Database Info

[Q] Ram...how low is too low?

I'm usually sitting on somewhere between 60-100MB of free RAM. Now keep in mind, I have LOTS of widgets running, a gorgeous theme, spb 3d launcher, etc...and I prefer to keep those things going, because that's how I get my value from my phone. I don't think the phone is slow by any means...but because I'm used to using Windows, I'm paranoid about low ram. Should I be worried, or is it fine as long as I'm not experiencing bad performance?
Moving some apps to my internal sd card wouldn't do anything about RAM, correct?

mmapcpro said:
I'm usually sitting on somewhere between 60-100MB of free RAM. Now keep in mind, I have LOTS of widgets running, a gorgeous theme, spb 3d launcher, etc...and I prefer to keep those things going, because that's how I get my value from my phone. I don't think the phone is slow by any means...but because I'm used to using Windows, I'm paranoid about low ram. Should I be worried, or is it fine as long as I'm not experiencing bad performance?
Moving some apps to my internal sd card wouldn't do anything about RAM, correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not an expert at all, but rather someone with the same question. As explained to me, the newer versions of android are most excellent in memory management. The need to manage memory, like in windows, is not there in newer versions.
With that said, being from windows, seeing low memory counts freak me out. I've been convinced by the people on this forum, to give it a try and not freak out. Avoid using task killers and such. Only thing I do is remove apps and Widgets I do not use. I've not regretted that advice.

It really all depends on what you are doing on the phone. If you only have 10 MB left, but are only checking emails, you are fine. But if you were to start playing a game from the terga zone, then you will have problems.
Sent from my G2x using Tapatalk

aowendoff said:
It really all depends on what you are doing on the phone. If you only have 10 MB left, but are only checking emails, you are fine. But if you were to start playing a game from the terga zone, then you will have problems.
Sent from my G2x using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right, but, my understanding is, android will shutdown unused tasks to accommodate the need.
I learned with windows phone 7, there is a balance between live tiles, battery life, and performance. I assume that android has a similar premise. Do I need 40 Widgets on my desktop. What is the trade off if I do.
Again, I'm # noob to android...but this is how I'm proceeding.

Android keeps things in ram, which I would think is so apps can start up faster. If you are using something and it needs more ram than is free, android will remove something that isn't running to free memory. as far as too little, ram not being used is wasted. So just because you have a low amount free means nothing. The only thing that would be bad is if running services and apps needed more ram than the phone physically has. so just because there is little free means nothing really.

Read the article linked to in the first post of this thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=678205
Pay special attention to the Addendum at the end where it talks specifically about the way Android/Linux handles memory.

2gb of ram?

Can someone explain this to me?

I don't know why, I have the same thing, but I think its related to how you would order a 16gb microsd and have, for instance 14.03 gb.

Some of it gets used by kernel space and video ram.

Think of this as a computer, a computer with a video card that doesn't have on board RAM will reserved some portion of the RAM for it's own used and will not show the full the full system RAM because of that portion being reserved. It's computer's nature.

scsa20 said:
Think of this as a computer, a computer with a video card that doesn't have on board RAM will reserved some portion of the RAM for it's own used and will not show the full the full system RAM because of that portion being reserved. It's computer's nature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great way of putting out
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

scsa20 said:
Think of this as a computer, a computer with a video card that doesn't have on board RAM will reserved some portion of the RAM for it's own used and will not show the full the full system RAM because of that portion being reserved. It's computer's nature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Basically this.
If you look at any Android device, you'll notice it doesn't list the full amount of RAM that it physically has. It's just the nature of the operating system.
With 1.62GB reserved for use by applications, who can complain? That's equal to or more than pretty much any Android device in existence at the moment.

ExodusC said:
Basically this.
If you look at any Android device, you'll notice it doesn't list the full amount of RAM that it physically has. It's just the nature of the operating system.
With 1.62GB reserved for use by applications, who can complain? That's equal to or more than pretty much any Android device in existence at the moment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was pretty sure is more and ANY android phone in existance except US variants of gs3 (and Korean one too maybe?)
Sent from my Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 2

Bloat sucks! Like others have said, roughly 380mb of ram is reserved for the system.

droidstyle said:
Bloat sucks! Like others have said, roughly 380mb of ram is reserved for the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Without that "bloat" your RAM wouldn't work at all.

