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Android Newbie Alert: What are the disadvantages of the small 1Gb internal memory with the Galaxy S 4g?
I am trying to decide whether to trade my new G2 in for this phone but I'm worried about the small rom space. I am very tech savvy and plan on putting it through the full paces once I've learned how.
Will there be problems with flashing new roms; multibooting; backing up/restoring?
Limitations to rom types or mods; roms beyond Gingerbread?
Won't a small drive make it slower? I've heard some say the 16Gb on the Vibrant makes it slower. Which is true? (In a Windows PC more space for your system partition = faster system, if you keep the partition within a reasonable size--say 60Gb. True for Android OS?)
I would also think having most apps installed to the SD card would slow things down a lot. I will use my class 6 SD card of course, because I'm sure HTC will stick us with their lousy class 2 cards.
The vibrant lags really bad due to the internal storage, however there ext4 lag fixes that will rid of this problem. The gs4g us low on app storage, only 512 mb but others are reporting even less. The gs4g is very responsive and doesn't lag what so ever. So far I'm liking the gs4g a lot. Just waiting for some custom roms and then it will be all good.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App
Samsung know that and I know that is it is the purpose: Difficulty the Modding
jonvaz said:
Samsung know that and I know that is it is the purpose: Difficulty the Modding
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didn't understand. Can you rewrite? I think you mean the modding will be a problem because of the small space? What problems? Will I regret trading from 4Gb space on the G2?
tq745: You are one of the people who traded the G2 for SGS4G. How many apps do you have installed? Any problems so far? I wish there were roms out already so people could tell me if they're having problems. I need to decide fast. I may already be over my 14 day trial period; I'm afraid to look.
My decision is wavering on potential problems with modding/rom flashing/app storage, and one other thing: The upgraded 4G modem. Others are saying there may be a software upgrade for this??? Or else I may be able to open it up and solder a new modem into my G2??? I think I'll post separately about this in the G2 forum. This would sell me on the G2.
I dont think there will be any problems with custom roms as othe phones have even less rom (nexus one, evo), the problem comes with apps being installed and will probley require you to move apps to SD. I use titanium to move apps to SD.
Had an Aria before my g2. It has a very small amount of system memory and I never had any issues flashing new roms. You can configure Cyanogen to force installation of apps to the sd card to avoid filling the internal memory. Not sure what other roms support that. Otherwise you will have to do some basic housekeeping to move apps to the sd to save memory. Removing bloatware helps too.
I am running cm7 gingerbread on a g2 now and storage management has improved even more. I'm getting the s4g next week and my only concern is that I have always been a HTC guy because they tend to have the most dev support. However the galaxy phones seem to be well supported by the community as well. Looking forward to the extra display size and slimmer form factor.
I'll post again when I get mine.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
So far the only real problem I'm seeing with the internal storage is not being able to run Lag-Fix...but really...I don't think you're going to need it. I wanted to run it just to see IF it would speed it up a little more (You know...squeeze out everything you can) but the program is telling I don't have enough internal storage...oh well.
Other than that...Um...Yeah. You will probably eventually have to move some stuff over to the SD. Not that big of an issue, though...I don't think.
As someone else mentioned, root, get rid of bloat ware and use Titanium Pro to move apps to sd and you should not have a problem.
gggirlgeek said:
Android Newbie Alert: What are the disadvantages of the small 1Gb internal memory with the Galaxy S 4g?
I am trying to decide whether to trade my new G2 in for this phone but I'm worried about the small rom space. I am very tech savvy and plan on putting it through the full paces once I've learned how.
Will there be problems with flashing new roms; multibooting; backing up/restoring?
Limitations to rom types or mods; roms beyond Gingerbread?
Won't a small drive make it slower? I've heard some say the 16Gb on the Vibrant makes it slower. Which is true? (In a Windows PC more space for your system partition = faster system, if you keep the partition within a reasonable size--say 60Gb. True for Android OS?)
I would also think having most apps installed to the SD card would slow things down a lot. I will use my class 6 SD card of course, because I'm sure HTC will stick us with their lousy class 2 cards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If my understanding of the Galaxy S 4G is correct, you get a 1 GB internal memory (ROM) that's complemented by an included 16 GB microSD memory card, and you can upgrade to optional 32 GB microSD card. Both the 3G and 4G have an additional 512MB of system RAM. Once ClockworkMod is working properly and giving access to modify the internal ROM, the 1GB internal memory will be more than enough to allow the Galaxy S 4G to operate just as well as the current Vibrant 3G with upgraded ROMs. The only downside is the loss of the larger 16GB internal SD memory storage the Vibrant 3G has to 1GB on the 4G.
