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[Q] Confused about ICS 4.0.3 running apps

I am now a ICS user and I realize when you hold the home button you'll have a list of recent apps. Cool, but I realize the list is very very long, are all those apps currently running at low usage for quick access? If so, is there a way I limit the amount of apps, I remember with 2.3.4 (whatever) cyanogenmod you could modify the number for recent apps. I ask because with so many running I imagine it will drain battery. Thanks

You can remove them from the recent apps list by swiping them away (either left or right).

I understand that, but if I let it stay because it is sort of a hassle having to deal with them individually. Will it consume a lot of battery? Am I better off leaving it, or just swiping constantly killing the task.

That, I'm not too sure of. I believe that by swiping it, it'll dismiss it from the recent apps and kill the task because there would be no point to just remove it from the recent apps list and still have it runing in the background but I think you'll need more clarification on that.
Sorry I can't help so much; I'm not running ICS yet, so I can't be too sure.

Thanks, I'll give it a Google anyways
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

You are better off leaving it as it is. It is really just a recent apps list, just with a thumbnail, exactly like the one in gb. Swiping can just resets the app, the same as 'backing' out of it. This has the effect of removing some apps from cache completely, though not all.

Thanks mate. My concern was that it would be a battery drain, but I'll let it be.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

No battery drain unless it's some kind of service (which is usually (always?)) in the notification bar. When you press the home button, the app will be put into RAM and classified as cache, so it is quicker to open up next time. Note that filling RAM uses no extra battery, RAM is powered the same regardless. If you are using an app that requires more RAM than is available that is classified 'free', it will start removing some of the apps android has put into ram as cache and fill it up with necessary data from the foreground app.
Task managers are useful, however not any more useful than Androids built in managing (system settings --> apps). There is never a need to close any app forceably UNLESS it is not working as it should, whether it be frozen, excessively slow or not loading in some way or another, etc. All other circumstances are taken care of for you and memory is used as efficiently as possible.

Thank you Harbb for the very detailed explanation. That is exactly what I was looking for. I thought myself the same but needed clarification simply because the list was so long, I semi feared it could be running. Cheers mate!
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

No problem mate, just happy to help. Always good to clarify these things.

i disagree Harb. RAM management is sometimes pretty poor without using a task manager.
For example some apps that use a lot of RAM such as Real Racing 2, could force close because of lack of RAM.

I've never experienced something genuinely FCing because of a lack of RAM, but will try out the RR2 demo and see how it gets on, i'll try and get it to crash or FC. 768mb of RAM would've been really nice on the NS though as a good chunk is used by the system.

Just a tip instead of going to settings/apps..ect
Just go to recent apps hold down on the app and click app info much quicker
also most of the top recent apps are not using any resources but the lower ones are swiping will close and free up the RAM
Its a built in taskkiller that Google put into ICS even though they always said one was not needed.

[Q]Ram issues Nexus S Jelly Bean!

This is my first post on XDA and although i'm not new to the android scene having owned a lot of devices in previous years but I never came down to post queries of my own cause everything used to go real smooth!
I recently got a Nexus S i9020t from a friend and tried flashing a Jelly Bean rom on my device.
No issues so far with everything working with every rom that i've tried...
The only thing that bugs me is the ram.
I've tried several kernels on top of different roms (Matrix, Air (Big-Mem version), Marmite etc.) designed for Jelly Bean but I never to seem get any greater ram than about 150-170 mb even on first boot with no applications installed and when I restore about 50 of my apps through titanium it goes down to 120-150 at max.
I have tried rebooting my device every now and then but the ram leak doesn't get any better.
That way most apps that I run crash my device (im a big fan of chrome on android but the lack of availability of free ram degrades performance)
I've been looking into using different free task managers on the play store but of no use.
Simply put, my question relates to the free ram this device can generate!
Can anyone give me an explanation as to the lack of free ram and what kernel, tips and tricks I could follow to improve it?

