An Android Music Question

[Bigaldoc]

Advanced apologies for what I know will be long winded, trying to 'splain my question! Some will remember that not long ago I switched carriers and bought a Samsung Indulge Android mobile in the process. I LOVE it! The touch screen is so much better than my old roller ball Blackberry, even though I had to buy a stylus to help my fat fingers touch things on the screen. I also love the "sweeping" technique for reviewing lists such as contacts or calendar.

I have an 8 gig SDHC card that I typically keep in the handheld for music and pictures which I admit are seldom used, but there if I need them.

The other day I noticed that my battery drain was occurring sooner than it has been so far. I don't use my phone too heavily so I wondered what might be happening. In going through menus on my screen, I noticed that the MUSIC screen had a "Now Playing" entry for a song I had played for someone a week or so ago. Even though the song was stopped, I couldn't figure out how to completely SHUT OFF the music. I had no firm idea that it was the cause of more rapid battery drain, but it turns out that I think it WAS!

I clicked, searched and pecked all over and couldn't find out how to TURN OFF or disengage the Android's music app. In frustration, I yanked the SDHC card so the phone could not find the music, turned off the phone and upon rebooting, put the card back in. The "Now Playing" is gone and for the past few days, battery drain has been back to the minimal level it was prior to playing that music.

I don't know if there's any hardware common ground on this but if anyone knows how you completely TURN OFF the music app, I'd love to know. Thanks...

[stuck]

In frustration, I yanked the SDHC card so the phone could not find the music, turned off the phone

I know nothing about smartphones but I would suggest that removing a card (of any flavour, SD/CF/etc) from any device, phone/camera/CP before you turn off is a recipe for file corruption on the card.

Ken
PS I'll nudge stuckling1 to read this post, he has a clever phone and knows a bit about Android stuff

[stuckling1]

I agree with Stuck. Don't pull your card without un-mounting it first. Lots of apps cache stuff to the SD card and whilst you're highly unlikely to do any serious damage, you may upset something somewhere.

What you want to do is 'close' the music app when it's not in use, yes?
Usually Andriod is quite clever at auto-closing apps not in use but occasionally it overlooks one, which you might want to kill manually.
If you pull down the notification panel at the top there's a link to the task manager in there. Using that you can kill un-needed processes.

The stock Android task manager is all well and good but if sometimes you want something a bit more industrial strenght, there are hundreds of third party task managers. The one that most people recomend, and that I use myself, is ReChild's Advanced Task Manager - https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... ller&hl=en" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This will generally show you more of what's running than the stock task killer does. You'd be quite surprised if you saw how many processes, services, callbacks and com.s etc that run constantly just to keep Andriod on it's feet.
With these though it's best to look but not touch!
ATK has lots of settings to tinker with, and by default is very safe - it won't kill anything that ought not be killed, and it will automatically build a list of services to ignore (ie leave running when you kill all others)
You can use it to supplement Androids inbuilt memory management, and let it kill unused things peroidically if it's safe to do so. Think of it as a crap-cleaner for your mobile. I've found that at some times it can free up as much as 200 extra MB of memory (~25% of the total) on my phone, with a resulting slight increase in battery life.

In the first instance though, you can use the stock Andriod task manager to get rid of the music player. I'll post some screenshots in a second :)

[stuckling1]

Don't pull your card without un-mounting it first

Just in case you didn't know:
Usually I never take the SD card out of my phone but if you do need to remove it without re-booting here's how to 'Safely Remove' it.
Settings> SD card & phone storage > Unmount SD card.
- When you do, this option will be grayed out because the card will be unmounted.
- Proceed with removing the card.
http://www.butterscotch.com/tutorial/Ho ... roid-Phone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[stuckling1]

Task Manager Screenshots from my HTC Sensation 4G

1. The stock Task Manager (might look slightly different on your Samsung but will have the same feature)

htc sense stock task manager 2011-11-10_12-26-30.jpg

2. ReChild Advanced Task Killer app
(Nb between taking the screenshots I used the Kill All Button in the first task manager to get rid of a few apps. Thats why there are less showing up in this screenshot. Note also, however, that ATK shows you lots more services that didn't appear in the normal one.

rechild advanced task killer 2011-11-10_12-27-31.jpg

[stuckling1]

Oh and watch out for Angry Birds. It'll happily sit there for hours chomping on a good 50-60megs of RAM... Not enough to make a significant difference to performance (this phone is blisteringly fast anyway) but it's by far the most graphics intensive app I have

[Bigaldoc]

Wow, that great stuff and I thank you for the trouble you've gone to. I'm getting ready for a class later this morning, and will have to do some investigative work later today.

I'll be back later...

PS: The reason I say "later" is that, while reading your tutorial I pulled down the notifications panel and don't see anything about task manager. On my Samsung, it must be hiding a little and I'll search for it later, after class.

[Bigaldoc]

I'm still here... leaving for class in 15 minutes.

But, I think I found it. On my Samsung, under Settings, Application, then Application Services, there are a ton of running services in there. Later today, I'll try another song and see if the app is listed there.

I can't thank you enough for the steer in the right direction!

[Bigaldoc]

Just a followup so that Stuckling1 will know that his tip DID help me solve my problem AND that after doing so, my memory today, 24 hours later is still at the full bar level compared to the time when I noticed the problem.

However, on MY Samsung model I had to hunt a bit more to find it. In running services, music player is shown but some in there are "grayed out" such that they can't be touched.

So I went back a level in the menu, clicked on "manage applications" and in that LARGE list, after playing a song, the music player WAS listed and COULD be stopped. So the solution was a bit oblique, but could be found.

Thanks again, MISTER Stuckling1 !!!

[jonwallace]

These kids do have their uses (as long as they're not on your lawn )

[stuckling1]

Perhaps Samsung put their own UI over ordinary Andriod, which hides the task manager away someplace.
I know that HTC Sense is a heavily tweaked custom UI so what I said was the 'stock task manager' is technicly not 'stock' in that it's HTC Sense, but it is 'stock' in the sense of being pre-installed.

Either way, Advanced Task Killer is probably a good option. Also AVG Mobile, while technically an anti-malware tool, also has app management features. https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... irus&hl=en" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;