Develop Bugs

Memory, Memory, Memory... WTF?

Hi All
I did bring this up before and on another thread, but thought it may be worth some collective advice for everyone.
For the TP2....
The specified RAM is 288mb - TOTAL
The specified ROM is 512mb - TOTAL
My TP2 shows only 188mb of RAM in 'total' (not 288) and 277mb of 'total' Storage which is well away from the specified 512mb.
With a working RAM total of just 188mb, with 100+mb in use (for the OS + TFlo - which is a bloody lot!) with no apps running at all, this leaves less than 100mb to actually 'run' apps and gives the user 'out of memory' issues if 2 large apps (like GPS and Photo Gallery are trying to run) - check yours by all means...
My TP2 often shows over 130mb in use (just for the OS and TF) - with no apps running at all - which leaves less that 60mb to run apps!! (There is a big problem with this device globally, or maybe just mine).
Unless i have the wrong end of the stick in my understanding completely (and i might!), this should be what we get - 512mb storage and 288mb RAM (each as totals).
I note that the RAM difference has been mentioned in another thread, and a fix from HTC is available only for the Hong Kong version to date. Someone suggested that it only relates to what is displayed, not what is actually in use, but with the above info, this seems not to be the case as the memory is very much affected.
Can someone shed some more experienced light on this whole memory thing...?
I think that the OS + TFlo using 100mb's or more of available RAM is waaay too high. My old Dopod 838 Pro, with WinMo 6.1 + SPB Mobile Shell 2.1.5 running uses less than 30mb of RAM.
So what the hell is going on here...?
Cheers
Jabberoo

jabberoo said:
Hi All
I did bring this up before and on another thread, but thought it may be worth some collective advice for everyone.
For the TP2....
The specified RAM is 288mb - TOTAL
The specified ROM is 512mb - TOTAL
My TP2 shows only 188mb of RAM in 'total' (not 288) and 277mb of 'total' Storage which is well away from the specified 512mb.
With a working RAM total of just 188mb, with 100+mb in use (for the OS + TFlo - which is a bloody lot!) with no apps running at all, this leaves less than 100mb to actually 'run' apps and gives the user 'out of memory' issues if 2 large apps (like GPS and Photo Gallery are trying to run) - check yours by all means...
My TP2 often shows over 130mb in use (just for the OS and TF) - with no apps running at all - which leaves less that 60mb to run apps!! (There is a big problem with this device globally, or maybe just mine).
Unless i have the wrong end of the stick in my understanding completely (and i might!), this should be what we get - 512mb storage and 288mb RAM (each as totals).
I note that the RAM difference has been mentioned in another thread, and a fix from HTC is available only for the Hong Kong version to date. Someone suggested that it only relates to what is displayed, not what is actually in use, but with the above info, this seems not to be the case as the memory is very much affected.
Can someone shed some more experienced light on this whole memory thing...?
I think that the OS + TFlo using 100mb's or more of available RAM is waaay too high. My old Dopod 838 Pro, with WinMo 6.1 + SPB Mobile Shell 2.1.5 running uses less than 30mb of RAM.
So what the hell is going on here...?
Cheers
Jabberoo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
did you check your device information -> hardware ?
RAM should say 288 and ROM 512, if RAM is 256, upgrade your TP2 ROM
if you're looking the RAM and ROM size in the memory settings, you are looking at the wrong channel mate...
cheers!

Damn, mine says 256. But I have no idea how to upgrade.
I posted a separte thread on this but unfortunately haven't had responses. In Device Information, my ROM version shows as 1.14.161.5 (50207) WWE. I have a Vodafone TP2 which I got on a business contract about 10 days.
Everyone else on this forum that I have seen reports ROM version as 1.19.x.x
Do I have a real old version? Where should I be looking for a ROM update? There's only a couple of hotfixes listed on the HP site, no ROMs, and I can't find anything on the Vodafone site yet.
Any info much appreciated!

HTC put a new ROM on their site just 2 or 3 days ago, which specifically fixes the 288MB RAM size, but they also say you may have to wait until your provider makes this available. The HTC support site also has instructions on how to load the new ROM.

piet8stevens said:
HTC put a new ROM on their site just 2 or 3 days ago, which specifically fixes the 288MB RAM size, but they also say you may have to wait until your provider makes this available. The HTC support site also has instructions on how to load the new ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HTC put a new ROM on their SEA site, it doesn't appear to be suitable for phones from other regions, let alone phones from the network operators :-(
Gordon

gunggu said:
did you check your device information -> hardware ?
RAM should say 288 and ROM 512, if RAM is 256, upgrade your TP2 ROM
if you're looking the RAM and ROM size in the memory settings, you are looking at the wrong channel mate...
cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, what do you mean..?
My device info says RAM size 256mb/should be 288 - so i am down 32mb. In memory it says 188 total (not 256), with 120mb currently in use (no running apps) - this leaves just 60mb or sometimes less, for running any installed apps.
This can't surely be right, can it? - Where is all that RAM gone, what is being used and for what? Explanation please....
Flash size in device info says 512mb, in memory it says 277.72 total - where is the rest of the 512...?
Confused i am.
Why is Winmo + TFlo using over 120mb (no other running apps) on my TP2...?
Why did my old Dopod 838 Pro use way less memory to run WinMo 6.1 + SPB Mobile Shell 2.15 + a Theme over that...?
Can anyone noob it out for me, i just don't get it.
Cheers
Jabberoo

