Android App Spotlight #24: Watchdog

Price: Free ($3.49 paid version)
AppBrain
Website


When I first got my Nexus One, a task killer was one of the first recommended must-download apps. As time went on, I only occasionally used it, often when I noticed my battery was depleting faster than I would have liked, and even through I killed all of the unnecessary processes it didn't seem to have that much of an effect. Even today task killers are still popular, but on Froyo and even Eclair there is an ever-growing sentiment that they are largely ineffective, and in the case of Froyo straight-up don't work. Turns out, even though you may see those open programs in your favorite task killer, they aren't really using any system resources. There are some apps, however, that aren't written so well, and may very well be utilizing a higher-than-average amount of your CPU. How do you know? Well, you install something like Watchdog, of course!

Watchdog is a nifty little program that sits in the background and watches for apps misbehaving. When it catches something that meets a percentage of system utilization that you can specify, it lets you know and it can take actions to correct the problem. More than that, it also allows you to see just how much of your CPU your apps are using, so you can see for yourself that the Facebook app isn't sucking as much juice as you originally thought. In fact, I only recently received validation that the program worked - the Android Market was using 88% of my CPU when it started automatically downloading 5 updates at once.

Honestly, the real reason your battery life sucks (pun) is because you keep using the phone. It takes juice to power that gigantic screen and transmit across all four antennas. The sad fact is that if you really want your battery to last, you need to use it as little as possible. On the rare occasions when it actually is due to an app, Watchdog will be there.