Database Info

Low Available Memory

When my phone just started it is about 180, then it dropped to 90 after extensive use (20ish minutes).
That is even after using advanced task killer...
Anyone else experiencing this?

That's still plenty o' memory.
Keep in mind that there's a lot of folks getting good performance out of Droids, Milestones, etc, that have half the RAM (256) to start with, and hover around 20-30mb free in normal operation.

I was curious about this myself and was going to make a thread about it soon. Regardless of if it's enough free memory, I'm still a little confused as to where all my memory is going. When I close everything with TasKiller, I can get to about 175 MB of RAM free. I have a friend with an EVO that always gets well over 200 MB free, and I imagine that the HTC Sense UI would use a lot more memory than Launcher Pro (which is what I'm using)... but I could be wrong.

I can hit about 230 free after killing all tasks. I uninstalled all the ATT apps not sure if that had anything to do with it. I also use Touchwiz with only 2 Widgets accross 2 home screens.

maybe its android 2.1 that has a cap on the memory

Guys, a little piece of advice if you're new to Android. Don't sweat memory usage, if it's above 40mb free you're generally doing just fine.
And those apps that are using memory aren't using much if any CPU cycles or power, most are just cached in case you need them, and are wiped out of the cache if something else needs the memory.
On the other hand, if you're killing a lot of background tasks by reflex, those tasks are taking MORE time and power to reload again if they're no longer cached, plus there's the overhead of the Task Killer. It's especially bad if you have a Task Killer set to auto-kill apps, even more overhead as the task killer has to remain active to sniff for things to auto-kill.
Task Killers are the devil, and they're like crack. Just walk away.

labbu63 said:
maybe its android 2.1 that has a cap on the memory
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Click to collapse
Thats what some people are saying. They said we should see more avail RAM when the 2.2 update comes out. Or if someone can do some kernel wizardry.
The specs on the box do not mention any amount of RAM. I would be unhappy if ATT only put in 256! I didn't look through the manual maybe it says in there.

Bjd223 said:
Thats what some people are saying. They said we should see more avail RAM when the 2.2 update comes out. Or if someone can do some kernel wizardry.
The specs on the box do not mention any amount of RAM. I would be unhappy if ATT only put in 256! I didn't look through the manual maybe it says in there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im going to look into this more cause thats strange but i dont think you should worry much about the ram cause like it was said before if u have 40mb free ur still good

labbu63 said:
maybe its android 2.1 that has a cap on the memory
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed that seems to be the case, many threads about the issue can be found elsewhere on xda or google. Also this technical article from google: developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.htm (I can't post links yet)

yep ur right says more mem support at near bottom http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html
2.6.32 kernel upgrade
HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB
so it seems cause of the kernel

Well that's interesting. So you're saying that no matter what, right now we're only accessing 256 MB of RAM? I hadn't heard that before about 2.1, but that would be cool if our RAM essentially doubled in 2.2 (along with the massive CPU speed gains seen).
Again, it's not so much being worried that I'm going to run out of memory. It's simply a discussion on what people think we should be seeing. I'm certain that I don't have enough running to use 300 MB of RAM, which is why the question was raised. So I think we have our answer now and can rest easy waiting for 2.2.
As for the task killers... I honestly am more worried about CPU cycles for things I've left in the background than RAM. I've noticed my phone basically hang for a few seconds every so often, and I can only assume that something in the background is causing it. I'm going to turn off auto kill and not kill tasks manually for a while and see if there is any difference during use.

labbu63 said:
im going to look into this more cause thats strange but i dont think you should worry much about the ram cause like it was said before if u have 40mb free ur still good
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
40? No. 40mb of free RAM is unacceptable with todays smartphones on the market. I own a Captivate as well as a Nexus One and my Nexus consistently has 200-250 avail RAM. However when they first released the phone they only released it with 256 avail making my phone normally read about 120- 130 avail RAM. Now its been opened up to the 512(unless it had already been rooted) and it is much quicker than before. I'm wondering if something similar has been done with this phone.

