even tho u are limited to doing certain things


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[Skull One]

No that is not the reason at all. I just like being able to close an app from with in the app like blackberry or droid. As in a menu button then hav options to close or whatever.

But using the ip5 more and more ...... The phone just works really well even tho u are limited to doing certain things


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FYI, when you close an app in Android, it is still in memory. Now if you Task Kill an Android app, it unload its so that you need to do a full reload of the app into memory. Which means if it is an App that you use a lot, you are wasting battery and CPU time for zero gain.

 

[Skull One]

Where can you see if an application is running on the IPhone5.

To truly show which apps are still in memory, you need a program that shows which processes are loaded. I personally use https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id401457165?mt=8.

Now your question specifically asks for which apps are "running". Just because the application is loaded and has a process handle doesn't mean it is running. And just because the app has a "Run Time" listed doesn't mean it is running. That only shows how long it is been in memory with an active process handle. So to truly answer your question, you can't see what is actually "Running" unless you jailbreak or have the iOS device hooked to XCode in debug mode.

Also to further clarify this question, there are only three types of apps.

1) System modules. They can run in background all day long and hence they are considered in a "running" state.
2) Apps that use the background API calls sanctioned by Apple. These apps usually need to be able to play music, GPS or some other streaming function. You will have NO DOUBT in your mind that the application is still running.
3) Apps that don't use the background API calls. Those make up more than 95% of all apps on the market. Basically when you hit the home button on the app, it is given enough time slices to save off any working data it needs to and then the app goes into a suspended state.

And here is my public service announcement of the day.

"Double tapping the home button does NOT show which apps are running or loaded in memory. It simply show the last 40 to 80 apps you have accessed."

 

[Skull One]

Now I didn't know that. I knew the apps weren't truly running. But then again some apps, like Home Run Battle 3D can act like you are just turning it on (ask you to sign in) or maybe just say you are not connected, you tap and then you are logged in.

There are a LOT of apps on the market that don't use the "Going into suspend mode, you better save" feature and simply act like you just launched them. I have noticed that any game from iOS 3 going forward seems to have the propensity to do that.

 

[ardchoille]

"Double tapping the home button does NOT show which apps are running or loaded in memory. It simply show the last 40 to 80 apps you have accessed."

Very good to know. The more I get into learning about iOS apps, the more I realize it's very similar to what android does. Makes sense really, since these are mobile phone operating systems that have small reserves of resources.

The best practice is to simply let the system manage itself.

 

[ods42]

Very good to know. Thx for that.


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