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?

Software Update 2.2.1 ?s

Ok so I was wondering about couple of things about the 2.2.1 and about task killing I know some ppl say not to have it. But some say they like using task killer. Does 2.2.1 have a task killer built in? What are some tools to use to kill off the task I did have advance task killer on my phone and it seemed like it helped out a lot even the battery life. Is it really just a personal thing to have.

Staticpunk84 said:
Ok so I was wondering about couple of things about the 2.2.1 and about task killing I know some ppl say not to have it. But some say they like using task killer. Does 2.2.1 have a task killer built in? What are some tools to use to kill off the task I did have advance task killer on my phone and it seemed like it helped out a lot even the battery life. Is it really just a personal thing to have.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What you want to do is, if you feel you're having issues and you aren't sure what app might be causing them, is get something like Watchdog, which tells you how much CPU each app is using, and optionally will alert you when an app crosses the line of acceptable amount of CPU usage. You can kill the problematic app at that point, in Watchdog.
Other than that, task killers should be avoided. They cause problems.
As far as built-in, it's not an condoned activity to be killing apps whimsically, so I would say that it's not built-in in the sense that I think you're talking about.
You can force stop apps by way of settings>manage applications, if you really must.
Inspired Ace 1.0.1¦ XDA Premium

cool..I have been reading about the pros and cons about task killer. I mean idk also I see a lot of ppl talk about the battery life and an app called juice defender. Didnt know how good that really is reviews seem 50/50.

Android will kill apps as it needs to, Linux kernel has this built in. No task killer will be as efficient or effective as what you already have.
When you kill apps with a task killer, most are gonna restart, which is gonna waste more battery. Let the kernel do its thing, you'll be fine

Staticpunk84 said:
cool..I have been reading about the pros and cons about task killer. I mean idk also I see a lot of ppl talk about the battery life and an app called juice defender. Didnt know how good that really is reviews seem 50/50.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A lot of people use juice defender. It's not really a task manager, more of a hardware battery usage manager.
I thought about it, but battery life isn't something that causes me that much of a problem, and a lot of the things it does I do anyway, so...
The custom rom I use improved battery life over stock, and I just manually keep things off/turned down while not in use, plus, I'm used to throwing my phone on the charger before I go to bed anyway... It lasts me through the day, so...
Inspired Ace 1.0.1¦ XDA Premium

di11igaf said:
Android will kill apps as it needs to, Linux kernel has this built in. No task killer will be as efficient or effective as what you already have.
When you kill apps with a task killer, most are gonna restart, which is gonna waste more battery. Let the kernel do its thing, you'll be fine
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To add to what dilligaf said, if he doesn't mind. Generally apps only consuming battery when they using your cpu, when you aren't using an app (the easiest way to explain it) it goes into a dormant state, but remains on your ram so it doesn't have to load the entire app the next time you open it.
Which is why watchdog is recommended.

cool I'll look into that also on a different note I see ppl talk about the side load update and att not knowing anything about it and calling up and having it push to them. Question is what the update for and is the same as side loader wonder machine?
also about my email not being so instant I see the settings for peak time and off peak time

Staticpunk84 said:
cool I'll look into that also on a different note I see ppl talk about the side load update and att not knowing anything about it and calling up and having it push to them. Question is what the update for and is the same as side loader wonder machine?
also about my email not being so instant I see the settings for peak time and off peak time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The ATT sideloading update enables "unknown sources" in settings, allowing you to sideload at will on a non-rooted, stock phone.
The wonder machine, though I've never used it personally, sideloads an app on a per app basis, on an otherwise sideloading-disabled non-rooted phone.
In other words, to have to run it every time you want to sideload an app.
Having the "unknown sources" (sideloading) setting enabled on the phone, which is normally hidden, either by way of ATT's recent update, or by rooting (the most widely used technique here on XDA), frees you of the need to run wonder machine each individual time you want to install a non-market app.
Inspired Ace 1.0.1¦ XDA Premium

ah ok I thought thats what it did.. I still have not seen my update I go in to the settings and about phone click for updates and its saying everything is up to date and I have wait like 24 hrs later lol

Task killer?

