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ROM not taking full advantage of all the RAM?

Allright, everyone has their noob questions and here's mine:
The HTC Inspire has 768MB RAM, correct? Yes.
So why is it that whenever I go to Settings > Applications > Running services
I see it saying 140Mb Used + 416MB Free.
That's only 556MB RAM.
It always adds up to that number.
Where's my other 212MB RAM being used?
I'm currently using Android Revolution HD 4.0 Beta 2
Thanks.

Infinimint said:
Allright, everyone has their noob questions and here's mine:
The HTC Inspire has 768MB RAM, correct? Yes.
So why is it that whenever I go to Settings > Applications > Running services
I see it saying 140Mb Used + 416MB Free.
That's only 556MB RAM.
It always adds up to that number.
Where's my other 212MB RAM being used?
I'm currently using Android Revolution HD 4.0 Beta 2
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not an expert but I recall someone saying it sets some side for the video processor to use.
Sent from my Inspire using Tapatalk Pro.

A portion of the RAM is used by the OS, all the processes it needs, the launcher, and sense UI stuff.

RogerPodacter said:
A portion of the RAM is used by the OS, all the processes it needs, the launcher, and sense UI stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, but those "system processes" are also shown with that 556MB, and they usually take up around 200MB of it. Leaving me with about 350MB RAM if I'm running nothing.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

What he says is true...on a fresh boot with nothing running i usually have between 350mb and 365mb free and the Android OS and HTC UI are in the list of whats being used.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

Theres some being set aside for hardware. The gpu may use some, theres probably a good bit set aside for the radio. Like the galaxy s, some may be able to be skimmed from here and there to give a little more user accessible RAM, but I've looked into this 0%. My kernel for the captivated is able to give around 30 extra MB or RAM accessible to the user with everything still working 100%(hd video recording etc). There is 768 mb or RAM in the phone though, some of its just reserved for things that need some of it dedicated, its not dynamically distributed as hardware needs it, instead its set aside UNTIL the hardware needs it.

Infinimint said:
True, but those "system processes" are also shown with that 556MB, and they usually take up around 200MB of it. Leaving me with about 350MB RAM if I'm running nothing.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Not everything appears though in running lists, the launcher for example takes up at least 20-30Mb of RAM just to run. Other internal processes just aren't shown. Sense UI stuff I bet is a big part of it.

You can set your task manager/viewer/killer to show all the system processes and whatnot.
It doesn't show 768 total ram.

I have this same question about the 4gigs of storage I've seen reported... I only see 1gig myself
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

Thrashavich said:
You can set your task manager/viewer/killer to show all the system processes and whatnot.
It doesn't show 768 total ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And it never will. Read my post above. It's 100% the answer to this thread, same as every other phone

arajay said:
I have this same question about the 4gigs of storage I've seen reported... I only see 1gig myself
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The theory behind this is that the 4GB has been formatted to Single Layer. When you do this to flash memory, it becomes faster and more stable, but you lose half of the storage space. So 4GB goes to 2GB. Take out for the operating system, and you are left with about a gig.
Once you format to single layer, you cannot go back. I know it sounds like false advertising, but i am fine with my system partitions being faster and more stable in exchange for losing a couple of gig. There is always SD cards.
I hope this helps.

argolfermd said:
The theory behind this is that the 4GB has been formatted to Single Layer. When you do this to flash memory, it becomes faster and more stable, but you lose half of the storage space. So 4GB goes to 2GB. Take out for the operating system, and you are left with about a gig.
Once you format to single layer, you cannot go back. I know it sounds like false advertising, but i am fine with my system partitions being faster and more stable in exchange for losing a couple of gig. There is always SD cards.
I hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was a great answer! Thank you for helping me to understand
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

Yup that was the same the same question/ordeal when the g2 vision came out and this was the answer that was found.

[Q] RAM on Sensation

How much RAM has this phone got and how much is free?
The phone is giving me conflicting information and I just don't understand it.
Settings - About Phone - Hardware information - 768MB
Setting - Applications - Running Services - 188MB used, 310MB free (498MB)
Task Manager - 558MB total, 451MB used, 107MB free
Loving this phone so far, but this memory thing is just confusing me.

