Database Info

Memory leaks?

My Cappy starts with about 165mb of free RAM, but it quickly goes away as I use apps. I have Task Killer installed and set to kill apps every 30 minutes, but once I get down to about 90mb of RAM it is impossible to get anywhere near what I boot with free. I'm used to memory leakage on my WinMo phones, but this is way worse. I had CleanRAM on my Tilt 2 (from XDA) and it worked pretty good and allows scheduling. Is there a similar app for Android?

I'd get rid of Task Killer, you don't need it.

its not leaking memory...it handles memory differently than windows of yore....stop fretting about how much memory you have available and just reboot your phone once every few days....thats not needed, but if it makes you feel better to look at useless numbers...

Yeah you need to stop looking at this as either a windows pc or an old device (think g1). Get rid of the task killer and never look at how much free ram you have again. Its not important at all. I've had this phone for months and I literally have no idea how much ram it uses on average because I have never checked or cared. My phone has been running smooth since day one. Yours will too.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Available RAM is a useless number? Having unused apps continue to run in the background is nothing to worry about?
Does anyone have anything usefull to respond with?

Miami_Son said:
Available RAM is a useless number? Having unused apps continue to run in the background is nothing to worry about?
Does anyone have anything usefull to respond with?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you look at Window 7, there is a concept called pre-fetch. This allows the OS to load the programs into memory based on past usage, and frequency of usage. This lets us open the program much faster, than fetch when requested. This info is loaded to memory, and kept there, until some other program comes in that needs more memory.
And just 'cos a program is present in RAM doesn't mean it would use CPU.
And, based on my observation of android, I see that I have close to 180 MB free when the phone boots up. But this quickly reduces to around 120-150 in less than an hour based on what I use. After like a day this I see that free RAM is about 80-120 MB. And even after 3-4 days of no reboots, the free memory is still present at the same 80-120 levels. I am not sure what kind of memory management android uses, but its very effective, and never caused any noticeable lag in the system.
And, I do not use any task killers, not free up RAM in task manager.

Your concerns are flawed in the fact that the Linux kernel handles memory different than what you are used to. Simply speaking, Linux keeps memory used by applications on need to basis. It keeps it loaded until something else needs to use it. It will take from something else at the required time. A system actually performs faster when there is less memory available because that means that applications are able to be recalled quicker. It's not like it can only load from what is left available.
You will also notice that many applications take up memory but are using 0 CPU. This speaks to the fact that it simply loaded into memory and not taking up resources required for other operations.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Lot to learn about this Android, I see. So, why are there so many task killers on Market and other RAM-related programs if it is not important? Should I really not be concerned when I see a program I hardly use being shown as running on startup?

Miami_Son said:
Lot to learn about this Android, I see. So, why are there so many task killers on Market and other RAM-related programs if it is not important? Should I really not be concerned when I see a program I hardly use being shown as running on startup?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I got my android phone, the first thing I did was put up things like task killer, start up auditor, etc. But as weeks passed, I realized these were more of deteriorating performance, than improve it. So got rid of them. Android can handle itself.

Autokiller optimises memory by changing values in android rather than kills apps. I reccomemd it, definately makes the phone faster. Set it to agressive.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Miami_Son said:
Lot to learn about this Android, I see. So, why are there so many task killers on Market and other RAM-related programs if it is not important? Should I really not be concerned when I see a program I hardly use being shown as running on startup?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It started with the combination of old versions of android (think cupcake and doughnut) and phones like the G1. Older versions didn't handle ram as well as they do in eclair and up. If you combine this with the fact that those older phones had less ram, and likely didn't use any gpu acceleration (unsure of this though), then task killers and other programs were considered necessary to get a fluid feeling experience.
They are still in the market now for 2 reasons.
1. Because some people still have those old phones and still run old versions of android. (less likely)
2. Habit. If people are used to using them and tell others they are necessary because they've always worked, why would a developer pull his money making app from the market? (much more likely)

So when Pandora or Grooveshark freeze, which happens all the time, and leaves my phone utterly useless until they're done doing whatever it is they're doing, how is using a task killer to...kill the process...not useful? It's much faster than rebooting the phone. I also think it's much faster than going into each application's individual settings to use the 'force stop' command. Is there a different way to kill a stuck app other than these methods?

