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[Idea]add memory to myTouch

Originally, a2sd was developed to allow installation of many apps on G1 as G1 has limited memory. The MT3G has more internal memory so it does not need a2sd.
My question is if we can enable a2sd on a MT3G and than use the additional memory for the system. This can improve performance so much ....
Is this possible? I'm a dev, but not on this kind of platform . I know shell scripting, Unix, C so I can help if needed, but don't know how to approach this thing.
Thx.

mr.tenuki said:
Originally, a2sd was developed to allow installation of many apps on G1 as G1 has limited memory. The MT3G has more internal memory so it does not need a2sd.
My question is if we can enable a2sd on a MT3G and than use the additional memory for the system. This can improve performance so much ....
Is this possible? I'm a dev, but not on this kind of platform . I know shell scripting, Unix, C so I can help if needed, but don't know how to approach this thing.
Thx.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends. Now if you have a 32a board, this is pointless. Unless you have 300+apps installed it will not hurt performance.
I sugest App killer to kill off unused apps that never shut down, it helps so much/
Me really dont need Apsd for mytouch, especially the new 32a boards. Running from the sd card slows everythign down. To improve your performance..
1. Get CPU overclosk from market, set lowest to 386, high to 528 screen on, screen off 256/256.
2. Download swapper, set to size of yoru swap partition etc...
3. Get any free app killer ( ifully suggest Anvanced task killer) and every hour or so, go in and ignore what u use all the time, and kill everything else.
Also, get Cachemate from market or Clean up. this clears out all the garbage.
Doing this, on a good day, my battery lasts 17 hours with data going. and My Live wallpapers never lag

Hi,
Thanks - I already have all that set up. I was thinking on a MOD that will allow improvement of performance in a different way.
My Idea is to actually use the memory that becomes available under /data as we move the app to SD to be used by /system partition. Maybe we can also do a "reverse RAM hack" and increase the 3D RAM.
Again, as I'm not very familiar with the Linux system I don't know how exactly this should be done, or if it can be done at all.
Thanks for the reply though

storage memory in the phone is different then addressable ram.. therefore what your saying is not possible...if you really want something like this set up a swap partition on your sd card.
also task killers are not needed for android... its been well documented here and on other forums as android handles processes much differently than your standard windows box (so no need to have the mindset that background apps are slowing down your system). android itself does an excellent job of managing memory and kills tasks itself when more mem is needed. i used to run ATK myself, and found after removing it my phone actually ran better than killing processes all the time.
your likely just having a placebo affect if you think it speeds up your phone.. however killing process can increase battery life.. albeit only slightly...try it yourself and you will see what im talking about..
regarding task killers, just google it and you will see what im saying...
edit: most roms have cpu scaling in them, if you want an app i find set cpu to be the best, followed by overclock widget...
edit2: forgot to mention autostarts . a great program to edit which programs start up upon boot .. if your still worried about having things running in the background...

I was trying to get a swapfile on /Data (being a lot faster than sdcard, probably), but It didn't work :/

Memory leaks?

My Cappy starts with about 165mb of free RAM, but it quickly goes away as I use apps. I have Task Killer installed and set to kill apps every 30 minutes, but once I get down to about 90mb of RAM it is impossible to get anywhere near what I boot with free. I'm used to memory leakage on my WinMo phones, but this is way worse. I had CleanRAM on my Tilt 2 (from XDA) and it worked pretty good and allows scheduling. Is there a similar app for Android?

I'd get rid of Task Killer, you don't need it.

its not leaking memory...it handles memory differently than windows of yore....stop fretting about how much memory you have available and just reboot your phone once every few days....thats not needed, but if it makes you feel better to look at useless numbers...

