T-Mobile wants your Android device like the myTouch 3G Slide to run smoother and it has added a task-killing functionality to its My Account application.
The “Tune-up” feature will try and kill unused services in the background for Android devices with the 2.1 version of the software and below. In theory, this could make the device run silky smooth and save on battery life.
Device Tune-up is different from most task killers because it does not require you to do anything. Device Tune-up will default to ‘on’. While on, Device Tune-up proactively closes services to help the device and battery perform at their best. Most preloaded applications will not be affected by Device Tune-up. For our non-technical users, this may mean you never even realize Device Tune-up is running; your device may simply run better.
Task killing apps are routinely the most-downloaded from the Android Market. In fact, one of the main complaints about Android is that it can get bogged down with all the multitasking, which can make task killer apps a necessity. It appears that T-Mobile agrees with this assessment.
This is just the latest attempt by T-Mobile to dive into the Android software, as the aforementioned Slide features customized software from the carrier. In particular, there’s a Genius button which uses voice recognition to make calls, do local searches and more.
I don’t use any task-killing programs, as I believe Android can handle this just fine on its own. It will be interesting to see what type of performance and battery impact multitasking will have on the iPhone with the iOS 4 software, as much of the appeal of an Apple smarthphone is the smooth user experience. Of course, the ability to run apps in the background will open the door for innovative developers to create cool and useful programs.
So, I guess it’s a good sign that T-Mobile wants to help its handsets work better but let’s hope Google can handle this with future updates. What about you readers? Do you use task killers? What’s your favorite app for this?
[Via T-Mobile]