You can try flashing a kernel that supports BIGMEM(check the development section). Since you're new you won't be able to post any question regarding said mod. Basically gives you 50mb of extra RAM which, IIRC, takes away from the HD recording portion of the phone or something of that nature. The 512MB RAM sucks, but I never had an issue with it on mine. Then again, I never really ran a lot of applications. Android can handle the tasks on its own and free up memory when needed. But you may face a few launcher redraws now and then.

chronophase1 said:
You can try flashing a kernel that supports BIGMEM(check the development section). Since you're new you won't be able to post any question regarding said mod. Basically gives you 50mb of extra RAM which, IIRC, takes away from the HD recording portion of the phone or something of that nature. The 512MB RAM sucks, but I never had an issue with it on mine. Then again, I never really ran a lot of applications. Android can handle the tasks on its own and free up memory when needed. But you may face a few launcher redraws now and then.
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Yeah so like you said I did try the Big Mem versions of Air Kernel and Matrix but it was never really of much use. Matrix gives me about 180 mb of ram when the device has no foreground apps running (except the system processes of course) and Air goes to about 140-160 not more.
The thing that I don't get is that this other friend runs Jelly Bean on his Galaxy S with Devil Kernel or something and his free ram is above 190-ish.
Technically both sport the same hardware with a few extras on Nexus S (led flash, lack of gorila glass, NFC etc.) but it really doesn't make sense.
And about those Launcher redraws. Yeah, they've been going really frequent now that I installed and use chrome as my daily browser.
Overall, in my experience I'd say Matrix Kernel would be perfect if it weren't for that Voodoo Colour Mod. It gives a weird hue to my display orangy in nature but Air comes around well in that department.

We all understand what you're experiencing. Basically, our Nexus S devices just are not able to keep up with the ever increasing size of electronic files. Even though it's nice to be able to run JB, it really stretches the Nexus to it's limits. I too am torn, because I love the smoothness of 4.1.1, but to be honest, the phone can handle GB much easier. One other thing, Chrome is a huge consumer of ram ... really too much for the NS. As much as I love my Nexus, the handwriting is on the wall, if I really want to continue to enjoy all the new stuff coming our way.

The colors can be adjusted to your liking. Some kernels have a setting that's not the factory norm(ie Trinity). You also have to keep in mind some of that RAM has to be dedicated to the OS itself. You're gonna have to deal with the fact the phone has a memory limitation on 4.1. Sucks, but there's really not much else you can really do about it.

I could never get above 125MB on GB even with a custom kernel. With only 512MB ram, more than half of that is already used by Android itself, there's not much left for apps. That said, I would remove unnecessary widgets on home screens, install Autostarts, or ROM Toolbox, or Gemini App Manager or other autostart management app and turn off autorun triggers on apps. The less background apps the more rams you can free up. I'm currently running with about 75MB and it's smooth. I set auto free rams to start killing apps if it's below 45MB.
Sent from my Nexus S using xda premium

[email protected] said:
I could never get above 125MB on GB even with a custom kernel. With only 512MB ram, more than half of that is already used by Android itself, there's not much left for apps. That said, I would remove unnecessary widgets on home screens, install Autostarts, or ROM Toolbox, or Gemini App Manager or other autostart management app and turn off autorun triggers on apps. The less background apps the more rams you can free up. I'm currently running with about 75MB and it's smooth. I set auto free rams to start killing apps if it's below 45MB.
Sent from my Nexus S using xda premium
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Click to collapse
Those auto triggers you talk of what software do you use to counter those cause I just looked at the cached processes inside the stock Application Manager and it showed a few that always show up when my phone boots. Of those that I usually encounter is Titanium, Maps, Google Search and a two or three more. Killing them doesn't make much of a difference though. Either the ram display at the bottom is screwed or the ram just doesn't go up when I abort any one of them and after a while they again show up. How do I deal with them?

Some general points.
Yes we want more ram. But we want it to use it. Free ram is wasted ram.
Task managers suck. All of them.
Low ram should not crash your device.
Stop worrying about how me free ram you have
Chrome sucks. It sucks on all devices. Sucks on n7. AOSP just runs better.
Want to keep a little more free ram because your device lags when its low on ram. Go to developer options and limit background processes

I'm with al. No point in over-obsessing about it. Cached processes aren't doing anything. They're there for when you want to switch apps for quicker access, which part of the way Android operates. You can limit what starts on startup to increase boot time(probably not even worth it), which I do even though I just said it probably doesn't help much, with a startup manager.