Title says it all. I know with froyo on Samsung phones the devs at sdx said it wasn't useful at all,but with HTC's phones,you see the apps running in the statusbar (I'm running gingerbread,inspired ace BTW) but my question is,will the task killer be useful? I quit using it a long time ago after I noticed a few of my phones battery life slowly getting worse. Any ideas?
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App

Those are just shortcuts to your recently opened apps. I'm not a big fan of task killers, they seem to make my phone run like crap.

Please have a look at Android Memory Management to get an overview of how android memory management works, be it on any device.
U can use task killer judicially to kill any stray apps.

Well see I kinda knew all that which is why I quit using them,but there's something that's eating the battery up and I deleted all my apps that synced huge amounts of data in the background besides Facebook. Contract killer was one app,after I deleted it I noticed a whole extra 2 hours of battery life each day. No lie. But if I could let go of sense,I'm sure battery would be better but it just wouldn't make sense to have such a great phone without its cool features
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App

I used to use task killers all the time. After getting my inspire I decided to stop using them. I have noticed no difference in performance other then the random freezes and small issues of that nature went away. I would say your on the right track just try and figure out what apps are causing the trouble. Then go into the settings of your apps that sync data to set the sync less frequently. That should help with your issues.

brd912 said:
Well see I kinda knew all that which is why I quit using them,but there's something that's eating the battery up and I deleted all my apps that synced huge amounts of data in the background besides Facebook. Contract killer was one app,after I deleted it I noticed a whole extra 2 hours of battery life each day. No lie. But if I could let go of sense,I'm sure battery would be better but it just wouldn't make sense to have such a great phone without its cool features
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't have to remove sense, just make it quit syncing. See my thread about it for currentwidget log proof.

The only app killer worth even thinking about putting on your phone is, watchdog/watchdog lite. It monitors for stray apps that hog the cpu and run your battery down, other then that they shouldn't be used, no task killer is going to be as efficient as the android operating system itself.

Install "Battery History for GB". This lets u see battery usage in more detail.
E.g., I noticed there was an instance where the GPS sensor was not turned off even after I quit the program GPS status. Though this was a stray instance, I would not have known this without this program. And for this specific issue, only a reboot was the answer.

mudknot2005 said:
The only app killer worth even thinking about putting on your phone is, watchdog/watchdog lite. It monitors for stay apps that hog the cpu and run your battery down, other then that they shouldn't be used, no task killer is going to be as efficient as the android operating system itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I second this. For what it's worth..

Yup. Watchdog for the gross stuff. Elixer has a nifty widget I use in conjunction to easily be notified how many apps are consuming resources and easily FC....I made a 21 icon control panel from elixer widgets that only takes up half a screen to monitor n toggle stuff...that dev has resource management in mind....
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

I use ATK but no way am I going to set it to auto kill tasks. I only use it when I notice my phone starts slowing down and being laggy and I have it set to kill only the tasks that do NOT automatically open themselves up again immediately (ie gmail, messaging, maps, pandora, etc). I use it to kill things that are just sitting around pointlessly IF I'm noticing my phone slowing down (just to reiterate ). Hope this helps someone

Yeah I decided to just let the phone do its thing. I just flashed a new Rom and battery life already seems 10 times better.
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App

nhshah7 said:
I use ATK but no way am I going to set it to auto kill tasks. I only use it when I notice my phone starts slowing down and being laggy ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As others said, let Android do it's thing regarding task and memory mgmt and - if you are still concerned - use watchdog.
ATK and other task killers are brilliant battery hogs - mine lasts at least 2h longer since I removed them.

Totally agree task killers are worthless and can cause apps to not work

bigdaddy818818 said:
Totally agree task killers are worthless and can cause apps to not work
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's if you use them incorrectly and kill apps that automatically reopen. That's what kills the battery. Killing an app that you used 3 hours ago that's still running in memory is actually helpful, etc...
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA Premium App

[Q] Low RAM?

Im not sure why but in the past week, my phone ram was was quite low. (30m - 45m) Before that, even after playing games and stuff, the ram was always above 55m. I have the go sms app, i have lookout running always and battery notifier (big text) to tell me my battery level. these were the apps that i downloaded just before the raam went low. oh and i only have 4 widgets running on my screen. (google search widget, power control widget (the one with options to toggle wifi, bluetooth etc etc on and off), a go taskmanager widget to show me how much ram i have and a music app widget) BTW im rooted running stock 2.1. Hope someone can help me!

