So I read how the Droid Charge had 512 MB of RAM. However, my phone only sees 349 MB of it. On top of that, ~260 MB of it is used all the time, with no way to clear it. I have also been getting quite a few Low Memory Warnings and random reboots.
So my question is, is there any way I can get back the ~200MB that the phone doesn't see? Or if not, clear up the ~260MB thats being constantly used?
You can't get back more than the 350 available. It is used by low level drivers and processes. You can make the low memory crap stop though. Download auto memory manager from the market and set it to aggressive. You wont ever get that warning again because your phone will more appropriately kill background processes. Eventually once you do some reading on the android memory system you can set your auto memory settings Individually for how you use your phone. But the aggressive setting should take care of your problem in the mean time.
This is assuming you are rooted. Also look up the v6 supercharger script and follow the instructions to have your launcher operate better. HARDTOKILL launched is what you should use, not bulletproof, and you will know what I mean after you read the thread about it.
Related
Hi guys,
I have a USCC Mesmerize with EC10 PNP w/ none of the pack addons.
I would consider my phone to be very slim. I pretty much only use the camera, sms, mms, internet, & phone.
But still after my phone has been on for a while my process is up to 295/349 MB
I constantly use the stock task manager with Level 2 clear memory option to kill the active process.
When I do this I normally close anywhere from 5-12 process's. Sometimes I will get a drop to around 245MB and other times it will stick around 282MB
On a fresh restart my phone boots up with 164MB
I immediately goto task manager and do a level 2 clearing of the memory and end up closing 10 programs with a RAM use of 131MB
Is there anything out there app or otherwise I can use to stop and prevent all non-critical process's?
uselessmidget said:
Hi guys,
I have a USCC Mesmerize with EC10 PNP w/ none of the pack addons.
I would consider my phone to be very slim. I pretty much only use the camera, sms, mms, internet, & phone.
But still after my phone has been on for a while my process is up to 295/349 MB
I constantly use the stock task manager with Level 2 clear memory option to kill the active process.
When I do this I normally close anywhere from 5-12 process's. Sometimes I will get a drop to around 245MB and other times it will stick around 282MB
On a fresh restart my phone boots up with 164MB
I immediately goto task manager and do a level 2 clearing of the memory and end up closing 10 programs with a RAM use of 131MB
Is there anything out there app or otherwise I can use to stop and prevent all non-critical process's?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That sounds pretty normal from what I have seen. Are you having any issues or just like to see the Rom lower?
Actually android by design is supposed to run almost always at full ram/memory compacity. Using a task killer other than stock can give unwanted results. My phone runs the same as yours does. When you kill off task the systen will automaticly reload common and system apps. Its the nature of android. Unless your having really bad performance. I wouldn't worry about it.
Edit: Ninja'd.
Tap-a-Talked from my Mesmerize
I agree with akellar, that sounds pretty normal. I mean, are you actually suffering any performance issues? If you're not, then you're just worrying about nothing.
Similar stuff here. I use the level 2 clear as well, but mainly to save battery. I run the clear,just before I set it down for a no use period or prior to bedtime and it saves battery big time.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
No not really any performance issues. Sometimes but its infrequent enough that I couldn't describe it.
That was mainly my thought was saving on battery.
Why have all this crap running if you aren't using it?
Technicly its not running. It is suspended. While it is in ram it isn't using any processing power until the app is brought to the foreground meaning you are using it. Android does this so these apps are ready to go when you need them. I quit using task killers other than the stock one a while back and noticed a big jump in battery and performance. I though they were helping me when in reality it was hurting me. Take a read on android and how it handles multi tasking. It explains it really well. I wish I had a link handy hut if you google it you will find several articles on it.
Tap-a-Talked from my Mesmerize
Yeah, you are actually wasting battery by having the screen on in order to end tasks that aren't actually running.
Either way, my battery lasts longer. I understand the logic, but in reality - my battery lasts longer.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
I've read probably 20 or 30 articles on this explaining bboth sides and hundreds of user opinions who say to use them, don't use them, use them once a day, etc and why they think that. I really think it depends on what you do with your phone, because in my personal experience I am a heavy user of my phone, constantly switching applications and loading browsers and whatnot. If I don't use a taskkiller then my phone becomes unresponsive and almost unusable at times. I know you're supposed to stay away from them and I have tried that but it is really obvious that it is useful when I can press a button and have my phone actually work again.
For somebody like the OP that just uses it like a normal phone and not a computer like I do, you probably shouldn't use one unless you are really getting slowdowns. It all depends on what exactly is using the memory and not getting killed by the system.
Sent from my CM7 SCH-i500
I agree to an extent. I use the paid version of system panel to monitor apps like that from time to time. I use the stock task killer and do a level two kill after I have been on my phone switching between programs and such. And it does make a difference is performance. Depending on what you are dping depends on whether you should use one or not. I thinl the big depate is whether you should use an auto kill function. Its one thing to kill all task here and there to improve performance but another to have an app doing it every five or ten minutes. I think that's were the big battery drains happen. Anyway. To each there own and if they see it helps them in how there phone performs and are happy with the results, then maybe a task killer ia for them. For me. I just use the stock task manager and it works fine.