jabberoo said:
Confused i am.
Why is Winmo + TFlo using over 120mb (no other running apps) on my TP2...?
Why did my old Dopod 838 Pro use way less memory to run WinMo 6.1 + SPB Mobile Shell 2.15 + a Theme over that...?
Can anyone noob it out for me, i just don't get it.
Cheers
Jabberoo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With regard to winmo+tflo using a large amount of ram compared to older devices you need to look at resolution (for the most part). The Dopod is a QVGA device (like my Titan) and renders at 320X240 pixels. The TP2 is a WVGA device, so already needs 4 times the effective memory for rendering the screen (simplified, but generally the case).
I would say turn off TouchFlo and go back to mobile shell if the memory is really running that low. As soon as rom cooking gets in swing people will cut down a lot of the fat that runs under stock roms.

nimnox said:
With regard to winmo+tflo using a large amount of ram compared to older devices you need to look at resolution (for the most part). The Dopod is a QVGA device (like my Titan) and renders at 320X240 pixels. The TP2 is a WVGA device, so already needs 4 times the effective memory for rendering the screen (simplified, but generally the case).
I would say turn off TouchFlo and go back to mobile shell if the memory is really running that low. As soon as rom cooking gets in swing people will cut down a lot of the fat that runs under stock roms.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanx for the advice (screen res makes sense, but geez!)
Out of interest, i turned off TFlo, uses a stable 92mb of RAM for the OS, with TFlo on, after soft reset it starts at 73mb and then climbs to as high as 130mb in use (no running apps).
I ran this issue past HTC here in Oz and they had no answers for the RAM use, apart from saying that using 120 to 130mb (with no apps running) was certainly not correct.
A Mate has a TP2 as well and his does the same (both Singapore models).
Going to try the new SEA upgrade which suits my model, who knows, may be the fix cuz it seems TFlo is perhaps the culprit...??
I still don't get why memory says i have just 188mb of RAM total though and just 277mb of total storage?
Cheers
Jabberoo

jabberoo said:
Thanx for the advice (screen res makes sense, but geez!)
Out of interest, i turned off TFlo, uses a stable 92mb of RAM for the OS, with TFlo on, after soft reset it starts at 73mb and then climbs to as high as 130mb in use (no running apps).
I ran this issue past HTC here in Oz and they had no answers for the RAM use, apart from saying that using 120 to 130mb (with no apps running) was certainly not correct.
A Mate has a TP2 as well and his does the same (both Singapore models).
Going to try the new SEA upgrade which suits my model, who knows, may be the fix cuz it seems TFlo is perhaps the culprit...??
I still don't get why memory says i have just 188mb of RAM total though and just 277mb of total storage?
Cheers
Jabberoo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/11/17/494177.aspx should explain things pretty well, and if you want even more detail about how the system uses what you can see, check out http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/11/29/498154.aspx

jabberoo said:
I still don't get why memory says i have just 188mb of RAM total though and just 277mb of total storage?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Got the same issue, which I only just noticed when I saw this thread. Device info only shows 256MB ram and Memory says 188MB.
Not going to bother doing the ROM upgrade just for the RAM. Gonna wait for a decent ROM to come out to justify the effort of installing all the programs etc etc.

nimnox said:
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/11/17/494177.aspx should explain things pretty well, and if you want even more detail about how the system uses what you can see, check out http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/11/29/498154.aspx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info nimnox...
I took a look and it did offer some explanation. I think that this HTC device, using around 190 odd megabytes to run is ludirous. The general public spec list for ROM at 512mb (when it really isn't) certainly gives the impression that it has this much available as usable storage is a bit of a fluffy area too.
Essentially, the device offers a little over half of the spec in actual usable storage and about one third in actual usable RAM.
I believe this is shamefully misleading (most folks are not overly tech savvy) as it represents an extreme lack of clarity and understanding.
I did a reflash with the SEA update ROM, the RAM spec increased to 288mb (from the displayed 256), but did little in the way of adding available RAM (still at 188mb). I am hoping it will clear up some of the other problems being reported with this device.
Thanks to all for the advice.
Cheers
Jabberoo

Personally I don't think it's that misleading.
People might not be that tech savvy, but these aren't your average phones.
When you buy a computer with a 250GB hard drive, you don't get upset because part of that is taken up by the OS or the backup/restore partition. Granted, in this case it's proportionately a lot more, but it's also understood that most of your memory needs will be covered by a microSD card. No one advertises just the available memory. It's like hard drives' GB, they measure them as 1000MB and not 1024 as it should be (which means the computer will always detect less). And as for the meomry reserved by the system, we see things like this with Windows Vista and other OS's.
well, just my two cents (I am not saying it's not irritating to have all that memory unavailable, just that it's common practice and therefore not that misleading as many people might be used to it).

jabberoo said:
I did a reflash with the SEA update ROM, the RAM spec increased to 288mb (from the displayed 256), but did little in the way of adding available RAM (still at 188mb).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wait.. the hotfix worked for you? or are you talking about something else?

agree, its normal in a sort of ways.....the more capability your phone has, the more memory it would use, the more complex an application is, the more ram it will consume.
btw, the 256 false RAM info is just a false info, so even if you upgrade the ROM, it doesnt mean you will get an additional amount of RAM, it only fix the info from 256 to 288 MB.
the manufacturer already states the truth: physical RAM of 288 MB and ROM of 512 MB. thats why i said, you should look into the device info, not the memory settings. In the memory, it will only show total of RAM and ROM available to be used when the device is turned on.

