Database Info

RAM Program Utilization?

Can someone explain to me how Program Storage space is allocated.
To the best of my understanding the Kaiser has 128MB RAM for running programs.
However, if I look in the Memory applet it shows TOTAL 95.36MB. I will assume that this is calculating in the base RAM needed to load up the ROM?
So, if I have 95.36 TOTAL it then says I have 35.19 IN USE. This is after shutting down all running programs AND removing everything from the startup menu.
I then go into task manager to look at running tasks and add up all of their memory utilization and only get between 6-7MB. Now I don't totally understand because it looks like things like file system drivers and services are listed here...I would think those things would be included in loading the device itself (and this part of that missing RAM from the 128 as mentioned above).
So with only 6-7MB accounted for in Task manager, what is taking up the remainder of the 35.19MB?
Also, does anyone have any good stats on at what % utilization the device starts to slow down? Theoretically you should be able to run very close to maximum RAM (assuming all needed apps are open).
And, another question out of curiosity is what do most people have for their base utilized RAM on a clean reboot? By this I mean you would have all your services loaded (BT, voice command, touchflo, etc.) and all your necessary today plugins, menu shells etc, but NOT applications like PIE or TCPMP. I find that mine tends to be in the 60%+ range as of right now.
Thanks for any info you can give!

Ok.. I just realized that the Task Manager had additonal tabs that I didn't see...specifically services. Now on a WindowsXP system running services will also usually list a corresponding process that shows RAM utilization. WM doesn't seem to show that information.
So it's entirely possible that all my missing RAM is taken up by additional running services. Any application that will fully detail this out for me?
Also, is there a list of services somewhere? I often go into my XP machine and disable any extraneous services... can I do the same in WM?
thx

yes, and there is also the so called "page-pool' that is a sort of cache / buffer.

th_undead said:
yes, and there is also the so called "page-pool' that is a sort of cache / buffer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this is true, the higher your page pull the less ram you will have but the faster your phone will run. i remember back on my wizard i would alway set like a 32(i think it was 32 or mayb 16)mb pagepool so the phone would run super fast. but at the same time i had like 15mb of free ram....i toke a faster phone lol

Ah right the pagepool... and I think dutty's latest uses a 24MB one which could account for alot of the missing RAM.
Ok...well so here is another question.
Let's say you are running at a high memory utilization....let's say 70-80%
If you could drop that down 10-15% by decreasing your pagepool would that be more efficient? This goes back to my original question of performance as utilization levels increase.
I thought I saw a post somewhere that showed only very minor increases in performance as the pagepool was increased... is it worth that vs. the slowdown (if any) when running at a high utilization?

RAM available right now

Hi Guys
How much RAM is available on device right now?
Please specify if you ROM and/or Rooted or not.

Rooted, Cyano b4, almost all ram available

Currently, with 19 apps running I have 139 mb in available ram. If I were to lose them all it'd be around 250.
Running CMB4 which has the memhaack by default.
When I was unrooted I averaged about 40 free, and the most I saw was around 115 after closing all processes.

170 Mb ram with 18 applications running. I'm on CM beta 4.

number of processes 43. total available memory 60 mb

ralexand said:
Currently, with 19 apps running I have 139 mb in available ram. If I were to lose them all it'd be around 250.
Running CMB4 which has the memhaack by default.
When I was unrooted I averaged about 40 free, and the most I saw was around 115 after closing all processes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just so you know its not a "hack." Thats what its supposed to be.

With nothing running I have 272Mb free.
Currently I have 28 tasks running and 93Mb free......
28! WTF?!?!?!
p.s. I wonder how many more that is compared to an iPhone

I have 14 running app and 66mb free.
Damn it, it's very small comparing to those who hacked with Cyangen....
I wonder if it makes any difference on speed.

Are you guys checking free memory in a task manager or in terminal by typing free?
I see up to 250mb free in task manager but never see more than 180mb free when I check in terminal. Any ideas why there is such a big difference?

