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Stock Android devices can come filled to the brim with nasty bloatware. Sometimes when you get a new device, just the sheer number of startup apps can put your device to the floor. Or, after using your device, you can install so many apps that startup is a five minute process. If you are in such a situation, Startup Cleaner is here to help your problem. Startup Cleaner helps kill apps from starting up at boot, so that you can save yourself some battery and boot faster.
What is it and what does it do
Main Functionality
Startup Cleaner is a startup manager for Android.
Pros
- Very simple, fast, and effective
- Auto kill list (in 1, 5, 10, 30, 60 intervals)
- Has an ignore list (helps you hide certain apps that you don’t want to stop from starting)
- Also allows for the un-installation of 3rd party apps
- Can start on boot and is allowed to hide notification bar icon
Cons
- Juvenile user interface
- Repeatedly killing apps is not a long term solution
- No update since 2010
Discussion
Startup Cleaner is a very interesting program, and a handy one too. Before I rooted my phone, I had this problem. I’m a careful type of person so I didn’t do any sort of hacking with my device until I did a week of research. In the meantime I had this app running. It really helped keep the memory usage down. You wouldn’t believe how much bloat I had to auto kill because it was so irritating.
Startup Cleaner is a great app, and the best feature is the auto-kill list. It’s very effective in killing a few apps too keep your memory down, but in the long run, this should not be your solution. If you want to get rid of bloat, you might want to seriously think of finding some guides for your device and a compatible ROM. This is coming from someone running Cyanogen Mod 10. Its great. I don’t have carrier bloat, or OEM bloat. The reason I bring this up is that in the long run, repeatedly killing apps isn’t a long term solution.
The reason that it’s not a long term solution is very simple. When you kill a system app, an app that is built into the ROM, it will restart. That will take considerably more memory than if you were to just leave well enough alone. Now, if you don’t have root, this app is a great alternative. It really does its job and I’m thankful for it, but this is NOT a permanent solution, and you should never try to “swear by” this app. If you really and truly want to get rid of bloat once and for all, you need to root. That’s the end of it.
Another feature that I really liked was the fact that I could uninstall apps right in the program. That’s always handy, especially if you DID happen to have root and you were using this (even though it would be kind of redundant to do so with root since you can just get rid of them permanently) you could also use this to (potentially) uninstall system apps.
It’s not something I necessarily have any use for anymore, but when I did need it, it did deliver. If you’re just looking to kill some startup entries, and nothing else this is probably the perfect app for you. I just have no use for it any longer because I build my own ROMS.
Conclusion and download link
If all you want is something that will temporarily quell bloated apps that are running on your Android device, this may just be the app for you. It doesn’t solve all the worlds problems, but it does kill apps very well. If you want a more permanent solution, root your device and check out Link2SD’s system app uninstallation or freezing feature.
Price: Free
Version reviewed: 2.1.0
Requires: 1.5 and up
Download size: 118 KB