I have the same confusion:
I like to put everything into the phone bringing with me everywhere, including all kind of software and all kind of materials, photo,music, e-book, home video etc.
if the ROM and RAM are not big enough, I will always be worried about them when install software or copy materials. Even it still does not run out off memory, but I do worry about it all the time.
although it can be expanded by TF card, however, many software can't run on TF card and the read/write speed of the TF card is slower than the main memory.
If the main memory is big enough, I can install all of the software into main memory and copy all of the materials into TF card. At that condition, I can easily change TF card to get anymore new contents.
My last device is O2 flame, I do feel comfortable with its big Flash ROM but its RAM still too small and also many other shortcoming.
I ever think of N97 for the built in 32G memory, however, I am used to WM system.
I ever think of samsung i908 for the built in 8G memory, however there is several week points in its specification.
I do not understand why HTC build in so small memory in such a highend model while its competitor,such as Apple,Nokia,Sumsung, are goint toward another way.
more details may refer to: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=542322

Whoops, erroneous posting, please ignore!

net_walker said:
I have the same confusion:
I like to put everything into the phone bringing with me everywhere, including all kind of software and all kind of materials, photo,music, e-book, home video etc.
if the ROM and RAM are not big enough, I will always be worried about them when install software or copy materials. Even it still does not run out off memory, but I do worry about it all the time.
although it can be expanded by TF card, however, many software can't run on TF card and the read/write speed of the TF card is slower than the main memory.
If the main memory is big enough, I can install all of the software into main memory and copy all of the materials into TF card. At that condition, I can easily change TF card to get anymore new contents.
My last device is O2 flame, I do feel comfortable with its big Flash ROM but its RAM still too small and also many other shortcoming.
I ever think of N97 for the built in 32G memory, however, I am used to WM system.
I ever think of samsung i908 for the built in 8G memory, however there is several week points in its specification.
I do not understand why HTC build in so small memory in such a highend model while its competitor,such as Apple,Nokia,Sumsung, are goint toward another way.
more details may refer to: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=542322
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My friend, the advantage of having a device with a micro sd or mini sd expansion slot is that it enables you to have the amount of storage that you want and even with the possibility to change it on the fly, like for example carrying around two 32Gb memory cards and using them as you like (one for gps and one for music for example). Now tell me how do you do this when the mobile has a built in memory of 8Gb or 32Gb but no storage expansion? It's a matter of choice.
Regarding the execution memory, it's more than enough, apple allows you one application per time, so no example here, nokia you can have multiple application running like in windows mobile, the trick is to make it cleverly, otherwise your mobile will be slow (either nokia or any other mobile suffer from this).
My suggestion:
Get a couple of memory sticks, have your software installed in one of them, then copy it over to the other, this way you have your software everywhere. Then use on memory stick for gps and/or photos and another for music.
It's only a matter of wanting to do things and not waiting for them to happen ;-)
cheers

Hello everyone,
It's been a long time since I didn't come on the forum, and I am interested in buying a replacement for my Hermes, and the Rhodium is the perfect candidate!
As I got interest in it, I just saw that today was released a rom upgrade dealing with the memory issue for EU phones:
http://www.htc.com/fr/SupportViewNews.aspx?dl_id=629&news_id=219
They also say to wait for update from your provider. Hope this can help.
See you after I buy my new toy.
Toni

Lyian said:
Wait.. the hotfix worked for you? or are you talking about something else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
Yes, installed fine, but did nothing to aid the working RAM available, just makes the hardware info show 288 instead of 256mb. It is a full ROM replacement, not a hotfix per se.
It did not fix the Keyboard backlight not working properly and a bunch of other things, infact, i can't see that it fixed much at all.
My device right now is running 128.28mb of RAM (in use) with no apps running at all. This leaves a meagre 59.33mb available to actually run my apps (manin memory or sd installed).
This is just ridiculous.....
Often, I have tried in the past to run IGO 8 (Sat Nav) off my sd card and it won't start because of a lack of available RAM to run it.
Soft reset and it will load.
Did i say this is ridiculous..?
Essentially, of the available 288mb of RAM, 100mb disappears straight away doing 'something', a further 188mb is in use presumably with the OS and TFlo, leaving the user with less than a meagre 60mb.
As for it being misleading - i don't recall any advertising advice, anything printed on the box, anything at all alerting me to the fact that the bulk of the RAM will be taken up with 'processes'....
Consider your PC, adding 8gb of RAM and having the OS taking more than 2 thirds of it to just run. Then all your apps not running because of a lack of available RAM. It really doesn't make much sense, does it?
The hope is that Minmo 6.5 will use much less to run, we'll see.....
Cheers
Jabberoo

jabberoo said:
...
My device right now is running 128.28mb of RAM (in use) with no apps running at all. This leaves a meagre 59.33mb available to actually run my apps (manin memory or sd installed). ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Huh? Only with 59.33mb available to run your apps? That is very strange. I have 84mb++ when nothing is running, i only get that amount when I have apps like S2U2, secondtoday, and other apps etc running. I even can launch Igo8 with that amount of mem with others apps were running.
I know when i have S2U2 running, it will slowly takes a lots of memory and sometime it even goes to 50mb++, but I used the cleanRAM to clear it up.
In your case... Very strange indeed.