Crap. Double post.

using advanced task killer free with only slacker and handcent currently running in the bg i have 246M free...

currently running 21 apps and have 156MB and still running fast as ****!
damn i love this phone.
Upgrade to beta-4 and have never been better

288 MB ram? but where to find it?

Hello guys
I already used the search and looked around on the internet using google and ecosia... but it didn't help me... everytime i am looking for the answer to my question: "HTC says that the touch pro has got 288 MB of ram but there are only displayed 193 MB and my free memory is about 65 MB (used 128MB)" i only find some roms that say that they have a lower pagepool... but that does not help me in finding a solution to my problem that i can't access the complete ram...
is there any workaround for this issue? a classmate found a rom for his touch hd2 which solved the same problem as mine but on his hd 2... now i ask you for a solution on the touch pro.. please help me ^^

i think you didnt think about the fact that the OS needs ram too ... but you can try ROMs without manila that spare ram; which ROM do you actually have?

I'm using the latest energy rom, its all fast and very smooth animations.. really great :]
but no i think you didn't understand me... the hardware ram is 288MB according to HTC. The memory manager shows me that there is in total only 193 MB available. 128 MB of these 193 MB are used... the rest is unsused memory... now what is about the rest of the 288 MB ?
the osram usage is included in the 128MB if you trust the task manager ^^
so what is my phones problem? are there maybe some limitations that can be solved with some registry changes? on windows vor PCs you can disable some parts of the ram that they are not used... can this be a possible problem on my phone? when I was using the O2 branded original rom there were 212 MB usable 80MB used and 132MB free... i really can't imagine why ._.

ok, i see, but what about the memory that is needed to store the files that will be used restore the files after you do a hardreset?
Do you know nue storage manager? Try it and look, how much drives you have installed in your memory... which you dont have in normal use

do you know the difference between ram and rom? operating systems are always installed on roms and the ram looses its data during a hard reset.

audiocore said:
the hardware ram is 288MB according to HTC. The memory manager shows me that there is in total only 193 MB available. 128 MB of these 193 MB are used... the rest is unsused memory... now what is about the rest of the 288 MB ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, hardware RAM is 288 MB. In your case (with Energy ROM) 95 MB of RAM is used by the OS itself, so you have only 193 MB RAM available. You should know that the rest (in your case 193 MB) depends on the ROM cooker. Energy ROMs are known for not being RAM friendly, actually NRGZ28 stated once that he doesn't care for free RAM. That is the reason you have only 65 MB of free RAM. For example I'm using CRACING ROM and I have about 110 MB of free RAM after reboot, if Sense 2.1 is enabled. If I disable it, I have about 130 MB left. When I was using offical HTC ROM, I had more than 150 MB of RAM - that is with all today plugins (TF3D for example) turned off. Of course, if I disable HTC dialer (that has a video dialer and other options) and switch to ordinary WM dialer, I can free even more RAM. Pagepool is also very important - it is a special area of memory reserved for loading apps into from ROM. I think that the default pagepool is for Raphael 12 MB (that means 12 MB less RAM), but most of the cooks sets pagepool to 20 MB or more - that means 20+ MB of RAM used for faster loading of apps. That is why your phone is so fast with Energy ROM - it has a veeery large pagepool, but you have very little free RAM because of that.
So, to make things simpler, most of the RAM is used by the OS, GPU, TF3D/Sense/Titanium/SPB Mobile Shell/some other UI app, pagepool, dialer, other background services/processes etc. So you just have to decide what ROM to use - there are some ROMs (like yours current) that are very bad for RAM, but there are others with 120 MB+ or even 150+. You can also cook your own ROM and maybe gain 180 or more free RAM.