Miami_Son said:
My Cappy starts with about 165mb of free RAM, but it quickly goes away as I use apps. I have Task Killer installed and set to kill apps every 30 minutes, but once I get down to about 90mb of RAM it is impossible to get anywhere near what I boot with free. I'm used to memory leakage on my WinMo phones, but this is way worse. I had CleanRAM on my Tilt 2 (from XDA) and it worked pretty good and allows scheduling. Is there a similar app for Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Along with what everyone else said, remember that a memory leak is a LEAK, something that is continuously draining, not a one-time thing. So, if memory goes to 80MB free and holds, that's not a leak, that's simply memory that is being used. If free memory drops to 75, then 60, then 55, 50, 45, and so on, then you have a true leak to worry about.

Well, what we Windows Mobile users often also refer to as leaks is the bad habit of some apps to not release their memory when closed. For instance, a program that carves out 25mb of RAM when started and returns less then half of that when closed.

jaju123 said:
Autokiller optimises memory by changing values in android rather than kills apps. I reccomemd it, definately makes the phone faster. Set it to agressive.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Anyone else know much about "Autokiller"?

i used to use a task killer with my G1, and continued to do so with my captivate but i saw a few things like this: http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/ and decided to get rid of my task killers and my phone seemed actually a little faster and seemed my battery life increased.

matt310 said:
So when Pandora or Grooveshark freeze, which happens all the time, and leaves my phone utterly useless until they're done doing whatever it is they're doing, how is using a task killer to...kill the process...not useful? It's much faster than rebooting the phone. I also think it's much faster than going into each application's individual settings to use the 'force stop' command. Is there a different way to kill a stuck app other than these methods?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is useful in those situations but realistically when people give that argument they are just looking for a reason to keep it. Android has the ability to kill tasks built in. If you're on 2.1 then yeah it's buried deeper in the menu but not a big deal. I can't imagine an app freezing enough to warrant having a task killer for. If you're on 2.2 it's much more easily accessible.
When we talk about task killers we're talking about people using them to kill open tasks that aren't causing issues simply to see more free ram available.

[Q] Memory (RAM) usage confusion

I have two Task Managers installed: "System Panel" and "Advanced Task Manager"
When I use the above two apps to check my free memory (RAM) available, it always shows around 75-100 mb remaining
When I use the stock app manager to check free memory, the value is always significantly higher - like 140-160 mb.
Does anyone know why there is discrepancy between the two readings? Which one shows the more accurate value?

sax1981 said:
I have two Task Managers installed: "System Panel" and "Advanced Task Manager"
When I use the above two apps to check my free memory (RAM) available, it always shows around 75-100 mb remaining
When I use the stock app manager to check free memory, the value is always significantly higher - like 140-160 mb.
Does anyone know why there is discrepancy between the two readings? Which one shows the more accurate value?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i dont know why there would be a discrepancy but you shouldnt use a task manager/killer on android 2.2+

slowz3r said:
i dont know why there would be a discrepancy but you shouldnt use a task manager/killer on android 2.2+
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Click to collapse
Why not?

sax1981 said:
Why not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Starting in Froyo, Android has become more efficient at it's own native memory management than past versions and Gingerbread continued that improvement. What this means is that if Android starts running low on RAM, it will start killing things itself and reclaiming/reallocating the memory without the need for a third party app. The other concern about using a TasKiller most people raise is that if you set it to autokill, system apps or other sort of apps that need to be run(such as Facebook widget, other kind of widgets, noLED, et al) will relaunch on their own causing the TasKiller to kill it again... relaunch... kill... relaunch... kill keep your CPU cycles at 100% and draining your battery quicker than it should be.
That being said, I still use a TasKiller on autokill with the screen off simply because I like to (and paid for the app, so dangit, I'm gonna use it! ). Once you have identified the apps that relaunch upon kill and set TasKiller to ignore them, the battery concern isn't an issue.

sax1981 said:
Why not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
they changed the way android 2.2+ handles apps in the background so when the task killer kills an app it does more harm than good, mainly kill the hell out of your battery because android wants to start it back up again
Dont know the details but thats the jist of it

System panel is a must have. It's not used to kill all apps, just to monitor your phone and kill an out of control app.
To answer the question, the way android shares RAM between processes is very difficult to actually identify free RAM and which apps are using what. So some apps make the choice to display the free RAM differently, no way around it as there is no one "right answer" on each memory usage. I always go by system panel myself.