I to am no fan of task killers. I've heard that they can sometimes consume more ram since some of the killed apps will try to start again.
I found the autostarts app very useful. I have disabled around 50% of all auto starts. Mainly for installed apps but also a bunch of system apps. Another useful tool is Auto Memory Manager which sets the ram level where the system kills apps according to their category (e.g. Foregroud, visible, hidden etc). I use the "mild" manager with the level for empty apps raised. I manage to get around 80 MB free when running nothing. However I have a performance ROM which might affect that number.

My Nexus S has been retired a long time now.. I'm currently using the GS3 with lots of rams so it's not an issue for me anymore dealing with low rams... However, same symptoms on the GS3 or any Android phone, the less available rams means more processes are running which can cause slow app responsiveness. Also, some app even runs in the background hogging load of cpu usage, that definitely slows down your phone. I use task manager to kill off those high cpu apps when they go wild. OS Monitor is a good app for monitoring cpu usage... GO SMS Pro is an example app that sometimes persistently consumes 30% - 50% cpu, killling it off makes the phone smooth again.
S-beamed from my GSIII via xda premium

Camera update and CPU usage

I recently noticed that the CPU on my rooted, stock rom Nexus 5 was running at levels of 70*% on all 4 cores. It came to my attention because this really slowed down the phone and made apps run very slow.
I asked about it and investigated but got no satisfactory responses. Finally I came across this
http://androidcommunity.com/nexus-5-camera-and-cpu-usage-bug-acknowledged-20140305/
I uninstalled the camera updates and the CPU usage immediately dropped to normal with only 2 cores being used most of the time.
So, if your phone has been running slow lately, it might be because of the latest camera update. Uninstalling the update might be the answer for you too.

the camera daemon was an issue way before the new camera came out. many many many have been experiencing it with the old camera. its not the camera itself btw, its a service your phone runs when taking photos(using the cam). and there are 2 temporary fixes for it.. 1. reboot your device, 2. use a free memory app to kill your services. as you can see that article was written way before the new camera app came out.

Which service should I kill? The battery app said it was "Android os" that was hogging it. Would disabling the camera app and using a different app make a difference?
Here's the difference I saw.

i use an app called FMR Memory Cleaner. i open it, press the button to run it(kill everything), and it frees my ram memory up. as a side effect, it kills that camera daemon service running. so it stops the high cpu usage/battery loss right after. basically, right after i stop using my camera, i run it.
btw, i used to work for androidcommunity.com(and actually get paid for it). i used to head and run their forums. and if you search simms22 in their search, a whole bunch of their news articles will pop up with me in them

Thanks. I thought task killers were useless because Android just reloads what it needs, but maybe it doesn't reload the camera daemon until the user calls it again. I don't use the camera much which is possibly why I had not noticed this till now.
Wonder if a boot manager could selectively prevent the camera and similar daemons from loading till actually called. But I don't know much about the inner workings of android.

Anderson2 said:
Thanks. I thought task killers were useless because Android just reloads what it needs, but maybe it doesn't reload the camera daemon until the user calls it again. I don't use the camera much which is possibly why I had not noticed this till now.
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its a matter of opinion. sure, android does the job. personally i dont like how android does it. ive been using a few free ram/fast reboot type memory freers apps for the past 5 years, and am very selective of which i use, as some are just junk. anyways, it keeps me happier in the end, and thats whats important. isnt it?

simms22 said:
its a matter of opinion. sure, android does the job. personally i dont like how android does it. ive been using a few free ram/fast reboot type memory freers apps for the past 5 years, and am very selective of which i use, as some are just junk. anyways, it keeps me happier in the end, and thats whats important. isnt it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it is what's important.
And thank you for your help.

Does this tablet just not want to multitask?

So I have had the tablet for a week now, running Marshmallow. Just rooted, nothing more. One thing that is driving me nuts with this tablet is that the way it uses its memory. It does not want to keep apps in memory.
For instance. I can be playing a game, jump out to Chrome, surf for a minute, go to email, then go back to my game and the game needs to reload. I look at the RAM and it says I have like 800mb free. This happens over and over to me.
Is this just normal for the Shield that it aggressively closes apps so fast. I am just comparing to my Nexus 7 that didn't behave like this and I thought it was very odd.
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!