Yeah you need to stop looking at this as either a windows pc or an old device (think g1). Get rid of the task killer and never look at how much free ram you have again. Its not important at all. I've had this phone for months and I literally have no idea how much ram it uses on average because I have never checked or cared. My phone has been running smooth since day one. Yours will too.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Available RAM is a useless number? Having unused apps continue to run in the background is nothing to worry about?
Does anyone have anything usefull to respond with?

Miami_Son said:
Available RAM is a useless number? Having unused apps continue to run in the background is nothing to worry about?
Does anyone have anything usefull to respond with?
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Click to collapse
If you look at Window 7, there is a concept called pre-fetch. This allows the OS to load the programs into memory based on past usage, and frequency of usage. This lets us open the program much faster, than fetch when requested. This info is loaded to memory, and kept there, until some other program comes in that needs more memory.
And just 'cos a program is present in RAM doesn't mean it would use CPU.
And, based on my observation of android, I see that I have close to 180 MB free when the phone boots up. But this quickly reduces to around 120-150 in less than an hour based on what I use. After like a day this I see that free RAM is about 80-120 MB. And even after 3-4 days of no reboots, the free memory is still present at the same 80-120 levels. I am not sure what kind of memory management android uses, but its very effective, and never caused any noticeable lag in the system.
And, I do not use any task killers, not free up RAM in task manager.

Your concerns are flawed in the fact that the Linux kernel handles memory different than what you are used to. Simply speaking, Linux keeps memory used by applications on need to basis. It keeps it loaded until something else needs to use it. It will take from something else at the required time. A system actually performs faster when there is less memory available because that means that applications are able to be recalled quicker. It's not like it can only load from what is left available.
You will also notice that many applications take up memory but are using 0 CPU. This speaks to the fact that it simply loaded into memory and not taking up resources required for other operations.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Lot to learn about this Android, I see. So, why are there so many task killers on Market and other RAM-related programs if it is not important? Should I really not be concerned when I see a program I hardly use being shown as running on startup?

Miami_Son said:
Lot to learn about this Android, I see. So, why are there so many task killers on Market and other RAM-related programs if it is not important? Should I really not be concerned when I see a program I hardly use being shown as running on startup?
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When I got my android phone, the first thing I did was put up things like task killer, start up auditor, etc. But as weeks passed, I realized these were more of deteriorating performance, than improve it. So got rid of them. Android can handle itself.

Autokiller optimises memory by changing values in android rather than kills apps. I reccomemd it, definately makes the phone faster. Set it to agressive.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Miami_Son said:
Lot to learn about this Android, I see. So, why are there so many task killers on Market and other RAM-related programs if it is not important? Should I really not be concerned when I see a program I hardly use being shown as running on startup?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It started with the combination of old versions of android (think cupcake and doughnut) and phones like the G1. Older versions didn't handle ram as well as they do in eclair and up. If you combine this with the fact that those older phones had less ram, and likely didn't use any gpu acceleration (unsure of this though), then task killers and other programs were considered necessary to get a fluid feeling experience.
They are still in the market now for 2 reasons.
1. Because some people still have those old phones and still run old versions of android. (less likely)
2. Habit. If people are used to using them and tell others they are necessary because they've always worked, why would a developer pull his money making app from the market? (much more likely)

So when Pandora or Grooveshark freeze, which happens all the time, and leaves my phone utterly useless until they're done doing whatever it is they're doing, how is using a task killer to...kill the process...not useful? It's much faster than rebooting the phone. I also think it's much faster than going into each application's individual settings to use the 'force stop' command. Is there a different way to kill a stuck app other than these methods?

Miami_Son said:
My Cappy starts with about 165mb of free RAM, but it quickly goes away as I use apps. I have Task Killer installed and set to kill apps every 30 minutes, but once I get down to about 90mb of RAM it is impossible to get anywhere near what I boot with free. I'm used to memory leakage on my WinMo phones, but this is way worse. I had CleanRAM on my Tilt 2 (from XDA) and it worked pretty good and allows scheduling. Is there a similar app for Android?
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Click to collapse
Along with what everyone else said, remember that a memory leak is a LEAK, something that is continuously draining, not a one-time thing. So, if memory goes to 80MB free and holds, that's not a leak, that's simply memory that is being used. If free memory drops to 75, then 60, then 55, 50, 45, and so on, then you have a true leak to worry about.

