I have noticed that my GS3 constantly uses more than 1GB of ram....usually about 1.15. I'm on the Synergy ROM. I read somewhere that this might depends on the ROM (some use more than others). Is that true or is there some kind of a tweak I can set up. I usually just hold the home button down and go into task and clear out the memory.
Thanks!
Touchwiz uses alot of ram in general...not much you can do other than switch to aosp roms.
droidstyle said:
Touchwiz uses alot of ram in general...not much you can do other than switch to aosp roms.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didn't know that....I was waiting for the CM10 to get more stable and switch to that. I think it might be time.
Thanks!
Take a look at this article:
http://www.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
It talks about how Android uses RAM and why it doesn't matter that the RAM is "filling up". It's a bit long and a bit elementary at times, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Edit: as far as programs using more RAM (TW>AOSP), there is probably some performance gain to be seen. BUT since you're not completely filling the RAM currently, it SHOULDN'T be all that significant.
Bleelas said:
Take a look at this article:
http://www.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
It talks about how Android uses RAM and why it doesn't matter that the RAM is "filling up". It's a bit long and a bit elementary at times, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Edit: as far as programs using more RAM (TW>AOSP), there is probably some performance gain to be seen. BUT since you're not completely filling the RAM currently, it SHOULDN'T be all that significant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 Great article!! I'm no longer worried hehe
ghilliek9 said:
+1 Great article!! I'm no longer worried hehe
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For what it's worth, I'm usually sitting at 1.2g on Synergy Nightly r53.
But I've got a lot of crap that likes to run in the background. Some apps, like Life is Crime use a little over 55mb, but I find that DroidStyle has it right up above. It looks like the elements of touchwiz are taking up like 300-600mb (if you count all the samsungy stuff like gestures and smart watch and all that)
I'm fine with very little ram available, the problem is screen redraws too much and becomes choppy.
Kinda annoying really
Related
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?
I'm usually sitting on somewhere between 60-100MB of free RAM. Now keep in mind, I have LOTS of widgets running, a gorgeous theme, spb 3d launcher, etc...and I prefer to keep those things going, because that's how I get my value from my phone. I don't think the phone is slow by any means...but because I'm used to using Windows, I'm paranoid about low ram. Should I be worried, or is it fine as long as I'm not experiencing bad performance?
Moving some apps to my internal sd card wouldn't do anything about RAM, correct?
mmapcpro said:
I'm usually sitting on somewhere between 60-100MB of free RAM. Now keep in mind, I have LOTS of widgets running, a gorgeous theme, spb 3d launcher, etc...and I prefer to keep those things going, because that's how I get my value from my phone. I don't think the phone is slow by any means...but because I'm used to using Windows, I'm paranoid about low ram. Should I be worried, or is it fine as long as I'm not experiencing bad performance?
Moving some apps to my internal sd card wouldn't do anything about RAM, correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not an expert at all, but rather someone with the same question. As explained to me, the newer versions of android are most excellent in memory management. The need to manage memory, like in windows, is not there in newer versions.
With that said, being from windows, seeing low memory counts freak me out. I've been convinced by the people on this forum, to give it a try and not freak out. Avoid using task killers and such. Only thing I do is remove apps and Widgets I do not use. I've not regretted that advice.
It really all depends on what you are doing on the phone. If you only have 10 MB left, but are only checking emails, you are fine. But if you were to start playing a game from the terga zone, then you will have problems.
Sent from my G2x using Tapatalk
aowendoff said:
It really all depends on what you are doing on the phone. If you only have 10 MB left, but are only checking emails, you are fine. But if you were to start playing a game from the terga zone, then you will have problems.
Sent from my G2x using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right, but, my understanding is, android will shutdown unused tasks to accommodate the need.
I learned with windows phone 7, there is a balance between live tiles, battery life, and performance. I assume that android has a similar premise. Do I need 40 Widgets on my desktop. What is the trade off if I do.
Again, I'm # noob to android...but this is how I'm proceeding.
Android keeps things in ram, which I would think is so apps can start up faster. If you are using something and it needs more ram than is free, android will remove something that isn't running to free memory. as far as too little, ram not being used is wasted. So just because you have a low amount free means nothing. The only thing that would be bad is if running services and apps needed more ram than the phone physically has. so just because there is little free means nothing really.