After reading some more I ran across an article that explained why the available internal memory on Android phones is always so small. I wish I could remember the where I found it because I am not familiar enough with Android to know the terminology.
As I understand it, there is one type of partition for storage, which the user has access to, and another type for the system OS. It is in a completely different format than ext partitions and is optimized to run very fast. The sacrifice for this is that it is read as only half the size of the Ext formatted partition. So even though the OS doesn't actually take double the space, the space is unavailable to the user (sounds kind like Raid actually, without using multiple drives.) So a 385mb partition for a 200mb OS will make 770mb unavailable to the user, leaving 230mb left on a 1Gb drive (is drive the correct term? It is a simple flash drive, yes)?
This is also permanent once formatted this way and can never be undone according to what I've read. This is why we cannot simply repartition to get the space back.
Does this sound correct? Please fill in the errors and details if you know more about this.
I really think Sammy and Tmo took a perfect phone and purposely ruined it. Why would they remove a 16Gb drive from a phone they finally got right? What a tease!
In the end I still don't see a way to avoid problems with 230mb available memory. OS's slow down when they have no place to write new files. SD cards are much slower than internal memory. New apps and better OS's will make a phone like this obsolete in a year. Hmmmm. I see the logic now.
These phones are full-fledged computers, doing more in one day than most PC's do in their life-cycle. Would you really buy a machine with 1Ghz cpu, 512MB ram, 1020p HD touch AMOLED screen, 5.1 surround sound, 802.11n hotspot, 4G, Lastest 3D gaming GPU graphics, HD video camera with 2-way real time video, turn-by-turn GPS, HDMI out,...... and 230mb available hard drive space???? Heck, no!
Of course it has no space left over! In fact a PC would have a lot less if run on a 1Gb hard drive...... Oh, but they'll throw in a 16GB external USB drive, if we don't mind a few freezes and restarts along the way.
Think about the amount of multitasking a smart phone is doing 24 hours a day, using high-end effects that bring most PC's to a crawl..... reliably... while trying to conserve battery life!
Windows 7 can do an almost comparable job... with 3Gb or Ram on a 16GB hard drive minimum, 40Gb including apps, (mine has 1.65TB,) and 3 hours of battery life.
Hope I've put it in perspective.
I'm mad. I'm stuck with a half-a$$ed phone no matter what. And they did it on purpose so I would buy another half-baked phone in a year -- less if they can help it.
That's my rant. I'll go and pout in my corner now.
MvP77 said:
I dont think there will be any problems with custom roms as othe phones have even less rom (nexus one, evo), the problem comes with apps being installed and will probley require you to move apps to SD. I use titanium to move apps to SD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just got Titanium backup pro and froze a few annoying apps -- Finance, Amazon MP3, Photo bucket, twitter, and face book.
Still on stock rom, temp rooted.
Then I moved everything that doesn't need a widget or primary access (LauncherPro, Lookout, etc.) to SD
I'm back to where I started with this stock rom; slow unresponsive app tray, widgets FC'ing, and hesitation when trying to answer calls. It was this way out of the box.
This was all fixed when I installed LauncherPro. It was fine with Titanium free. Now it's back. I disabled put the networking and sync settings back to battery-friendly (didn't need to with LauncherPro) and it's still pokey after rebooting.
I don't know about this SD card business. I think my point has just been made for me.
Oh, well 2 more days to romming heaven. Think I'll keep the G2 though. Hope my rain dance to the radio gods ends up working.
gggirlgeek said:
I really think Sammy and Tmo took a perfect phone and purposely ruined it. Why would they remove a 16Gb drive from a phone they finally got right? What a tease!
In the end I still don't see a way to avoid problems with 230mb available memory. OS's slow down when they have no place to write new files. SD cards are much slower than internal memory. New apps and better OS's will make a phone like this obsolete in a year. Hmmmm. I see the logic now.
These phones are full-fledged computers, doing more in one day than most PC's do in their life-cycle. Would you really buy a machine with 1Ghz cpu, 512MB ram, 1020p HD touch AMOLED screen, 5.1 surround sound, 802.11n hotspot, 4G, Lastest 3D gaming GPU graphics, HD video camera with 2-way real time video, turn-by-turn GPS, HDMI out,...... and 230mb available hard drive space???? Heck, no!
Of course it has no space left over! In fact a PC would have a lot less if run on a 1Gb hard drive...... Oh, but they'll throw in a 16GB external USB drive, if we don't mind a few freezes and restarts along the way.
Think about the amount of multitasking a smart phone is doing 24 hours a day, using high-end effects that bring most PC's to a crawl..... reliably... while trying to conserve battery life!