Ansextra said:
Without that "bloat" your RAM wouldn't work at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Huh. Think about what you just said.
Bloat is by definition superfluous data that is not required. And the ram would still work, it just wouldn't have anything to run so it wouldn't have a function.
What you were probably trying to say was without the necessary required system files the ram would be largely useless. Of course that really isn't relevant in addressing what droidstyle said.
Sent from my htc_jewel using xda premium

Ansextra said:
Without that "bloat" your RAM wouldn't work at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
derpy derp, please refer to bobloblaw's post!

can't see the attachment in the OP, but I assume based off the comments they are noticing the 1.6Gb available to user, which is as others have explained, after all the system gets it's memory and all
then out of that, at least on my CM10 JB build, with a lot of apps running, there is still 1GB of ram free, so there's 600Mb actively in use by apps and what not....
be really glad you have a full gigabyte of free ram, you could be like the Exynos guys and get a gimped 1Gb of ram and have only 100!150Mb free, and have your apps and stuff having to reload and stuff just to maintain free memory for overhead.

bobloblaw1 said:
Huh. Think about what you just said.
Bloat is by definition superfluous data that is not required. And the ram would still work, it just wouldn't have anything to run so it wouldn't have a function.
What you were probably trying to say was without the necessary required system files the ram would be largely useless. Of course that really isn't relevant in addressing what droidstyle said.
Sent from my htc_jewel using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes that is what I was trying to say. Thank you. But it is not irrelevant because by definition bloat would not be necessary files to my way of thinking. Bloat (the way I think of it) are files taking up space that are not necessary. This 380k is necessary.

the 380 is mostly necessary. you and droidstyle are both correct, no not all of that is useless stuff but honestly probably a majority of it is crap running in the background, stock apps and widgets and processes, that nobody will ever need.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

TechSavvy2 said:
I was pretty sure is more and ANY android phone in existance except US variants of gs3 (and Korean one too maybe?)
Sent from my Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LG Optimus LTE II announced the same day as the Galaxy S III comes with 2 GB of RAM. Although, if I recall correctly, the usable memory is something like 1.2 GB.

Taehee. said:
LG Optimus LTE II announced the same day as the Galaxy S III comes with 2 GB of RAM. Although, if I recall correctly, the usable memory is something like 1.2 GB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2GB of ram is quickly becoming the norm. It's nice after a couple days let say I have opened 60 apps, and when i go back to an app from the day before after using my phone the entire time, to be able to go back to that app and have it be right where i left it, having lost nothing......also it's nice to be able to run very involving launchers and not have to wait on it to reload from time to time......

bobloblaw1 said:
Huh. Think about what you just said.
Bloat is by definition superfluous data that is not required. And the ram would still work, it just wouldn't have anything to run so it wouldn't have a function.
What you were probably trying to say was without the necessary required system files the ram would be largely useless. Of course that really isn't relevant in addressing what droidstyle said.
Sent from my htc_jewel using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your so called bloat isn't loaded into ram unless you launch it and I'm certain it isn't using the system reserved ram but would use the free ram pool. I would assume its the os and video memory that is using that space not some vzw apps you aren't using.

lol

piiman said:
Your so called bloat isn't loaded into ram unless you launch it and I'm certain it isn't using the system reserved ram but would use the free ram pool. I would assume its the os and video memory that is using that space not some vzw apps you aren't using.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
a lot of the Samsung stuff is indeed loaded into RAM.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

b4silver said:
Can someone explain this to me?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
[/COLOR]Agree that it's being used by the video display. Video memory has to come from somewhere.

how to expand my ram

hi, ive been succesfully rooted my samsung galaxy gio s5660m and now im looking forward for my ram expansion and internal memory.. someone can help me for this topic? tnx a lot

badagila said:
hi, ive been succesfully rooted my samsung galaxy gio s5660m and now im looking forward for my ram expansion and internal memory.. someone can help me for this topic? tnx a lot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to go here to download the extra RAM for your device - if it's compatible.