Read the article linked to in the first post of this thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=678205
Pay special attention to the Addendum at the end where it talks specifically about the way Android/Linux handles memory.
i dont really know too much about AOSP rom's but from what i hear they are very basic.. what makes that so great? i really have no idea since ive never used a AOSP rom. just wanted to know cuz i always hear ppl talking about how great they are. thanks
They are true Android. Built clean from source code from the AOSP website and modified to work with the specific phone. Basically its how every Android phone should come but each manufacturer likes to mess with the software and add their own stuff.
i agree, AOSP is very minimalistic, thats why i prefer them over an other rom
They're fast. Pretty much the main reason anyone switches.
Like the unlock screens this phone came with, both of them sucked. The puzzle was annoying because I would miss the swipe about 15% of the time while the glass unlock screen was just bad looking. I don't see the big deal about AOSP seeing as i replace pretty much anything AOSP/stock anyway(messenger, lockscreen, browser etc). I get it's there for the simplicity and stability but it's just boring if you ask me.
duuurp said:
They're fast. Pretty much the main reason anyone switches.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This.
Performance on aosp blows touchwiz out of the water any day.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
sneakysolidbake said:
This.
Performance on aosp blows touchwiz out of the water any day.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ANYTHING blows touchwiz out of the water.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
kvswim said:
ANYTHING blows touchwiz out of the water.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
TW4 isn't bad :]
blarrick said:
TW4 isn't bad :]
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Click to collapse
Visually, its a huge improvement over tw3 but that's only the launcher. The only things I like about tw are the music player, task manager, and calculator. That's it. Not worth the sacrifice of performance imo.
We (maybe just I) want aosp because it frees us from samsungs untimely and poorly written source code releases.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
AOSP is pure google experience. AOSP ROM's are google experience with developer tweaks.
It doesn't require many approval processes, so it runs the latest version of the O/S usually before phone manufacturers can get them out
It is very slim and minimalistic with it being highly customizable.
It comes minus any bloat, all source code is available, full wiki with instructions to remove any portion you want, teh ability to grab the source code and compile it yourself..etc.
Here is an example as far as bloat goes, I had the thunderbolt for a bit, CM7 checked in around 80ish mb. A sense rom was going around 400 mbish.
I'm assuming then that the RAM usage by the OS will decrease dramatically from what it is now?
Its crazy to me that this device sets aside almost 200mb for the OS anyway, yet on startup, another 200 is used up immediately (I rebooted and cleared memory just to see).
Just seems like a rather large footprint.
BleedsOrangeandBlue said:
I'm assuming then that the RAM usage by the OS will decrease dramatically from what it is now?
Its crazy to me that this device sets aside almost 200mb for the OS anyway, yet on startup, another 200 is used up immediately (I rebooted and cleared memory just to see).
Just seems like a rather large footprint.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android isn't like your pc operating system. Unused ram is wasted ram. Apps are loaded in the background so they open quicker when you use them. When the ram is too low it kills off some processes.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
sneakysolidbake said:
Android isn't like your pc operating system. Unused ram is wasted ram. Apps are loaded in the background so they open quicker when you use them. When the ram is too low it kills off some processes.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, I saw that response coming. I get how it works.
However, if you had more RAM to start with, more applications could be cached at a time which means your device will be opening more apps quickly. That's why I rebooted my phone before I provided numbers, because I'm asking about the RAM that the OS leaves free to actually do the caching.
Are you really trying to tell me that Android is so good that it wouldn't benefit from having more RAM available to it on startup?
BleedsOrangeandBlue said:
Yea, I saw that response coming. I get how it works.
However, if you had more RAM to start with, more applications could be cached at a time which means your device will be opening more apps quickly. That's why I rebooted my phone before I provided numbers, because I'm asking about the RAM that the OS leaves free to actually do the caching.
Are you really trying to tell me that Android is so good that it wouldn't benefit from having more RAM available to it on startup?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No I get what you mean. This phone certainly does suffer from a lack of ram and aosp will help with that.
However, rebooting doesn't really tell you much about ram used by the os because it begins caching apps before it fully boots if I remember correctly.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
Edit: double post
Lol, the more free RAM, the more efficient and faster your phone runs: for example, my old G1 with its limited RAM would freeze for 3 minutes if you tried its phone dial app, mind you it would happen almost randomly as the phone swapped out memory, oc'ing the g1 CPU made no difference since the bottleneck was the memory size. So, the more ram you have the better off you are.
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App
Typically the AOSP roms will be packaged together with a custom kernel built on mtd/yaffs which I believe to be the largest performance enhancer. The fact that the AOSP rom is minimal and has all the benefits as Utnapishtia mentioned just makes it that much faster because it's not burdened down with unnecessary garbage.