Tap-a-Talked from my Mesmerize
I just noticed that if I repeatedly press to kill apps, it always frees some space - there is never 0bytes freed, even if I press it twice within the same second. I don't know much about android's architecture, but in software programs that indicates a memory leak somewhere. Is this the same?
im not an expert either but from what i've read, i believe its because when you kill apps with the app killer, some apps are restarted (such as necessary ones that the phone needs to run) and that causes some memory to be used again.
dont worry too much about killing apps in android, if apps aren't being used and are in the background, it is suspended and doesn't use the cpu. memory is cleared when needed automatically
Yea some apps just restart. Thats why if you close out all your apps and go back in a few seconds later, some are open again.
No big deal. I also use Go Launcher with its app killer tab in the program menu.
Alright, cool. Just wanted to know.
I installed @dwitherell's TweakStock 1.4 on my Charge about 5 weeks ago, and I've mostly been happy with it. The one problem I kept running into was deteriorating performance over time, leading to frequent hard lockups requiring hard reboots. I'd gotten to the point where I needed to reboot the phone nearly every day. Having multiple active apps also tended to cause problems, for example Cardiotrainer + Rhapsody music.
Sometimes when the lag hit I was able to get a CPU usage report before the phone fully locked up. At such times I'd see kswapd0 eating a large portion of CPU. That suggested memory problems. I tried tweaking my OOM kill thresholds, to no avail.
This morning, based on some research, I took a look through my build.prop and noticed that this ROM's default VM heap size is a whopping 72MB. That sounded very high, compared to my previous phones where it was 24-32MB. I installed the VM Heap tool, knocked the heap size down to 48MB, and rebooted. My phone has been running as smooth as silk since, even with multiple simultaneously active apps running.
I'll keep watching to see how this holds up over time, but the difference even over a few hours is noticeable enough that I thought I'd report my findings right away. Regrettably, XDA discriminates against new members, so I can't post into the TweakStock developer thread as I would prefer. HTH!
thanks for the tip... just installed Eclipse, at its VM is 48MB.
tweakstock was running great for me though, so real problems like you said. my only problem (minor) was my Scrabble app being such a battery and data hog...
Thanks for the tip -- I had noticed this too, will give it a try. Though I'm on a different version of TweakStock I noticed the heap size is 72 here as well. Trying 48 for a while... will chime in if there's improvement.
- A
It is likely set high because it was found that increasing the VM heap size helped curb hot boots on heavily modified ROMs.
Interesting, thanks for the history @imnuts! I did encounter the hot boot issues some months back on earlier iterations of Gingerbread ROMs for the Charge. I will keep an eye out for hot boots to see if my 48Mb VM heap size is too low, or swap lag if it is still too high. Perhaps we will all have to try to find the best heap size for our usage patterns, as there may be no best one-size-fits-all setting.
Can't remember where, but I think I once read something that said 40 MB is the absolute best size to go with for a variety of reasons. For what that's worth...
Back on tweak stock.... can I just edit the build.prop or do I have to download VM heap?
Thanks!
tappin' that....
jco23 said:
Back on tweak stock.... can I just edit the build.prop or do I have to download VM heap?
Thanks!
tappin' that....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just set the value in the build.prop.
jco23 said:
Back on tweak stock.... can I just edit the build.prop or do I have to download VM heap?
Thanks!
tappin' that....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Only change back only when you have issue. I currently using 72m since day one and it's working fine, super fast launching apps.
Fwiw stock settings are 64
Was so thrilled to see this recommendation, as I observed that my phone is really struggling to memory, and then kswapd0 kicks in. Tried to change it to 48MB, then to 64MB. Did not see any improvements. It looks like all apps get pre-loaded into memory, and once free memory hits less than ~80MB, the phone becomes sluggish. Once I kill all apps, the phone is back to normal snappy lag-free operation. Free memory at that point is around 135MB. This is even worse when I insert the phone into car dock. Re-draw takes about 5-7 seconds, swiping is about 2-3 seconds. In few moments it becomes ok, but still laggy.
No problems here
Been on TS1.4 w/ PBJ for about a month now, everything is still as snappy as day one. Thought I was having issues at one point but it turned out it was actually an app, Stitcher Radio, that was eating CPU and draining battery (even though I never launched it). I've over/under clocked with SetCPU at various times but never messed with the voltages.
Nonetheless, thanks to OP for this little tidbit, I'll remember it if I ever start experiencing problems.
ddavv said:
Was so thrilled to see this recommendation, as I observed that my phone is really struggling to memory, and then kswapd0 kicks in. Tried to change it to 48MB, then to 64MB. Did not see any improvements. It looks like all apps get pre-loaded into memory, and once free memory hits less than ~80MB, the phone becomes sluggish. Once I kill all apps, the phone is back to normal snappy lag-free operation. Free memory at that point is around 135MB. This is even worse when I insert the phone into car dock. Re-draw takes about 5-7 seconds, swiping is about 2-3 seconds. In few moments it becomes ok, but still laggy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ddavv, sorry it didn't work for you. Some of the other things I've done to my Charge to help with the lag:
Changed io scheduler to bfq (from sio)
Tweaked my memory manager kill thresholds to 6,8,20,28,32,40 (WIP, YMMV!)
