Database Info

[Q] 1GB vs 2GB RAM on Android 4.0

There has been a lot of internet buzz lately around new 2GB phones coming out, most specifically the LG Optimus LTE2 and the Galaxy S3. I am looking to get a new phone, but the one that has caught my eye is the Xperia GX with Sony's new CMOS sensor.
I was wondering, how is the performance of Android 4.0 with only 1GB RAM, and would the performance increase of 2GB be a significant enough difference to want one of the Korean phones? Does anyone with a current 1GB phone have any issues with performance?
I believe all of the above mentioned phones use the new Snapdragon S4 processor.
Thank you!

I think for now 2GB of RAM is a bit of a overkill, for now, unless you're running fifty apps at once. I think 1GB is plenty enough. I myself own a Galaxy Nexus and it has 1GB of RAM. It ran smoothly even with like a few apps running in the background. Really, if you wanted to run fifty apps in the background, it will kill your battery, so I guess thats the trade off with 2GB RAM.

vx117 said:
I think for now 2GB of RAM is a bit of a overkill, for now, unless you're running fifty apps at once. I think 1GB is plenty enough. I myself own a Galaxy Nexus and it has 1GB of RAM. It ran smoothly even with like a few apps running in the background. Really, if you wanted to run fifty apps in the background, it will kill your battery, so I guess thats the trade off with 2GB RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think has talking about a nexus phone, when buying let's say an HTC evo 4G lte or galaxy3. You see left with very little ram if they were both1GB. My LTEvo is left with only 200 to 150 mb's ram left, but that's with every app I have running. Still when I'm web surfing the web sites easily ready threw the 200 mb's & more so sometimes the browser closes on me all on it's to refresh the memory I'm guessing. So yes I believe the fact that we now use higher resolution screens meaning higher resolution slings & launchers not to mention games, imo we need more RAM, not an extra gig but at least 400 mb's free. That way the launcher on the evo doesn't have to refresh everytime *really about once a week* but the 2 GB's the galaxy had is overkill but at least you won't have any of the referring the RAM every one in a while. Also to be noted in every benchmark between the galaxy3 & ltevo, the evo win's, surprisingly even in the memory I/O! In antutu benchmark & in quadrant the gs3 scores about 4780 while the ltevo scores 5000 to 5300, I peonally scored 545x... So I don't know if SG3 isusing given 2 GB's of slower ram or LTEvo is using faster RAM but it still not bring enough, all in all I will change my LTEvo do to the RAM issue that can be fixed with a simple update.

It's android or it's Windows 7 ultimate?? LOL
1 GB is just perfect.
My pc has 2.13 GHz cpu single core and 2GB ram and runs windows 7, my brother's htc one x has 1.5 ghz quad core cpu and 1gb ram for run android 4.0!
that's incredible

Android does NOT need 2gb of ram. My Galaxy Nexus runs amazing on 1gb of ram, and my Xperia Play ran ICS pretty good and it only had 512mb of ram. Right now a phone having 2gb of ram is just a marketing gimick. I can't see any of the Android releases in the near future needing 2gb of ram to be smooth. In fact Jellybean runs smoother than ICS on the same hardware, so it's getting more efficient, not less.

1GB is GOOD & 2GB is ... :good:

In theory, 1GB of RAM is lots. But I have the HTC One X (North American version) which has 1GB of RAM, and it suffers from crippled multitasking (just search Google if interested). Nobody seems to know for sure, but the general consensus on the root cause is that the HTC Sense software is a RAM hog, and therefore HTC had to modify Android to aggressively kill background apps in order to ensure that Sense performs well. I suspect that had they installed 2GB of RAM, like the Samsung Galaxy S3, the multitasking issue would not have occurred.
I have since installed an unofficial alpha build of Cyanogenmod9 on my device and it multitasks like a dream. So if you're buying an Android phone without a whole lot of bloatware, like a Galaxy Nexus, 1GB should be a lot. But if you're eyeing the HTC One X, you may want to wait for a 2GB model to come out

in future you need 2gb of memory.....
many apps and games improvement in the future......now 1gb it's still enough but in the future?? :laugh:

