Database Info

Low Available Memory

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

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

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

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

maybe its android 2.1 that has a cap on the memory

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

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

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

labbu63 said:
maybe its android 2.1 that has a cap on the memory
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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] Froyo 2.2 - where is all the memory?

I had read that Eclair could only access 256MB of the Cappy's system memory and that Froyo was going to be able to access all 512MB.
But I'm still seeing 80MB free after flashing to Froyo same as 2.1.
And the problem of diminishing memory is still occurring after the phone has been sitting idle overnight I'll wake it and have like 60MB free or once even worse w/ 25MB free.
Using Ultimate Juice, Adv.Task Killer And Titanium Backup(froze many unnecessary apps), but still horrible memory management on the part of Android. I was hoping Froyo was going to be better.

suprsidr said:
I had read that Eclair could only access 256MB of the Cappy's system memory and that Froyo was going to be able to access all 512MB.
But I'm still seeing 80MB free after flashing to Froyo same as 2.1.
And the problem of diminishing memory is still occurring after the phone has been sitting idle overnight I'll wake it and have like 60MB free or once even worse w/ 25MB free.
Using Ultimate Juice, Adv.Task Killer And Titanium Backup(froze many unnecessary apps), but still horrible memory management on the part of Android. I was hoping Froyo was going to be better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was a test release, and it was a bad buggy one at that. I wouldn't put too much value in it. I would also expect that we will have more than one "official" Froyo release as it continues to get tweaked.

I was seeing 304 Mb TOTAL, of which < 130Mb was available in task manager. More than 256Mb, but still not the 512Mb expected in 2.2.

Yeah, about 300 is available with Eclair, not 256.

Let's get over it. You will NEVER see all 512MB in Galaxy S. Samsung happens to count the shared video memory (128MB) as the total RAM which technically is correct but that video memory will never be counted by OS because you can't load programs into it.

foxbat121 said:
Let's get over it. You will NEVER see all 512MB in Galaxy S. Samsung happens to count the shared video memory (128MB) as the total RAM which technically is correct but that video memory will never be counted by OS because you can't load programs into it.
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Click to collapse
we are seeing 304 mb then we should be seeing 384 mb

tjsooley said:
we are seeing 304 mb then we should be seeing 384 mb
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Click to collapse
Other things also need ram such as the cellular radio.

And os.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

This thread in the I9000 forum goes into detail.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=792512&highlight=512mb
Basically theres a rather large "blackhole" of ram that is reserved for an unknown purpose. Some say graphics, some even say its a bad part of the chip that Samsung covers up. Nobody knows for certain. HIGHMEM support is supposedly already enabled even in 2.1 builds. Our only hope is that Samsung gets their act together and fixes it.

ThisWasATriumph said:
This thread in the I9000 forum goes into detail.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=792512&highlight=512mb
Our only hope is that Samsung gets their act together and fixes it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh I hope not!
Sent from my Samsung-SGH-I897 using voice talk

How much free RAM do you have advailable?

I've been looking at how much free ram is available at any given time in my Bolt. With a stock debloated ROM I had about 325MB at start up and as I used the phone it went to ~230mB.
Now I'm running debloated Das BAMFv1.4 and have ~310MB free at boot and ~195 as the phone is use throughout the day.
These number slightly irritate me since my old INC has about 210MB at boot and 170MB as the day went on.
The Bolt has and extra 256MB so I'm thinking that it should reflect this in the free RAM. (I know that the bolt is running more process so call it and extra 170MB it should have)
Why is the Bolt so RAM hungry?
I'm using system panel (free edition works) to see how much free ram I have.

about ~360 on boot and ~250 on average during useage

I believe what you are seeing on the TB is some of that memory is reserved specifically for the GPU while on the incredible may not reflect it or uses less for the GPU.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

Isn't "free ram" wasted ram in Android (and Linux in general)? People obsess over these things for no reason.
Does your phone perform okay? Is it sluggish or snappy? Do the apps you want to use open up fast enough for you? If it's snappy, then what are you worried about free ram for? It's a meaningless geek number unless you're diagnosing some performance issue.
If you really just really have to have more free ram, then get one of those apps like AutoKiller or Min Free Manager and tweak your memory manager settings. Neither of these are "task killers" per se, both are just apps that change the parameters for Android's built-in memory manager.

distortedloop said:
Isn't "free ram" wasted ram in Android (and Linux in general)? People obsess over these things for no reason.
Does your phone perform okay? Is it sluggish or snappy? Do the apps you want to use open up fast enough for you? If it's snappy, then what are you worried about free ram for? It's a meaningless geek number unless you're diagnosing some performance issue.
If you really just really have to have more free ram, then get one of those apps like AutoKiller or Min Free Manager and tweak your memory manager settings. Neither of these are "task killers" per se, both are just apps that change the parameters for Android's built-in memory manager.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad somebody gets it. Free RAM is wasted RAM. Thus why you have things like Superfetch in Windows now which caches all your programs.
My only concern with free RAM is what is taking up that space. Thus why you use a debloated ROM. That way only legitimate programs are taking up space.

I usually sit around 130-150. On my Eris I would be happy if I had 35-40
Sent from my ADR6400L

Start up is around 420mb with Virus ROM (Senseless) and as the day goes on it gets to around 300mb.

[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.