Related
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?
I've just installed compcache on my Cyanogen ROM, and preliminary farting around gives me the impression "this is frelling epic". I can have some big apps running, all at once, flick between them without reloads, and go back to the home screen instantly.
So here's the question: why is the ext2 partition needed? If compcache does it magic by creating a ramdisk that has compression enabled, and then using that for swap, why does it need any changes to your SD card at all? (I've made the changes, I have my ext2 partition - I'd just like to understand WHY).
Also, has anyone done any empirical testing on battery life with compcache versus swappper? My gut feeling (although this is not based on any proper analysis) is that swapper has made my battery take a real nose-dive, and I've seen people on the Dream boards say compcache has the same or worse effect. How are people finding it on their Magics?
I have had swapper for a while and it does not appear to have any effect on my battery thus far. I've heard of people running both compcache and swapper. Is there a good tutorial out there on setting compcache up? The one I found was kinda outdated and listed support roms that were WAY outdated. I wouldn't mind trying both in conjunction with each other.
I found this over in the Dream forums
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=537236
but it does presuppose that you're running Cyanogen.
I've actually bumped up my "swap" with Compcache to 64Mb. Rationale is that the Dream has less RAM than we do (even us poor relation 32B RAM-cripped Magic owners). Loaded Google Mail, Exchange Mail, Pacman, Teeter, and loaded up icanhascheezburger.com on the browser (the latter usually being a sure-fire way of prompting a pause for reloading when going back to the home screen). There was no more than half a second delay switching from app to app once they'd all loaded and they all seemed to stay in memory rather than the oldest one used dropping out and needing a reload. If the battery life holds up I'm very pleased.
Just to verify, Swapper is for using a swap on a SD while Compcache utilizes space on the built in ram for a swap. Is this correct?
Gimpeh said:
Just to verify, Swapper is for using a swap on a SD while Compcache utilizes space on the built in ram for a swap. Is this correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I understand it, yes. So basically Compcache will grab (say) 32Mb of your RAM and uses it as swap. Which would make no sense (because why would you swap to RAM - just use the RAM as RAM!) except Compcache compresses what gets swapped. Your 32Mb thus becomes 96Mb or more (I'm seeing compression factors of 70-odd %). What I don't personally get is why Compcache needs an ext2 (linux) partition on your SD card.
Although I have all photos, music, apps etc pointed to 'external' memory I am now getting low memory (<2MB) warnings. I have manaully purged (as much as I feel confident with) main memory and even uninstalled and re-installed programs to ensure that they reside in external memory. However when I search for files >64KB there are no files reported in main. This is driving me crazy and I need help before I microwave my HTC Diamond. Please, please point me in the right direction
The messages are probably not for storage memory but for either RAM or virtual memory. Close applications instead of minimizing them (the usual default). Get a task manager and see what's going on.
I hoped that that was the case however I have a RAM cleaner tool and even after running that and killing all processes I still have low memory. Is there any way I can determine what is taking up main memory?
you know one of my friends has the same problem with his samsung omni and i can't for the life of me find what is taking up so much room. he is pretty back to stock and we have tried everything. i tell him to return his phone as defective but he hasn't. is this a winmo problem that could be a bad code or is it just dumb luck that this has happened to an htc and samsung?
Calendar items, phone logs, messages reside in main memory too -- have you cleared those?
I do use the calendar and maybe clearing some of the old entries will help. However I do not use the handset as a voice phone, only data, and have no call logs or texts taking up space. I do use it for email so will check that too. That said it's currently using 83.36MB out of 84.56MB and doubt if the odd deletions will make a great difference. Is there a way of partitioning some of the storage card space over to extend the main storage area?
You can relocate \My Documents pretty easily with a registry change. You can also move your PIE cache (sk tools will help with this). These things might help. I thought the diamond had 4G of internal memory? Does it have a small main memory and then a large internal storage memory? I'm afraid I'm not that familiar with it.
You may want to install ClearTemp or something similar to clean out your temp and volatile folders. And you're sure it's not a ram issue? Do you have the problem immediately after a soft reset, or does it take a while?