Well, what we Windows Mobile users often also refer to as leaks is the bad habit of some apps to not release their memory when closed. For instance, a program that carves out 25mb of RAM when started and returns less then half of that when closed.

jaju123 said:
Autokiller optimises memory by changing values in android rather than kills apps. I reccomemd it, definately makes the phone faster. Set it to agressive.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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Anyone else know much about "Autokiller"?

i used to use a task killer with my G1, and continued to do so with my captivate but i saw a few things like this: http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/ and decided to get rid of my task killers and my phone seemed actually a little faster and seemed my battery life increased.

matt310 said:
So when Pandora or Grooveshark freeze, which happens all the time, and leaves my phone utterly useless until they're done doing whatever it is they're doing, how is using a task killer to...kill the process...not useful? It's much faster than rebooting the phone. I also think it's much faster than going into each application's individual settings to use the 'force stop' command. Is there a different way to kill a stuck app other than these methods?
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Click to collapse
It is useful in those situations but realistically when people give that argument they are just looking for a reason to keep it. Android has the ability to kill tasks built in. If you're on 2.1 then yeah it's buried deeper in the menu but not a big deal. I can't imagine an app freezing enough to warrant having a task killer for. If you're on 2.2 it's much more easily accessible.
When we talk about task killers we're talking about people using them to kill open tasks that aren't causing issues simply to see more free ram available.

(Q) Droid Charge ram 328 or 512?

Sorry if this question has been answered somewhere, but I searched and couldn't find a reliable answer. When I go to task manager, it always shows memory usage out of 328mb available. Everything I read prior to purchase indicated there was 512mb ram. If I'm going to be locked in contract for any extended period of time I definitely need more than 328. 512 is already low by today's standard, but 328mb is ridiculously bad. Anyone that knows the answer and a way to verify would be greatly appreciated as all the searches I do come up with both answers.
Thanks for the help guys.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

In addition to the above mentioned issue... I frequently have 250+ out of the available 328 used even when task manager indicates no apps running. Is there that much going on in the background? In case this helps I'm running the ED2 debloated rom so I can't imagine how bad it would be if I still had all the bloat in there.
Thanks again for the input
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

The phone has 512MB total, with some of that allocated to the system that can't be used by apps. This memory goes to thinks like the GPU to give you that stellar video performance. Sucks that it can't be changed really, but that is how it's setup. I believe that we can get a few MB back from the system, but you won't get all of it back.

imnuts said:
The phone has 512MB total, with some of that allocated to the system that can't be used by apps. This memory goes to thinks like the GPU to give you that stellar video performance. Sucks that it can't be changed really, but that is how it's setup. I believe that we can get a few MB back from the system, but you won't get all of it back.
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Thanks a lot for the response. Makes me a lot more comfortable with holding on to this guy. There must be some serious bacground processes going. because I've yet to see anything lower than 180mb used (about 150 available) and that's with autokiller at extreme preset, which I normally wouldn't set so high...I just wanted to see if any additional mb's would free up.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

Ok, android 101:
Android uses smart caching and background process management to keep your apps available and running smoothly. As such the more RAM you have free the more you are WASTING. This system is designed to run up to 99% RAM use before turning off any running apps/background processes.
Ever since android 2.2 it has been HIGHLY efficient at doing so. Using autokillers to keep RAM free is pointless, as most apps don't even use ANY CPU when in background, unless they perform background checks for things like is it your turn on words with friends, etc. Unless you have an app that uses too much background data like this (in which case I'd just get rid of the app...) then using killers is pointless, let the OS run the way it is designed to do. Ever since I listened to a ROM dev and stopped using task killers my battery life on my original droid has nearly tripled, and I'm overclocking it from 566 to 1200mhz!
Android is not windows 95, you don't need to hold its hand and make sure things are closed, doing so actually defeats the advanced features of the OS, decreases battery life in all but a very few cases, and increases your app startup times, keeps you from getting background updates properly, etc.