well if it does have more than 256 mb it will be able to recognize rest in 2.2 as you said about ur nexus one maybe its just that the software on the captivate thats showing less you never know just gotta wait till some dev figures it out hopefully not to long

My phone is reporting 325mb of RAM, so I'm not sure if this is the same kernel limitation. I would appreciate if anyone could enlighten me as to whether or not the full 512 I was under the impression this phone possessed will be available under 2.2.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

ttalaoc said:
My phone is reporting 325mb of RAM, so I'm not sure if this is the same kernel limitation. I would appreciate if anyone could enlighten me as to whether or not the full 512 I was under the impression this phone possessed will be available under 2.2.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's exactly the limitation being talked about. Yes, 512 will be available after 2.2.
Until then, don't worry about it. Don't install a task killer, they just waste your time worrying about it. The OS has built in levels of memory where it starts to kill off different types of apps from background idle, all the way up to foreground active if entirely necessary. It WILL kill the extra apps if you need the memory.

I have been running ATK constantly since I got my Captivate a couple days ago. Not really concerned with memory usage as much as battery life. So far I get one full day of use before recharge, but I expect that to go up once I stop turning on the screen every few minutes to play with it. Can auto task killing negatively affect battery life?

[Q] Can Cache be converted into RAM?

I recently installed root explorer in my milestone xt720 (dexter's froyo) and i found out that there is more than 100 MB free memory in cache folder, while on the other hand i am running low on memory for my apps and RAM. I barely get 30 MB free with no apps running in the background. This makes my phone really slow even when its overclocked to 1Ghz. So is there any way i can use some of the free memory from cache as RAM or as data for downloading apps? Thanks

Nope. Just nope.

Yup, FJFalcon is right. The idea sounds pretty good. If you could use the internal flash as a swap it seems like it would be much faster than the sd-card swap. But there are too many problems with this idea. First, it that would involve some sort of weird partitioning of the internal memory (which Motorola prevents on this phone -- locked bootloader). Second, on most ROMs with a clean install you get something around 70MB free space on /system and around 130MB free space on /data. So you're really looking at 200MB at most, and that's assuming you don't install any of your apps on the internal space and no cache for any programs. You COULD throw all the apps on the sd-card (Link2SD), but you'd get a performance hit there and then with no cache...ouch. It would get pretty complicated pretty quickly. So I think that's the long answer for FJFalcon's reply.

thanks alot fjfalcon and thejaycan
but as far as ive seen this phone never uses upto 100 MB cache and, using this phone for so long, it gets frustrating seeing all that space wasted!
i wish something could have been done.

What is the best way to increase internal memory for the phone?

Title of thread.

Lilshaun said:
Title of thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
run something besides the stock firmware. AOKP for example has a smaller memory foot print than the shipping firmware.

to be honest, you can't really do a damn thing, running a different rom will free up maybe 100mb.

I'm currently running cleanrom lite 1.0. However, I still find that I usually only have around 250 mb free to use even without any apps open.

Lilshaun said:
I'm currently running cleanrom lite 1.0. However, I still find that I usually only have around 250 mb free to use even without any apps open.
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Click to collapse
Running ver 1.1 and loving it. I dont care if it says 5mb free. If its running smoothly thats all that matters

Your question is about increasing internal memory. Unless you were to break the phone open and replace the chip (not sure how well that'd go but I'd think not so good), you cannot increase memory. You can run a lightweight rom but that just makes more available not increasing size. Also its unclear if you're talking about internal disc space such as the ad card that you'd see on many phones, or actual memory.

shgadwa said:
Your question is about increasing internal memory. Unless you were to break the phone open and replace the chip (not sure how well that'd go but I'd think not so good), you cannot increase memory. You can run a lightweight rom but that just makes more available not increasing size. Also its unclear if you're talking about internal disc space such as the ad card that you'd see on many phones, or actual memory.
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Click to collapse
I'm pretty sure he meant something along the lines of increasing the memory that's free, not actually opening up the phone. I hope..