6.5 Insane RAM usage?

I have tried multiple 6.5 ROMs including multiple EnergyROMs and even the official HTC 6.5 ROM and they all have the same problem. Very high memory usage. It just keeps climbing. After one day of pretty normal application usage, I'm at only 40MB free. And having Windows Mobile close things when there is still 20MB free doesn't help either.
gwes.exe starts at below 15MB but blows up to 30MB. What is taking those 15MB? Nothing extra is running then after a soft reset.
Is every 6.5 ROM like this?
Also can I change the limit to when Windows Mobile starts closing programs? It seems that it is set to a percent not a fixed amount of megabytes.

petard said:
I have tried multiple 6.5 ROMs including multiple EnergyROMs and even the official HTC 6.5 ROM and they all have the same problem. Very high memory usage. It just keeps climbing. After one day of pretty normal application usage, I'm at only 40MB free. And having Windows Mobile close things when there is still 20MB free doesn't help either.
gwes.exe starts at below 15MB but blows up to 30MB. What is taking those 15MB? Nothing extra is running then after a soft reset.
Is every 6.5 ROM like this?
Also can I change the limit to when Windows Mobile starts closing programs? It seems that it is set to a percent not a fixed amount of megabytes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should start by saying that I'm no expert, but this is my experience:
I think that some ROMs have better memory usage than others...but this definitely is a commonly-reported problem with lots/most ROMs.
With the current ROM I'm running the memory stays high (>70%) even after a Level-3 clean with cleanRAM -- only a soft-reset releases it.
I've been running WM6.5.1+ ROMs for the past few weeks, mostly Sense 2.5 versions...and I don't remember if milder ROMs are better. I have Activesync (and data) constantly on/connected to my Exchange Server, so maybe that makes it worse -- don't know.
I guess I'm just assuming/hoping that later/more-refined builds will have better memory-management...until then I just put up with it...and soft-reset when I feel like it.

Does anyone know what specifically causes this? I tried pretty much the same EnergyROM on both my Rhodium and Raphael (when I had it) and the Raphael didn't have any of the memory problems the Rhodium has. Same OS version.
Edit: Found this on ppcgeeks, going to try it out.
HKLM\Software\HTC\ResProxy
"ShareMemSize"
Change this value to zero
ResProxy is HTC's method of "Pre-Caching" your applications on the phone, therefore loading times are faster when opening, etc. It just allocates a chunk of your memory for this feature. Problem is, after about a day of not soft-resetting your phone, your idling at 90% or so.
Changing it to 0 will set this as DYNAMIC. So instead of a bunch of pre-set apps being precached IMMEDIATELY, it does it dynamically. It will only raise the memory for the apps that you are currently using, etc.
Keep in mind, changing this REG does not affect speed in terms of opening applications,etc. Performance stays identical.
You will not notice IMMEDIATELY that this tweak has worked. You will notice later in the way when you notice your device won't idle higher than 65-70% usage anymore, and won't even get as high as 90% unless your running mad software on it lol.
Enjoy!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It makes a huge difference in RAM available when the phone first boots, yet things like the album and calculator are still launching instantly. What useless stuff does this thing do?

petard said:
Does anyone know what specifically causes this? I tried pretty much the same EnergyROM on both my Rhodium and Raphael (when I had it) and the Raphael didn't have any of the memory problems the Rhodium has. Same OS version.
Edit: Found this on ppcgeeks, going to try it out.
It makes a huge difference in RAM available when the phone first boots, yet things like the album and calculator are still launching instantly. What useless stuff does this thing do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so where is it that i need to go to do this at ???

petard said:
I have tried multiple 6.5 ROMs including multiple EnergyROMs and even the official HTC 6.5 ROM and they all have the same problem. Very high memory usage. It just keeps climbing. After one day of pretty normal application usage, I'm at only 40MB free. And having Windows Mobile close things when there is still 20MB free doesn't help either.
gwes.exe starts at below 15MB but blows up to 30MB. What is taking those 15MB? Nothing extra is running then after a soft reset.
Is every 6.5 ROM like this?
Also can I change the limit to when Windows Mobile starts closing programs? It seems that it is set to a percent not a fixed amount of megabytes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Flash a ROM that cares about your memory.
Disabling push internet and resproxy helps in stock rom, but the memory usage will be still high.