Ram
SimonTS said:
You need to go here to download the extra RAM for your device - if it's compatible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is it 100% safe? tnx

reply
Sewrizer said:
I don't think you can download RAM.. I know you can add RAM cards on computers and laptops but they have certain limitations(plus, they are hardware which you have to buy and apply correctly).. and on an android phone I'm not sure.. so if you could provide more details it would be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
but you have any idea how to increase ram in a safe way? do you already root your cell phone?

Sewrizer said:
i have rooted a sgs2 and a htc sensation xe.
You can't increase RAM without the hardware (again, as far as i know). the only thing you can do is to use less RAM, thus making the device faster and more effective. try freezing the apps that you are not using with titanium back-up. a lot of apps work on background and you don't even need them. by freezing them, you prevent them from auto-starting. you can unfreeze them to make them work again. (you need to be rooted for this)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And then we get into the old falacy that "Free RAM is good". This is simply NOT true on Android. If you start running too short on free RAM then the Android system starts to kill applications to free up more RAM, but RAM is there to be used.

badagila said:
is it 100% safe? tnx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ahahahaha :')
@OP I don't know if this'll work on your phone but on the HD2 at least you could create a swap partition on your SD card then flash a zRam script to increase RAM.

Sewrizer said:
So you are saying it is bad/useless to kill/freeze unused background applications?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Useless? Not necessarily, as long as you know what you are doing and are 100% certain about the apps you are freezing. However, I have never seen any real benefit in doing so. The Android built-in task manager normally does a failry good job of managing the memory without any real intervention.

SimonTS said:
Useless? Not necessarily, as long as you know what you are doing and are 100% certain about the apps you are freezing. However, I have never seen any real benefit in doing so. The Android built-in task manager normally does a failry good job of managing the memory without any real intervention.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually I personally have found that killing apps on devices with low RAM makes the phone feel a lot faster.

Nigeldg said:
Actually I personally have found that killing apps on devices with low RAM makes the phone feel a lot faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Manually killing them is something I do as well. I just don't buy into the task-killer type apps.
Sewrizer said:
I was suggesting freezing and killing unused apps on background because on phones with low RAM (his gio has less than 512 MB of ram) system is laggy, mostly because of pre-installed software which users don't use. He said he has just rooted his phone, therefore he can't have uninstalled the network carrier apps/social networks apps, which may be running on background. And in my experience as an android user, if anything is laggy or stops working, i restart the phone. And after restarting it always works smoother.
About the android built-in task manager, it does indeed do a good job, but on 2.x android versions is a little harder to find and use. thanks for replies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Freezing / killing the apps as root can be useful, but as I said you need to be certain what apps you are freezing and why. How many times have you read on XDA from someone who has frozen a load of the 'Background' apps, and then finds their device won't even boot up and they have to do a full flash to recover, often losing a load of data as well?

ram topic
Nigeldg said:
Ahahahaha :')
@OP I don't know if this'll work on your phone but on the HD2 at least you could create a swap partition on your SD card then flash a zRam script to increase RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my phone is samsung galaxy gio s5660m and yes i rooted

Leaky Ram

Hey Guys,
I am relatively new to the world of Android being an IOS man until I took the plunge and got this cracking little Nexus.
One thing I have come across is how I seem to be losing RAM over about a period of an hour or so. On a restart my RAM reads about 1.3gb free. After some time it goes to 900mb free. I have APPs like Advanced Task Manager freeing up RAM every hour but thought that someone may have come up with a software tweak or solution that may stem the flow.
I am running a rooted with standard ROM and ElementalX Kernel.
Cheers
Jason

jasonst165 said:
Hey Guys,
I am relatively new to the world of Android being an IOS man until I took the plunge and got this cracking little Nexus.
One thing I have come across is how I seem to be losing RAM over about a period of an hour or so. On a restart my RAM reads about 1.3gb free. After some time it goes to 900mb free. I have APPs like Advanced Task Manager freeing up RAM every hour but thought that someone may have come up with a software tweak or solution that may stem the flow.
I am running a rooted with standard ROM and ElementalX Kernel.
Cheers
Jason
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
using apps that use ram to then try free it up try remove these type of apps and check after a few hours