1. Settings-> developer options-> and Window animation scale and Transition Animation scale -> change both of those to 0.5x (or 0 for both, for instant reactions). Doing this will speed up your phone.
information got from this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1735283&highlight=transition+0+5
2. Settings-> Developer Options--> Limit Background Processes
Set it to 4 to increase the "smoothness" of your phone.
information got from this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1797011
Thanks will try, this, to think it's already fast...lol
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
Smok3d said:
Set it to 4 to increase the "smoothness" of your phone.
information got from this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1797011
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This made absolutely no difference at all in my system but I already had all the bloatware either frozen or removed.
Limiting background apps to 4 is pretty silly when we have 2gb of RAM! That'd make sense if we had 512mb or *maybe* even a gig, but I've never come close to using all 2 and I have an extremely high number of apps installed including a ton that run in the background.
I only did what you mentioned in the first tip and omg its amazingly fast!
Falcyn said:
Limiting background apps to 4 is pretty silly when we have 2gb of RAM! That'd make sense if we had 512mb or *maybe* even a gig, but I've never come close to using all 2 and I have an extremely high number of apps installed including a ton that run in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While 2gb of ram is nice, the device needs 4 cores to handle the high cpu load...after a couple days without a reboot, my device hits over 1gb ram usage(thats debloated too)...the problem is the cpu cant keep up with all the processes. Limiting them does help, but it would be nice if there was an option for limiting to 8 processes. 4 seems to be a little excessive and causes delays with email updates and what not, but it does infact keep the device smoother overtime.
Edit* also i believe its a TW issue aswell because this issue is non existant on aosp roms like cm10. Thats partially due to alot less crap running in the background compared to stock touchwiz.
droidstyle said:
While 2gb of ram is nice, the device needs 4 cores to handle the high cpu load...after a couple days without a reboot, my device hits over 1gb ram usage(thats debloated too)...the problem is the cpu cant keep up with all the processes. Limiting them does help, but it would be nice if there was an option for limiting to 8 processes. 4 seems to be a little excessive and causes delays with email updates and what not, but it does infact keep the device smoother overtime.
Edit* also i believe its a TW issue aswell because this issue is non existant on aosp roms like cm10. Thats partially due to alot less crap running in the background compared to stock touchwiz.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://m.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
MG386 said:
http://m.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Essentially its saying the same thing...the more ram available allows to run more powerful apps. However it does not help with high cpu usage from too much **** running in the bacground.
droidstyle said:
Essentially its saying the same thing...the more ram available allows to run more powerful apps. However it does not help with high cpu usage from too much **** running in the bacground.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That isn't at all what it is saying.
This phone is already faster than my old iPhone but faster is always better. Thanks!
buur11 said:
That isn't at all what it is saying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree its counteractive to kill off apps every 10 min, but it is effective to do it once a day. Im just telling it as what Im experiencing on my end...
topmetsfan said:
This phone is already faster than my old iPhone but faster is always better. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any modern android, setup correctly, is faster and more powerful than the iphone
I prefer to turn off the animations so everything is instant on this already fast phone.
Sadly since I got this phone the problem isn't speed, it's battery dying too fast! But I'll definitely give it a shot and see if I can tell a difference
Sent from my Verizon Samsung GSIII xda developers-app
Whenever i use game killer on an aosp rom and when i look for the values it reboots. i have tried on paranoid android and liquidsmooth and same thing happens. is there any specific settings on how to use it with an aosp rom? it works fine on touchwiz. any help with this will be gladly appreciated.
Did you happen to find out how to fix this?
since1876 said:
Did you happen to find out how to fix this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. Maybe is because none uses this game hack apps
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 4
picarito said:
Nope. Maybe is because none uses this game hack apps
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 4
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Click to collapse
I have used it on kairosoft games and never had any problems with it so I can't help you out.
Thousands of people do my decision was to flash cleanbean which is a stripped touchwiz rom. It's not the best choice though since half my ram is in constant use but it works. It used to work fine on cyanogenmod I don't know what happened. Oh well.
since1876 said:
Thousands of people do my decision was to flash cleanbean which is a stripped touchwiz rom. It's not the best choice though since half my ram is in constant use but it works. It used to work fine on cyanogenmod I don't know what happened. Oh well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You know the old saying "Doc it hurts when I do this" .
Well don't do that then....
If your RAM is half full consistently, then your ROM is broken. The Android (Linux) OS memory manager strives to keep the RAM 80% used /full all the time so that apps load faster. If its less than that you either don't have any apps installed or, you dorkeked something. Lots of times people try to use auto task killers, which work against the OS and cause much memory thrashing and gnashing of teeth and resultant poor performance. Having 60% of the RAM free might make you feel better, but it won;t make your phone faster, just the opposite.