Windows 7 can do an almost comparable job... with 3Gb or Ram on a 16GB hard drive minimum, 40Gb including apps, (mine has 1.65TB,) and 3 hours of battery life.
Hope I've put it in perspective.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had a long talk with both T-MO and Samsung. I was told by Samsung that the SGS 4G still has 16GB of internal ROM, in addition to the 16GB external SD chip that it ships with. They were very tight lipped about why you cannot see the internal memory the way you can with the former 3G model. I think it has to do with the way they are partitioning it as you say. Partitioning is an easy way to hide the actual size of a given storage space. That is how Windows Vista and 7 hide their Restore partition, in a separate partition in the front of the Drive. Dell also does this with its PC Restore partition using a utility developed by Symantec. I’d like to find a utility that can read the partition structure on these Android devices. DroidExplorer lets you see part of the internal memory but not the partition structure from what I’ve seen.
nwpro3 said:
I had a long talk with both T-MO and Samsung. I was told by Samsung that the SGS 4G still has 16GB of internal ROM, in addition to the 16GB external SD chip that it ships with. They were very tight lipped about why you cannot see the internal memory the way you can with the former 3G model. I think it has to do with the way they are partitioning it as you say. Partitioning is an easy way to hide the actual size of a given storage space. That is how Windows Vista and 7 hide their Restore partition, in a separate partition in the front of the Drive. Dell also does this with its PC Restore partition using a utility developed by Symantec. I’d like to find a utility that can read the partition structure on these Android devices. DroidExplorer lets you see part of the internal memory but not the partition structure from what I’ve seen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also just had a talk with tmo and they told me the phone had 16gb of internal. After making sure they weren't confusing it with the vibrant the, guy could not tell me why it only saw 500mb for apps. Something seems fishy...
MvP77 said:
I also just had a talk with tmo and they told me the phone had 16gb of internal. After making sure they weren't confusing it with the vibrant the, guy could not tell me why it only saw 500mb for apps. Something seems fishy...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was just looking on the TMO support site today at the specs listed and they show: Internal memory: RAM: 512MB; ROM: 1024MB which jives with what I’ve seen at some of the other mobile web sites. What’s strange is that all that talking to Samsung and they could not even interpret their own specs that they have on their own web site. They have yet not responded with an answer by email as they have promised. I guess they justify 16GB ONBOARD on their specs by including or should I say changing the external SD to 16GB. Personal preference I think I should have stayed with the SGS 3G and had the advantage of using some of the trick ROMs that are out for that now. I really don’t care about the better quality camera or the 4G speed. I’m lucky to get a very slow EDGE speed where I live anyway. I guess it depends on who you talk to in tech support and whether or not they even have a clue what they are talking about. I know this from experience. I have worked in tech support for Dell and I was astonished by some of the clueless techs that worked there. There is a learning curve and you can’t know everything but reading the specs from a device is right in front of your face in the tools and reference material these companies provide. You just have to know how to look it up.
nwpro3 said:
I was just looking on the TMO support site today at the specs listed and they show: Internal memory: RAM: 512MB; ROM: 1024MB which jives with what I’ve seen at some of the other mobile web sites. What’s strange is that all that talking to Samsung and they could not even interpret their own specs that they have on their own web site. They have yet not responded with an answer by email as they have promised. I guess they justify 16GB ONBOARD on their specs by including or should I say changing the external SD to 16GB. Personal preference I think I should have stayed with the SGS 3G and had the advantage of using some of the trick ROMs that are out for that now. I really don’t care about the better quality camera or the 4G speed. I’m lucky to get a very slow EDGE speed where I live anyway. I guess it depends on who you talk to in tech support and whether or not they even have a clue what they are talking about. I know this from experience. I have worked in tech support for Dell and I was astonished by some of the clueless techs that worked there. There is a learning curve and you can’t know everything but reading the specs from a device is right in front of your face in the tools and reference material these companies provide. You just have to know how to look it up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll trade you my 3G Vib for your 4G hehe
krylon360 said:
I'll trade you my 3G Vib for your 4G hehe
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, but the SGS4G is costing me another $150.00 when after the rebate the Vibrant would have been free with the 2 year contract. It remains to be seen if the new phone is really that much better. I would not be that concerned by the added costs except I have been unemployed since October. And YES I would rather have the better toy, If only next week I could count on a paycheck.
Perhaps the only "frustrating" thing for me, at this point, is that the built-in apps, when updated, are truly bloat if they can't be moved to SD card (yeah, I know, root the thing already -- I'm talking about Joe Average).
