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Hello.
I'm soon getting the Desire HD, and I wanted to clear some things up, regarding to multi-tasking, and how applications run in the background. This would be like a second edition of the other thread about closing applications, but more general.
I have read some parts of this, and things seem to make sense. You press the home button, and the app gets "stored" in the RAM.
However, when comparing this management of processes with the iPhone's; Why can't you close applications on Android the same way? Wouldn't it be a smart choice of they guys behind Android to make a similar way to really close apps (and thus "remove" the program from the RAM)?
What do you guys think?
I think you answered the question of why android multitask so much better. The desire HD will have more than enough RAM(768MB I think) for it to ever slow down or need a task killer. Haven't really needed a task kisller since RAM went above 256mb I haven't used one on any of my cuter t android phones. Except to monitor programs that are causing problems. System panel is a great one for monitoring you CPU and RAM usage
Sent from my DROIDX using XDA App
ksizzle9 said:
I think you answered the question of why android multitask so much better. The desire HD will have more than enough RAM(768MB I think) for it to ever slow down or need a task killer. Haven't really needed a task kisller since RAM went above 256mb I haven't used one on any of my cuter t android phones. Except to monitor programs that are causing problems. System panel is a great one for monitoring you CPU and RAM usage
Sent from my DROIDX using XDA App
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Awesome. I do not doubt this system at all, and it seems to be smart. My next question would then be; How much RAM does a typical application use? Does the RAM drain more power, when things are stored into it?
nunikasi said:
Awesome. I do not doubt this system at all, and it seems to be smart. My next question would then be; How much RAM does a typical application use? Does the RAM drain more power, when things are stored into it?
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The amount of RAM an application uses varies a lot, so there is no 'typical' amount, but Android has its own system of freeing up RAM as and when it needs it.
Power drain is not caused by how much RAM is in use at any one time, but by how much the CPU is used.
That is why with the DHD's generous amount of RAM you don't need to worry about task killers and freeing up RAM - instead you need to monitor things like screen use, wifi use, phone use, data uploading/downloading & syncing, GPS use, etc - the programs that use more resources will consume more power.
I am running Froyo from Samsung web site.
Anyways, I know froyo was supposed to free up 512 ram. I know about 100 goes to gpu. However my phone is left with 339 ram to use (as seen in task manager). However it is always using at least 220mb, even when I close everything and restart the phone. When I open up advanced task killer it says 116m free. Why so little? How can I get more easily? without having to use ROMs or kernels?
Or is this how it is for everyone? I feel kind of cheated!
First of all, you should never need to use anything like Advanced Task Killer now that you have froyo. There are legitimate uses, but its really something you can go without. See http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/cwovf/in_light_of_all_the_discussions_right_now_about/ for a good writeup.
Your phone, just like a computer, uses an optimal amount of RAM at all times. That does not mean minimal. Android phones dynamically allocate RAM for applications and the OS. Why have 200MB of RAM free when you can instead have 100MB free and have the phone be more responsive? 2.2+ manages memory more effectively, and if you are not using an application, will close it. Its fairly difficult with any normal usage scenario to cause your phone to run out of memory.
In short, you don't really need to worry about it because its that way on all Android devices (and generally any modern computing device), and that if is not affecting the usability then its not an issue
Completely agree With first comment. Everyone is concerned about keeping as much ram free as they can but it does not speed their phone up at all. Ram its just like quadrant scores a useless numbers if the phone is response and speedy in actual use
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
U could try reading this: Android Memory Management
your ram usage does seem a little high, you may have an app that is using a lot of it. the 339mb available is normal. some kernels will show quite a bit lower than that but the never seeing more than 116 free is odd. the rom im curently on fluctuates from about 140mb used to 240mb used. i only know that because i clear ram before running benchmarks, have you tried clearing ram in the built in taskmanager? or are you only going off the task killer? because the task killer doesnt necessarily clear ram.
all i know is task killers are pretty useless unless you have an app that freezes and for that the taskmanager built in to many of the samsung roms should be enough for that though it does not show every process that is in a saved state or system processes. task killer programs do more harm than good but i cant seem to get people off them. danm verizon store sets people up with them and poeple use them religiously. i figured out in the first few days of using android on my aria that getting better speed and battery life by killing tasts was a futile effort. there are few market apps that use resorces when running in the background and if you exit the app with the back button it doesnt save the state or run in the background. not that saved state is a problem. i only found that the phone uses more battery restarting processes that are designed to be running and has more lag than when you just use the phone and ignore the running processes.
Personally the only time you should be ever worried about ram is when watching a flash video or viewing a webpage with a lot of stuff. Other than that, as said, if the phone runs smooth, who cares about ram?
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.
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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?
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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?
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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?
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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!
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
Rooting and freezing apps doesn't give you more RAM, since there is only 512MB of RAM and the OS takes part of that to run.
You can free up internal app storage space, by deleting bloatware, or cut/paste the bloatware into a folder on the SDcard (I call mine VZWBloat) and that will save you space.
You can run a task killer to kill off apps that you don't need but you have to be careful, Android does need certain apps to be available in the background and it will just reopen automatically and that will put them into a cycle and drain the battery.
rcb929 said:
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
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Please do not post Questions or problems in Android Development
Moving to General
RaptorMD said:
Rooting and freezing apps doesn't give you more RAM, since there is only 512MB of RAM and the OS takes part of that to run.
You can free up internal app storage space, by deleting bloatware, or cut/paste the bloatware into a folder on the SDcard (I call mine VZWBloat) and that will save you space.
You can run a task killer to kill off apps that you don't need but you have to be careful, Android does need certain apps to be available in the background and it will just reopen automatically and that will put them into a cycle and drain the battery.
