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Amen. It bothers me more than I would like to admit that I can't tell how many applications are currently running on my Android phone. Or then when I press "back", sometimes the application quits and sometimes it doesn't.

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Can't you just hit the little multi-box icon on the bottom right always (to the right of the home icon)? Then swipe an app away to kill it.

Not available on some earlier Android versions — but a nice way to handle it.

My understanding is that this does not kill the app, merely removes it from the list.

It kills the app on my phone (Nexus 4 Cyanogenmod). If I ever get a slowdown I open up the switcher and swipe away all my recent apps to close them.

On Android, why would you care? They get killed when the device is low on memory anyway.

Because I trust some apps more than others. I don't trust my Facebook app to be running 24/7, for example.

Also, background apps I no longer care about may affect my battery life.

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