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Hello Guys and Gals,
After a couple of weeks running the factory update I find the mem available to twindle down as the hours go by.
I run task manager to free up mem after closing apps but after about 4-5 hours mem available is Regards to 185.
Any suggestions, hints or tips please?
Regards,
billygtab said:
Hello Guys and Gals,
After a couple of weeks running the factory update I find the mem available to twindle down as the hours go by.
I run task manager to free up mem after closing apps but after about 4-5 hours mem available is Regards to 185.
Any suggestions, hints or tips please?
Regards,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stop using task manager. I have read that Froyo takes care of it by itself and using a task killer can actually make things worse. You shut something down that Android needs, it starts it up. You shut it down, something else wants it. Somehow that ends up using more battery and memory.
Other than that I don't know.
Tip: Stop thinking of the ram that Android uses the same way you think of ram in a PC. Period.
Why, Ever wonder why there is no 'exit' or 'close' button on most apps? It's b/c Apps don't close on Android, they just get moved down the stack so to speak. Think of it like a deck of cards. Some apps are thin (use little ram), some are thick (use lots of ram), the deck is only so big (total amount of ram). So if you have a bunch of small apps, then they will all be in memory. if you have a large app, it will push everything else out of ram to make room for it to run. So, if your ram usage is 100% then Android is working properly. This is why Task Killers are a bad idea on Android. The above is a pretty simple explanation and this topic has basically been beaten to death ever since Android was released. For some info, just google,
http://www.google.com/search?q=why+...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
chad
Thank you both for your insight.
I will take your advice!
Thanks again... great forum!
Apologies, but based on my experience, I kind of disagree about ignoring RAM usage. I'd read some of that info awhile ago, and it made sense. But I noted that my Gtab would occasionally act weird, freezing, reboot, stuff like that.
So, I installed System Panel, and when things started grinding to a halt, I'd check that, and I often found avail memory in the 10-50MB range.
One thing was that Xscope would sometimes take almost 200MB, so I emailed the dev, who suggested changing cache from default 8 to 4. I did that, and then rarely found avail memory less than 150MB.
The other thing is I noticed that there a lot of Apps taking about 10MB, that I wasn't using. Things like Settings, Email, etc. So, I installed Startup Auditor, and configured that to stop several of those non-used apps. The thing I noticed after that is that booting is faster. Specifically, instead of sitting on the Tent boot screen for a long time, it would boot past that in maybe 10 secs. I'm thinking of buying the paid apparently so I can stop more than 5 Alps.
Anyway, YMMV, but that's my experience.
Jim
I have my Nexus S for over two weeks now, and I'm incredibly happy with it. Theming is a lot of fun, and you can do very cool stuff even without root and custom roms!
However, there is one (strange) thing I've noticed. It's about the RAM.
For your information: I use Go Launcher which has a tab in the App Drawer with running applications, and a button to close all (you can exclude certain apps). When I boot up my phone, I have 170-180 MB free RAM. The following programs (and widgets) are running in the background (I have excluded them from the close all list): Go SMS Pro (widget, notifications), WhatsApp (notifications), Lookout, Extended Controls (widget), Wiget Locker (I made it look like the MIUI lockscreen) and Clockr (widget).
There are two more apps that are on constantly, and those are the Miren Browser and PlayerPro. I don't know why Miren Browser keeps turning itself on. When I check how much MB it uses, it says 0,00 dB... As for PlayerPro, I use a widget called Phantom Music Control, a widget that hides itself when no music is being played. I also use it on my lockscreen. This widget controls PlayerPro, so that is probably why PlayerPro has to be running all the time (so that it can start up quickly when needed).
There are some Google apps that turn themselves on, like Gmail and Places, and they actually use RAM according to Go Launcher. I don't want them to be running, and synchronization is turned off with Gmail. When I want to know if I have mail, I open Gmail. It doesn't have to be running all the time. I've never used Places, and I never will use it, so I don't know why that has to be running all the time.