RogerPodacter / slowz3r / unremarked - Thanks for the info!

[Q] RAM observations

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.
Click to expand...
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?
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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?
Click to expand...
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!

Whats Best way to free up the ram???

Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.

Rooting and freezing apps doesn't give you more RAM, since there is only 512MB of RAM and the OS takes part of that to run.
You can free up internal app storage space, by deleting bloatware, or cut/paste the bloatware into a folder on the SDcard (I call mine VZWBloat) and that will save you space.
You can run a task killer to kill off apps that you don't need but you have to be careful, Android does need certain apps to be available in the background and it will just reopen automatically and that will put them into a cycle and drain the battery.

rcb929 said:
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
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Click to collapse
Please do not post Questions or problems in Android Development
Moving to General

RaptorMD said:
Rooting and freezing apps doesn't give you more RAM, since there is only 512MB of RAM and the OS takes part of that to run.
You can free up internal app storage space, by deleting bloatware, or cut/paste the bloatware into a folder on the SDcard (I call mine VZWBloat) and that will save you space.
You can run a task killer to kill off apps that you don't need but you have to be careful, Android does need certain apps to be available in the background and it will just reopen automatically and that will put them into a cycle and drain the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey im using root explorer when im in system/app/ how do i single out the bloatware apps?

rcb929 said:
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Freeing up that much RAM is probably detrimental to the overall efficacy of the memory management system, I've never seen mine at 185MB, and if I did I'd worry something was wrong.
If you really want to free up more RAM, for no benefit whatsoever, use something like Advanced Task Killer and set it to allow killing of the lowest level processes it can, then kill everything. Bam, tons of free'd up RAM. Again, this has pretty much no benefit whatsoever and for a short time will probably make your phone more sluggish and slow.

In Android (Linux) free memory is considered wasted memory.
That said, I remember on my galaxy S that the phone ran snappier when I tweaked the memory management of the phone.
Task killers are generally considered a bad idea on android, so I would avoid using one of them to free up memory. However, there is a poorly named app called auto killer that is actually just an interface to tweaking androids built and memory management. I recommend giving it a try, here's a link: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.rs.autokiller
Note that it is not a task killer per se, it is just a tweak for android phone memory management schemes.
I haven't used it on my droid charge yet, but play with the settings maybe starting with aggressive. Good luck and let us know how it works for you.
Sent from Thunderbolt

I don't have my phone with me right now, but you need to make the folder read/write and then hit menu and multi-select or select multiple. This thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1082588 shows what is ok to freeze, but I am not familiar enough with those to say you can remove all of them. Typically I would look for the Verizon specific apps, games like lets gold, guitar hero etc. If you remove anything related to touch wiz (widgets) you need to remove both of the associated files. I am pulling this from memory on my previous TB.
These are the ones I recognize, but the others in that long list I would like to see better clarification of what they are and how they are tied into the TouchWiz UI so we don't get errors. Please exercise caution when doing this.
• Bitbop 1.0
• Blockbuster 0.6
• City ID 1.1.4
• Lets Golf 2 3.2.2
• Rhapsody 1.0
• Rock Band 4.4.3
• Slacker 2.1.170
• TuneWiki 2.2
• VCAST Media Manager 4.2.96.3
• VVMService 1.0.30
• VZ Navigator 7.1.2.87
• WeatherBug Clock 11.04.07.01

rcb929 said:
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BY FAR.... BAR NONE.... The best way to free up memory and keep it free without messing with task killers is to use a program called startup auditor. This app prevents apps from starting up automatically on startup and throughtout the day without interfering with normal app processes. You can shut down or enable any app you want.
Even cooler, if you select the option menu and hit disable all, it only disables programs that won't interfere with the phone operation so it knows which apk's are critical for phone integrity. PRETTY COOL!!!