If you want more free ram try to upgrade your phone into 2.2 custom rom...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=943368
Sent from my Milestone using XDA App

DarkMD said:
If you want more free ram try to upgrade your phone into 2.2 custom rom...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=943368
Sent from my Milestone using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh lol i was already planning to go for the xda special but i just wanted to find out why suddenly the ram went down on my stock 2.1. any idea?

androidlover123 said:
oh lol i was already planning to go for the xda special but i just wanted to find out why suddenly the ram went down on my stock 2.1. any idea?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
must've been the services or processes running hidden in the background. there are some apps you can use to kill or stop them. but mainly i just use autokiller memory optimizer to modify android's default app killer to kill apps even when the ram is not very low(it kills apps when ram reaches a certain level). theres also a function in autokiller memory optimizer which allows you to kill processes. if you want more ram, you could use swap too, but it eats more battery, so i dont.
its a good app, and you dont have to use any task killers anymore. you can use the strict preset in the app if you want higher free ram. swap if you activate swap, you could go up to more than 100m free.

eejin2 said:
must've been the services or processes running hidden in the background. there are some apps you can use to kill or stop them. but mainly i just use autokiller memory optimizer to modify android's default app killer to kill apps even when the ram is not very low(it kills apps when ram reaches a certain level). theres also a function in autokiller memory optimizer which allows you to kill processes. if you want more ram, you could use swap too, but it eats more battery, so i dont.
its a good app, and you dont have to use any task killers anymore. you can use the strict preset in the app if you want higher free ram. swap if you activate swap, you could go up to more than 100m free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh ya i forgot to mention i have already been using autokiller memory optimizer at strict level for a month already. yesterday i changed it to aggressive hoping that my ram would increase but to no avail.

then it'd be that you have to many processes running it in the background. see from autokiller memory optimizer. just tap to close. swap gives you a LOT of free ram also. but you have to be using a swap compatible rom of course, so stock but rooted, no. unless u are using the eclair strikes back rom. im also on stock singapore but rooted. average free ram now is around 50 and im underclocked running at 500mhz cos i wanna save battery. its still running smoothly. actually, i dont really care about how much free ram there is, if its smooth then its all right for me. is your phone running smoothly?

eejin2 said:
then it'd be that you have to many processes running it in the background. see from autokiller memory optimizer. just tap to close. swap gives you a LOT of free ram also. but you have to be using a swap compatible rom of course, so stock but rooted, no. unless u are using the eclair strikes back rom. im also on stock singapore but rooted. average free ram now is around 50 and im underclocked running at 500mhz cos i wanna save battery. its still running smoothly. actually, i dont really care about how much free ram there is, if its smooth then its all right for me. is your phone running smoothly?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
huh no sadly D: every time i launch app then i exit that app, it will take about 3-5 sec for home page to load. It wasnt like that a week ago. (then it was very fast to return to screen-no lag at all.) btw im using go launcher.(it was there a month ago and had no lag at all until last week)

androidlover123 said:
huh no sadly D: every time i launch app then i exit that app, it will take about 3-5 sec for home page to load. It wasnt like that a week ago. (then it was very fast to return to screen-no lag at all.) btw im using go launcher.(it was there a month ago and had no lag at all until last week)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to clean cache frequently, that help to
Sent from my Milestone using XDA App

My suggestion would be to flash the stock Cincinnati bell sbf. I did that recently it is the most updated one from Motorola and is set at 720 MHz by default. I don't use anything and my ram is around 55-60. Smooth as hell. I use launcherpro. Its prettier, you can choose the keep in memory option which stops it from redrawing the screen. Mine is rooted. I get a day and half of battery life with wifi and autosync in 100% of the time, an hour of GPS, 1 hour gaming, one hour music and the odd texts or calls. Hope that helps. Nothing in my opinion beats stock 2.1
Sent from my Milestone XT720 using XDA App