Infuse ram

is there a way to increase the infuse ram?

well no and yes. you can't physically add ram very easily and i doubt the board has space for it even if you did have the specialized soldering equipment.
but there is a big ram mod on the galaxy s that was attempted on the infuse but was buggy that makes use of ram that was allocated for something else. if someone wants to do the kernel work i think something like 20-30 mb more could be available. i'm not really sure of the details but a stock galaxy s has like 300-315 mb available and most custom kernels make 335-345 available out of 384 physical (128 is video ram and i'm not counting that). the infuse physically has 512 mb so maybe we could use up to 470 if some work was done in that area. not really a big deal though, i dont have any lag associated with programs being dumped from ram and restarting. the 440 mbs that i have available now is plenty for a nice clean aosp rom.
if you really need more ram maybe swap space (the linux equivalent of a page file/virtual memory) could be setup on the sdcard. but that wont make the phone any faster, it would just give the cpu more work to do. it would strictly help with a situation where things were getting wiped from ram too often when ram was low.

Jack it up and park a SGS3 under it. :silly:

Dani897 said:
well no and yes. you can't physically add ram very easily and i doubt the board has space for it even if you did have the specialized soldering equipment.
but there is a big ram mod on the galaxy s that was attempted on the infuse but was buggy that makes use of ram that was allocated for something else. if someone wants to do the kernel work i think something like 20-30 mb more could be available. i'm not really sure of the details but a stock galaxy s has like 300-315 mb available and most custom kernels make 335-345 available out of 384 physical (128 is video ram and i'm not counting that). the infuse physically has 512 mb so maybe we could use up to 470 if some work was done in that area. not really a big deal though, i dont have any lag associated with programs being dumped from ram and restarting. the 440 mbs that i have available now is plenty for a nice clean aosp rom.
if you really need more ram maybe swap space (the linux equivalent of a page file/virtual memory) could be setup on the sdcard. but that wont make the phone any faster, it would just give the cpu more work to do. it would strictly help with a situation where things were getting wiped from ram too often when ram was low.
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Click to collapse
what rom and what launcher are you using becuase im experiencing abit of lag and i want it gone!!

Yoshiikim said:
what rom and what launcher are you using becuase im experiencing abit of lag and i want it gone!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
run this kernel:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1134995
with this rom:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1100625

^^^ lol. that kernel might have access to more ram but it's froyo. i doubt the lag the op is experienceing is ram related. but he can try it with it's misreported clock speeds and all.
my best experience with touchwiz roms is a stock debloated rom, odex, not deodex. and there is an overclock kernel around somewhere. the tw4 launcher works best for me, but of course that needs framework mods to run, the tw4.5 launcher in the market will work but some features don't work too well on the infuse. turn off auto rotate. the sony arc launcher and the latest tw3 launcher with looped scrolling are also nice. but i like tw4 for it's improved widget picker. the stock android widget picker is so slow.
best rom now is aosp. i'm running entropy's ics build but also enjoyed rem-ics. either the trebuchet launcher or the sgs3 launcher should be fine. i like folders in the app drawer on sgs3. but i keep my phone pretty clean, if you do a clean install with either a stock unmodified rom and custom kernel or a clean aosp rom and you still feel lag then you might want to invest in an sgs3.