pilgrim011 said:
Yes, hardware RAM is 288 MB. In your case (with Energy ROM) 95 MB of RAM is used by the OS itself, so you have only 193 MB RAM available. You should know that the rest (in your case 193 MB) depends on the ROM cooker. Energy ROMs are known for not being RAM friendly, actually NRGZ28 stated once that he doesn't care for free RAM. That is the reason you have only 65 MB of free RAM. For example I'm using CRACING ROM and I have about 110 MB of free RAM after reboot, if Sense 2.1 is enabled. If I disable it, I have about 130 MB left. When I was using offical HTC ROM, I had more than 150 MB of RAM - that is with all today plugins (TF3D for example) turned off. Of course, if I disable HTC dialer (that has a video dialer and other options) and switch to ordinary WM dialer, I can free even more RAM. Pagepool is also very important - it is a special area of memory reserved for loading apps into from ROM. I think that the default pagepool is for Raphael 12 MB (that means 12 MB less RAM), but most of the cooks sets pagepool to 20 MB or more - that means 20+ MB of RAM used for faster loading of apps. That is why your phone is so fast with Energy ROM - it has a veeery large pagepool, but you have very little free RAM because of that.
So, to make things simpler, most of the RAM is used by the OS, GPU, TF3D/Sense/Titanium/SPB Mobile Shell/some other UI app, pagepool, dialer, other background services/processes etc. So you just have to decide what ROM to use - there are some ROMs (like yours current) that are very bad for RAM, but there are others with 120 MB+ or even 150+. You can also cook your own ROM and maybe gain 180 or more free RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great comment! Don't forget that the Radio will also use up some memory and especially with the HD2 there seems to be a Radio (original t-mobile) which uses almost 12 MB less than others.
However, what is your problem? You are concerned about battery life (keeping all that RAM happy and addressed) or you have a specific application which wont run. I didn't check the latest NRG ROMs but he ran pagepools up to 26 MB. It's one of the first things I check with a tool called pagepool changer. I adjust mine to 16 meg which is/was supposed to be the sweet spot for the Raphael/TouchPro and never had any problems, speed or memory issues.

tyguy said:
However, what is your problem? You are concerned about battery life (keeping all that RAM happy and addressed) or you have a specific application which wont run.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the question is adressed to me, and not OP, I need at least 90-100 MB of free RAM because I heavily multitask. That is the main reason for being WinMo user. Besides, ROMs with low RAM are usually battery hungry.

pilgrim011 said:
If the question is adressed to me, and not OP, I need at least 90-100 MB of free RAM because I heavily multitask. That is the main reason for being WinMo user. Besides, ROMs with low RAM are usually battery hungry.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My answer was addressed to both. I also multitask though mainly Word, Excel and chat and as long as I don't open iGO all is running well (and you don't multitask while driving anyway ).
Let me check how much free RAM I have. ROM is in my sig, modified the PP from 26 MB (NRG's default) to 18 MB, Manila 2.5 with added Program Tab and Max Manila 2.7SE fullscreen on top. As you see I run the xperia X2 task manager because I too like to know what's left in RAM.
The screenshot is after ~ 4 days after the last boot "active sync'd"

tyguy said:
I also multitask though mainly Word, Excel and chat and as long as I don't open iGO all is running well (and you don't multitask while driving anyway ).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I do multitask while driving. For example, iGo is running along with browser. When I need informations about traffic on main intersections (from the video cameras in my city), I open the link for that particular intersection via browser and then Streaming Media plays that clip. In the meantime iGo is running in the background of course. Lot of RAM is required for these tasks. And what if someone calls me - the dialer is also RAM hungry... Besides, often I use GPS whilst walking. This is just an example - like I said, I'm a heavy multitasker.

humm okaaay... but on my older eten glofiish x650 with only 64MB of ram I had about 24MB of free ram though windows mobile 6.5 (only tried it out ) so windows mobile can be 40MB small... and although it seems to run very well...
humm what do you mean with radio? the music radio or something like gsm radio module for windows mobile? (sry 4 my comprehension issues but i'm from germany ^^)

talking about the radio rom, which can be updated / changed like the OS and make it possible to get better phone reception or gps or ...

audiocore said:
humm okaaay... but on my older eten glofiish x650 with only 64MB of ram I had about 24MB of free ram though windows mobile 6.5 (only tried it out ) so windows mobile can be 40MB small... and although it seems to run very well...
humm what do you mean with radio? the music radio or something like gsm radio module for windows mobile? (sry 4 my comprehension issues but i'm from germany ^^)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I really think that you should read XDA Wiki, as much as humanly possible, in order to understand basic things about WinMo. Cheers, mate.

Available RAM?

Hello,
I'm trying to fill a table useful to understand how much RAM is really available to the user in Android Phones.
Please try "Free Memory" by coconuts on the market or the "free" command in Terminal to let me know the total RAM of your device so that I can understand how much is reserved for hardware operations.
Please also say which ROM are you using.
Thanks

poochie2 said:
Hello,
I'm trying to fill a table useful to understand how much RAM is really available to the user in Android Phones.
Please try "Free Memory" by coconuts on the market or the "free" command in Terminal to let me know the total RAM of your device so that I can understand how much is reserved for hardware operations.
Please also say which ROM are you using.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
bit confusing how devices with 768mb ram have only 300mb free ram on boot.... 400mb+ ram already used by android (+sense)
then imagine a few years back devices had/still have 256mb ram..

olyloh6696 said:
bit confusing how devices with 768mb ram have only 300mb free ram on boot.... 400mb+ ram already used by android (+sense)
then imagine a few years back devices had/still have 256mb ram..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some is for caching and used ram also means that it is used for a good cause but I think that android uses too much RAM, maybe it's a bit related to using Java... I cannot believe that very simple widgets eat 10-12 MB of RAM so easily.