I may have been leading you down the garden path. When I run the memory app' in Settings there are two totals: Storage and Program. In storage 82.7MB out of 84.5MB is in use and in program 78MB out of 111MB is in use. The Diamond complains of being almost out of memory shortly after it is turned on. Without a guide to follow I'm a little ill at ease attempting registry changes even though I have advanced config and PHM RegEdit installed. I will try ClearTemp if I can install it! Thanks for the help to date.
Does anyone know how to clear out the 'storage' area of the HTC as Opera is now refusing to run (not enough cache space...?) I'm facing the prospect of reloading the firmware (again) with no confidence I won't be back in this situation again in a couple of months
The out-of-memory warning message is activated after the ram memory is lower than a desired value .
The activation pattern and the threshold value are controlled by a set of registry entries under \HKCU\Software\Htc\TaskManager\
Can Play With It By Changing The Threshold Value In Registry.
Thanks for that, however at < 1-2MB of storage area remaining my problem is how do I recover storage capacity? I used ClearTemp and I now have around 7MB free which is much better though not ideal. Surely there must be a way of tweaking the storage / program balance through one of the toolkits?
I had the same prob few month back. The best way is to Hard reset > reinstall programs your REALLY NEED to internal storage except .net C Framework or Smart Protect etc... [install those types of programs to main memory]
The other way is
Buy SkTools if you dont have it
move things ie. programs to internal storage!
I select internal memory every time I install an app which further mystifies me. Now I can't get Opera to run.... it's just a year of break downs for me
Can anyone direct me to a guide somewhere?
I'd like to make an ext partition? Or would I? Is Swapper 2 just as fast? Tradoffs? Anyone run into their sd card wearing out yet?
bueler?
The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.
The consensus seem to be "do not use" except as 'last resort', and only needed on phones with 256MB or less of mem.
I wrote this, and I am waiting for a technical review from some experts in this field.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=897823
kschang said:
The consensus seem to be "do not use" except as 'last resort', and only needed on phones with 256MB or less of mem.
I wrote this, and I am waiting for a technical review from some experts in this field.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=897823
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have 256MB ram
At the moment, Compcache is good enough, but I can't help but wonder how much better it could be with swap instead of Compcache.
edit: "For example, If you have a 256MB system (shows as 262MB due to 1024 vs. 1000 KB size difference) and have 130MB of apps and data/cache loaded, then that leaves about 130MB for the system to actually RUN programs. That sounds like a lot, but in reality that is not enough, since the system itself takes 50-80MB, and services will take up another 30-50MB, leaving almost nothing. "
quick review, you don't appear to be differentiating between RAM and Flash? Having more apps installed shouldn't increase RAM usage at all. Unless I gravely misunderstand the Android OS, if I install a new program, it resides in the system flash, not the RAM, until I run it, at which point it gets loaded to RAM. When the system needs memory and no swap or Compcache is in use, it writes the state of the application to the flash and removes it from RAM.
What the swap does is similar to what compcache does-- compresses apps that are currently in RAM, and moves them to the swap space. In the case of Compcache, this is in the RAM. But since you're compressing it, background apps don't take nearly as much RAM, and you get an app switching speedboost because the processor can uncompress the compcache'd program, "move" it to RAM, compress the currently running program in RAM, and "move" it to the compcache. Forgive me if you already said this, I can't read the entire thing at the moment.
As for swap, I'm not sure if the processor compresses before going to the hard swap file, I don't think that it does-- when android starts getting low on RAM, it moves what was in RAM, to the swap on the SD-card. Since it does this when the system is low on RAM, and not when the system runs out of RAM, you never notice it. Reading the app back from the SD card happens almost instantaneously, because the sd cards can be read from at a speed of at least 20MB/s, maybe more. When you're restoring an app to RAM, 20MB/s is plenty.
edit2: I'm sorry but this guide is too vague to be anything more than moderately informative. Comments like:
-"CompCache, or "compressed cache", is handled by the Linux kernel. It takes a portion of your memory, and use it as a cache space, but compressed. By using on-the-fly compression it is able to make your memory appear to be a bit larger than it actually is. However, the result is slower performance.