MCbrian said:
I should start by saying that I'm no expert, but this is my experience:
I think that some ROMs have better memory usage than others...but this definitely is a commonly-reported problem with lots/most ROMs.
With the current ROM I'm running the memory stays high (>70%) even after a Level-3 clean with cleanRAM -- only a soft-reset releases it.
I've been running WM6.5.1+ ROMs for the past few weeks, mostly Sense 2.5 versions...and I don't remember if milder ROMs are better. I have Activesync (and data) constantly on/connected to my Exchange Server, so maybe that makes it worse -- don't know.
I guess I'm just assuming/hoping that later/more-refined builds will have better memory-management...until then I just put up with it...and soft-reset when I feel like it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my opinion the WM6.5.x branch uses less memory comparing to WM6.5 branch. However, this is nothing comparing to what a chef is able to manage.

petard said:
gwes.exe starts at below 15MB but blows up to 30MB. What is taking those 15MB? Nothing extra is running then after a soft reset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn off the WM6.5 lockscreen, it uses a lot of memory as gwes.exe. I may provide you a cab if you wish.
petard said:
Is every 6.5 ROM like this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No.
petard said:
Also can I change the limit to when Windows Mobile starts closing programs? It seems that it is set to a percent not a fixed amount of megabytes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, of course. It's WM, not an iPhone. Have a look here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=637771

Jackos said:
Turn off the WM6.5 lockscreen, it uses a lot of memory as gwes.exe. I may provide you a cab if you wish
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
could you please explain how to turn off wm6.5 lockscreen ?
and also what is gwes.exe what is it for & can it be turned off as well ?

If you are still using Energy ROM, using one of the Start Menu replacement options yields big RAM savings. But aside from that, Energy is not "lightweight" in the RAM department. As Jackos suggested, you might try other ROMs.

Doo Doo said:
and also what is gwes.exe what is it for & can it be turned off as well ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
gwes.exe controls all the window elements. Basically, it is the GUI.

Vic1307 said:
so where is it that i need to go to do this at ???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No offense, but if you don't recognize those as registry keys and values, you're not ready to be messing with this stuff.

Doo Doo said:
could you please explain how to turn off wm6.5 lockscreen ?
and also what is gwes.exe what is it for & can it be turned off as well ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try this cab.
The gwes.exe cannot be turned off, just like Miami_Son wrote, it's managing the whole GUI.

Miami_Son said:
No offense, but if you don't recognize those as registry keys and values, you're not ready to be messing with this stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True. My suggestion for him is to choose a custom rom.

Jackos said:
Try this cab
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
could you please explain what exactly this cab does, will i not have a lockscreen at all or what ?
just wanted to know before i installed it

Doo Doo said:
could you please explain what exactly this cab does, will i not have a lockscreen at all or what ?
just wanted to know before i installed it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just a simple cab that disables the lockscreen in registry. Changes only one registry key.

a simple way to get rid of lag (most of it)

hi everyone, i'm no expert on phone, so don't kill me if i sound stupid
been using my galaxy S for about 4 months now. and yes it does lag compare to the iphone, or other HTC phones. so i been trying to find out, what's going on? why is my top end phone lagging? here's what i found:
1) when does it start to lag badly?
i installed system panel which gives me a nice list of active and inactive apps, and how much free ram i have left. the phone ALWAYS starts to lag like crazy when ram gets below 60mb. this is a problem - samsung is not giving us enough free ram to play with as once we run a few apps (market, internet especially), we're reaching the 60mb point already. when the phone gets to the 60mb mark it tries to manage the apps by closing some less important ones. but it lags BADLY while doing so.
what's gonna happen is the phone gonna get into this never ending cycle of closing apps and laggin as it's stuck in around the 50mb-60mb mark.
i can solve this by going to system panel and closing all inactive apps. then the ram is gonna go back to around 140mb. however after opening a few apps, once again it goes back to below 60mb and the lag starts again.
2) autokiller
guys been saying autokiller is great and they go with the aggressive settings. i tried it and it made the phone worse. why? because instead of killing apps at the 60mb mark it starts killing apps even sooner! that's wasting battery, wasting free ram, and making the phone even slower. we don't have enough free ram to begin with, so we should make max use of it. here's how i do it:
1) root the phone. install autokiller from the market.
2) instead of using high aggressive settings, use the LOWEST settings. i use advanced mode and then enter all values to 8mb only.
now it is awesome!! the phone never lags until you get it down to around the 20mb mark. you now have around 40mb of extra ram to use (of course autokiller does use some ram but no big deal). the lag starts much latter. u may not think 40mb is a lot but it is in practice!
if you dont believe me, you can try it. it may or may not work for u, but it's definitely working for me. of course, once the ram falls below 20mb, it may be a good idea to close some inactive apps yourself, LOL
but really, samsung should give us at least 100mb more free ram, i can't believe i even have to do this!