Well you have to understand that ALL android phones, despite saying they come with 512/768/1024mb have to reserve some memory for the GPU. After you just boot, the memory available to the user will always be less than the advertised memory merely because of the GPU taking up some.
I would imagine there's 550mb or so after the GPU takes up some, then Sense 3.0 probably takes up a decent amount... so 300ish after a fresh startup sounds about right.
Keep in mind that having "free" ram isn't very efficient but having more memory in absolute is better since you'll be able to have more applications open before the system starts closing some to free up memory.
dirkgently68 said:
How much RAM has this phone got and how much is free?
The phone is giving me conflicting information and I just don't understand it.
Settings - About Phone - Hardware information - 768MB
Setting - Applications - Running Services - 188MB used, 310MB free (498MB)
Task Manager - 558MB total, 451MB used, 107MB free
Loving this phone so far, but this memory thing is just confusing me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Thanks Dinan,
So android works like a PC motherboard with integrated GPU and shares RAM between the two.
It still doesn't explain the difference between the 'Task Manager' and 'Running Services' though? Is this just a software error?

Yea it seems like the android running services free memory counts "idle" apps as free ram where as a task manager will not.
For example my phone says 150mb free in running services but a task manager says I only have 44mb free which is pretty accurate since I set my empty app space to 40mb.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Ah, ok that makes sense now, was confused by all the different figures, thanks for the response.

Ram confusion
+1 thanx for the explanation.
had the same questions when i saw the taskmanager on my freshly received sensation

I Dont get it!
I have a New Phone! Nothing installed, Clean!!!
I just Bought and got my Sensation..
it says 558 ram and free 117 mb!
NO apps are on, and None installed by me!!! How can that be possible?
I have a DHD alssow.. and its aloways 300-500 mb free!
The phone dosent lagg! but mem makes me crazy

3kgt said:
I Dont get it!
I have a New Phone! Nothing installed, Clean!!!
I just Bought and got my Sensation..
it says 558 ram and free 117 mb!
NO apps are on, and None installed by me!!! How can that be possible?
I have a DHD alssow.. and its aloways 300-500 mb free!
The phone dosent lagg! but mem makes me crazy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
REAL available RAM is shown on "Running Services". Task killer is inaccurate.

3kgt said:
I Dont get it!
I have a New Phone! Nothing installed, Clean!!!
I just Bought and got my Sensation..
it says 558 ram and free 117 mb!
NO apps are on, and None installed by me!!! How can that be possible?
I have a DHD alssow.. and its aloways 300-500 mb free!
The phone dosent lagg! but mem makes me crazy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, would someone care to explain why this is the case with phone?
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA Premium App

well you can always run Launcher pro instead. And that might free up more. Let me know if im wrong though. but i think running Launcher as the default and not htc sense would free up some ram. if some one has tried it let me know what free space you get after fresh boot

3kgt said:
I Dont get it!
I have a New Phone! Nothing installed, Clean!!!
I just Bought and got my Sensation..
it says 558 ram and free 117 mb!
NO apps are on, and None installed by me!!! How can that be possible?
I have a DHD alssow.. and its aloways 300-500 mb free!
The phone dosent lagg! but mem makes me crazy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats odd. I have all of my apps installed and have over 275mb free on a fresh boot.

[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

2gb of ram?

Can someone explain this to me?

I don't know why, I have the same thing, but I think its related to how you would order a 16gb microsd and have, for instance 14.03 gb.

Some of it gets used by kernel space and video ram.

Think of this as a computer, a computer with a video card that doesn't have on board RAM will reserved some portion of the RAM for it's own used and will not show the full the full system RAM because of that portion being reserved. It's computer's nature.

scsa20 said:
Think of this as a computer, a computer with a video card that doesn't have on board RAM will reserved some portion of the RAM for it's own used and will not show the full the full system RAM because of that portion being reserved. It's computer's nature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great way of putting out
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

scsa20 said:
Think of this as a computer, a computer with a video card that doesn't have on board RAM will reserved some portion of the RAM for it's own used and will not show the full the full system RAM because of that portion being reserved. It's computer's nature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Basically this.
If you look at any Android device, you'll notice it doesn't list the full amount of RAM that it physically has. It's just the nature of the operating system.
With 1.62GB reserved for use by applications, who can complain? That's equal to or more than pretty much any Android device in existence at the moment.

ExodusC said:
Basically this.
If you look at any Android device, you'll notice it doesn't list the full amount of RAM that it physically has. It's just the nature of the operating system.
With 1.62GB reserved for use by applications, who can complain? That's equal to or more than pretty much any Android device in existence at the moment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was pretty sure is more and ANY android phone in existance except US variants of gs3 (and Korean one too maybe?)
Sent from my Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 2

Bloat sucks! Like others have said, roughly 380mb of ram is reserved for the system.

droidstyle said:
Bloat sucks! Like others have said, roughly 380mb of ram is reserved for the system.
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Click to collapse
Without that "bloat" your RAM wouldn't work at all.