This is usually NOT tweakble without mod ROM such as Cyanogen Mod. The kernel also must support this feature, and not all do. This also slows your phone. "
-"...swap space by either creating a swap file or a swap partition. This adds a lot of read/write action to your SD card and may substantially decrease its usable life."
-"This really slows your phone."
People wouldn't be doing these things for no reason. Compcache does not "make your memory appear a bit larger", when it at least doubles the amount of usable RAM-- when you allocate 60MB, if you average 75% compression (I usually see between 65% and 80%), do you know how much RAM this effectively nets you? Over at least 60MB extra, usually about 80! So my phone goes from having 256MB ram to having 340 effectively. Having your processor overclocked minimizes any slowdown from the compression/decompression; I haven't noticed any slowdown, and having the "extra" RAM definitely has made my phone more able to multitask.
You basically discourage users from doing ANYTHING like swapping, compcaching, etc to their phone, saying it "slows it down" and "can substantially decrease your SD Card's life". My experience has been otherwise regarding slowing it down, and regarding the SD card, the only part that would actually go bad is the swap partition. If you put that at the end of the drive, when it goes bad, you'll know, and you can just move the partition back 300MB and put your 300MB swap there. We haven't heard of any users' cards going bad from this yet. Also, if you have a class 6+ SD Card, they implement wear leveling on the card, so you don't need to worry about wearing out any individual bits.
Sorry, I'm just not digging it.
rancur3p1c said:
I have 256MB ram
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me too, me too...
At the moment, Compcache is good enough, but I can't help but wonder how much better it could be with swap instead of Compcache.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So try it. With CM612, I have CompCache AND Swap (through Swapper2 / 128 MB) turned on. It slows down every once in a while but my programs don't crash any more.
edit: "For example, If you have a 256MB system (shows as 262MB due to 1024 vs. 1000 KB size difference) and have 130MB of apps and data/cache loaded, then that leaves about 130MB for the system to actually RUN programs. That sounds like a lot, but in reality that is not enough, since the system itself takes 50-80MB, and services will take up another 30-50MB, leaving almost nothing. "
quick review, you don't appear to be differentiating between RAM and Flash? Having more apps installed shouldn't increase RAM usage at all. Unless I gravely misunderstand the Android OS, if I install a new program, it resides in the system flash, not the RAM, until I run it, at which point it gets loaded to RAM. When the system needs memory and no swap or Compcache is in use, it writes the state of the application to the flash and removes it from RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At first I thought the same way you did, until I started looking in "diskusage".
According to diskusage, there is no separate RAM. 256MB is 256MB. App storage is where everything goes, and what's left is used to load services and such. The numbers I added up matches. I have 256 MB phone. 100 is for apps, which leaves about 150-160. System itself takes 50-80 (acore, gapps, phone, system...) then add a few services and you're down to 30-40 MB free to actually run the programs. The numbers seem to match up to what's shown at the bottom of "Manage Services".
I know it's weird, but perusal of Android developers kit doesn't contradict this understanding.
What the swap does is similar to what compcache does-- compresses apps that are currently in RAM, and moves them to the swap space. In the case of Compcache, this is in the RAM. But since you're compressing it, background apps don't take nearly as much RAM, and you get an app switching speedboost because the processor can uncompress the compcache'd program, "move" it to RAM, compress the currently running program in RAM, and "move" it to the compcache. Forgive me if you already said this, I can't read the entire thing at the moment.
As for swap, I'm not sure if the processor compresses before going to the hard swap file, I don't think that it does-- when android starts getting low on RAM, it moves what was in RAM, to the swap on the SD-card. Since it does this when the system is low on RAM, and not when the system runs out of RAM, you never notice it. Reading the app back from the SD card happens almost instantaneously, because the sd cards can be read from at a speed of at least 20MB/s, maybe more. When you're restoring an app to RAM, 20MB/s is plenty.
edit2: I'm sorry but this guide is too vague to be anything more than moderately informative. Comments like:
-"CompCache, or "compressed cache", is handled by the Linux kernel. It takes a portion of your memory, and use it as a cache space, but compressed. By using on-the-fly compression it is able to make your memory appear to be a bit larger than it actually is. However, the result is slower performance.
