Hi tinfoilhat,
Welcome to the puzzling world of Android. Well its often puzzling to me but that probably proves nothing. ;-)
As for running apps, well ..... I'm not aware of any simple answer. You will invariably find Maps running but as it is basically a Google product and Android is a .... They just seem to expect maps to run when your phone is running. It may have something to do with the ability to use location based services etc. It puzzled me for a while but I have got used to it and it does not seem to cause any problems so I have left well alone. And leaving well alone is often a good line to follow, for if your device is running well do you really want to start tinkering with no particular objective in mind?
Now to the subject of stopping apps. If you have an app running there are normally two ways to exit it. The first is the press the "home" button. This should normally leave the app running in the background but allow you to get at other phone features until such time that you want to return to your app without having to start it again e.g. a GPS app logging your route but you want to make a phone call on the way. The second way it to hit the "back" button. The result here is varied. Some apps will ask "do you really want to close me?" Some will just close. And others will appear to close but if you go to something like Norton Mobile Utilities (NMU) you can see that there is still something running in the background. In part this is probably down to the way Android operates. If it has plenty of free resources why kick recently used apps into touch? Leaving some part ready for use may be useful. However if the device needs the resources then the unused apps can be thrown out to leave space for the ones that are needed.
If you are unhappy with this situation then you can use NMU to stop various apps. I would not try stopping what are shown as "system apps". This may not be possible and may also result in odd performance. At the NMU home screen select Apps, then scroll down to choose any app you like that is running but you wish to stop. Long press on it and then select "STOP" from the list you get, confirm that you wish to stop it and .. see what happens. It should stop but it may come back. Some apps are designed to start up when the device boots and will keep coming back into life because that is what they are designed to do. If you are unhappy with that you will have to uninstall them, but then they are gone and of no further use to you. You can uninstall an app from the same list in NMU that allows you to STOP the app. The forced stop and the uninstall can also be achieved from any android device by selecting Menu-Settings-Applications-Manage applications and then selecting the application.
I hope that added a little light and did not just add to the mystery. ;-)
Good luck in your voyage through Android.
Posted from Motorola Xoom