jasonst165 said:
Hey Guys,
I am relatively new to the world of Android being an IOS man until I took the plunge and got this cracking little Nexus.
One thing I have come across is how I seem to be losing RAM over about a period of an hour or so. On a restart my RAM reads about 1.3gb free. After some time it goes to 900mb free. I have APPs like Advanced Task Manager freeing up RAM every hour but thought that someone may have come up with a software tweak or solution that may stem the flow.
I am running a rooted with standard ROM and ElementalX Kernel.
Cheers
Jason
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats not a issue , not in android the less free ram you have the better.. if you search google you'll know and also dont use any app killer.

There's really no need to use apps to free up ram. We got 2gb of ram
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Free ram is wasted ram, don't use any stupid task killers and forget about it
//Nexus 5//Nexus 4//HTC WFS//

So remove those APPs and it runs better with less RAM.
The revers of what Im used to :silly:

jasonst165 said:
So remove those APPs and it runs better with less RAM.
The revers of what Im used to :silly:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could check RAM usage on iOS? (Genuine question, not a poke at Apple )

Always let android handle itself. I have used android since the HTC G1 and android keeps getting better and better managing itself. Don't use apps that help with the android system. They make it harder for the managing to do what it has to do. Let android do it.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

A memory leak is when a single app (or multiple apps) leak into memory. This would mean if you look in RAM, app1 is using 10MB. Then an hour later app1 is using 40MB, then an hour later, app1 is using 100MB. Its only a leak if the particular app is grabbing more memory and never releasing it.
What is described here is just RAM being used, which as already covered by everyone else, is a good thing
-----------------------
Sent via tapatalk.
I do NOT reply to support queries over PM. Please keep support queries to the Q&A section, so that others may benefit

As posted, let Android manage the RAM. It has become quite the mature operating system over the past few years. It will know when to remove an app from RAM when it needs to free some up.
As a general point of why you basically want less free RAM: RAM uses the same amount of power whether you have 2gb free or 1 byte free. The entire stick is powered on. When you cold-boot an app, it spins up the CPU to do what it needs to do to load it into memory (compile it in the case of a JIT compiler, etc). After you do what you want to do in that app, it's fine to keep in RAM. Again, that RAM is going to either be useful, or sit there empty, doing nothing. The advantage happens when/if you want to access that app in the future. If you offloaded it, the CPU has to spin up again (which uses power) and load it into memory. If it's still in memory, it just looks at the pointers in memory and addresses it. And this is where Android has matured and knows how to handle itself: when you leave all your apps open, open another one, and reach your RAM limit, Android knows which app to offload. I don't know the exact formula, but I'm betting time last accessed is a huge (heck, it could be the only; I simply don't know) factor.
And as @rootSU mentioned, this is all assuming normal behavior. If you do actually have a memory leak, that is bad, but you are describing normal RAM usage.

[Q] Nexus 5: set the size of devices as you want

Hello,everyone!
I have a Nexus 5 whose ram size is about 2GB. Now, I want to change the ram size to 1G or anything else below 2.
Do you have any idea? If so, please share with us now. I'll appreciate that very much!
Someone told me that I might try the bootloader, but I havn't figured that out yet. Please help me out! Thanks again!