Good question. I self have noticed this behaver, but I have the K1 only for a bit more than a week too and upgrade directly to Android 6.0, so I can't say if that happens on 5.x too. A Bug? A "Feature" of Android 6.0 or of the K1 itself? What ever it is, I don't like it, makes no sense for me, the K1 have enough RAM.

jev3gs said:
So I have had the tablet for a week now, running Marshmallow. Just rooted, nothing more. One thing that is driving me nuts with this tablet is that the way it uses its memory. It does not want to keep apps in memory.
For instance. I can be playing a game, jump out to Chrome, surf for a minute, go to email, then go back to my game and the game needs to reload. I look at the RAM and it says I have like 800mb free. This happens over and over to me.
Is this just normal for the Shield that it aggressively closes apps so fast. I am just comparing to my Nexus 7 that didn't behave like this and I thought it was very odd.
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm noticing similar behavior but can't effectively tie it to the Marshmallow update either. I'm running stock with Action Launcher 3 as my launcher.
I see the same reload for apps when I've switched between multiple in one sitting. The one place I notice it frequently is in my use of Muzei, which I use in conjunction with Tapet, for changing wallpapers. It seems like at least once a day I access my tablet and notice that the wallpaper has reverted to a stock, static wallpaper and Muzei needs to be "activated".

sfringer said:
I'm noticing similar behavior but can't effectively tie it to the Marshmallow update either. I'm running stock with Action Launcher 3 as my launcher.
I see the same reload for apps when I've switched between multiple in one sitting. The one place I notice it frequently is in my use of Muzei, which I use in conjunction with Tapet, for changing wallpapers. It seems like at least once a day I access my tablet and notice that the wallpaper has reverted to a stock, static wallpaper and Muzei needs to be "activated".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I have no went back to 5.1, and the same problem. I can be playing a game, come out to the browser for a minute or 2, then go back to the game and it needs to be fully reloaded. Honestly I am soo surprised it acts this way, especially with 2GB of ram. It is such a let down. I wish people would have mentioned this in there reviews in the product as I saw it no where. I hate to say it, but it drives me nuts enough I am about to be an Ex-shield owner. I like playing games on this but I am sure other people are like me where they play for 15 -20 minutes. Put it down for a little bit, come back and want to play more. This just doesn't allow for that. It acts more like a portable console. constantly needing to be relaunched.

It's really annoying that it dumps apps out of memory. Like say I'm in Facebook and I want to look up a link in chrome to reply to a comment with.. So I switch to chrome find the link, switch back to Facebook, and now I'm at the main page again and have to scroll and find where I was at and sometimes I just can't and give up. Why Nvidia why?!
Sent from my HTC M9 using Tapatalk

ou2mame said:
It's really annoying that it dumps apps out of memory. Like say I'm in Facebook and I want to look up a link in chrome to reply to a comment with.. So I switch to chrome find the link, switch back to Facebook, and now I'm at the main page again and have to scroll and find where I was at and sometimes I just can't and give up. Why Nvidia why?!
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Click to collapse
As far as I can tell, this is a bug/feature that Nvidia is responsible for. At first, I used to worry about switching between a game like Real Racing 3 and Chrome browser. The game will almost certainly close. Now, the there's an even bigger problem. I can't have a reasonable amount of tabs open in Chrome. They reload each time I switch to them. I considered switching to Firefox and/or Opera to see if the problem would persist but I just can't do without Chrome's syncing capabilities.
The only thing keeping me from rooting and trying out a custom ROM is the loss of Nvidia's proprietary apps.

albert0pia said:
As far as I can tell, this is a bug/feature that Nvidia is responsible for. At first, I used to worry about switching between a game like Real Racing 3 and Chrome browser. The game will almost certainly close. Now, the there's an even bigger problem. I can't have a reasonable amount of tabs open in Chrome. They reload each time I switch to them. I considered switching to Firefox and/or Opera to see if the problem would persist but I just can't do without Chrome's syncing capabilities.
The only thing keeping me from rooting and trying out a custom ROM is the loss of Nvidia's proprietary apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The chrome tab problem might not be tablet related. I have the same issue on my Sony Xperia Z3 compact and on my Nexus 9. Maybe chrome sucks up so much ram that it forces android to close app in the background and tabs to unload?

