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Managing Memory

Hi all,
One habit I've developed with the Captivate is using Advanced Task Killer to kill apps that otherwise would just be hanging out in memory. I do this probably because I'm anal retentive like that, but also with the thought that it save me battery life if I do.
This has led to two questions of mine (excuse the noobiness to Android if these have been discussed):
1.) Why do so many applications start automatically when the phone boots up? (browser, gallery, etc etc). Is there a startup ini somewhere I can edit to prevent this or do all the apps just wake up? It's easy enough to kill, but I find some of the apps that start up very odd.
2.) Over the course of the day, even with Autokill on and security set to "Low", eventually my memory is consumed and it only gets back to its full state until the phone is rebooted. After all obvious apps have been killed the memory usage will will go from ~170mb (after a reboot) to as low as ~130mb (at the end of the day). Does anyone know why that happens and if there is a better way to manage memory/apps?
Thanks.

I used to use task killers, but I have uninstalled them and just let android do its thing. The only reason I'll end a program is if the program has an exit function or has froze, which is rare. With this method I don't have any slowdowns and great battery life. On the flipside I don't install poorly developed apps. Thats just me though.
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Preventing apps from loading

Hi,
Im running HTC Desire HD 2.2, and I noticed terrible batterylife.
So I installed battery improve to kill all apps in my memory.
That was fine for awhile, but then I noticed after a long period (like 24 hours), the memory filled up with apps again. And these arent just apps that Im using, they're random apps that I have installed on my phone.
At the same time, I had APNDroid installed and I started to notice that the memory would fill up with apps as soon as I enabled my 3G. Maybe some sort of wakeup event is occurring?!
So is there a way to prevent apps from automatically loading whenever they feel like it? Its a pain frequently having to check battery improve to see if there's anything needs killing?

I think the best way is to uninstall the apps that you don't often use..............

Yeh, that kinda defeats the point doesnt it.
And I know the internet is full of threads arguing about whether full memory uses more battery power or not.
Its a shame there's no way to specify whether an app can/cant access the internet. Or access the internet only when you tell to. That would prevent them all trying to refresh themselves as soon as I enable 3G.
Is there a ROM that disables multitasking? <snigger>

Apps just wont die!

Its frustrating as well as annoying whenever i turn on task killer to see Skype, Picasa tool and Gmail running in the background. I have disabled autosync and i even kill the services to stop them, but they return from the grave after ~10 minutes or so....
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

Thats part of android. It has applications in the background that were called on once, and it keeps them in the RAM. Once android recognizes that the process is no longer needed, it terminates it and frees up ram
ADR6300

Get Autostarts from the market. Similar to msconfig for Windows, it prevents apps from launching in the background and hogging memory & battery. It's only $1 and well worth it.
You can also "freeze" unused apps with Titanium Backup. Freezing an app hides it from android, effectively removing it. This is better than deleting the app, because if you freeze an app and your phone starts acting weird, just "unfreeze" that app and the phone will return to normal.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Those apps are not running in the background, they're only cached in RAM. As long as you don't launch them they'll stay asleep. They don't eat your battery, and they don't take RAM away from running apps that need it.
If your phone runs out of memory those dormant apps will be kicked out of RAM.
In Android empty RAM is wasted RAM. Task killers are a real waste of RAM and battery.

i also seem to have fring always in the background, is there any way i can stop this?

Is there any tasks killer app that really kills some annoying apps running on my device? I'm using 2.3.3, and the battery is drying like crazy

task killers are bad for you phone. they're not necessary, and they kill battery life. just saying

NoctMonster said:
i also seem to have fring always in the background, is there any way i can stop this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can tell fring not to autostart. The option is somewhere in the settings menu.
Android will still cache it in memory, especially if you use fring often. But if it is only cached it doesn't go online and it doesn't eat any battery power.
Same thing for almost all other apps. Just because Android loads them into RAM doesn't mean they're running.

[Q] The MIUI app killer - mem leak?

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.

[Q] Low Memory Warnings. Anyone Else?

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.