Hi,
But... Why do you want to reduce your RAM size????
RAM is allocated to user apps, system, GPU, etc... it's possible (for some devices) to re allocate the RAM for the GPU (a little more) for example at kernel level, but here you want to re allocate 1 Gb of RAM, seriously? Why? Even if it was possible, here what do you expect?
For other devices with an unlock bootloader it's the system partition size (I don't remember the exact name) you re allocate to be used for the user (apps), maybe it will be possible in the future for the N5?
But here, honestly, I don't uderstand why you want that

viking37 said:
Hi,
But... Why do you want to reduce your RAM size????
RAM is allocated to user apps, system, GPU, etc... it's possible (for some devices) to re allocate the RAM for the GPU (a little more) for example at kernel level, but here you want to re allocate 1 Gb of RAM, seriously? Why? Even if it was possible, here what do you expect?
For other devices with an unlock bootloader it's the system partition size (I don't remember the exact name) you re allocate to be used for the user (apps), maybe it will be possible in the future for the N5?
But here, honestly, I don't uderstand why you want that
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Firstly, thanks for your response!
Now I'm doing a series of experiments on swap partition. For the ram size of N5 is a little too large to make use of the swap area I created.
So I want to make the ram size small enough so that the device could run out of memory and would swap things out to emmc(swap area).
Have I made it clear to you? Looking forward to your reply!:fingers-crossed:

Hi,
Yes it's a little clearer, maybe, but why do you want that? What kind of experimentation are you doing? It's totaly counter productive...
Some apps like Ram Manager for example (Play Store) can create a swap file, there is also some kernel like Faux123 with, grrr don't remember exactly the name, something like Zramswap or... not sure...
But you don't reduce the RAM size, on 2Gb, you have about 1,8 Gb free for the system, apps and that's all, you can't reduce this part. At the end with a clean and light system booted you have about 1,6 Gb free. What you want will virtualy increase the RAM size (with the swap file).
In any case with the app above, use it to create and use your swap file, open one or two "big" apps, a game and you will see that it is used...
Tweak also the OOM settings to run Out Of Memory earlier, see Google.
You want reduce the amount of free RAM not reduce the RAM size. For me it's not the same thing.
Or I don't understand again, and I'm sorry. But I don't see the point...
Sent from my LG-D802 using xda premium

viking37 said:
Hi,
Yes it's a little clearer, maybe, but why do you want that? What kind of experimentation are you doing? It's totaly counter productive...
Some apps like Ram Manager for example (Play Store) can create a swap file, there is also some kernel like Faux123 with, grrr don't remember exactly the name, something like Zramswap or... not sure...
But you don't reduce the RAM size, on 2Gb, you have about 1,8 Gb free for the system, apps and that's all, you can't reduce this part. At the end with a clean and light system booted you have about 1,6 Gb free. What you want will virtualy increase the RAM size (with the swap file).
In any case with the app above, use it to create and use your swap file, open one or two "big" apps, a game and you will see that it is used...
Tweak also the OOM settings to run Out Of Memory earlier, see Google.
You want reduce the amount of free RAM not reduce the RAM size. For me it's not the same thing.
Or I don't understand again, and I'm sorry. But I don't see the point...
Sent from my LG-D802 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, actually it's quite simple. The Nexus 5's RAM size is too large(ok, it's about 1.8Gb free or less). Even After I have run a lot of apps, there are still serval hundred Mb RAM free(Maybe I can run more apps, but it doesn't worth. Or I should choose another device with smaller RAM size. But that's out of my budget). Yes, as you said I want to reduce the amount of free RAM. But reducing the RAM size can also work for me.
All in all, I want to see the benefit of swap area through the experimnt?
Ok, my friend, you have got that right? It's ok, if you still feel confused. I'm glad to tall with you!

Cant you increase swappiness?
-----------------------
Sent via tapatalk.
I do NOT reply to support queries over PM. Please keep support queries to the Q&A section, so that others may benefit

rootSU said:
Cant you increase swappiness?
-----------------------
Sent via tapatalk.
I do NOT reply to support queries over PM. Please keep support queries to the Q&A section, so that others may benefit
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you mean?
Just now, I found a way out! Make large enough ramdisk in RAM. In that way, the RAM decresed!
Thank you all the same!

zxcoolid said:
What do you mean?
Just now, I found a way out! Make large enough ramdisk in RAM. In that way, the RAM decresed!
Thank you all the same!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For future info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swappiness

Just use scavenger pro and slight of hand pro. Then you never run out of memory and you can swap apps really fast!!!!
Sent from my SGH-M919 using xda app-developers app

rootSU said:
For future info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swappiness
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your message!