Every once in a while I hit Close All (with Go Launcher). However, I've noticed that over time my free memory keeps lowering. When I boot up my phone it is around 175 MB, but at the end of the day the free memory is 100 MB, 70 MB or even 50 MB, and yes, even after I've hit the 'Close All' button.
I know I don't use my phone very efficient, with programs like Go SMS, Widget Locker and that Music Control widget, and I will flash a custom rom later. My RAM memory will probably increase then (I've read something about Supercurio's kernel including a boost RAM management). It just bothers me that I don't have control over what programs are running (Gmail and Places), and that my free memory decreases over time. I haven't noticed any slow downs, I'm just worried. Or shouldn't I?
I don't know about the rest, but you shouldn't be concerned about free memory.
Android is designed in a way that all programs keep running (sleeping actually) in the background even when you don't use them at the moment. They are automatically killed when the system needs memory for something else. Any program that is sent to the background (e.g. by pressing back or home) can be killed by the system at any time and is (should be) ready for it.
Basically, the less free memory you have, the better. That means that many of the apps you use are running and you can return to them without delay.
There are some articles floating around the web about the architecture of android and process/application life cycle. They explain that better then me, and in more detail.
cgi said:
I don't know about the rest, but you shouldn't be concerned about free memory.
Android is designed in a way that all programs keep running (sleeping actually) in the background even when you don't use them at the moment. They are automatically killed when the system needs memory for something else. Any program that is sent to the background (e.g. by pressing back or home) can be killed by the system at any time and is (should be) ready for it.
Basically, the less free memory you have, the better. That means that many of the apps you use are running and you can return to them without delay.
There are some articles floating around the web about the architecture of android and process/application life cycle. They explain that better then me, and in more detail.
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Click to collapse
First of all, thanks!
So I don't have to be afraid of any slow down? And what about Gmail and Places turning themselves on every time, even if I don't use them?
And why does the free memory decrease over time, but increases again when I turn off and boot up my phone?
Androyed said:
So I don't have to be afraid of any slow down? And what about Gmail and Places turning themselves on every time, even if I don't use them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More like the opposite: your RAM is being put to good use.
When your PC get's low on RAM it will start swapping and trashing around. Your smartphone has no swap and is optimized for it. If it get's low on RAM, it will just kill some stuff in the background. All this happens without you noticing anything (if the app is programmed correctly).
I don't know about Gmail and Places. Most likely they are running because they registered broadcast receivers or something.
Androyed said:
And why does the free memory decrease over time, but increases again when I turn off and boot up my phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Every app is running in its own dalvik virtual machine process. Since creating a new VM process is expensive (in terms of processing time), the VM processes are reused to some degree. One app is unloaded, the new one is loaded.
There is more stuff going on behind the scenes, of course. There are likely some spare VMs sleeping in the background waiting for an app to use them.
However, the heap (dynamically allocated memory of a process) of a VM can only grow and never shrink (don't ask me why). So after a few apps or so a VM process is restarted, too.
To come back to your question: When your device boots up, only the processes needed for boot are running. That will be the launcher, some widgets and so on. So basically, this is the moment with the most free RAM. However, this is also when your device is slowest, because every new app you launch has first to be loaded into memory and executed.
While you use your device, many of the apps you used will be kept around in the background, so when you start them again, they will reappear instantly, because the whole "create vm process --> load app from storage --> execute and initialize app" chain has already happened.
"Free memory is wasted memory."
When you open an app, the system loads it into ram. When you close it, the system should not bother to remove it from ram because there is a good chance you will use that app again and having it pre-loaded makes it open significantly faster.
Just because ram is "used" doesn't mean it can't be re-allocated for something more important.
That being said, it is entirely possible that some of your apps have memory leaks. Does it get worse after two days, or three days?
d-h said:
"Free memory is wasted memory."
When you open an app, the system loads it into ram. When you close it, the system should not bother to remove it from ram because there is a good chance you will use that app again and having it pre-loaded makes it open significantly faster.
Just because ram is "used" doesn't mean it can't be re-allocated for something more important.
That being said, it is entirely possible that some of your apps have memory leaks. Does it get worse after two days, or three days?