Well you point one issue that lag happens, but almost every custom kernel/Rom use memory tweak that Make you around 40MB more to start with.
And yes autokiller don't work good.
The program in the phone is the best to use.
The main lag issue is the filesystem.
Even these can be fixed with many different kernel/Rom.
Sent from GT-I9000 jpo. My own kernel for z4mod and with 341MB Ram

i don't disagree with what you're saying. but a few things to add:
1) i have not applied lag fix myself but i have a friend who has. i dont feel his phone is much quicker than mine in reality. also, his phone crashed after a few weeks and he had to do a hard reset. what we REALLY need is more ram. if we have lots of ram, who cares about the file system? we don't even need any swap from the file system. just let everything stays in ram where it is the quickest.
2) i'm not using any custom roms. if custom roms give me extra 40mb, and then i adjust the auto killer setting to low, that gives me 80mb extra to play with. great.
autokiller DOES work good i feel if you're doing what i'm saying. maybe u have already tried what i'm doing, i don't know, but if you have not, then i highly recommend you to try it.

like i said i'm no expert on this, but autokiller is so easy to install and adjust, and that i feel anyone here can use it
maybe flashing custom firmware is easy to do, i haven't tried it, but it sounds complicated to do for me, and i don't want really big changes on my phone, i want it to be extremely stable and safe as i use it a lot for business. i don't really want to risk any data or risk reinstalling stuff.
so maybe i sound uneducated but like i said i suggest everyone to try this method if they're newbies and don't wanna do too much

I can confirm that setting autokiller to low settings makes the phone feel faster than on high settings, I tried that some time ago.
But lag will still be present.
As mentioned by the poster this is a low risk, low skill method of improving the phone and is easy to do for all.
For all others I recommend the JFS lagfix. It is by far the lagfreest experience out there!

i have a buddy with a moto milestone and his phone lags just the same as ours. his phone has even less free ram than ours and so his is constantly lagging. sometimes he can't even take a phone call while listening to music becoz his phone only has like 50mb of free ram after starting up. so, just a point of reference - our galaxy is crippled with just not enough free ram, i heard stories of nexus one having 200+ free ram after startup and that's why they dont lag like us, so at the end of the day we're fighting a losing batter becoz samsung didn't give us a good enough phone

Mycorrhiza said:
I can confirm that setting autokiller to low settings makes the phone feel faster than on high settings, I tried that some time ago.
But lag will still be present.
As mentioned by the poster this is a low risk, low skill method of improving the phone and is easy to do for all.
For all others I recommend the JFS lagfix. It is by far the lagfreest experience out there!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank u and i may try the jfs fix, but i'm just worried about something happening to the phone becoz of what happened to my buddy who lost all his data (i can't remember which lag fix he used though), i always have this thinking that if the lag fix are 100% safe, then why aren't samsung doing it? samsung are paying tons of money to the programmers i'm sure and you would think they know how to do it too? but they choose not to, and there must be a good reason why.

You have a very good point supraman123! I realized it was the memory management that made the phone go crazy around the 60MB mark (you'll see the kswapd0 process go crazy), but never realized Autokiller could help us lower that mark. I hope this works, would be one of the best and easiest fixes for the SGS.

supraman123 said:
thank u and i may try the jfs fix, but i'm just worried about something happening to the phone becoz of what happened to my buddy who lost all his data (i can't remember which lag fix he used though), i always have this thinking that if the lag fix are 100% safe, then why aren't samsung doing it? samsung are paying tons of money to the programmers i'm sure and you would think they know how to do it too? but they choose not to, and there must be a good reason why.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If we know the amount of time and money Samsung spend on developing RFS...

So wait, the phone is faster if the minfree is set higher than default, and the phone is faster if the minfree is set lower than default... holy ****!
I applaud Samsung for figuring out the one setting that makes the phone suck and use that as default. Way to go, Sammy, way to go.

I know what u are talking about. I think it was an ext4 fix. All other lag fixes I know of don't share that problem.
Also with root there are many ways to secure your data prior to installing a lag fix.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Mycorrhiza said:
I know what u are talking about. I think it was an ext4 fix. All other lag fixes I know of don't share that problem.
Also with root there are many ways to secure your data prior to installing a lag fix.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi, thank u, can u tell me how to secure the data? or u have any good links to show me? thanks

jjwa said:
You have a very good point supraman123! I realized it was the memory management that made the phone go crazy around the 60MB mark (you'll see the kswapd0 process go crazy), but never realized Autokiller could help us lower that mark. I hope this works, would be one of the best and easiest fixes for the SGS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i hope it will work good for u also

xmonkee said:
So wait, the phone is faster if the minfree is set higher than default, and the phone is faster if the minfree is set lower than default... holy ****!
I applaud Samsung for figuring out the one setting that makes the phone suck and use that as default. Way to go, Sammy, way to go.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i'm quite disappointed at the ram issue also. coming from a n97 mini which seriously lacks ram, i was hoping by going for a high end phone like the galaxy, i aint gonna have to worry about ram and closing apps manually all day, however in reality the Galaxy aint much better than the n97 at multi tasking. of course, it's far better than the n97 at everything else.

I totally agree with OP on this one!
But Autokiller is not the only app that can fix the lag.
One Click Lag Fix 2.0 can root your SGS (Eclair only), lagfix it (with EXT2) and it can even do some additional tweaks like minfree (same as the Autokiller app) and fix the Scheduler.
With minfree Samsung put these values in "/sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree":
"2048,4096,5120,5632,6144,7172"
But best is:
Aggressive: "1536,2048,4096,21000,23000,25000"
or
Strict: "1536,2048,4096,15360,17920,20480" - I prefer this one

btw when you've a lot of ram free the ram is mostly used to cache file system reads ^.^
this explains that a little

Im using the 341MB of free ram so that gives me an instant 40MB ontop of the stock kernel, never seen the phone had less than 60mb free with this kernel, with my usage it doesnt even go under 95mb free.