warriorprophet said:
Ok, android 101:
Android uses smart caching and background process management to keep your apps available and running smoothly. As such the more RAM you have free the more you are WASTING. This system is designed to run up to 99% RAM use before turning off any running apps/background processes.
Ever since android 2.2 it has been HIGHLY efficient at doing so. Using autokillers to keep RAM free is pointless, as most apps don't even use ANY CPU when in background, unless they perform background checks for things like is it your turn on words with friends, etc. Unless you have an app that uses too much background data like this (in which case I'd just get rid of the app...) then using killers is pointless, let the OS run the way it is designed to do. Ever since I listened to a ROM dev and stopped using task killers my battery life on my original droid has nearly tripled, and I'm overclocking it from 566 to 1200mhz!
Android is not windows 95, you don't need to hold its hand and make sure things are closed, doing so actually defeats the advanced features of the OS, decreases battery life in all but a very few cases, and increases your app startup times, keeps you from getting background updates properly, etc.
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I was always of the impression that an app such as autokiller differed from a standard task killer in that it modified the values at which android natively kills off processes vs me going in and manually closing an app (which i never do). I too have read articles that task killers are pointless and do more harm than good, but I always thought autokiller was a different sort of "tweak" if you will. I've even seen several devs promote that they've modified androids native memory management to be more aggressive, etc...which is what I thought autokiller accomplished. Autokiller simply seemed necessary to me with the Charge because I was experiencing lag and lockups even with a debloated rom and voodoo kernel. Clearly there could be several culprits to this this and I was simply testing out different fixes and seeing what the results were. Thanks for the heads up though...learn something new every day.

Autokiller memory opimizer (not a task killer)

What is the verdict on these memory optimizer type apps?
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/faq

I can't recommend Autokiller highly enough on Samsung Froyo phones. It was a must use, even with Voodoo, on my old SGS i9000, and the same thing on my Droid Charge.
True story: just this morning I was ready to throw my Charge against the wall in frustration. Ever since upgrading to EE4 the damn thing was LAG LAG LAG city, even with Voodoo. Phone was snappy as heck after a reboot, but after a couple of hours use, it started to lag, and then would get so laggy it was almost unusable. Seriously, opening apps would take 10 second. Auto-rotate the screen took 4-5 seconds.
I enabled Autokiller, set it "aggressive" and the phone's a speed demon again.
Try it, can't hurt your phone with it, might help it exponentially.

waiting for the phones built in lowmem killer is useless, use autokiller and you will notice an immediate improvement in phone response time. heres a point for ya, without it installed i have 78mb ram free,,,with installed 158ram. thats huge. for a phone. plus they dev just updated to reduce memory usage of the app itself, plus there are tweaks in the settings menu to make the IO scheduler more aggressive, improve sd card reads, battery life, wifi, networ,...its layered man. and free....whats more to love. the only other way i have found to improve phone speed feelwise is with kangfucius kernel and set that terd up to 1500hz with cfq. shazaam.

elucid said:
What is the verdict on these memory optimizer type apps?
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/faq
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Click to collapse
Basically what you're doing is tweaking the settings for how Android frees up your memory. In theory, it should be good, because the defaults that were picked with the Android release aren't going to be appropriate for everyone. Just be careful not to be too aggressive or you might start losing functionality you want, such as alarms or background email checks.