The more the merrier.; )

2gb is just too much for android, 1gb already runs smoothly, hell even my galaxy s1 with 512mb can run ics smoothly (true story). i think they are trowing 2gb just for people to think it's gonna be faster and smoother but that isn't the case here, though it's not going to hurt if you go for 2gb, it is just that it wont make a real difference. :laugh:

Confused, frustrated, and abandoning the platform if...
I can't find the bottleneck and get snappy performance.
I'm on a Galaxy Nexus on V. The problem is (and I'm really not looking for business advice - I'm spread too thin for major overhaul) I can't delete my SMS because, many times, it may be the ONLY reference we have for a discussion I had with a customer of what they need(ed), what I charged, when the job was completed. I realize this isn't ideal, but it's (for now) a reality.
I have a HUGE DB of SMS... over 5000. I don't install many apps... of course, I have my gmail account sync'd.
One of my slow-downs was using google-voice... however, even with it removed, it's choppy. Whether moving between home screens, loading my SMS, getting keyboard input on an SMS to respond (which sometimes takes 10 seconds to start recording keystrokes).
I know that if I deleted everything and only had a sparse amount of data (primarily SMS) it'd be faster. And for good reason... managing a DB of texts seems like a lot of data to organize. And that... I assume is controlled by RAM.
And before anyone jumps to conclusions, bare in mind, I own a tech company. There's nothing broken on the phone. It runs the same as EVERY android device I've owned. Pretty fast (generation specific) at first, then, slows down... by month 3, I dislike the phone.
Yes, each generation gets successively LESS painful -- but I have an EXTREMELY fast paced life. I always have 2-6 people waiting for my attention throughout the day... every second counts. And every delay is annoying.
Is this just fatally-flawed-android for you? Unable to deal with a large(ish) DB..? Is this a RAM issue? Is this energy saving issue? I'm currently waiting for the iPhone 5 for a larger screen. If it has one... I'm probably jumping ship. I've exhausted my attempts with android... if either RAM or JB 4.1 doesn't fix this... I give up. I need my messages.
Suggestions? Am I overlooking anything?
THanks

Well more RAM can't hurt you, but it really after all depends on the device you're getting. These days I reckon as long as it isn't below 1GB RAM for a mobile device, then it's ok. As a matter of fact that's great
If I may suggest a mobile device for you to have a good look at, this would be the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It's google's flagship phone, it's great, mostly gets the new updates first and is very reliable and clean. It isn't hard to root at all also, and is very true to its core, with google supporting it more than any other device. I currently have a Nexus S, the one that came before it. It's great, but would really need a bump in speed, I can see myself getting a new phone in 6 months, maybe when google come out with a new mobile device.
cheers, and good luck on finding a new phone.

That IS the phone I have.
Thanks,
Truman

It sounds like you have the same problems as iphone users at http://michaelhyatt.com/speed-up-iphone.html in which case switching to iphone probably won't help.
You could use a free app to backup your texts, "sms to text" is one which could help and you can save all or selected texts to txt or csv formats which would also mean you could search quicker when needed or transfer backups to a pc.
It seems it is a smartphone issue as opposed to model specific, based on a lot of googling not my personal experience though, but backing up would allow you to access the data as needed on other platforms.
Dave
( http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAownKXmAQ/bigfatuniverse )
Sent from my LG P920 using Tapatalk 2

[Q] About available ram?

