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
Click to expand...
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] What Hoggs Your Ram?

I would like to know what are your guys readings of RAM usage. Mine sits around 240MB/339MB
Is that high or normal? I do have quite a bit of widgets on different home screens so I dont know what the baseline is. Please share your results.

Good topic I was wondering this myself ...
Average ram I have is about 128MB free out off 339MB
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App

179mb out of 339
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App

moshe22 said:
179mb out of 339
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, running widgets? maybe I should modify my running apps.

fknfocused said:
Wow, running widgets? maybe I should modify my running apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No widgets running at the moment though.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App

Task MAnagers!?!?!
I'm not sure if i am 100% right about this maybe won of the senior members who does know can enlighten us on this...
But I remember reading somewhere that task managers some times can hurt your phones RAM usage. I don't use one anymore unless it comes stock. and then I rarely find a reason to open it on mine. In standby I am running around 80-100 with 200-300 of freem RAM so with the SGS4G i don't think i will find a reason to use more than the stock utilities. I somtimes will installl a tool to monitor the RAM to see what I'm usin but every once in a while I go through and uninstall anything I don't need right away. I figure ussually being in good internet coverage I can always put something back.
So does anyone else know about wether or not the "Task Manager" could actually be a tantric in some cases?

moshe22 said:
No widgets running at the moment though.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So widgets are the ram hog on this phone? I have been constantly clearing ram in the task manager to help with speed. I only run clock, battery, and calender widgets on my device. Are they enough to boost me all the way to 240+ even after a RAM clearing? Considering the age of this thread is this still the case with new ROM's that are starting to roll out? I'm still stock, and very noob to android devices, but the urge for mods is growing given the positive responses to them.

http://m.lifehacker.com/5650894/and...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
Very good article about task killers
Sent from my SGH-T959V

Bassmanjames said:
So widgets are the ram hog on this phone? I have been constantly clearing ram in the task manager to help with speed. I only run clock, battery, and calender widgets on my device. Are they enough to boost me all the way to 240+ even after a RAM clearing? Considering the age of this thread is this still the case with new ROM's that are starting to roll out? I'm still stock, and very noob to android devices, but the urge for mods is growing given the positive responses to them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, this is def not the case anymore. I sit around 200MB free. Ever since cwm's final release the doors opened for us. Go get some love
sent from my not so stock SGS4G

You shouldn't have to worry too much about RAM usage. A lot of it used by the OS. But yeah widgets does lower it and whatever app you're using. But I hope you don't resort to using task killers just to save 50mb's of RAM. It's there for use and shouldn't be looked at too much.
Mine shows about 400/626, but haven't noticed any big difference in battery drain when it's at 300/626.

Simple answer....everything hogs ram. The best way to tell what's worse is settings » applications » manage applications and watch your ram usage when you have certain things running. You will notice what is hogging more than others.
sent from the pits of hell (from an sgs4g)

Thank you for the info everybody. Been ruinning just fine all day with the ram almost maxed out, hard to break that task manager habit though lol. Goona keep reading before I root-flash-mod need to make sure I get it right the first time.
On the moon our weekends are so advanced they encompass the entire week

Samsung and Tmo set many bloatware to run ALL the time and hogs RAM
via Linda file manager and auto memory manager (which tweak's android's memory management, not a standard task killer), i saw many apps that always run (many with priority equals to android system and the phone app) such as "wifi calling, visual voice mail, my account, qik, device management, drm, etc.
not everyone use these apps and they take up precious RAM and tiny amount of CPU cycles.
worse, however, is how the phone keeps loading unused, unaccessed, unwanted apps into memory (been weeks since I used pandora, yet it keeps getting reloaded into memory).
from clean boot, I get 150mb free. after a week, I get 45-55mb. This causes memory manager to kill off app as soon as you switch away and alot of stutter (dont you hate it when your browser gets killed)
Dont know if theres a fix for this. I tried tweaking the OOM parameters but it doesnt seem to work on this phone. Samsung probably tweaked something that broke this.

[Q] Ram...how low is too low?

I'm usually sitting on somewhere between 60-100MB of free RAM. Now keep in mind, I have LOTS of widgets running, a gorgeous theme, spb 3d launcher, etc...and I prefer to keep those things going, because that's how I get my value from my phone. I don't think the phone is slow by any means...but because I'm used to using Windows, I'm paranoid about low ram. Should I be worried, or is it fine as long as I'm not experiencing bad performance?
Moving some apps to my internal sd card wouldn't do anything about RAM, correct?

mmapcpro said:
I'm usually sitting on somewhere between 60-100MB of free RAM. Now keep in mind, I have LOTS of widgets running, a gorgeous theme, spb 3d launcher, etc...and I prefer to keep those things going, because that's how I get my value from my phone. I don't think the phone is slow by any means...but because I'm used to using Windows, I'm paranoid about low ram. Should I be worried, or is it fine as long as I'm not experiencing bad performance?
Moving some apps to my internal sd card wouldn't do anything about RAM, correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not an expert at all, but rather someone with the same question. As explained to me, the newer versions of android are most excellent in memory management. The need to manage memory, like in windows, is not there in newer versions.
With that said, being from windows, seeing low memory counts freak me out. I've been convinced by the people on this forum, to give it a try and not freak out. Avoid using task killers and such. Only thing I do is remove apps and Widgets I do not use. I've not regretted that advice.