chadness said:
Basically what you're doing is tweaking the settings for how Android frees up your memory. In theory, it should be good, because the defaults that were picked with the Android release aren't going to be appropriate for everyone. Just be careful not to be too aggressive or you might start losing functionality you want, such as alarms or background email checks.
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Good point on not being too aggressive. The higher you set it, the more sticky sports ate pushed out of memory, so with the settings I have right now the phone kills some things that in the oat would have been running when I went back to them. I'm going to drop down from aggressive to strict and see if that's a better balance for how I use the phone.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

Call me crazy but...
Android is linux based right? I.E. it uses a linux kernel? I was under the impression that was true. If so, unless you're running into the problem of completely filling RAM and having to wait for stuff to be cleared, this kind of thing will not help you!
Linux intentionally leaves commonly used items in RAM in order to decrease access time. It is perfectly normal for such a system to run at 70-80% memory usage. It is, in fact, a GOOD thing, because it means more memory is actually being put to a potentially useful purpose.
That being said, if you're actually running out of RAM I suppose something like this could help.

slight23 said:
Android is linux based right? I.E. it uses a linux kernel? I was under the impression that was true. If so, unless you're running into the problem of completely filling RAM and having to wait for stuff to be cleared, this kind of thing will not help you!
Linux intentionally leaves commonly used items in RAM in order to decrease access time. It is perfectly normal for such a system to run at 70-80% memory usage. It is, in fact, a GOOD thing, because it means more memory is actually being put to a potentially useful purpose.
That being said, if you're actually running out of RAM I suppose something like this could help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, yes, I frequently give the "in linux free memory is wasted memory" whenever people want to use some taskkiller app because they want a lot of free memory. This isn't about shooting for some high free memory number because we're Windows minded and think we need a lot of free memory, this is about finding the right settings for Android's own memory manager to keep the phone responsive. There's been something about my Samsung phones (except the Nexus S) where they just get laggy as hell with the stock memory manager settings.
As described above, my phone was almost unusable after a couple of hours booted up until I enabled Autokiller. Maybe something I'm running has memory leak; could be, but I pretty much run the same apps on all my phones, and the HTCs and Nexus S don't get laggy like the i9000 and Charge do.
This app, or the one named MinFreeManager really help. In the early days of the i9000 on MoDaCo site we were using the cat command to tweak the settings manually in our efforts to find a way to stop RFS lag before Voodoo came along.

I just installed this yesterday and configured it for strict mode. I also enabled all of the advanced system tweaks and so far I haven't noticed much if any difference, perhaps it depends on your individual usage and what apps, launcher, etc you're using. I'm going to leave it on and see how it goes though.

Any still using this? Any want to share what settings they use?

[Q] Is adanced task manager good for our xt720?

I've seen a lot of debates abt whether advanced task manager is good for the phone or not but im not sure if it has a positive effect on our xt720 with very little ram, so does it make more sense to use advanced task manager?? Btw im talking abt the 2.1 version of xt720 not the dexter's froyo or anything else. any help would be appreciated!

Advanced task manager is an app and task killer. Although discussion is varied it is safe to say a majority of very computer literate people tend to think task killers are bad for your phone and actually cause more battery drain in the end.
It is important to know how android handles memory. When you open an app for example the browser, and then move to gmail android puts the browser in an idle state. If after that you open say google maps and your phone has no more free memory android will kill your first process the browser to make space. The apps which are idle take no memory resources and just sit there. Killing idle apps, which usually reappear as soon as they are killed drain more juice, and are slow to launch.
A better app to use is the Autokiller memory optimizer. It uses a script to change androids own parameters at boot. So you can specify at what ram you want android to kill the idle apps. It does not involve killing apps and lets android handle everything. Ive been using it for quite some time and my phone is snappy fast and has around 60-70MB ram free all the time. I use the strict settings anything about that free's too much ram. Ofcourse your phone needs to be rooted for this to work.