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Click to collapse
I turn my phone off every evening, so I don't know. It's not a problem by any means, I'm just curious.
I've left my RAM alone today, and I didn't noticed any slow down. It was on 110 MB free RAM when I left it alone, and when it was at 35 MB RAM, I decided to hit the close all button (there was no slow down btw). Guess what? My RAM went back up to 140 MB! Not as much as when I boot my phone up, but it's still strange: when I hit close all when the free RAM is very low, I get more free RAM then when I hit close all when my free RAM is around 100 MB (I only get 5 or 10 MB free RAM extra then).
Thanks by the way, good first post!
I am wondering if there is some way to speed up loading in Manage Applications? I have ~500 apps including system apps, and of course it takes a couple minutes to load fully sometimes, and half of the list contains junk text after the actual name - you know what I'm talking about. Is there any way to maybe increase the cache size or something? I ask because it seems like Android dumps it when I load up a game which uses a lot of memory, but really I have more than enough to go around. I have a rooted Atrix, SQLite Editor, etc, and any solution would be greatly appreciated.
For some reason task managers keep showing widgets loading over amd over. I kill them, anx they immmediately reload.. None of witch I use, they've never even been on my screen. There are several widgets doing this. Facebook, YouTube, Power Control, and many more. The thing that baffles me though is that ALL of the apps that are loading themselves aren't on the device, they're on my SD card but I thought that apps on the sd card couldnt run widgets... and yet they are. Normally i wouldnt worry too much about it, but my tablet only has 400mb of ram, and all this garbage im not even using makes it virtually impossible to do anything until i kill them all. I've even used programs like Elixir 2 and Rom Toolbox to go in and manually disable the all wodget functions within the apps i could find, but they keep loading. Im rooted but this is my first android device so im not sure if this is a normal occurrence or some type of anomalous behavior. Any input would be very much appreciated.
Sent from my SC-91MID using Tapatalk HD
Hello!
I've been using XT1032 for a while as someone that's mostly new to smartphones - it's an upgrade after heavily worn out LG GT540. However after rooting it, installing official CM and updating to the latest nightlies every second day or so, I still have several problems. I'm sorry if there's too little detail in this post, I'll try to add detail later on.
First off, I don't understand how the storage space works. The phone is supposed to have 8GBs of internal memory, however only 5.5GBs are accessible to the user. Additionally, applications refuse to install when the system reports that there's ~400MBs of "space" left. Is this because of a partition being filled up? The Apps panel of system settings isn't specific what is taking up too much space and I'm afraid the DiskUsage app doesn't help either.
Second thing is the actual available RAM. It's supposed to be 1 GB, but Z-DeviceTest reports only 885MBs being available. Where's the rest? There's also swap of 255MBs that I don't know where it came from. I thought that on a low-end smartphone they wouldn't waste internal storage on swap.
There's a trick to increasing available storage space by linking the /cache folder to root. How does that work? How do I know if the folder is being used or not, and if it's safe to do this? DiskUsage doesn't show this folder normally, and when switching to it in root it's being 651MBs large, with "System data" taking up 11.2MBs and pds-CM10.img 3MBs. There's also recovery and backup folders, 56KBs and 16KBs respectively. Why is it this big anyhow, if it's not being used?
The most immediate problem, and the one that annoys me the most since I bought the phone for a certain purpose, is that Google Play Music is lagging terribly. It uses ~110MBs when I switch to the Running Apps screen from the settings quickly enough to check its stats, each song takes several seconds to load even on WiFi, no matter the quality, and the worst part is that even if it "loads up" it takes several additional seconds to scroll around it! It's not just the playing affected, the whole interface is sluggish. Screens take seconds to switch between each other, returning to the app after opening two applications makes it either "restart", where it still plays music, but you can see that the interface is now several screens back. How is it possible that in 2015 an operating system developer can't make a performant app that's not a game, that's not a video editor, but a god damn music player? The only quirk is that it's streaming the music from the net instead of playing a downloaded file. It has a cache that uses over 700MBs already, no excuses. I checked that with DiskUsage.