burningembers said:
Freeing up that much RAM is probably detrimental to the overall efficacy of the memory management system, I've never seen mine at 185MB, and if I did I'd worry something was wrong.
If you really want to free up more RAM, for no benefit whatsoever, use something like Advanced Task Killer and set it to allow killing of the lowest level processes it can, then kill everything. Bam, tons of free'd up RAM. Again, this has pretty much no benefit whatsoever and for a short time will probably make your phone more sluggish and slow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NEVER USE ADVANCE TASK KILLER... See other post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1106265

RaptorMD said:
Rooting and freezing apps doesn't give you more RAM, since there is only 512MB of RAM and the OS takes part of that to run.
You can free up internal app storage space, by deleting bloatware, or cut/paste the bloatware into a folder on the SDcard (I call mine VZWBloat) and that will save you space.
You can run a task killer to kill off apps that you don't need but you have to be careful, Android does need certain apps to be available in the background and it will just reopen automatically and that will put them into a cycle and drain the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DON"T USE A TASK KILLER ON ANY SAMSUNG DEVICE. See other post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1106265

I wasn't really condoning the use of task killers. I disagree with them 99% of the time (there are some edge cases). I just gave the OP an option if he really, really wanted to for no reason whatsoever.

@OP: I would recommend leaving the pasture gate open.

rcb929 said:
Whats best way to free up the more ram? I have root and froze the safe stuff. The lowest I can get free is about 185MB / 328MB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is an app called Greenify. Its available on Play store.
Just check it out.
It also helps to maintain the juice of the battery.. !!

To Free Ram
A more easy way to delete a minimum of 1gb of space which by doing so also frees up ram is to delete the dump state log cat. See every time your device has an error or force close issue, date is collected / written to the log file and this can take up ane enormous amount of space which when space is low also means your device user more ram. To do this go to your dial pad and type in *#9900#
This will automatically brings up options and then just choose to delete the dump state/log cat. Let it clear for a few minutes and that's it's. Try seeing how much space you have before and after and you'll realise this is a blessing.

AOKP Memory Management

I made an observation today that I was hoping someone could shed some light on.
In AOKP there's an option where you can set how much memory the system should keep free. I have mine set to 24mb. While doing some browsing (opera mobile) I got curious so i headed over to the running apps to have a look at my memory usage. I noted that I had 235MB of ram free and that opera was using 30mb in the background. after not switching back to opera for a few minutes it was closed by the task manager.
Now this doesn't present a problem for me but it does make me wonder does the task managing in android take into account how long an app has been idle in the background as well as said apps memory usage vs available memory? I ask because while it makes sense that the os closes an app after a certain idle time but I don't see why it would need to close an app due to idle when there is such an abundance of memory still free for usage.
would be nice if an app stayed open regardless of idle time as long as memory doesn't run low and need clearing to make room for more recent processes.

regP said:
I made an observation today that I was hoping someone could shed some light on.
In AOKP there's an option where you can set how much memory the system should keep free. I have mine set to 24mb. While doing some browsing (opera mobile) I got curious so i headed over to the running apps to have a look at my memory usage. I noted that I had 235MB of ram free and that opera was using 30mb in the background. after not switching back to opera for a few minutes it was closed by the task manager.
Now this doesn't present a problem for me but it does make me wonder does the task managing in android take into account how long an app has been idle in the background as well as said apps memory usage vs available memory? I ask because while it makes sense that the os closes an app after a certain idle time but I don't see why it would need to close an app due to idle when there is such an abundance of memory still free for usage.
would be nice if an app stayed open regardless of idle time as long as memory doesn't run low and need clearing to make room for more recent processes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe you're assumptions are correct. We're pretty sure its a battery saving attempt. I wasnt aware that AOKP did it also so it must be kernel related. HTC tried a whole new bag of tricks with this One... pun intended

Yeah the way the stock ROM handled memory was awful IMO. AOKP is a hell of a lot better. I didn't think about battery consumption, that makes sense. Too many background processes would murder battery.

regP said:
Yeah the way the stock ROM handled memory was awful IMO. AOKP is a hell of a lot better. I didn't think about battery consumption, that makes sense. Too many background processes would murder battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wasnt this HTC's first phone without a changeable battery? They wanted to make sure it didnt die.