This is usually NOT tweakble without mod ROM such as Cyanogen Mod. The kernel also must support this feature, and not all do. This also slows your phone. "
-"...swap space by either creating a swap file or a swap partition. This adds a lot of read/write action to your SD card and may substantially decrease its usable life."
-"This really slows your phone."
People wouldn't be doing these things for no reason. Compcache does not "make your memory appear a bit larger", when it at least doubles the amount of usable RAM-- when you allocate 60MB, if you average 75% compression (I usually see between 65% and 80%), do you know how much RAM this effectively nets you? Over at least 60MB extra, usually about 80! So my phone goes from having 256MB ram to having 340 effectively. Having your processor overclocked minimizes any slowdown from the compression/decompression; I haven't noticed any slowdown, and having the "extra" RAM definitely has made my phone more able to multitask.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It also seriously depends on your SD card. I've read reports on Phandroid that said class 6 or 8 microSD cards would provide almost lag-free swaps, but that's on a G1 (which is already a slow phone).
You basically discourage users from doing ANYTHING like swapping, compcaching, etc to their phone, saying it "slows it down" and "can substantially decrease your SD Card's life". My experience has been otherwise regarding slowing it down, and regarding the SD card, the only part that would actually go bad is the swap partition. If you put that at the end of the drive, when it goes bad, you'll know, and you can just move the partition back 300MB and put your 300MB swap there. We haven't heard of any users' cards going bad from this yet. Also, if you have a class 6+ SD Card, they implement wear leveling on the card, so you don't need to worry about wearing out any individual bits.
Sorry, I'm just not digging it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Constantly reading and writing the file will cause that area to get much heavier use and eventually cause it to fail the bootup "checking SD card". The only question is how much life is taken away.
I am running my Droid on 24% CompCache AND 128MB Swap right now. Occasional lag but otherwise runs quite well. It's also overclocked to 1.2 GHz with P3Droid's kernel. So I do practice somewhat of what I preach...
so if I have 512MB of ROM, and 256MB of RAM, and I fill up my ROM with programs, how much RAM do I have?
I don't follow how what you said can be.
SD Card writes-- SanDisk guarantees theirs for 100K writes to any given sector...that's good enough for the swap to not be a problem in the near future IMHO.
let's put it this way...
Here's the specs of Moto Droid from Motorola itself (http://developer.motorola.com/products/droid/)
RAM 256 MB
FLASH ROM 512 MB
USER STORAGE AVAILABLE (MAX) 256 MB
So the REST of the ROM clearly is to hold the Android OS itself. The actual programs you can load for running? 256MB. That's app storage.
I've always wondered if there's a way to read the actual ROM contents and enumerate that... But that's for another topic.
Found this useful post: boot process of Android OS
http://www.androidenea.com/2009/06/android-boot-process-from-power-on.html
Furthermore, I noticed that the "built-in" apps (i.e. bloatware) are actually just stuff left in the "system" dir which can only be accessed with root permission. So they are NOT store in "ROM" per se, but more like "part of boot rom".
I have to find explanation on how an app is loaded, but that helps...
Aha, so that's the term they used... Application Lifecycle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITfRuRkf2TM
Okay, I take back what I said. Apps are loaded into RAM, but HOW things are allocated wasn't that clear.
From what I understand, apps, when they are killed by system, some exit gracefully by writing their instance "state" (data and cache) to app storage. Some just exits.
Browser will write the URL, for example. When the browser is "resumed", the process is loaded, then the instance loads back the URL and it's as if nothing happened.
I'll have to revise the paper, AND I haven't figured out what to say about swap and compcache yet.
Made some corrections.