I use CyanogenMod 6 and its pretty nice... i have around 70-80 mb of ram free... btw i have about 25 apps instaled...
Overclock at: 1.1ghz @ 70vsel
Sorry for my bad english jaja
Sent from my Milestone using XDA App

androidlover123 said:
Im not sure why but in the past week, my phone ram was was quite low. (30m - 45m) Before that, even after playing games and stuff, the ram was always above 55m. I have the go sms app, i have lookout running always and battery notifier (big text) to tell me my battery......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have 30m-45m ram and it didn't affect the performance of the phone, then nothing to worry....now if your rom is in the 2.1 stock, you have a problem especially in using camcorder due to low memory... my suggestion is to flash the 2.2 rom like wahhu rom, xda special or the cm6...My ram is in the range of 30m-60m and I'm using the wanhu rom and even the cm6 rom still the performance of the phone is great..... Actually there is something in the phone that eats the ram..... It is one of the reasons why there is a problem in porting the cm7.
P.S. Try to flash the original wanhu rom then apply the latest update of Mioze-update-SC_2.2_XT720_Beta3a-Mz05 and the dark froyo theme.....

Go to cm6. Can't stop saying how smooth and snappy it is
Sent from my Milestone using XDA App

spectacle said:
Go to cm6. Can't stop saying how smooth and snappy it is
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree..... but there are still several issues to fix.... I'm waiting for the final product..... Great work by Mioze.

abet1017 said:
If you have 30m-45m ram and it didn't affect the performance of the phone, then nothing to worry....now if your rom is in the 2.1 stock, you have a problem especially in using camcorder due to low memory... my suggestion is to flash the 2.2 rom like wahhu rom, xda special or the cm6...My ram is in the range of 30m-60m and I'm using the wanhu rom and even the cm6 rom still the performance of the phone is great..... Actually there is something in the phone that eats the ram..... It is one of the reasons why there is a problem in porting the cm7.
P.S. Try to flash the original wanhu rom then apply the latest update of Mioze-update-SC_2.2_XT720_Beta3a-Mz05 and the dark froyo theme.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya i remember last time i use camcorder my phone had frozen. (nothing was responding. after 5 min i decided to battery pull then after that all apps started to force close, including launcherpro, so i could not do anything with my phone and had to uninstall launcherpro to solve problem. I really want to stay on stock 2.1 cos it has no issues at all until recently the ram problem which was slowing the phone down a lot. even at 1ghz 66vsel and autokill memory optimizer at strict level its quite low ram.

androidlover123 said:
Ya i remember last time i use camcorder my phone had frozen. (nothing was responding. after 5 min i decided to battery pull then after that all apps started to force close, including launcherpro, so i could not do anything with my phone and had to uninstall launcherpro to solve problem. I really want to stay on stock 2.1 cos it has no issues at all until recently the ram problem which was slowing the phone down a lot. even at 1ghz 66vsel and autokill memory optimizer at strict level its quite low ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if the ram is still low after all these trying out all these suggestions, why dont you try wiping everything and starting again?

eejin2 said:
if the ram is still low after all these trying out all these suggestions, why dont you try wiping everything and starting again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ya that was kind of my last resort.... but since no one can find a solution for this, i just do that. Thanks to all for their help!

androidlover123 said:
ya that was kind of my last resort.... but since no one can find a solution for this, i just do that. Thanks to all for their help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are going to do it from scratch, I suggest you use the cincinnati bell sbf. I have had a very good experience with that. Root with universal androot 1.6.2 beta. After that install open recovery and youre set.

i have about 60 applications installed and here a screen shot of a very comon amount of ram i have in mafia wars when done any were from 95 to 110 i have availble for use.

Low ram?