Hi! I would really like to buy this tablet but I heard from somewhere that the tegra 3 gpu and cpu needs 500mb of ram so that there would be only a half gig left to system.
So could somebody tell me what the available ram is for real on that tablet and is the amount of ram enough? And also is tf700 really worth the money?
Thanx in advance
Sent from my Optimus 2X

Stempanssi said:
Hi! I would really like to buy this tablet but I heard from somewhere that the tegra 3 gpu and cpu needs 500mb of ram so that there would be only a half gig left to system.
So could somebody tell me what the available ram is for real on that tablet and is the amount of ram enough? And also is tf700 really worth the money?
Thanx in advance
Sent from my Optimus 2X
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You shouldn't judge it on how much ram it has left. RAM can be used to pre cache apps so theres no loading time. Different manufactures tweek the way android handles RAM. A tablet with less available RAM can run faster than one with more available RAM
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium

ian1 said:
You shouldn't judge it on how much ram it has left. RAM can be used to pre cache apps so theres no loading time. Different manufactures tweek the way android handles RAM. A tablet with less available RAM can run faster than one with more available RAM
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's not a lot that you can do to clog up the available RAM on this thing anyways....Even if you had 500MB available, what kind of applications can actually fill up that space?

KilerG said:
There's not a lot that you can do to clog up the available RAM on this thing anyways....Even if you had 500MB available, what kind of applications can actually fill up that space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats what I wanted to know, but one thing more what's the real amount of ram left to system.
And do you think this tablet is worth the money?
Sent from my Optimus 2X

Stempanssi said:
Thats what I wanted to know, but one thing more what's the real amount of ram left to system.
And do you think this tablet is worth the money?
Sent from my Optimus 2X
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know how much RAM is being used, they're not available in the US quite yet. I can only guess that the system will use 500MB or less. On my Bionic, I don't have a big problem of not having enough RAM, so I don't expect it on the tablet (especially since the OS on the tablet is much cleaner than on my phone).
Worth the money? That's up to you. It has the best specs on the market right now and has the awesome keyboard dock, so I think it's worth it.

Listen to ian1, he had something important to say.
Also remember that Android has its own way of not only freeing memory used by running and idle processes, but also of managing various kinds of memory - it is not free/used dichotomy, you have to count in shared and buffered memory (you can actually see it in various OSs nowadays). I have about half of Infinity's 1GB RAM available normally (and right now), which is AFAIU free+buffered mainly.

The TF300 has a LOT of ram available on boot up. Almost a full GB I think.

Free ram is NOT a good indicator of how fast/usable your device is. Android is based on Linux, which has a philosophy of free ram is wasted ram. That is, your device will actually be faster if its ram is full. This is why task killers are considered to be so bad on Android. Just let Android manage itself and don't worry about it.

Ok thanks all I think i'm buying the tf300
Sent from my Optimus 2X

You have 976mb of ram most of it is used though
Sent from my Asus Transformer Pad Infinity

RAM left after loading phone with apps

Hello,
Can anyone here help me to report about ram left when you first get the phone and after you have loaded your phone with apps (viber whatsapp fb etc) these apps always taking up ram so much even when idling in background... I am asking this because i am still surveying which phone i should get. Its either nexus 5 or moto g. If the ram left is still plenty, i guess i might be able to survive with the motog for at least another two years and save some bucks along the way for other purposes. If not, i would opt for the nexus 5, although it would burn my wallet a bit. Thanks!
Edit: And.. I would be happy if there is anyone who would like to report ram usage before and after kitkat since Google has been vocal about kitkat being able to run on phone with 512mb ram, and being ram effiicient.

urra901109 said:
Hello,
Can anyone here help me to report about ram left when you first get the phone and after you have loaded your phone with apps (viber whatsapp fb etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure i'll try answer your question or give you some kind of idea about the amount of RAM left, i have a UK Moto G with Kitkat UK
Ok so I powered on the Moto G, waited 5 minutes while looking at the Running screen inside the Apps settings,
and i see 479MB Used & 403MB free (give or take a a couple of MB)
The user apps that are idling, are :
Vault = 14MB
Kik = 11MB
Applock = 6.2MB
Comodo Security = 4.8MB
If i then open up the 3 main apps that i frequently open (twitter, Kik, Gmail) and go back to the Running Apps Screen,
i see 494MB used & 388MB free
Hope this helps