For example, Google Maps / Navigation v5.2.1 is out, which very unscientifically "feels better" than the as-shipped version, chews up another 8.95 MB of app space. Market self-updated (thanks to that being the default setting for the Google apps, imagine that) for another 4.80 MB.
Nearly 10% of that precious 150 MB already fried just by Google...
I would have to say that it was a poor decision on T-Mobile's part to trim the internal storage so much for the general-public user. At least there are tools for those able to root their phones to move the large number of apps that don't allow native Froyo move-to-SD.
I don't have that many apps, games stored on my phone and would rather the extra space be allocated to media.
Would it be possible to cut 1gb off the phones 2gb storage etc?
of course this is possible with a custom rom that repartitions the device when flashing.
I'm no phone man so hopefully someone can maximise the media space for those that wish.
Must be others out there with this need
Very likely. I hit a store today to look at it and bought it like my car - against better judgement and just acting from the gut.
Just gotta love the feel of that device. I am seriously miffed that HTC is advertising a 16GB internal storage phone but leaves only about 10GB for the user (well at least its written on the box, but still).
What the heck do they use those Gigs of storage for? I can see how one or even three GB are put aside for the /data partition and maybe an recovery patition, but 6GB?
All I hope is that the One S gets enough developer love, instead of all the devs going for the higher bling of the Quad flagship.
I wonder why they didn't implement the unified storage which is supperted by ICS which makes partitioning superfluous, at least for app/media space.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA
When we get stock iPhone devices in our office, on a 16GB device, the available space os about 14GB, I had expected similar from HTC. But no, it is just over 9GB free on a stock device with nothing much installed.Grrr.
I know I have been complaining about the space in other forums but your compairison is off the mark.
The HTC One S has 9.8gb free for user storage, and 2gb free for apps, that's 11.8gb free.
The Iphone 4, 16gb model has 13.4gb free "out of the box".
The way Android works is different from Ios for storage. Android partions the drive for system, cache, and user. Some manufacturers choose application and user storage to be separate, depending on wether they have mtp, or usb mass storage mode. If you read up on this stuff a bit, you'll soon agree the android way is better, and unlike Ios devices once we have S-off, we can change mtd partions.
So, technically your talking 13.4gb versus 11.8, not really as big a dif as you tried to claim.
Sent from my GT-P7510 using XDA Premium HD app
I just hope HTC was lazy and went the way they did on the first WM7 phones - an microSD card slot that contained a exchangeable Sandisk microSD, but was just hidden under a few screws.
I guess I would happily void my warranty for that. I am heavily anticipating the first "teardowns" or service / disassembly manuals for this device.
Can someone post testing the speed of the internal storage, I would appreciate the test results made with SD Tools app. ?
Sent from my HTC Desire S using xda premium
Here it is !
psych0t1c said:
I just hope HTC was lazy and went the way they did on the first WM7 phones - an microSD card slot that contained a exchangeable Sandisk microSD, but was just hidden under a few screws.
I guess I would happily void my warranty for that. I am heavily anticipating the first "teardowns" or service / disassembly manuals for this device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've read that the storage in this phone is all NAND, not a hidden micro SD.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA
psych0t1c said:
I just hope HTC was lazy and went the way they did on the first WM7 phones - an microSD card slot that contained a exchangeable Sandisk microSD, but was just hidden under a few screws.
I guess I would happily void my warranty for that. I am heavily anticipating the first "teardowns" or service / disassembly manuals for this device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sadly, I don't think that's going to happen. They did this with WP7 because Microsoft made them - they didn't want user-swappable SD cards in WP7 devices. In the One series, the memory is most probably normal NAND chips on the board deep inside the phone, to save space.
Thanks, for compare I post my tests with newest microSD adata 32GB UHS-1 tested on HTC Desire-S which I made when bought that card and installed ROM, after some use of phone the speed is decreasing.
Sent from my HTC Desire S using xda premium
This was the max speed which I get out of that card 21.6MB/s write and 25.8MB/s read.
Sent from my HTC Desire S using xda premium
10gb storage
1,5gb system
2gb data
1gb others (cache boot recovery radio vs)
Android apps and caches getting enlarged everyday and even all my apps moved to empty system/app folder and only 5 apps installed to data/app I have only 200mb free because dalvik cache, data/data folders are 1,5gb total.
I need repartition my htc one s like that:
1gb system
4gb data
1gb others untouched
8gb storage.
it is very easy on mtk devices. there must be a way via fastboot commands on qualcom devices.
here is a way for zte z7 mini via fastboot commands.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=57928909&postcount=3
I recently bought a One S and one thing that has really been bugging me is the fact that I have much les storage than advertised. It says that you get 16 GB, but the actual amount is 12.14, and
2.21 of that is internal memory so I only actually have 9.93 to store my media. Why is this? Also it says it should have 1 GB of RAM but task manager says I only have 650 MB.