If you got the knowledge you can rewright the code to use ram differently as noted earlier...but no amount of software hacking will actually get you more ram...I know linux has a thing called swap which is similar to ram but is its own partion of the HDD...if someone had the knowledge they could possibly create a partion of it and add some kernel hacks to utilize it...
But as far as actually adding more ram-impossible as far as I know...there is no chip on the mother board to add ram.like in a desktop or laptop...I believe its built into the motherboard so your stuck with what's on it
Sent from my HTC Holiday using Tapatalk 2

Leaky Ram

Hey Guys,
I am relatively new to the world of Android being an IOS man until I took the plunge and got this cracking little Nexus.
One thing I have come across is how I seem to be losing RAM over about a period of an hour or so. On a restart my RAM reads about 1.3gb free. After some time it goes to 900mb free. I have APPs like Advanced Task Manager freeing up RAM every hour but thought that someone may have come up with a software tweak or solution that may stem the flow.
I am running a rooted with standard ROM and ElementalX Kernel.
Cheers
Jason

jasonst165 said:
Hey Guys,
I am relatively new to the world of Android being an IOS man until I took the plunge and got this cracking little Nexus.
One thing I have come across is how I seem to be losing RAM over about a period of an hour or so. On a restart my RAM reads about 1.3gb free. After some time it goes to 900mb free. I have APPs like Advanced Task Manager freeing up RAM every hour but thought that someone may have come up with a software tweak or solution that may stem the flow.
I am running a rooted with standard ROM and ElementalX Kernel.
Cheers
Jason
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
using apps that use ram to then try free it up try remove these type of apps and check after a few hours

jasonst165 said:
Hey Guys,
I am relatively new to the world of Android being an IOS man until I took the plunge and got this cracking little Nexus.
One thing I have come across is how I seem to be losing RAM over about a period of an hour or so. On a restart my RAM reads about 1.3gb free. After some time it goes to 900mb free. I have APPs like Advanced Task Manager freeing up RAM every hour but thought that someone may have come up with a software tweak or solution that may stem the flow.
I am running a rooted with standard ROM and ElementalX Kernel.
Cheers
Jason
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats not a issue , not in android the less free ram you have the better.. if you search google you'll know and also dont use any app killer.

There's really no need to use apps to free up ram. We got 2gb of ram
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Free ram is wasted ram, don't use any stupid task killers and forget about it
//Nexus 5//Nexus 4//HTC WFS//

So remove those APPs and it runs better with less RAM.
The revers of what Im used to :silly:

jasonst165 said:
So remove those APPs and it runs better with less RAM.
The revers of what Im used to :silly:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could check RAM usage on iOS? (Genuine question, not a poke at Apple )

Always let android handle itself. I have used android since the HTC G1 and android keeps getting better and better managing itself. Don't use apps that help with the android system. They make it harder for the managing to do what it has to do. Let android do it.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

A memory leak is when a single app (or multiple apps) leak into memory. This would mean if you look in RAM, app1 is using 10MB. Then an hour later app1 is using 40MB, then an hour later, app1 is using 100MB. Its only a leak if the particular app is grabbing more memory and never releasing it.
What is described here is just RAM being used, which as already covered by everyone else, is a good thing
-----------------------
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I do NOT reply to support queries over PM. Please keep support queries to the Q&A section, so that others may benefit

As posted, let Android manage the RAM. It has become quite the mature operating system over the past few years. It will know when to remove an app from RAM when it needs to free some up.
As a general point of why you basically want less free RAM: RAM uses the same amount of power whether you have 2gb free or 1 byte free. The entire stick is powered on. When you cold-boot an app, it spins up the CPU to do what it needs to do to load it into memory (compile it in the case of a JIT compiler, etc). After you do what you want to do in that app, it's fine to keep in RAM. Again, that RAM is going to either be useful, or sit there empty, doing nothing. The advantage happens when/if you want to access that app in the future. If you offloaded it, the CPU has to spin up again (which uses power) and load it into memory. If it's still in memory, it just looks at the pointers in memory and addresses it. And this is where Android has matured and knows how to handle itself: when you leave all your apps open, open another one, and reach your RAM limit, Android knows which app to offload. I don't know the exact formula, but I'm betting time last accessed is a huge (heck, it could be the only; I simply don't know) factor.
And as @rootSU mentioned, this is all assuming normal behavior. If you do actually have a memory leak, that is bad, but you are describing normal RAM usage.