urra901109 said:
Hello,
Can anyone here help me to report about ram left when you first get the phone and after you have loaded your phone with apps (viber whatsapp fb etc) these apps always taking up ram so much even when idling in background... I am asking this because i am still surveying which phone i should get. Its either nexus 5 or moto g. If the ram left is still plenty, i guess i might be able to survive with the motog for at least another two years and save some bucks along the way for other purposes. If not, i would opt for the nexus 5, although it would burn my wallet a bit. Thanks!
Edit: And.. I would be happy if there is anyone who would like to report ram usage before and after kitkat since Google has been vocal about kitkat being able to run on phone with 512mb ram, and being ram effiicient.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you can live without 4g get the moto g,I use this the same as my HTC one and its super smooth, I run a lot of apps and ram isn't an issue, ram being used is a good thing too,as it means app launch faster as they are stored in memory,saying that I usually have over 200 MB free.

@OP your understanding of RAM is wrong.
Do not worry about the RAM usage.
RAM IS THERE TO BE USED.
There is no point in the system keeping lots of RAM free, this makes the system perform worse. The idea is that as apps are used (either started by the user or automatically started when an app is woken etc) they are of course using RAM, the system keeps them in RAM so they can quickly be accessed next time they are required.
If the system closed all apps etc to free RAM you basically end up with more free RAM, but for what purpose. No use it sitting there empty - may as well go and buy a phone with 128MB rather than 1024MB if you dont want to use much RAM.
If you start an app that needs a lot of RAM (more than is currently free) the system just removes older apps from RAM to free up the RAM required.
It is not worth comparing your phone's normal RAM usage to another phone, each person has different apps and uses the phone in different ways. It makes no sense at all to compare two phones where RAM is concerned.
If your phone is running fine and you have some free RAM, even if just a smallish amount, then most likely things are running just as they should.

@scott_doyland @kierancc88 @cra1g321 thank you for your detailed reply..
@scott_doyland @kieran88: i have same idea about the ram being used is a good thing. But what bothers me is the survivability of the moto g in the next future update for it. Today, according to @cra1g321 and @kierancc88 both reporting that the OS itself is already eating around ~ 700Mb of available RAM w/o any other apps running. What could this number be in the future, will the OS takes more RAM? Thus making reduced RAM available for other apps. Currently i am using SE phone from 2011 with 512mb ram, while it is very responsive on Gingerbread, it does suffer on ICS, my Tasker profile always closes itself due to low ram(most probable culprit). I am afraid it would happen all over like that in the future, but at the same time google seems to move towards more efficient ram usage. Lets hope the ram usage wont increase so much in the next android update.
Butttt.. Maybe i am complicating stuff.. anyways, thanks guys!

urra901109 said:
@scott_doyland @kierancc88 @cra1g321 thank you for your detailed reply..
@scott_doyland @kieran88: i have same idea about the ram being used is a good thing. But what bothers me is the survivability of the moto g in the next future update for it. Today, according to @cra1g321 and @kierancc88 both reporting that the OS itself is already eating around ~ 700Mb of available RAM w/o any other apps running. What could this number be in the future, will the OS takes more RAM? Thus making reduced RAM available for other apps. Currently i am using SE phone from 2011 with 512mb ram, while it is very responsive on Gingerbread, it does suffer on ICS, my Tasker profile always closes itself due to low ram(most probable culprit). I am afraid it would happen all over like that in the future, but at the same time google seems to move towards more efficient ram usage. Lets hope the ram usage wont increase so much in the next android update.
Butttt.. Maybe i am complicating stuff.. anyways, thanks guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Generally, your point is correct; however, KitKat is actually designed to better utilize a smaller amount of RAM than Jelly Bean. Theoretically, according to Google at least, a phone with 512mb of RAM will run KitKat better than it will Jelly Bean. Theoretically.

