Develop Bugs

Freeing more ram on Galaxy S

Hypothesis:
The memory for this device is contiguous with memory holes. This holes are for DMA for front/back camera, video decoding/encoding, etc. In 99.99% of time this is wasted memory.
Proposal:
Why not allocating all ram and dynamically allocating memory for DMA only when needed?
For example this could be like this:
1.The phone boots and the mm allocates all memory but lies the driver for camera that he could use a portion of ram for DMA
2.The system use normally all memory (maybe allocating last the reserved memory)
3.The user starts the camera
4.A hook in camera's driver instruct the mm that he needs the reserved memory
5.The MM frees a portion of ram(other than the one needed by the camera and equal with that) and moves everything from the reserved memory in that
6.The MM updates it's maps(virtual memory ↔ real memory)
7.The camera uses normally in DMA the reserved memory
8.The user closes the camera, the camera driver notifies the MM that he doesn't need memory anymore
9.The MM allocates normally the reserved memory
Pros: You'll have like 50% more ram in user space
Cons: Some lag when starting camera
I'm ready to start implementing this but I don't have lots of experience with the linux's mm and I don't really know if this is possible so I'm asking:
How crazy this idea is and it could be implemented? And if yes, how hard?

WOW! Your the first to suggest it. After everybody else here on forum, that is.

dupel said:
WOW! Your the first to suggest it. After everybody else here on forum, that is.
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Yes, I know, the idea is not revolutionary or smth ) but I'm ready to try to implement it...
So please respond only if you can provide some useful information.

Not sure anyone really knows how easy it is to do for sure, but it has been mentioned a few times (but sounds like you have done it in further detail).
Personally, I've always believed that it's something which Samsung is working on, but maybe not. Could be awesome if you managed to make it work reliably.

Check out Hardcore's Speedmod kernel here in the development section.
His kernel gives you 341 RAM instead of the default 304. Might give you some ideas.

I know this isn't a bounty thread, but I would be willing to donate $20 if you could get this working. I wouldn't mind a slightly delay when launcher camera. I'd much rather have more free RAM.

andars05 said:
I know this isn't a bounty thread, but I would be willing to donate $20 if you could get this working. I wouldn't mind a slightly delay when launcher camera. I'd much rather have more free RAM.
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I seriously think Samsung messed up a very good phone by allotting ONLY 512 MB ram. With 16/8 GB at their disposal, they could have easily allotted at least 1 gb

ragin said:
I seriously think Samsung messed up a very good phone by allotting ONLY 512 MB ram. With 16/8 GB at their disposal, they could have easily allotted at least 1 gb
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+1 here!
I have the 16GB version so I wish Sammy gave this version at least 2GB RAM and 1 GB ROM

android.francis said:
+1 here!
I have the 16GB version so I wish Sammy gave this version at least 2GB RAM and 1 GB ROM
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Click to collapse
Can any developer DO THIS?
Seems simple. I think you need hack the pit file.

hi . . .
I dont want to be rude, but seeing these comments I couldn't stop myself -
Dudes, if you dont know what you are talking about STFU!!!
Seriously?? Allocate more to RAM from 16/8 GB??????? And edit the PIT file for this???? I am assuming that you all would've used computers, are you allocating more to RAM from the free space in your Hard Disk?? What you are suggesting is the same!!!
Please think for a moment before you post stuff.
And to the original query regarding how hard this would be - it would be pretty hard. You will have to touch upon everything that uses and reserves RAM. And this would also include modifying firmware of individual components on the phone. And if there are parts in this for which Samsung has not released source code, it would be very difficult. Not to say that - you could end up damaging the phone.
Good thoughts - but it would need a lot of work to get going.
Cheerios!!