DBBGBA said:
The chrome tab problem might not be tablet related. I have the same issue on my Sony Xperia Z3 compact and on my Nexus 9. Maybe chrome sucks up so much ram that it forces android to close app in the background and tabs to unload?
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Click to collapse
My Marshmallow-running HTC One M8 handles this better than the tablet that has a more powerful hardware. I don't know how many tabs my phone can handle at a time but I know the tablet doesn't even come close in that regard.
I didn't buy a 2GB RAM tablet only to have it treat my browser tabs like an iPad with 1GB of RAM.

Holy crap... uninstall Facebook and Messenger and this thing flies. I always felt like it gamed "ok" but the UI was laggy as hell. Uninstalled FB and Messenger and now this thing is a beast.

T1Pimp said:
Holy crap... uninstall Facebook and Messenger and this thing flies. I always felt like it gamed "ok" but the UI was laggy as hell. Uninstalled FB and Messenger and now this thing is a beast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would recommend that on any android device. I've noticed on all of my devices with facebook that it was listed as the number one app for battery use even when I hadn't launched it in days. After uninstalling it I got improvements in battery life and now I just use their mobile website in chrome. I actually like that better as links open up in a new tab and there is no need to switch apps to go back and forth between facebook and web pages. I also created a home screen link to the facebook mobile website and put it in a folder on one of my home screens.

I hated the aggressive ram management of the stock rom initially so i rooted it and flashed BitO-k4 kernel , it improved but not up to the mark compared to my nexus 5x , now i use CM13 temasek's build (multirom) and it is way way better.
i think the stock rom is the initial culprit here, removing apps like facebook might help but things like swap , zram and ram management values present in stock will always be bottlenecks for true multitasking.
try using different kernels from our community it might help a bit.

Try kernels from 4pda.ru
http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=617264&view=findpost&p=48990563
or
http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=617264&view=findpost&p=46309014

T1Pimp said:
Holy crap... uninstall Facebook and Messenger and this thing flies. I always felt like it gamed "ok" but the UI was laggy as hell. Uninstalled FB and Messenger and now this thing is a beast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you still want to use fb try the app tinfoil for Facebook. That kinda goes for anyone regardless of what they are using, it's a lot better. Facebook apps suck so bad with resources they slow just about anything down...

Aggressive memory management?

Sorry if this has been discussed before, I am new to the P20.
Does Huawei use some pretty aggressive memory management, or is it just me or setup? I typically have about 1.3 to 1.5GB free RAM, but when I switch tasks with the application switcher it seems like a lot of applications have to cold start and don't come back where I left them... I have a Moto G5 Plus (4GB RAM) device before, and never had this problem, could switch out of a game or Facebook and switch back and forth with no issues... Now if I am playing a simple puzzle game, minimize it and open FB or even something simple like a Google search, then switch back to the game it always restarts.

acejavelin said:
Sorry if this has been discussed before, I am new to the P20.
Does Huawei use some pretty aggressive memory management, or is it just me or setup? I typically have about 1.3 to 1.5GB free RAM, but when I switch tasks with the application switcher it seems like a lot of applications have to cold start and don't come back where I left them... I have a Moto G5 Plus (4GB RAM) device before, and never had this problem, could switch out of a game or Facebook and switch back and forth with no issues... Now if I am playing a simple puzzle game, minimize it and open FB or even something simple like a Google search, then switch back to the game it always restarts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've experienced similar things. I really think that it's emui9 doing that and throttling background processes

Amphibius2 said:
I've experienced similar things. I really think that it's emui9 doing that and throttling background processes
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could be... I have a lot of the Huawei services disabled and am running Nova Launcher and most of the Google applications rather than the Huawei ones. It's not really a problem most of the time, just a little annoying.

That is the biggest problem I have with this phone, I used to have a Huawei P10 with the same amount of RAM and I never experienced this problem.