Im really sorry for asking but, Ive exhausted all other search methods to find an answer. What can I do about the extremely low ram availability? Ive got like, on a good day 110 out of 329mb available. Is this normal? Ive tried reading up on flashing a new kernel but Im not positive this will fix the issue.
Im running the uvkg4 2.3.4 with the kernel that came with it. Go launcher sits on top of that using about 18mb. Maybe Im just expecting to much from my phone?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Even if its to yell at me cause I missed something while searching on here.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App

Dude i think its a usual problem i have a galaxy fit and i also have aost 100mb-130mb of free RAM out of 280.
So, May be we are expecting too much from our galaxies!!
However in a HTC phone( i dont remember the model) it has 784MB RAM!!!...
the best way to free Ram is close useless running apps and uninstalling them!
Sent from my GT-S5670 using xda premium

My wife has an LG Optimus for Tmo...and she's getting like, 261 of 418. The difference seems only slight but, I'd like all the ram I can possibly have. I use the built in task manager to keep up with running services. TB for freezing or uninstalling. I don't have a whole heck of a lot of things left to kill that would equal 100mb. Maybe 60 at most.
I don't know. I am still interested in the whole kernel thing though. I've read what a kernel is, and is supposed to do. I just don't understand what exactly the benefit is of flashing one over. Like drhonks, I've read all about it everywhere...for the life of me can't find what the exact benefits are. Same thing with the modem. I'd like to flash that too to fix the constant drop of data connection even though it reads 4g, but I don't know that that will fix that (lots of thats) problem either.

Does it matter? 100mb of free ram is the same as 200mb free isn't it? It's all unused. with GB, it has a pretty good system for managing tasks, so I didn't think it would be a problem.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using xda premium

Well, that's true. Even while trying to hurt my phone it doesn't bog down or lag out due to low ram. Thank you for the insight.
Also, with the modem thing..should I open up another question for this? Its something that's now becoming quite the hassle, it drops data way to frequently to be normal.

I read somewhere once that having lower ram is actually a bad thing. The android operating system stores information on apps to help it launch those apps faster. When you clear it out it takes longer to launch because it does not have the information stored anymore.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using xda premium

For the most part I only have the necessary things required to make my phone work turned on. Aside from Go launcher, and a couple widgets (1-4mb a piece) running. I'm just stumped on where the rest of the memory is, or what's using it.

Are you getting a bunch of launcher reloads? If so, then you might wanna consider switching roms. I tried a few rom/launcher combinations and stuck with audiophile ftw with the newest init.d pack. Stopped my launcher reloads unless I was using a really ram intensive app like plants vs. zombies.

The ram operates like on any computer. if it is cleared, you need to rebuild your workspace cache. If you clear the ram on a phone, you will have to wait a bit longer for the cache to rebuild. It's minimal though. unless you get an error or an fc, I would say there is no need to clear your ram on the phone, especially with the great built in task manager. For games zombies or pewpew, yea, it makes sense to clear it prior to playing, but the system should do it for you anyway, shouldn't it?
Also, do what fbis suggested. Will make a difference
Sent from my SGH-T959V using xda premium

Yeah honestly you think about what takes the most ram in use stuff like browsers,skype,youtube etcc...but of course you Wont be using all of them at the same time!
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA at App

After using my phone for a while, I usually have 60-80mb free. Just different services running etc... Phone doesn't slow down, never have any real memory problems, and the only time I sometimes get a launcher reload is after playing a memory hungry game like PvZ or Gun Bros, and even then it's pretty rare.
Unless it's malfunctioning, those apps sitting in memory will just close if something needs it, you can see this first hand if you view your free memory right after playing a game, I usually see anywhere between 140-200mb free. It then gradually goes down as I use other apps and as some of them auto sync etc.
Except in the case of a buggy app, Android seems to be pretty good at managing memory.
I believe some of the low memory paranoia would go away if we had a task manager like Windows has where it tells you what memory is Cached, Available, and Free. I'd be freaking out as my netbook only has 3 mb free out of 2 gigs right now if Windows didn't tell me the other info lol.

Yea, I'm not getting any heavy launcher reloads. Even if I'm playing a Gameloft game everything seems to run quite smooth. I guess I was just freaking out about the numbers.
I thank you all for the responses and help. I think I'll do a little more research on flashing modems and such before I ask anything about that. There's a helluva lot of information to read about.

As what everybody said here, the 100ish MB free RAM is fine. Android caches the processes so it'll load up faster when you open an app again. Of course, if you clear your RAM, you clear these caches too. When Android needs more memory, it'll kill an app to provide for more memory.
Also, do NOT use a task killer. I can't emphasize that enough. Using that will kill your necessary apps, which will eventually cause your phone to do random reboots. Many people have reported that.