Actually, using a swap partition on flash isn't that bad an idea, they are low latency. It would be pretty slow compared to physical ram though
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

coooolboyz said:
hi . . .
I dont want to be rude, but seeing these comments I couldn't stop myself -
Dudes, if you dont know what you are talking about STFU!!!
Seriously?? Allocate more to RAM from 16/8 GB??????? And edit the PIT file for this???? I am assuming that you all would've used computers, are you allocating more to RAM from the free space in your Hard Disk?? What you are suggesting is the same!!!
Please think for a moment before you post stuff.
And to the original query regarding how hard this would be - it would be pretty hard. You will have to touch upon everything that uses and reserves RAM. And this would also include modifying firmware of individual components on the phone. And if there are parts in this for which Samsung has not released source code, it would be very difficult. Not to say that - you could end up damaging the phone.
Good thoughts - but it would need a lot of work to get going.
Cheerios!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My response: VIRTUAL RAM. And yes, I think before I post. My response was more of wishful thinking. So as an added response: ANALYZE and comprehend BEFORE you react. And I orginally was not suppose to reply but similar to you, I JUST COULDN'T STOP MYSELF
Now as for the topic of more RAM, I said before to check out Hardcore's SPEEDMOD KERNEL. It is fully functional and your RAM goes from 304MB to 341MB. Yes, it is hard but Hardcore already did it.

V6 Supercharger

I am an Eris user, soon to be DINC2 owner at the end of this week. I've been reading through the threads here getting ready for my purchase and it has been very informative.
I searched the DINC2 forums and did not see this mentioned. Has anyone tried zepplinrox' V6 Supercharger script on the DINC2? I'm not going to regurgitate his post verbatim, but it is a memory optimizer. It was introduced to me over on the Eris forums, in the GSB ROM thread. It really makes a difference on the Eris, but I'm not sure how much difference it would make on the DINC2.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=991276
He also has another script called 3G Turbocharger. This will probably make a difference on the DINC2. According to zepplinrox, "the 3g script reconfigures the build.prob and kernel to change the speed settings to a better enhanced setting. Think of it like a TCP optimizer on windows." On my phone I have noticed an increase in speed surfing the web, downloading apps and in other 3g activities. It may be placebo, but it does seem faster. If nothing else, I do plan to add this to my DINC2 when I get it.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=15948434#post15948434
There is also a Kernel Tweaks script on the above link as well. I am using it too, but not sure what performance gains I am getting.
Per zepplinrox' post, this should work on stock and rooted ROMS.
I am by no means an expert on this, so don't shoot me if this is in the wrong forum, not valid on the DINC2, or a repost. Just trying to pass along something that works well for me.

For now those scripts are useless for phone that came preloaded with GB 2.3.3.....no root no turbo.

This sounds interesting to me, I am rooted, would it work?
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA App

This wouldn't really benefit the Inc2. The Eris was a very memory limited device designed to run Android 1.5. Upgrading beyond this was pushing the Eris to its limits, and in some cases, beyond. Running newer versions of Android would make memory management more difficult because of the higher memory requirements and the very limited memory.
The Inc2 has one of the bigger pools of memory available for Android devices. It has 768mb of total RAM when many current generation devices are getting 512mb (others are either getting 768mb or 1gb). Unless you are running a LOT of background apps, or somehow managed to find apps that require massive amounts of memory, this is plenty of room.
What does it do? It tunes memory settings and task manager. That's pretty much it. It could have an effect on the Inc2, but I wouldn't really consider it a necessity.
Edit: BTW, my previous device was an Eris.

Well, Desire HD users with 768mb of ram enjoy improvements.
It even improves performance of an Atrix with 1gb or ram...
So it probably will help.
So "It tunes memory settings and task manager" is an understatement.
It revamps the whole memory thing

ben805 said:
For now those scripts are useless for phone that came preloaded with GB 2.3.3.....no root no turbo.
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Actually, I think these will work without root. I think the only drawback without root is the scripts do not stick on boot so you have to re-run on each boot/reboot.