I am also running one of those kernels that gives extra RAM. And I have all my partitions Ext4 lagfixed. But my phone still seems quite slow at times. My RAM was above 80MB free at that time though, so probably not related to any minfree/Autokiller thing at all. Which means there are way more causes to get rid of I guess.

I don`t know how you guys have problems with the lag, I use the stock samsung JPO, not even deodexed with zankinz 23 kernel and NO-RFS all ext4 lagfix and the phone is running perfectly, no lag whatsoever, the RAM is somewhere near 220 mb free after reboot. After deodexing and optimizing the apk`s the phone should run even better. I was determined to change my SGS with a Desire HD, but now I`m really thinking of keeping it.

Using a lot of RAM... for some reason?

Ok so I was running an app to check on CPU speeds (unrelated research) when I noticed that this same app was saying I only had 340mb of RAM free...
This seemed a bit strange, considering this tablet has 3GB of RAM on board, and I'm not really running anything at the moment.
I went into the storage setting page, and looked at running processes, and it says that I am using 2.5GB of my RAM.
but... if I add up all the ram usage on all the running processes, it only adds up to about 500mb....
So what is using up the other 2gb?
If anyone has any suggestions, it'd be nice, as at the moment it seems I only have 1gb of usable RAM in this device...
EDIT:
Nevermind, I think I solved it... sort of. I found that the ram clearing button is in a different place than I remember, and I have managed to clear out some more space... though even after a full reset 1.5gb of ram is immediately being used. Seems a lot.
Though this is a stock rom etc so I suspect thats normal.

electrical tcfpain
nirurin said:
Ok so I was running an app to check on CPU speeds (unrelated research) when I noticed that this same app was saying I only had 340mb of RAM free...
This seemed a bit strange, considering this tablet has 3GB of RAM on board, and I'm not really running anything at the moment.
I went into the storage setting page, and looked at running processes, and it says that I am using 2.5GB of my RAM.
but... if I add up all the ram usage on all the running processes, it only adds up to about 500mb....
So what is using up the other 2gb?
If anyone has any suggestions, it'd be nice, as at the moment it seems I only have 1gb of usable RAM in this device...
EDIT:
Nevermind, I think I solved it... sort of. I found that the ram clearing button is in a different place than I remember, and I have managed to clear out some more space... though even after a full reset 1.5gb of ram is immediately being used. Seems a lot.
Though this is a stock rom etc so I suspect thats normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You probably aren't using all 2.5GB for actual running programs.
Windows 7 does a great job of managing money. If it has any unused memory it will hold often used programs or data in memory in case it's needed. If a running program needs that memory it's quickly shifted. Otherwise when you reopen that program you recently closed, it may load quickly from memory rather than from the drive. I suspect Android does things similar.
Modern systems programmers consider "free" memory to be wasted, so they put it to the best use they can anticipate. That gives you the benefit of all memory as often as possible. If they only allowed the memory to be used for what's needed right now, your Note would only have about 1 GB memory, and would be considerably slower.
It's a little like having the cook wash your car while waiting three hours for the turkey to cook. You get both the turkey and the car wash.

jnichols2 said:
You probably aren't using all 2.5GB for actual running programs.
Windows 7 does a great job of managing money. If it has any unused memory it will hold often used programs or data in memory in case it's needed. If a running program needs that memory it's quickly shifted. Otherwise when you reopen that program you recently closed, it may load quickly from memory rather than from the drive. I suspect Android does things similar.
Modern systems programmers consider "free" memory to be wasted, so they put it to the best use they can anticipate. That gives you the benefit of all memory as often as possible. If they only allowed the memory to be used for what's needed right now, your Note would only have about 1 GB memory, and would be considerably slower.
It's a little like having the cook wash your car while waiting three hours for the turkey to cook. You get both the turkey and the car wash.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm guessing you mean android, not windows 7
Though I imagine both do the same thing lol

nirurin said:
I'm guessing you mean android, not windows 7
Though I imagine both do the same thing lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used Windows 7 as an example because I know how it works. Like you, I imagine Android 4.3 does the same thing.

I was wondering about this as well. On my Note 2, when I clean the ram, it will go to 480-500 / 1.75g on this tab, ext I could get is 1.33/2.75.......
I went through and turned off a lot of the apps, it helped free up a little bit.
Does anyone have a list of the apps that are safe to turn off?
:beer:
Sent from my SM-P600 using Xparent Cyan Tapatalk 2

I have LTE version with Snapdragon and when I start the tablet, it uses about 890MB of 2,35GB available (yes, it has 3GB RAM, but graphic processor uses some of this RAM)... When it loads all apps to RAM (about 50 of them, we know android do this) and I start few apps(FB, Gmail, Chrome, Hangouts for example), I still use only about 1,3GB of RAM... So almost 1GB is still free

In Android having too much free ram is not a good thing. Let your apps use it, you don't have to worry about not having enough ram, OS manages it well for you.