When android boots it loads apps into memory, its isn't just the OS that's using ram after a reboot.
Try it - reboot phone and look at running AND cached apps.

bought the dual sim variant of moto g.. Hehehe. So far i am very happy.

scott_doyland said:
@OP your understanding of RAM is wrong.
Do not worry about the RAM usage.
RAM IS THERE TO BE USED.
There is no point in the system keeping lots of RAM free, this makes the system perform worse. The idea is that as apps are used (either started by the user or automatically started when an app is woken etc) they are of course using RAM, the system keeps them in RAM so they can quickly be accessed next time they are required.
If the system closed all apps etc to free RAM you basically end up with more free RAM, but for what purpose. No use it sitting there empty - may as well go and buy a phone with 128MB rather than 1024MB if you dont want to use much RAM.
If you start an app that needs a lot of RAM (more than is currently free) the system just removes older apps from RAM to free up the RAM required.
It is not worth comparing your phone's normal RAM usage to another phone, each person has different apps and uses the phone in different ways. It makes no sense at all to compare two phones where RAM is concerned.
If your phone is running fine and you have some free RAM, even if just a smallish amount, then most likely things are running just as they should.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Finally, someone that understands what RAM is really all about.
Too often, I see people trying to limit how much RAM is being used for no good reason. Like what was said, RAM is there to be used, not saved for a rainy day.

I do understand that ram is there to be use. Honestly, the moto g performs really well to my liking. But when i asked the ram usage i was referring to "future proofness" of the device. Good by today's standard but may not be the same after 1-2 android update. Since every update seems to be more resource hungry.
Conclusion: the moto g is very well built product for what we are doing "right now" but with very little wiggle room(RAM) for any future update.
Sent from my XT1033 using xda app-developers app

It seems with Android their focus is to reduce needed resources, that was one of the main features in 4.4
We cant predict the future but Linux/Windows 8 runs fine with 1GB of RAM so if Android begins to exceed this then we need a new mobile OS.
Sent from my XT1032 using xda app-developers app

urra901109 said:
I do understand that ram is there to be use. Honestly, the moto g performs really well to my liking. But when i asked the ram usage i was referring to "future proofness" of the device. Good by today's standard but may not be the same after 1-2 android update. Since every update seems to be more resource hungry.
Conclusion: the moto g is very well built product for what we are doing "right now" but with very little wiggle room(RAM) for any future update.
Sent from my XT1033 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It also depends if you will always want to update to the latest and greatest OS. Personally Im still running 4.3 on my moto g. The reason is that its performing very well and there is nothing in 4.4.2 that I want. Of course its tempting to upgrade to 4.4.2 to have those few hours of excitement but after those initial few hours I will be using my phone to do exactly the same things as Im doing now.
The only reason I would upgrade to a later Android version is if an app I used a lot became incompatible with 4.3 or if a new Android version increased battery life by some amazing amount.
So the chances are that for me, 4.3 on moto g, is very future proof.
Also consider that in just a couple of years its likely the moto g wont get any more official updates anyway so whether it can run Android version 6 (or whatever) with only 1GB RAM may not even be a point of discussion unless you want to run a custom ROM. If you do this the chances are you will probably have a trimmed down Android anyway, ie GAPPS initially removed etc so RAM usage will be less. Although I appreciate GAPPS isnt part of the OS as such and any GAPPS can be removed from RAM by the OS when required - so my point is sort of skewed there anyway
But I agree with the post above, if 1GB is not enough for the OS and a decent amount of apps to run well then Android is not an OS you really want to be using on a phone regardless of the amount of RAM you actually have.

Why does it say I only have 1794 mb of RaM?

When I go to Antutu or Ram Booster they say I only have 1794 mb of ram what happen to the other 250 mb?

fleen said:
When I go to Antutu or Ram Booster they say I only have 1794 mb of ram what happen to the other 250 mb?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Nothing wrong, the rest is for system, GPU (in short)... Not all the RAM is available for the userspace.