The ram is supposed to be taken up. It allows programs to start really fast(normally). This is normal. The programs in memory are based upon what you use. Available ram is wasted space. I generrally only have ~100mb free and have 512mb total. My phone never slows except when a dev does not implenent a listview correctly. As for Widgets with big ram req that is also a developer thing.
Sent from my Incredible using Tapatalk

wow! 12mb for a widget?!
yeh i understand it runs in the background, but if you use task killers you gain more ram back... the free ram ensures better performance though? it isnt 'wasted' is it?
do htc widgets generally use alot of RAM?

olyloh6696 said:
wow! 12mb for a widget?!
yeh i understand it runs in the background, but if you use task killers you gain more ram back... the free ram ensures better performance though? it isnt 'wasted' is it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it's not
android have it's own internal task killer and there is no need to install additional apps to manage RAM and keep free memory for... for what? system knows how much free mem is needed to run and will kill processes when needed.
and if you close app with task killer and then would want to run it again, it will actually take more time than if it would be kept in RAM.

deadwilder said:
it's not
android have it's own internal task killer and there is no need to install additional apps to manage RAM and keep free memory for... for what? system knows how much free mem is needed to run and will kill processes when needed.
and if you close app with task killer and then would want to run it again, it will actually take more time than if it would be kept in RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I generally agree with you, but my heavy usage of android shows me that things can get really slow even on my oced G2, when the available ram gets under 40 things get messy, increasing the lowmem limit saved me a bit but I aim for a 768 MB minimum for my next phone.

a widget takes 12mb of RAM because of the heap size of the way android OS is setup. it assigns 12mb of RAM regardless of whether that widget needs it or not. check each process, every one shown in system panel will be a minimum of around 12mb or so, even something that is only 75k. just the way android works.

RogerPodacter said:
a widget takes 12mb of RAM because of the heap size of the way android OS is setup. it assigns 12mb of RAM regardless of whether that widget needs it or not. check each process, every one shown in system panel will be a minimum of around 12mb or so, even something that is only 75k. just the way android works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That seems a bit uncomfortable to me

i personally think that it could be changed better by removing some apks or in other ways to reduce something

In my opinion it is nonsense that 1-4 MB stuff must reserve a minimum of ~12 MB of precious RAM. In this way we just lose resources that would be better used for actual data.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

[Q] More RAM available

Hi! I try xdandroid rom from his official site.
Apart little things maybe fixed on other rom that i've found here, there's a method to increase the available RAM? Because I've a Raph100 and it use only 50/60 Mb (I saw that in the "running applications" menu).
Thanks!

TheXeno said:
Hi! I try xdandroid rom from his official site.
Apart little things maybe fixed on other rom that i've found here, there's a method to increase the available RAM? Because I've a Raph100 and it use only 50/60 Mb (I saw that in the "running applications" menu).
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well obviously to physically get more RAM you'd have to get the soldering iron out and be pretty brave.
To manage memory better, read my Speed Improvements thread. There's a topic that covers memory management - you can get as detailed as you want with it, or just use the SuperCharger script. Either way, depends on how much you want to learn it .

I don't understand very well, but i don't think this will change the physical ram used. I mean, if it runs under/with win mobile, maybe we can change one parameter to release more memory. Like the page pool setting: maybe applying this directly to haret.exe

But the problem is, winmo is shutdown completely; if I'm not mistaken. You know, the whole reason why you have to reboot your phone in order to get winmo back. Usually apps that run under winmo, you just shut down and either run cleanRAM to regain the memory or you could reboot at that time but you do it while winmo is still running in either case.

