Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Tablet indecision...

Chess, I initially considered the Playbook as I have a BB phone and rely on it for my business contacts, calendars, email....basically anything that syncs with Outlook.

But it's hard to want to invest in something that has a tiny market share (and decreasing) without concerns that you'll bet left high and dry if they drop out!

I have what may be the stupidest question regarding my Android tablet: How the hell do you "close" an app when you're done with it?

I MUST be missing something. The manual doesn't explain it, and searches only bring me to "stopping installed apps from running in the background".

I received this yesterday, and last night had gone into all kinds of apps to see what was on there. After awhile, it started running slower and I realized that every app I opened was STILL open.

I did a hard reboot to shut them all down, but then when I went into the browser after powering back up I had lost my tabs, etc.

Isn't there some way to say "OK, I played with the camera, but now I'm done with that and want to shut it down"?

PS- I promise I'll read the whole manual ASAP, but it didn't help me in this case!

No one can help you because you bought a Toshiba.

Actually though, Android OSs just freeze the state of 'most' Apps when you switch to another so other than a very tiny bit of memory, they are not really running but they are kind of on standby. Others, like ones with GPS or Skype will keep running, draining battery.

Most Android devices will have a way to shut down an App under the setting menu. Settings, App Manager or something like that.

Seem kind of convoluted, well ya, it is. However, you can download an App to shut off your Apps. Brilliant or Monty Python worthy? You pick. I think there are a few of these on the Android Market. If I can find out who has recently pilfered the office Galaxy Tab, I'll check that.

Thanks Murph. This explains it to me:

<<< other than a very tiny bit of memory, they are not really running but they are kind of on standby. >>>

I've run across apps that shut down other apps and like I said, knew that there are methods for shutting down apps that are running in the background.

I guess I was looking for a way to "Hit X and close the window". I guess that's not really necessary!

Having to go under "settings" DOES seem awkward, though, when you eventually have 20 of them "open"!

FREAKIN' PIGS!

I hate really those birds that don't do anything when you tap the screen. Foam bullets of the Avian variety.

Don't know anything about the Thrive but it should have something similar. On the Galaxy Tab 10.1 you hit the ^ icon that is at the bottom border of the screen and from there you can access the built in task manager from the homepage. You can see all the APPS and webpages that are currently running and close individual ones or all of them.

This is on the Honeycomb OS. I haven't had a chance using ICS yet since the first generation Galaxy tab 10.1 owners are still awaiting the update.

You don't have to worry about closing apps out. Welcome to the era of idiot proof computing. Wait, what was that sound? Someone just built a better idiot?!?

Mostly, but not always entirely true. For a while when I first downloaded it, I thought iPengHD was broken but I soon realized that it just wouldn't run if a bunch of other apps were still 'active' in the frozen state. I assume, but did not look into, that it was a memory resource issue. They seemed to work the bugs out of it with a patch as I don't have an issue any more.

I had the same problem with a racing game. Still do, maybe, with that one. I haven't played it in a long time. This is with my wife's iPad 1, by the way.

Thanks for the input, guys.

I HAVE found that I can close the apps via the Settings> Applications tabs, but it just seems so...inelegant I guess. Even if they aren't taking a lot of resources, the (slightly) O/C side of me wants to simply close out an app that I don't plan on revisiting in the next couple of days.

Especially now, when this is new and I frequently open included apps just to see what they are.

Optional method number 3.
Pull the battery out of it.