ddavtian said:
In Android having too much free ram is not a good thing. Let your apps use it, you don't have to worry about not having enough ram, OS manages it well for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Android is a mobile OS which means that it can backup and restore not needed apps if necessary and the 3GB are only the runtime memory beside this it can use the whole internal memory for "running" apps. So long Android got enough memory it holds all apps in memory which speed up the whole device. Therefore it is positive that the Note use his whole 3GB memory and don't think that killing apps or free memory will be a good idea. It will slow your device and produce lags.

ddavtian said:
In Android having too much free ram is not a good thing. Let your apps use it, you don't have to worry about not having enough ram, OS manages it well for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Elim said:
+1
Android is a mobile OS which means that it can backup and restore not needed apps if necessary and the 3GB are only the runtime memory beside this it can use the whole internal memory for "running" apps. So long Android got enough memory it holds all apps in memory which speed up the whole device. Therefore it is positive that the Note use his whole 3GB memory and don't think that killing apps or free memory will be a good idea. It will slow your device and produce lags.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They are both right. Android is based on linux. Linux uses ram very effectively to cache apps and data to speed up your system. When something needs ram it removes a different app or data from the ram to keep moving. It works totally different from Windows. Check out this article.
http://www.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care

Every day since Android came out someone asks this question somewhere... Is Google offline?
Sent from my SM-P605 using XDA Premium HD app

If you want to change how your ram is managed, and you have root, you can use the v6 supercharger or a simple minfree setting app. V6 is in the developer section of the general android forum on this site. I've found that m ram fills up from cached apps. V6 will let you auto clear however often you want.

Too much ram consumption

So after installing viper one 2.1 on my m8, my phone is showing too much used ram. Even though there is no app running and also i force stopped them, my phone would still show 1.3 Gb consumed ram. Thanks

Well, that's just the viperone rom, you shouldn't be surprised. All the features included in this rom need ram.
Sent from HTC One m8, or maybe not anymore

mr.loverlover said:
Well, that's just the viperone rom, you shouldn't be surprised. All the features included in this rom need ram.
Sent from HTC One m8, or maybe not anymore
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats a bummer then. it looks really good, but no work then huh...

what are you "saving" the RAM for?
Its there to be used, and most developers will tell you that using as much ram as you have is a good thing, so no, its not a problem

wase4711 said:
what are you "saving" the RAM for?
Its there to be used, and most developers will tell you that using as much ram as you have is a good thing, so no, its not a problem
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Problem starts when I run few apps at a time. Game, browsing etc., the phone slows down, lags and all. I ain't no expert but what good is 2 Gb ram if It can't run apps smoothly.

there are few, if any complaints anywhere on the internet about this phone ever lagging; close your game when you are done with it, and see if that makes things better.

wase4711 said:
there are few, if any complaints anywhere on the internet about this phone ever lagging; close your game when you are done with it, and see if that makes things better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course it does get better.
So that means I have to run minimum apps

no just close your games when you aren't playing them..hardly means you have to run "minimum" apps..
I have about 9 programs running in the background, and I have over 400 mb of free ram on my phone..no lag at all

Use Greenify to hibernate a few high ram users. Especially games that don't close properly.
But as said already... Android/Linux is built to run with a lot of the ram used always. This makes task switching quick and normally doesn't create issue, quite the opposite... Usually makes things open quickly.
But large games that are kept in memory is probably not a great thing.
I Greenify all games and anything else that hurts performance or my battery. But that's a short list on my phone.

wase4711 said:
no just close your games when you aren't playing them..hardly means you have to run "minimum" apps..
I have about 9 programs running in the background, and I have over 400 mb of free ram on my phone..no lag at all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow. I ve just Internet Explorer running and I'm left with 320 mb

Browsers use more ram as their cache size increases. It's normal. Android will boot older cached apps out of memory when it needs more space.
Stop worrying and start enjoying your device. It's working as intended.

KJ said:
Use Greenify to hibernate a few high ram users. Especially games that don't close properly.
But as said already... Android/Linux is built to run with a lot of the ram used always. This makes task switching quick and normally doesn't create issue, quite the opposite... Usually makes things open quickly.
But large games that are kept in memory is probably not a great thing.
I Greenify all games and anything else that hurts performance or my battery. But that's a short list on my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll give it a go. Thanks

KJ said:
Use Greenify to hibernate a few high ram users. Especially games that don't close properly.
But as said already... Android/Linux is built to run with a lot of the ram used always. This makes task switching quick and normally doesn't create issue, quite the opposite... Usually makes things open quickly.
But large games that are kept in memory is probably not a great thing.
I Greenify all games and anything else that hurts performance or my battery. But that's a short list on my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone is much faster now. Thank you very much

KJ said:
Use Greenify to hibernate a few high ram users. Especially games that don't close properly.
But as said already... Android/Linux is built to run with a lot of the ram used always. This makes task switching quick and normally doesn't create issue, quite the opposite... Usually makes things open quickly.
But large games that are kept in memory is probably not a great thing.
I Greenify all games and anything else that hurts performance or my battery. But that's a short list on my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone is much faster now. Thank you very much