Removed some apps that kept heavy services in memory all the time, e.g. Accuweather & Lookout Security, and streaming media services I didn't use much (Last.fm, Slacker)
Turned off Google location services to stop the k3g_wq CPU runaway bug (this may be fixed in Google Maps > 6.4.0)
Switched to ADW.Launcher
Trimmed widgets I wasn't using frequently (down from 20 to 15)
I still do get a bit of lag after the phone has run for a while, so daily reboots are still a good idea for me - but I'm slowly improving my situation. I'm probably going to take a few hours to do a full wipe & reload once the FP1 ROMs start dropping, and be much more careful about indiscriminate app restoring from Titanium Backup this time. Good luck!
Anyone here gotten low memory warnings? I've seen them pop up three times in as many days. I'm usually running a few active tasks with some push services in the background, but nothing that should be consuming massive amounts of RAM. Anytime this happens, by the time I get to the settings menu to check the running apps the used/free indicator is sitting at about the midway point. I'm thinking of using a desktop widget to give me quick access to the memory usage and task list but while I search for one that will actually be hepful I figured I should poke the community to see if anyone else has seen this.
Never seen such messages here.
To monitor free RAM and what's running use a simple app like Task Manager.
Do you kill most of the cached apps? If not, one of those may be keeping memory hogged. (top right when you're in Running Apps menu under settings). Don't kill all of them, but things like media, Google search and apps can be killed.
Does it mean the RAM memory or the internal SDmemory? I've never seen the warning, but it could be referring to too little free mamory space.
ShadowLea said:
Do you kill most of the cached apps? If not, one of those may be keeping memory hogged. (top right when you're in Running Apps menu under settings). Don't kill all of them, but things like media, Google search and apps can be killed.
Does it mean the RAM memory or the internal SDmemory? I've never seen the warning, but it could be referring to too little free mamory space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It means RAM... have plenty of actual storage space. As for killing processs, I tend not to worry about that since Android is supposed to take care of them for me. Cached apps *should* be cleared when RAM gets low. I'm wondering if the low memory warning is being triggered before the system has time to reclaim resources. In other words, the threshold is reached, android starts to kill cached threads but it takes longer than it should so the warning pops up before the cleaning process completes. This would explain why the RAM shows around 50% usage right after I see the message. Well, if no one else is seeing anything like this it could just be some combination of processes I'm running that are holding on to things longer than they should.
I ended up getting the latest ATT/LG software update, build LMY47D / H81010o. It actually let me choose when to install it so I'm happy about that, but I'm having a few problems. The screen seems to be working better now, taps, touches, swipes, and drags seem to be working correctly - but my phone is running really hot - even after a couple reboots. and for some reason all of my task killers no longer work. I use CCleaner and AVG to flush out ram because even though the G4 has 3gb, about 1.6gb is always in use with factory apps only. None of the task killers detect any running apps now, even the built-in LG task killer doesn't find anything running in the background.
Anyone else having issues with task killers? I've cleared the cache out of them, dumped the data, re-installed them, and they still don't work. I had a few other apps that quit working but once I dumped the cache they started to work again. Also, the phone seems to boot a little quicker and charge faster too, seems like mixed results with the latest upgrade.
Everything I've EVER read about task killers says that they don't really help because they are at odds with Android. And RAM is supposed to be used. Android will drop things out of RAM if it needs more.
The issues with memory leaking are inherent to Lollypop and are "supposedly" addressed in Marshmallow. We'll see.
But I had the same issues with my S6 and S6 Active.
Sent from my LG-H810 using XDA Free mobile app
Task killers shouldn't be used with anything later than Gingerbread. They simply serve no purpose. Android's stock RAM management keeps everything how it needs to be run, and shouldn't be messed with. For example, every time you go and use one of those task killers to flush out your RAM, Android is going to turn around and load those same apps right back into RAM because they're set with certain OOM values that tell Android when to kill them off or when to let them stay in memory.
So, in practice a task killer is probably robbing you of battery power.
The only thing I still don't like about LG's software is that they HAVE tweaked the stock RAM management system that Lollipop uses to favor keeping things in RAM for longer... and things on the G4 can get a little slow sometimes because of it. Just use the app switcher and swipe them away though, that way the app services can still run in the background like they're supposed to.
The G4 would be my ideal Android device if they would ship it with stock Android and just put their apps on top of that. RAM management doesn't need to be messed with, and UI elements don't need messed with (lollipop is quite elegant).
As for the "o" version, I was forced into it. It never asked. It installed itself while my phone was laying on the coffee table. Really pisses me off.