Ansextra said:
Without that "bloat" your RAM wouldn't work at all.
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Click to collapse
Huh. Think about what you just said.
Bloat is by definition superfluous data that is not required. And the ram would still work, it just wouldn't have anything to run so it wouldn't have a function.
What you were probably trying to say was without the necessary required system files the ram would be largely useless. Of course that really isn't relevant in addressing what droidstyle said.
Sent from my htc_jewel using xda premium

Ansextra said:
Without that "bloat" your RAM wouldn't work at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
derpy derp, please refer to bobloblaw's post!

can't see the attachment in the OP, but I assume based off the comments they are noticing the 1.6Gb available to user, which is as others have explained, after all the system gets it's memory and all
then out of that, at least on my CM10 JB build, with a lot of apps running, there is still 1GB of ram free, so there's 600Mb actively in use by apps and what not....
be really glad you have a full gigabyte of free ram, you could be like the Exynos guys and get a gimped 1Gb of ram and have only 100!150Mb free, and have your apps and stuff having to reload and stuff just to maintain free memory for overhead.

bobloblaw1 said:
Huh. Think about what you just said.
Bloat is by definition superfluous data that is not required. And the ram would still work, it just wouldn't have anything to run so it wouldn't have a function.
What you were probably trying to say was without the necessary required system files the ram would be largely useless. Of course that really isn't relevant in addressing what droidstyle said.
Sent from my htc_jewel using xda premium
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Click to collapse
Yes that is what I was trying to say. Thank you. But it is not irrelevant because by definition bloat would not be necessary files to my way of thinking. Bloat (the way I think of it) are files taking up space that are not necessary. This 380k is necessary.

the 380 is mostly necessary. you and droidstyle are both correct, no not all of that is useless stuff but honestly probably a majority of it is crap running in the background, stock apps and widgets and processes, that nobody will ever need.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

TechSavvy2 said:
I was pretty sure is more and ANY android phone in existance except US variants of gs3 (and Korean one too maybe?)
Sent from my Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LG Optimus LTE II announced the same day as the Galaxy S III comes with 2 GB of RAM. Although, if I recall correctly, the usable memory is something like 1.2 GB.

Taehee. said:
LG Optimus LTE II announced the same day as the Galaxy S III comes with 2 GB of RAM. Although, if I recall correctly, the usable memory is something like 1.2 GB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2GB of ram is quickly becoming the norm. It's nice after a couple days let say I have opened 60 apps, and when i go back to an app from the day before after using my phone the entire time, to be able to go back to that app and have it be right where i left it, having lost nothing......also it's nice to be able to run very involving launchers and not have to wait on it to reload from time to time......

bobloblaw1 said:
Huh. Think about what you just said.
Bloat is by definition superfluous data that is not required. And the ram would still work, it just wouldn't have anything to run so it wouldn't have a function.
What you were probably trying to say was without the necessary required system files the ram would be largely useless. Of course that really isn't relevant in addressing what droidstyle said.
Sent from my htc_jewel using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your so called bloat isn't loaded into ram unless you launch it and I'm certain it isn't using the system reserved ram but would use the free ram pool. I would assume its the os and video memory that is using that space not some vzw apps you aren't using.

lol

piiman said:
Your so called bloat isn't loaded into ram unless you launch it and I'm certain it isn't using the system reserved ram but would use the free ram pool. I would assume its the os and video memory that is using that space not some vzw apps you aren't using.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
a lot of the Samsung stuff is indeed loaded into RAM.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

b4silver said:
Can someone explain this to me?
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Click to collapse
[/COLOR]Agree that it's being used by the video display. Video memory has to come from somewhere.

Question RAM plus question.

Since recent update I can disable RAM plus completely. When i disable Ram plus i still see 3GB swap in ram.
Is that ram "zram" instead of disk ram?
Or.....was it zram from the beginnin and does the disable not work?
I check ram with terminal app using following command:
free -h
Br.
Michel

Yeah mine showing the same thing. But phone seems faster since i disabled it.

Marvin.the.Martian said:
Yeah mine showing the same thing. But phone seems faster since i disabled it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes feels faster indeed, less stutters.
But I would like to understand if RAM plus is any different from zram. Anybody?