On 256MB machine, 30MB is used by deep system buffers (not part of OS), another 32 for OS cache, so about 190 or so is available the OS itself to load apps and services, and just the default gapps, system, phone, and so on is about 60MB. So a fresh clean phone should ahve no more than 120-130 MB free. If you load a couple apps with autostart services, it'll quickly drop below 50MB.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2298208/how-to-discover-memory-usage-of-my-application-in-android
Another piece of the puzzle... The numbers at the bottom of "Manage Services" is as explained below:
(quoting from http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/02/service-api-changes-starting-with.html )
"Finally, along the bottom of the screen are some obscure numbers. If you know how to interpret them, this gives you a lot of information on the memory status of your device:
* Avail: 38MB+114MB in 25 says that the device has 38MB of completely free (or likely used for unrequired caches) memory, and has another 114MB of available memory in 25 background processes it can kill at any time.
* Other: 32MB in 3 says that the device has 32MB of unavailable memory in 3 unkillable processes (that is, processes that are currently considered to be foreground and must be kept running)"
The order is reversed in Android OS 2.2. Mine says
Other: 75MB in 5 Avail: 18MB + 20 MB in 3
Which should mean 75MB in 5 unterminable tasks, 18 MB free (or can be freed easily), plus another 20 MB used by 3 processes that can be killed to free up.
ProCrank says...
39911K System_server
15756K acore
12982K swiftkey
10136K DIY Screensaver (lock screen)
9392K Phone (system)
9093K ATKfroyo
6834K Terminal
3984K JuiceDefender
3785K Screebl
3482K system MMS
3329 SeePU
3244K Bluetooth
3199K SetCPU
1979K Zygote (which is Dalvik init)
1425K Mediaserver
and the rest is native system code well under 1MB in size.
If you add System_server, Phone, Zygote, Acore, and foreground app (terminal and procrank) you get about 75MB. It would be nice if that screen TELLS you which program it considers to be unterminable, but, oh well...
I have my Nexus S for over two weeks now, and I'm incredibly happy with it. Theming is a lot of fun, and you can do very cool stuff even without root and custom roms!
However, there is one (strange) thing I've noticed. It's about the RAM.
For your information: I use Go Launcher which has a tab in the App Drawer with running applications, and a button to close all (you can exclude certain apps). When I boot up my phone, I have 170-180 MB free RAM. The following programs (and widgets) are running in the background (I have excluded them from the close all list): Go SMS Pro (widget, notifications), WhatsApp (notifications), Lookout, Extended Controls (widget), Wiget Locker (I made it look like the MIUI lockscreen) and Clockr (widget).
There are two more apps that are on constantly, and those are the Miren Browser and PlayerPro. I don't know why Miren Browser keeps turning itself on. When I check how much MB it uses, it says 0,00 dB... As for PlayerPro, I use a widget called Phantom Music Control, a widget that hides itself when no music is being played. I also use it on my lockscreen. This widget controls PlayerPro, so that is probably why PlayerPro has to be running all the time (so that it can start up quickly when needed).
There are some Google apps that turn themselves on, like Gmail and Places, and they actually use RAM according to Go Launcher. I don't want them to be running, and synchronization is turned off with Gmail. When I want to know if I have mail, I open Gmail. It doesn't have to be running all the time. I've never used Places, and I never will use it, so I don't know why that has to be running all the time.
Every once in a while I hit Close All (with Go Launcher). However, I've noticed that over time my free memory keeps lowering. When I boot up my phone it is around 175 MB, but at the end of the day the free memory is 100 MB, 70 MB or even 50 MB, and yes, even after I've hit the 'Close All' button.
I know I don't use my phone very efficient, with programs like Go SMS, Widget Locker and that Music Control widget, and I will flash a custom rom later. My RAM memory will probably increase then (I've read something about Supercurio's kernel including a boost RAM management). It just bothers me that I don't have control over what programs are running (Gmail and Places), and that my free memory decreases over time. I haven't noticed any slow downs, I'm just worried. Or shouldn't I?