It really all depends on what you are doing on the phone. If you only have 10 MB left, but are only checking emails, you are fine. But if you were to start playing a game from the terga zone, then you will have problems.
Sent from my G2x using Tapatalk

aowendoff said:
It really all depends on what you are doing on the phone. If you only have 10 MB left, but are only checking emails, you are fine. But if you were to start playing a game from the terga zone, then you will have problems.
Sent from my G2x using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right, but, my understanding is, android will shutdown unused tasks to accommodate the need.
I learned with windows phone 7, there is a balance between live tiles, battery life, and performance. I assume that android has a similar premise. Do I need 40 Widgets on my desktop. What is the trade off if I do.
Again, I'm # noob to android...but this is how I'm proceeding.

Android keeps things in ram, which I would think is so apps can start up faster. If you are using something and it needs more ram than is free, android will remove something that isn't running to free memory. as far as too little, ram not being used is wasted. So just because you have a low amount free means nothing. The only thing that would be bad is if running services and apps needed more ram than the phone physically has. so just because there is little free means nothing really.

Read the article linked to in the first post of this thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=678205
Pay special attention to the Addendum at the end where it talks specifically about the way Android/Linux handles memory.

[Q]How much ram you have available?

On my phone i can get at least 175mb of ram free. For some weird reason my phone says in total of ram i have 576mb. But the specs online says its 768mb of ram. My gf myTouch 4g (non-slide) has more ram available than my slide. I will like to know your phone's ram? how much you have free?

Mine says the same thing. My guess is it has dedicated some ram as video memory.
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using XDA App

tevroc said:
Mine says the same thing. My guess is it has dedicated some ram as video memory.
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes
sonicjam said:
On my phone i can get at least 175mb of ram free. For some weird reason my phone says in total of ram i have 576mb. But the specs online says its 768mb of ram. My gf myTouch 4g (non-slide) has more ram available than my slide. I will like to know your phone's ram? how much you have free?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The OS itself reserves RAM for the GPU/Camera/Driver files like radio/cell/etc...
On Sense 3.0 a lot of RAM is used for sense to function since it has extended features compared to Stock/vanilla. You can use the task manager in the status/notification bar to close some apps but not all will be closed...There are background services and some apps that stay in RAM so that they can open faster later on...If you're phone is rooted then you can use the supercharger link in my sig to at least help with the available RAM issue and gain speed if that's an issue. I have a MT4G and I get more Free Ram than you when using the MT4GS's ROM or even the sensation's ROM too. Mines is normally around 200+. Please go in to settings->Manage apps->And look at running services

Yeah this is my 1st Android and I'm learning a lot about it. I am wondering if anyone else has the same space of ram. Man I wished it was 1gb of ram that would be awesome.
Sent from my myTouch 4g Slide.

sonicjam said:
Yeah this is my 1st Android and I'm learning a lot about it. I am wondering if anyone else has the same space of ram. Man I wished it was 1gb of ram that would be awesome.
Sent from my myTouch 4g Slide.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Low Ram is not a bad thing, this means android is caching files for faster access things later, this way that RAM is being used up. Most android phones have 512MB or less, imagine if you had that much on this phone, the EVO3D doesn't have as much as you would think available, as you know it also has Sense 3.0 . Your RAM issue can be addressed by closing active apps via the task manager as I had said before, or going directly into settings-->manage apps-->services or the options mentioning running apps.

I see what you mean it makes sense to me. So i'm good then.

It sucks!!
I hard reset my phone because my nephews install too much crap on it...and all i have free ram is 180-183....??? Is that what everyone gets??
For some reason, my friend's 4g Slide (khaki color) has more ram when I do a hard reset....

I have 177mb free with no applications running. 575mb total

The phone as shipped runs way to many background programs. I was never over 200mb free. I rooted my phone and have stripped out a ton of useless apps. I now see 400mb free when the phone starts but it usually ends up with ~350mb free.

If I kill EVERYTHING except a couple of processes (weather, beautiful widgets, wpclock, sense) i can get 235mb of free ram.
It honestly doesn't matter, the phone still performs great with less than 100mb free ram.
Edit: The HTC task manager says 174mb free, w/no apps running. ATK on the other hand, shows a tons of things that are running that don't need to be
My Account
Amazon Appstore
Google+
GMail
Elixir
Maps
Music
Notes
Video Chat
Twitter
I kill everything and get 220mb free ram.

raduque said:
If I kill EVERYTHING except a couple of processes (weather, beautiful widgets, wpclock, sense) i can get 235mb of free ram.
It honestly doesn't matter, the phone still performs great with less than 100mb free ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you think it runs great now try running it with the useless junk stripped out. It is easily 30-50% faster.

banzairx7 said:
If you think it runs great now try running it with the useless junk stripped out. It is easily 30-50% faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have deleted most everything that it came with (except a few things I would use anyway) and it really didn't change much except that I get more unused ram when I hit "kill selected apps" in ATK

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
-----------------------
Sent via tapatalk.
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.