Pre-installed Apps keep opening up and eating my battery life!!!

[momofmab]

It's my understanding from reading on here that pre-installed apps can not be removed from the DROID Incredible without voiding the warranty, correct?

There are five or six pre-installed apps I never use (nor would ever use) that repeatedly open up on my phone and suck the life out of my battery (Skype, GMail, Stock Quote, etc. - worst is Skype!).  I have a task killer downloaded, but find that I have to go in repeatedly and shut down these apps that keep opening.  Is there anything I can do?  Can I go into a Verizon store and have them removed there?

Thanks!

[mortb]

I'm afraid not. However, which task killer do you have? The best one is Advanced Task Killer.  With this one, you can set the level of auto kill and of auto kill frequency. These pre-installed on our phones can be a pain.

[momofmab]

Thanks for responding!  Yes, I do have A.T.K.  Can you program it to kill tasks automatically?  Right now I am doing it manually every couple of hours.

Thanks!

[mortb]

It should automatically be automatic (no pun intended). Every so often, do you get a little blurb saying something like "5 apps killed"? But to answer your question directly, no, there is no way to make it automatic per se. There is a way to make it NOT kill an apps. Go into the killer and you'll see an "ignore" line. I have three apps that I don't want the killer to kill.

[TLBauer3617]

I noticed after the Froyo 2.2 update that the WiFi was the biggest drain on my battery.  For some reason, it seemed to stay active even when the phone went into lock mode.  I installed an app called "Battery Booster" (free in the Market) that automatically shuts down WiFi when the phone goes into lock mode and then reactivates it when you bring the phone back up. 

I also made some adjustments under settings > Accounts & Sync.  I turned off the news and stock sync and set the weather sync to every 4 hours.  I use Google, so left that sync active, but if you don't use it, you could turn those off as well.

I bought a 1750mah battery and with the Battery Booster app I get about 2-1/2 to 3 days on a single charge.  I'm a lite to moderate user:  a few phone calls, some text messages, checking facebook, etc.

[mortb]

Thanks for the clue on synching. Did not even think of looking there. Shut off the synch to news and stockmarket. Set my weather synch to every six hours, could see a four hour one. Still learning.

[jslechner1028]

I found that by going into Accounts & Sync and making sure that the Background Data and the Auto-Sync tabs were not checked helped immensely... I had read that the Gmail and the Calendar apps were constantly updating and that was a big cause of the battery drain, this stops it from syncing unless i tell it to.

[nimiaj]

@momofmab, It is very frustrating that we have those pre-installed apps always running in the background even though we don't want to use it! However, since the FROYO update, if you are trying to kill them, you are causing more harm than help.

Here's why:

These applications are configured as services and no matter how hard you try, they WILL keep re-spawning every single time you kill them. So technically everytime you kill them, you are "waking" up the system to re-spawn them, hence using up more system level memory and processor time. This means that by constantly killing them, you are actually making your processor work harder and hence burning more battery!

Personally I use "SystemPanel" (paid version, lite is available on the market for free) to monitor the processes. However, I have stopped trying to kill those processes and made peace with myself! What happens is, if you leave those processes alone for long enough, android will "cache" those applications and reclaim most of the memory used by them for other actively used applications.

You could still use ATK to manage other non service applications and kill those to reclaim more resources.

If your battery is really getting drained, more offending apps are the ones that use either wifi or 3g. So you want to look at the sync or refresh intervals for the following to begin with:

- everything under Accounts & Sync

- News & Weather (default android app... this is not under accounts & sync. look in the app drawer)

- Facebook App

- Any other data sync app you may have installed

Hope this helps!

[lowly_user]

Notice how strangely silent Verizon remains on this issue? the Verizon apps don't want to lay down and die either