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Click to collapse
Hey im using root explorer when im in system/app/ how do i single out the bloatware apps?
rcb929 said:
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
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Click to collapse
Freeing up that much RAM is probably detrimental to the overall efficacy of the memory management system, I've never seen mine at 185MB, and if I did I'd worry something was wrong.
If you really want to free up more RAM, for no benefit whatsoever, use something like Advanced Task Killer and set it to allow killing of the lowest level processes it can, then kill everything. Bam, tons of free'd up RAM. Again, this has pretty much no benefit whatsoever and for a short time will probably make your phone more sluggish and slow.
In Android (Linux) free memory is considered wasted memory.
That said, I remember on my galaxy S that the phone ran snappier when I tweaked the memory management of the phone.
Task killers are generally considered a bad idea on android, so I would avoid using one of them to free up memory. However, there is a poorly named app called auto killer that is actually just an interface to tweaking androids built and memory management. I recommend giving it a try, here's a link: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.rs.autokiller
Note that it is not a task killer per se, it is just a tweak for android phone memory management schemes.
I haven't used it on my droid charge yet, but play with the settings maybe starting with aggressive. Good luck and let us know how it works for you.
Sent from Thunderbolt
I don't have my phone with me right now, but you need to make the folder read/write and then hit menu and multi-select or select multiple. This thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1082588 shows what is ok to freeze, but I am not familiar enough with those to say you can remove all of them. Typically I would look for the Verizon specific apps, games like lets gold, guitar hero etc. If you remove anything related to touch wiz (widgets) you need to remove both of the associated files. I am pulling this from memory on my previous TB.
These are the ones I recognize, but the others in that long list I would like to see better clarification of what they are and how they are tied into the TouchWiz UI so we don't get errors. Please exercise caution when doing this.
• Bitbop 1.0
• Blockbuster 0.6
• City ID 1.1.4
• Lets Golf 2 3.2.2
• Rhapsody 1.0
• Rock Band 4.4.3
• Slacker 2.1.170
• TuneWiki 2.2
• VCAST Media Manager 4.2.96.3
• VVMService 1.0.30
• VZ Navigator 7.1.2.87
• WeatherBug Clock 11.04.07.01
rcb929 said:
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
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Click to collapse
BY FAR.... BAR NONE.... The best way to free up memory and keep it free without messing with task killers is to use a program called startup auditor. This app prevents apps from starting up automatically on startup and throughtout the day without interfering with normal app processes. You can shut down or enable any app you want.
Even cooler, if you select the option menu and hit disable all, it only disables programs that won't interfere with the phone operation so it knows which apk's are critical for phone integrity. PRETTY COOL!!!
burningembers said:
Freeing up that much RAM is probably detrimental to the overall efficacy of the memory management system, I've never seen mine at 185MB, and if I did I'd worry something was wrong.
If you really want to free up more RAM, for no benefit whatsoever, use something like Advanced Task Killer and set it to allow killing of the lowest level processes it can, then kill everything. Bam, tons of free'd up RAM. Again, this has pretty much no benefit whatsoever and for a short time will probably make your phone more sluggish and slow.
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Click to collapse
NEVER USE ADVANCE TASK KILLER... See other post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1106265
RaptorMD said:
Rooting and freezing apps doesn't give you more RAM, since there is only 512MB of RAM and the OS takes part of that to run.
You can free up internal app storage space, by deleting bloatware, or cut/paste the bloatware into a folder on the SDcard (I call mine VZWBloat) and that will save you space.
You can run a task killer to kill off apps that you don't need but you have to be careful, Android does need certain apps to be available in the background and it will just reopen automatically and that will put them into a cycle and drain the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DON"T USE A TASK KILLER ON ANY SAMSUNG DEVICE. See other post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1106265
I wasn't really condoning the use of task killers. I disagree with them 99% of the time (there are some edge cases). I just gave the OP an option if he really, really wanted to for no reason whatsoever.
@OP: I would recommend leaving the pasture gate open.
rcb929 said:
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is an app called Greenify. Its available on Play store.
Just check it out.
It also helps to maintain the juice of the battery.. !!
To Free Ram
A more easy way to delete a minimum of 1gb of space which by doing so also frees up ram is to delete the dump state log cat. See every time your device has an error or force close issue, date is collected / written to the log file and this can take up ane enormous amount of space which when space is low also means your device user more ram. To do this go to your dial pad and type in *#9900#
This will automatically brings up options and then just choose to delete the dump state/log cat. Let it clear for a few minutes and that's it's. Try seeing how much space you have before and after and you'll realise this is a blessing.
Hello everyone
i have noticed something strange about the RAM available, if I go into settings-applications-services running: ram, 211 MB used 80MB free.
If you instead use Android system info I see: 37 MB free RAM
Why this? I have 2.3.4 stock
sorry my bad engish
try terminating cached programs. also, remove unnecessary apps. dont use task killers/managers etc. they are unnecessary. linux is smarter than us. dont use security services unless you frequently visit suspect sites and dl apps w/out research. see which programs are consuming ram and search for solutions. last resort, hard reset. if it persists or low ram issues arise when stock, time for a new one. good luck.
The nexus S has 345MB for the OS and apps, rest is used by the hardware (mostly by the GPU), you will never have access to it.
Your situation is perfectly fine, the biggest memory hog is the browser. I recommend auto memory manager (free on market) and set the empty application line to 80mb.
The services are killed automaticly by android, no need for task managers, but the limit is set to 80mb instead of 24mb. You will still run into memory leaks eventually, but not really at 30mb left.
Thanks to all
I do not use task killer, using linux for 4 years , i try Auto Memory Manager. see if the situation improves.