Autostarts saves HTC EVO battery life, memory, and possibly your sanity
This guest article was written by Richard Walker.
Just as its name suggests, Autostarts allows you to edit when apps automatically start on your HTC EVO. If you've ever used a task killer/manager or process viewer app, you've seen the sheer number of apps sitting in the background, eating memory, without ever being individually launched by you.
Now, yes, Android does a fine job of ending background processes as memory gets low and more is necessary, but it is far from perfect and you can easily reach the dreaded "memory low" notification that is seemingly impossible to get rid of without a restart.
With Autostarts on your rooted EVO, you can stop applications from starting under certain circumstances or even at all without you starting them manually.
An example of an app with counter-intuitive start points is Miren Browser, which installs with permissions to start when the EVO first boots, when connectivity changes, when downloads complete, when the WiFi state changes, and most important when the battery is low. The last thing I want happening when my battery is low, I'm nowhere near a charger, and I'm attempting to conserve my battery is for an app with data access to launch!
When you first launch Autostarts, it'll begin loading all the launch permissions registered for the apps you have installed. The number of apps you have will determine how long this loading will take; I have 247 apps and the loading takes less than a minute.
I appreciate a good progress bar and you can see the individual apps loading in Autostarts, something I like over the usual spinning circle "I'm thinking" icon. Developers, take note: the little things make a big difference.
After loading there are two viewing options. You can "Group by Event," meaning you can see what apps want to start when you first boot your EVO or when your battery is low. The alternative is to "Group by Application," which groups the permissions individually under each app.
Some apps you won't want to change, like your launcher, but others have no business starting on their own. For example, I have a few different games that their developers felt needed to launch in the background every time I get a text message.
Disable the apps launching permissions as you see fit, restart your phone to start with a clean slate, and enjoy your snappier phone.
Links: Market (EVO) | Market (web)
This guest article was written by Richard Walker.