Hammer_Of_The_Gods said:
Hi,
Nothing wrong, the rest is for system, GPU (in short)... Not all the RAM is available for the userspace.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the quick reply, does this happen to all phones or just the nexus 5?
I feel like it should be better implemented like have 250mb of its own ram or use at it is needed not just take away from me 250 mb of ram.

fleen said:
Thanks for the quick reply, does this happen to all phones or just the nexus 5?
I feel like it should be better implemented like have 250mb of its own ram or use at it is needed not just take away from me 250 mb of ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know, at least for all devices I owned, it's always the same thing (some devices with 1Gb RAM had something like 768 Mb available stock)...
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the available RAM detected from Antutu or RAM Booster or another apps.

fleen said:
Thanks for the quick reply, does this happen to all phones or just the nexus 5?
I feel like it should be better implemented like have 250mb of its own ram or use at it is needed not just take away from me 250 mb of ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is like that for absolutely everything. PCs/Notebooks, Tablets, Phones, etc. It's normal.

Just remember one thing that with a build.prop edit (by adding a line) you can fake the available RAM in Settings/About phone (like you can show some CPU info), but I don't know if some apps detect it (I think but... not sure ).
Maybe something like "ro.product.************" .
Maybe a Google search will give you the trick, just a cosmetic thing since the real available RAM is "hardcoded"

mmmmBACON said:
It is like that for absolutely everything. PCs/Notebooks, Tablets, Phones, etc. It's normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't pc graphic cards have dedicated memory?
So they don't take "my" memory

fleen said:
Don't pc graphic cards have dedicated memory?
So they don't take "my" memory
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but those are dedicated "add-on" cards and are generally limited to PCs and gaming notebooks. The OS would still be using the main system memory. If you had 16GB RAM, the OS and any other processes would be using it regardless. You would never have 16GB available to you. Also, even if you had dedicated memory on the graphics card some of it will also be used regardless without your knowledge.
Any SoC uses the systems main memory.
If you want the full 2GB available to you, have fun never turning on your phone. If you want 2GB only for you, then the system has nothing to run on.
Memory is there to be used. Having a separate section for the OS and 2GB only for your choosing is pointless and inefficient.

mmmmBACON said:
Yes, but those are dedicated "add-on" cards and are generally limited to PCs and gaming notebooks. The OS would still be using the main system memory. If you had 16GB RAM, the OS and any other processes would be using it regardless. You would never have 16GB available to you. Also, even if you had dedicated memory on the graphics card some of it will also be used regardless without your knowledge.
Any SoC uses the systems main memory.
If you want the full 2GB available to you, have fun never turning on your phone. If you want 2GB only for you, then the system has nothing to run on.
Memory is there to be used. Having a separate section for the OS and 2GB only for your choosing is pointless and inefficient.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think what the OP is trying to ask is why is the hardware only detecting 1794mb of total actual RAM? Not how much ram the OS utilizes.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

mmmmBACON said:
Yes, but those are dedicated "add-on" cards and are generally limited to PCs and gaming notebooks. The OS would still be using the main system memory. If you had 16GB RAM, the OS and any other processes would be using it regardless. You would never have 16GB available to you. Also, even if you had dedicated memory on the graphics card some of it will also be used regardless without your knowledge.
Any SoC uses the systems main memory.
If you want the full 2GB available to you, have fun never turning on your phone. If you want 2GB only for you, then the system has nothing to run on.
Memory is there to be used. Having a separate section for the OS and 2GB only for your choosing is pointless and inefficient.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't have a problem (well I do but not as much) with the OS and GPU use the 2GB of ram I have available but it should be something like like 300mb out of 2048mb (300/2048) of available ram not just cut my 2Gb of ram to 1794. What if the OS only needs 200 I still would not have 1894mb my max available ram is always 1794.