I don't know about the rest, but you shouldn't be concerned about free memory.
Android is designed in a way that all programs keep running (sleeping actually) in the background even when you don't use them at the moment. They are automatically killed when the system needs memory for something else. Any program that is sent to the background (e.g. by pressing back or home) can be killed by the system at any time and is (should be) ready for it.
Basically, the less free memory you have, the better. That means that many of the apps you use are running and you can return to them without delay.
There are some articles floating around the web about the architecture of android and process/application life cycle. They explain that better then me, and in more detail.
cgi said:
I don't know about the rest, but you shouldn't be concerned about free memory.
Android is designed in a way that all programs keep running (sleeping actually) in the background even when you don't use them at the moment. They are automatically killed when the system needs memory for something else. Any program that is sent to the background (e.g. by pressing back or home) can be killed by the system at any time and is (should be) ready for it.
Basically, the less free memory you have, the better. That means that many of the apps you use are running and you can return to them without delay.
There are some articles floating around the web about the architecture of android and process/application life cycle. They explain that better then me, and in more detail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, thanks!
So I don't have to be afraid of any slow down? And what about Gmail and Places turning themselves on every time, even if I don't use them?
And why does the free memory decrease over time, but increases again when I turn off and boot up my phone?
Androyed said:
So I don't have to be afraid of any slow down? And what about Gmail and Places turning themselves on every time, even if I don't use them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More like the opposite: your RAM is being put to good use.
When your PC get's low on RAM it will start swapping and trashing around. Your smartphone has no swap and is optimized for it. If it get's low on RAM, it will just kill some stuff in the background. All this happens without you noticing anything (if the app is programmed correctly).
I don't know about Gmail and Places. Most likely they are running because they registered broadcast receivers or something.
Androyed said:
And why does the free memory decrease over time, but increases again when I turn off and boot up my phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Every app is running in its own dalvik virtual machine process. Since creating a new VM process is expensive (in terms of processing time), the VM processes are reused to some degree. One app is unloaded, the new one is loaded.
There is more stuff going on behind the scenes, of course. There are likely some spare VMs sleeping in the background waiting for an app to use them.
However, the heap (dynamically allocated memory of a process) of a VM can only grow and never shrink (don't ask me why). So after a few apps or so a VM process is restarted, too.
To come back to your question: When your device boots up, only the processes needed for boot are running. That will be the launcher, some widgets and so on. So basically, this is the moment with the most free RAM. However, this is also when your device is slowest, because every new app you launch has first to be loaded into memory and executed.
While you use your device, many of the apps you used will be kept around in the background, so when you start them again, they will reappear instantly, because the whole "create vm process --> load app from storage --> execute and initialize app" chain has already happened.
"Free memory is wasted memory."
When you open an app, the system loads it into ram. When you close it, the system should not bother to remove it from ram because there is a good chance you will use that app again and having it pre-loaded makes it open significantly faster.
Just because ram is "used" doesn't mean it can't be re-allocated for something more important.
That being said, it is entirely possible that some of your apps have memory leaks. Does it get worse after two days, or three days?
d-h said:
"Free memory is wasted memory."
When you open an app, the system loads it into ram. When you close it, the system should not bother to remove it from ram because there is a good chance you will use that app again and having it pre-loaded makes it open significantly faster.
Just because ram is "used" doesn't mean it can't be re-allocated for something more important.
That being said, it is entirely possible that some of your apps have memory leaks. Does it get worse after two days, or three days?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I turn my phone off every evening, so I don't know. It's not a problem by any means, I'm just curious.
I've left my RAM alone today, and I didn't noticed any slow down. It was on 110 MB free RAM when I left it alone, and when it was at 35 MB RAM, I decided to hit the close all button (there was no slow down btw). Guess what? My RAM went back up to 140 MB! Not as much as when I boot my phone up, but it's still strange: when I hit close all when the free RAM is very low, I get more free RAM then when I hit close all when my free RAM is around 100 MB (I only get 5 or 10 MB free RAM extra then).
Thanks by the way, good first post!