TheXeno said:
I don't understand very well, but i don't think this will change the physical ram used. I mean, if it runs under/with win mobile, maybe we can change one parameter to release more memory. Like the page pool setting: maybe applying this directly to haret.exe
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't understand, WinMo is completely kicked out of memory - no trace of it is left. Many have done extensive tests, WinMo ROM speed has no effect on Android speed - why would it? It's not running "under" WinMo. HaRET is not a 'virtual machine' or an emulator. We're actually running Linux on the hardware - about all WinMo does for us is initialize said hardware.

Understand. And ok... but the question remains: my raph has 288Mb of RAM. Why Android use only 60? (in application menu: (plus or minus) "xx Mb used of 60 total")

TheXeno said:
Understand. And ok... but the question remains: my raph has 288Mb of RAM. Why Android use only 60? (in application menu: (plus or minus) "xx Mb used of 60 total")
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well 288mb is the total amount. In WinMo, you don't have that much total because of various things like video etc. Lots are beyond me.
Perhaps RAPH doesn't have all the banks available? I doubt it. Have you checked with free? In the terminal.
My RHOD says 171mb total, when I also have 288mb physically. I would think it would show more than 60 tho... Perhaps you've done something wrong? Using the wrong startup perhaps...?
You say you have a RAPH100, that isn't one of the crippled models.

So it's not only my diam100 who can not use all the RAM! I'm relieved!
I knew that even with 192MB, 64MB were blocked for VRAM (I think)
Winmo 6.5 shows a total of 111.66Mb
In settings, xdandroid 2.3.7 (compiled by me) shows only 30Mb, with free 0Mb
using the command FREE in the ADB, however, shows a total of 103Mb, with 1 or 2 MB free
In these days I'm doing some tests with compcache off, 24Mb (1 / 4 of RAM) or more
using Compcache the maximum memory is increased, but free is always 1 or 2Mb!
In the next days I will try with FRX07.1, we will see

Fabiett83 said:
So it's not only my diam100 who can not use all the RAM! I'm relieved!
I knew that even with 192MB, 64MB were blocked for VRAM (I think)
Winmo 6.5 shows a total of 111.66Mb
In settings, xdandroid 2.3.7 (compiled by me) shows only 30Mb, with free 0Mb
using the command FREE in the ADB, however, shows a total of 103Mb, with 1 or 2 MB free
In these days I'm doing some tests with compcache off, 24Mb (1 / 4 of RAM) or more
using Compcache the maximum memory is increased, but free is always 1 or 2Mb!
In the next days I will try with FRX07.1, we will see
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Based on free, that sound accurate. Settings -> About Phone might be using some different metrics (I honestly don't know).

And what about the 1 or 2 Mb free? they're too less to be ALWAYS 2 Mb, or not?

TheXeno said:
And what about the 1 or 2 Mb free? they're too less to be ALWAYS 2 Mb, or not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is this, I don't even...

I mean that it isn't normal which there are always 2Mb free, in according to Fabiett83 (he says this)

I'm sorry, before i meant 1-2 mb of uncompressed ram, there was still free memory in compcache
I think android needs more than 100Mb of ram, so it keep closing open apps and processes when i/it need ram for anything else
this could explain the ever full ram and the long time needed for opening apps
even answering to calls needs more than a minute if the phone app is not open!
Edit:
This is the result of ADB Free command in a fresh FRX7.1 install
_____ ---- total --- used --- free - shared - buffers
Mem: -- 103160 - 101116 -- 2044 ------ 0 ----- 72
Swap: - 102392 -- 64004 - 38388
Total: - 205552 - 165120 - 40432
Android uses a total of 165Mb of ram
Now with compcache set to 80Mb in froyo.user.conf
_____ ---- total --- used --- free - shared - buffers
Mem: -- 103160 - 101332 -- 1828 ------ 0 ---- 256
Swap: -- 81912 -- 54032 - 27880
Total: - 185072 - 155364 - 29708
Here uses 155Mb, but leaves less compcache free
Last with compcache set to 64Mb
_____ ---- total --- used --- free - shared - buffers
Mem: -- 103160 - 101812 -- 1348 ------ 0 ---- 352
Swap: -- 65528 -- 34356 - 31172
Total: - 168688 - 136168 - 32520
I Don't know... seem to always use the max possible uncompressed ram and thel load the rest in compcache
what i can clearly see is that the less compcache i use the more responsive the system is!
I will stick to 64mb for a while, i hope 168Mb is enough for normal use