Sent from my HTC One S using XDA
tjamzt said:
I recently bought a One S and one thing that has really been bugging me is the fact that I have much les storage than advertised. It says that you get 16 GB, but the actual amount is 12.14, and
2.21 of that is internal memory so I only actually have 9.93 to store my media. Why is this? Also it says it should have 1 GB of RAM but task manager says I only have 650 MB.
Sent from my HTC One S using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
16 GB storage is partitioned and some RAM is reserved for the system and the GPU.
tjamzt said:
I recently bought a One S and one thing that has really been bugging me is the fact that I have much les storage than advertised. It says that you get 16 GB, but the actual amount is 12.14, and
2.21 of that is internal memory so I only actually have 9.93 to store my media. Why is this? Also it says it should have 1 GB of RAM but task manager says I only have 650 MB.
Sent from my HTC One S using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off no hdd or flash memory is ever 100% as advertise because its been formatted to run. That's why there is only 12gb instead of 16gb. And that 2gb is the space dedicated to app installs. And the remainder is for you to do with however you please. Music, videos, extra game data (like many of gameloft games where you need to dl an extra 500 MB or so) or whatever you else you want to throw on other then an app install.
When you see an app in market and you download it and install it, it goes directly to that 2gb partition. If you download an app from a third party website it first goes to the 9gb space and once it installs it, it installs on the 2gb and all you need to do is delete the original dl .apk or keep it as a back up.
Sent from my DROID X2 using XDA
The above answers covered the answer so no need to reiterate but I just want to opine that you should consider yourself lucky, HTC doesn't rape you like Motorola does. On the Razr and Bionic, they are advertised as 16gb internal but only 8 is accessible to the user. They allot 4gb for apps and 4 for the OS. Bonus for them is obviously expandable memory.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2
System takes the resources
On many phones the preinstalled software takes a lot of space. I would recommend to install another ROM. I always do that to get rid of the software I don't need.
Ok. Thanks for the help. But what about the RAM? Shouldnt all of it be available?
tjamzt said:
Ok. Thanks for the help. But what about the RAM? Shouldnt all of it be available?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As already said, some of the RAM is reserved for the system and GPU. For example my HD2 should have 576MB RAM but it only has 411/403 (depends on the ROM/Kernel I guess) because 128MB is for the GPU and the rest is used by the system. I never actually get that much free RAM (I never get more than 200MB free, and that's only on startup; normally I have around 130MB free) but at the same time it's never really been an issue.
Ok. I just though that everything was shown together because I always have 500 MB of RAM used even with all applications closed.
The phone will still reserve some RAM for itself, and that is not the best indicator of RAM that's actually in use.
HTC One S is a gorgeous piece of hardware. To bad they didn't add sd card support...
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda app-developers app
My iPad is advertised 16 gb but its 13. Is the answers here applicable to that?
larsibsen said:
On many phones the preinstalled software takes a lot of space. I would recommend to install another ROM. I always do that to get rid of the software I don't need.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System software installed on separate partition usually. So removing them will not add more space to the user data.
OptimusLove said:
My iPad is advertised 16 gb but its 13. Is the answers here applicable to that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes
I love the HTC One S. It just has one problem for me and that is storage, of which only 9.9 GB is usable. If I go to settings>Storage I also see that 2.34GB is reserved for "Internal Storage", which should leave about 3GB, for the OS or something I presume. I'm wondering if this space can be reduced, so I get more usable space for my music etc.
One of my first smartphones was a HTC Desire. It was a great phone but its one downfall was storage capacity. So some guys made it possible to repartition the internal storage. The traditional partitions were 250MB for system, 40MB for cache and 147 for user data. When you installed a ROM like Cyanogenmod, which was way smaller in size than the Stock Sense ROM, it was possible to reduce the size of system to 100 and the size of Cache to 5MB, giving you 287MB for user data. (see alpharev.nl) Isn;t something like this also possible on the One S?
On a sidenote, the was a lot of outrage when people found out the 16GB Galaxy S4 only had 9 available to users. Why hasn;t that happened for the One S, where the issue is worse because there is no possibility for expansion?
The short answer is not really. I used to have a desire and I'm in the same boat as you. Basically I just got pickier about which of my music I put on here and use the camera a lot less.
Sent from my HTC One S using xda app-developers app
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!
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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.
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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
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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.