fleen said:
I don't have a problem (well I do but not as much) with the OS and GPU use the 2GB of ram I have available but it should be something like like 300mb out of 2048mb (300/2048) of available ram not just cut my 2Gb of ram to 1794. What if the OS only needs 200 I still would not have 1894mb my max available ram is always 1794.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its not out of 2048MB for one
its 2GiB, not 2GB
from wikipedia
Although most manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash-memory disk devicesdefine 1 gigabyte as 1000000000bytes, software like Microsoft Windows reports size in gigabytes by dividing the total capacity in bytes by 1073741824 (230 = 1 gibibyte), while still reporting the result with the symbol "GB". This practice causes confusion, as a hard disk with an advertised capacity of, for example, "400 GB" (meaning 400000000000bytes) might be reported by the operating system as only "372 GB" (meaning 372 GiB). Other software, like Mac OS X 10.6[5] and some components of the Linux kernel[6] measure using the decimal units. The JEDEC memory standards uses the IEEE 100 nomenclatures which defines a gigabyte as 1073741824bytes (or 230 bytes).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Zepius said:
its not out of 2048MB for one
its 2GiB, not 2GB
from wikipedia
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2 GiB is 1024x1024x1024. HDD / MMC / SSD use GB (1000x1000x1000) not GiB, however this is for storage. RAM is usually binary 1024... so it most likely is out of 2048.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

fleen said:
I don't have a problem (well I do but not as much) with the OS and GPU use the 2GB of ram I have available but it should be something like like 300mb out of 2048mb (300/2048) of available ram not just cut my 2Gb of ram to 1794. What if the OS only needs 200 I still would not have 1894mb my max available ram is always 1794.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, well don't worry, you have 2GB RAM. It might just be the way it is displayed in Antutu. CPU-Z displays the total amount of RAM as 1855MB. Not exactly consistent between programs.

mmmmBACON said:
Oh, well don't worry, you have 2GB RAM. It might just be the way it is displayed in Antutu. CPU-Z displays the total amount of RAM as 1855MB. Not exactly consistent between programs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will just try to ignore this and I will be happier I guess, my cpu-z still says 1794MB total ram.

The device has 2GB of RAM but you the "BIOS" or whatever controller is in there allocates some for itself and the hardware in the phone (mainly GPU) and the rest is left to the OS.
Sharing RAM is good in general but many systems require X amount of RAM whether it's actively being used or not as it's designed to be able to use it. if it were to call on that memory address and it's full the system would crash (or a STOP error).
So instead of sharing it and allocating it as needed, it's locked off totally from the OS in the event it's ever needed by the hardware.

rootSU said:
2 GiB is 1024x1024x1024. HDD / MMC / SSD use GB (1000x1000x1000) not GiB, however this is for storage. RAM is usually binary 1024... so it most likely is out of 2048.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And that's why they make 512MB RAM modules instead of 500MB

fleen said:
Thanks for the quick reply, does this happen to all phones or just the nexus 5?
I feel like it should be better implemented like have 250mb of its own ram or use at it is needed not just take away from me 250 mb of ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Happens to all phones.

Ok guys i get the gist of it now, thank you all.

[Q] Moto G 4G 4.4.3 RAM management too aggressive

Hey folks
I bought a moto g 4g a week ago. The phone itself is good but KitKat is cleaning RAM too often. If i have opened two tabs in chrome and have Skype opened in background i still have almost 300mb of free RAM. But if i switch to home screen and back to chrome one of the tabs gets suspended and needs to reload. Sometimes Skype also gets suspended. I could never bring the moto using all of its RAM. I have always at least 200mb free ram!
What can i do?? Was jelly bean better? Why is KitKat closing apps if there still is enough RAM left?