sohrab.naushad said:
Advanced task manager is an app and task killer. Although discussion is varied it is safe to say a majority of very computer literate people tend to think task killers are bad for your phone and actually cause more battery drain in the end.
It is important to know how android handles memory. When you open an app for example the browser, and then move to gmail android puts the browser in an idle state. If after that you open say google maps and your phone has no more free memory android will kill your first process the browser to make space. The apps which are idle take no memory resources and just sit there. Killing idle apps, which usually reappear as soon as they are killed drain more juice, and are slow to launch.
A better app to use is the Autokiller memory optimizer. It uses a script to change androids own parameters at boot. So you can specify at what ram you want android to kill the idle apps. It does not involve killing apps and lets android handle everything. Ive been using it for quite some time and my phone is snappy fast and has around 60-70MB ram free all the time. I use the strict settings anything about that free's too much ram. Ofcourse your phone needs to be rooted for this to work.
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Im trying the app now so far so good. After i put it in strict level, there is nothing else that i should be doing with the app rite? i can just continue with the normal use of my phone rite? thx a lot! oh and i already uninstalled advanced task manager.

Nopes, just use your phone as you would Use the lowest settings that make your phone feel fast. How much free memory are you getting now? Also reboot your phone once. I've used the strict settings makes my phone feel great lemme know how it works out for you.

You should also use milestone overclock to overclock your processor if you dont already. Its available on the market for free. I use 1 Ghz, 74 Vsel!

After using the memory app, I have also 60-70mb free oh and I also use milestone overclock my settings are 1ghz 62vsel. What are the advantages of increasing the vsel value?
Sent from my Milestone XT720 using XDA App

I find that having a higher vsel keeps the system more stable during memory intensive tasks. Also I found no difference in battery life thats why I use the stock presets. Before I used 56 vsel 1 ghz but when I opened up the camera or something the system would hang and reboot. Try it out, its also much faster

More vsel actually drains the battery faster. From my experiance and recomnendations I found out that 1Ghz @ 66vsel is my optimal setting.
About ATK and Autokiller memory optimizer - crap! I preffer Running service and Manage application to deal with programs if I need to, but I mostly let Android decide for himself. My phone always have around 60MB free memory and ROM is fast and very responsive.
Also you may wanna try JuceDefender. Awesome app which saves you battery and clears RAM, if you are not feeling comfortable doing it yourself.

eSu.Matix said:
More vsel actually drains the battery faster. From my experiance and recomnendations I found out that 1Ghz @ 66vsel is my optimal setting.
About ATK and Autokiller memory optimizer - crap! I preffer Running service and Manage application to deal with programs if I need to, but I mostly let Android decide for himself. My phone always have around 60MB free memory and ROM is fast and very responsive.
Also you may wanna try JuceDefender. Awesome app which saves you battery and clears RAM, if you are not feeling comfortable doing it yourself.
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Click to collapse
Umm, I think you're confusing autokiller memory optimizer with the normal task killers. Look it up, it isnt a task killer but changes androids native application management parameters. Which ROM are you on?
Also ive used ultimate juice for sometime. It doesnt clear RAM, it just toggles your data and wifi according to options you set. I also noticed that without juice defender my phone works just as much so dont know how much that helps.
Battery calibration after new ROM flash has always made my battery meter more accurate and lasts longer.

I very well may and I apologize for that.
Actually I use recovery mode options to set the aggressiveness of the running service and I'm more than satisfied.
Sent from my XT720 using XDA App
P.S. StealEpicBlue with some little tweaks from me (few deleted system apps).

eSu.Matix said:
I very well may and I apologize for that.
Actually I use recovery mode options to set the aggressiveness of the running service and I'm more than satisfied.
Sent from my XT720 using XDA App
P.S. StealEpicBlue with some little tweaks from me (few deleted system apps).
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Click to collapse
How did you do that. I am running steelblue also and can always tweak it more. Is it through Androidiani recovery that you set the aggressiveness. I might start a thread tomorrow about all the things Androidiani does and how to use them. Haven't been able to find too much on it, but I know alot of people use it.