Stock has very high minfree values, they were the same on my s3 mini, I just don't understand why the foreground app will close when you have 48 MB free... I mean, this literally translated to your phone having 48 MB less RAM... My Optimus One had a stock value of 2 MB and I never had an issue... The only way to change this is with root.
Also, because chrome runs each tab on a separate process, every time you change your tab, that goes to the background, and with our super epicly stupid minfree values, they will just close (and will reload) if you have less than 300 MB free...
Changing the browser might do the trick, Chrome is horribly stressing on my laptop cpu and very glitchy on Android, but Google made that *sort of* worth it...
Sent from my XT1033 using Tapatalk

Many thanks for the reply. Anyone knows if for Android L the min free value are also that high? If its lower i would just wait for it. Because i dont feel good in unlocking bootloader and loose waranty to root the device...

In fact we need a device which has at least 2G RAM to use chrome on Android.
and maybe 4.4.3 uses more RAM than 4.4.2, I had 450 free ram on 4.4.2 but only 350 on 4.4.3.

Can anyone confirm that with root and lower min RAM settings chrome can be used comfortably? Im at 4.4.3 and i have 430mb free ram
And btw how much free RAM is available in cynogenmod Rom? Or slimkat Rom?

FILLY86 said:
Can anyone confirm that with root and lower min RAM settings chrome can be used comfortably? Im at 4.4.3 and i have 430mb free ram
And btw how much free RAM is available in cynogenmod Rom? Or slimkat Rom?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can confirm that it will never be used comfortably, I did that on S3 mini (cyanogenmod, so pretty much the same), and since Chrome runs every tab as a background process, and android caches processes in the same category, most of the time they get the same OOM priority as, let's say, the calculator app you back-buttoned to go back, so they get killed anyway, since android loads background processes all the time, for faster loading (this is just a stupid way to put a process priority for Chrome, bad Google).
TL;DR: Google sucks at making multitasking work when browsing the internet...(most probable case for multitasking IMO)
Also, if you have Facebook messenger, or the app, which have ALL (I really mean ALL) the possible permissions, and will expand their RAM to the limit, you will always have redraws, because they are ran as a service, and will only DECREASE (because they have tons of actual services) their RAM usage when all the background apps are closed.
TL;DR: If you have Facebook app/messenger, say goodbye to multitasking.

vlt96 said:
I can confirm that it will never be used comfortably, I did that on S3 mini (cyanogenmod, so pretty much the same), and since Chrome runs every tab as a background process, and android caches processes in the same category, most of the time they get the same OOM priority as, let's say, the calculator app you back-buttoned to go back, so they get killed anyway, since android loads background processes all the time, for faster loading (this is just a stupid way to put a process priority for Chrome, bad Google).
TL;DR: Google sucks at making multitasking work when browsing the internet...(most probable case for multitasking IMO)
Also, if you have Facebook messenger, or the app, which have ALL (I really mean ALL) the possible permissions, and will expand their RAM to the limit, you will always have redraws, because they are ran as a service, and will only DECREASE (because they have tons of actual services) their RAM usage when all the background apps are closed.
TL;DR: If you have Facebook app/messenger, say goodbye to multitasking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So moto g has not enough RAM . browsing for me has highest priority. Perhaps i ll geht a nexus 5

Hmm yes if you are looking for any sort of serious multi tasking then Moto G isn't for you. A 2 GB phone is absolutely required for that.
The Moto G is excellent for smoothly running whatever you are currently doing but your background apps and browsing tabs will be killed quickly.
Sent from my Moto G using Tapatalk

FILLY86 said:
So moto g has not enough RAM . browsing for me has highest priority. Perhaps i ll geht a nexus 5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it DOES have enough RAM, even my Optimus One had enough (420), the problem is in the Chrome tab management.
But if you can get a Nexus 5, get a Nexus 5, but a quick test with the nexus 4 and Moto G showed Moto G using much less cpu than nexus 4 for the same tasks (don't know about nexus 5, but n4 vs moto g is a freaking krait versus a low end cortex A7), so Motorola really did optimize.
Spoiler
The test was done with my cousin's N4, almost the same apps installed.
Sent from my XT1033 using Tapatalk