nimdae said:
This wouldn't really benefit the Inc2. The Eris was a very memory limited device designed to run Android 1.5. Upgrading beyond this was pushing the Eris to its limits, and in some cases, beyond. Running newer versions of Android would make memory management more difficult because of the higher memory requirements and the very limited memory.
The Inc2 has one of the bigger pools of memory available for Android devices. It has 768mb of total RAM when many current generation devices are getting 512mb (others are either getting 768mb or 1gb). Unless you are running a LOT of background apps, or somehow managed to find apps that require massive amounts of memory, this is plenty of room.
What does it do? It tunes memory settings and task manager. That's pretty much it. It could have an effect on the Inc2, but I wouldn't really consider it a necessity.
Edit: BTW, my previous device was an Eris.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It may not, but zepplinrox posted above about the Desire HD with similar RAM and the Atrix with more that reported improvements.
Whether you use the Supercharger script or not, the 3G Turbo is definitely worth trying. Again, it may be placebo, but I think my up/download speeds are faster after the script. Here is a post with some info on speed improvements with the script.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=15959134&postcount=1139

I use the Mega memory option with the v6 script. I notice a huge difference in performance.
Sent from my Incredible 2 using XDA App

Has anyone tried it on Virtuous Unity?

Stam2000 said:
Has anyone tried it on Virtuous Unity?
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I second this... I am intrigued...
Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk

3g turbocharger didnt increase anything to my 3g speeds.

MJL99 said:
3g turbocharger didnt increase anything to my 3g speeds.
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same here. i've actually tried the v6 superchgarer and saw no improvements. actually, the only thing that happened was my battery life took a hit.

lol, well that's no good.

killed all for ground apps TouchWiz UI uses up 2gb of ram?

So this is pretty crazy and weird but I killed all the apps running in the background and it says I'm using up 2.07gb of Ram how is that possible?

gator9422 said:
So this is pretty crazy and weird but I killed all the apps running in the background and it says I'm using up 2.07gb of Ram how is that possible?
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Why does it matter? There is a ton of memory in this phone, and the OS manages it very, very well. You don't need spare memory. This isn't Windows, you won't run out of memory. It stores what it thinks it needs in RAM and keeps it there for quick access. It uses all the memory all the time (or at least it should). One of the things that prevents lag is to have the stuff loaded and ready at a moments notice.
Its a question of how the OS runs, not how much memory its taking. I would prefer if they hid that stat all together, then people would stop fixating on it, and loading efficiency killing memory manager apps.
Much like running defrag on a modern hard drive (they are supposed to be fragmented, they work better and faster that way) Android is supposed to run 90-95% used memory.. ALL THE TIME. Its the way its designed, and it works better that way.

One of the biggest misconceptions on all of XDA is about used RAM in a phone. People are always saying "OMG, there is only 500mb of unused RAM on my phone, it's going to slow down to a crawl!".
Just to be clear and hopefully people will understand it....unused RAM is wasted RAM. It does NOT have anything to do with slowing your phone down or anything like that. If there is 1gb of free RAM on your Note 4, that's totally fine.
Android manages RAM very well, don't stress. That's actually way more than it needs. You can only have 200mb of RAM free and your phone would still run fine. It's the way it's supposed to work. We have more than enough RAM in this phone.
I just hope this misconception will finally go away. I see at least a few RAM threads in every device forum.

It doesn't matter to me it's just the fact that I don't have any apps open and TouchWiz itself uses up 2gb of Ram to me that's a lot js

gator9422 said:
It doesn't matter to me it's just the fact that I don't have any apps open and TouchWiz itself uses up 2gb of Ram to me that's a lot js
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Click to collapse
It truly is a misconception. Android, windows, nix, any OS, for that matter. You would want too see your RAM being utilized. I would prefer to have my RAM used than not used at all because any unused RAM is a wasted RAM. This is also same with CPU. Unutilized cores are wasted cores. When writing software, one of the best practices is to learn how to use the memory to its full potential. You would want necessary stuff in RAM because using them when needed is faster if they are already loaded in memory than reinitializing the modules again and again every time for use. As far as memory location, RAM still provides the fastest. This is why in many companies that used gigabytes of data in their databases, a common practice in databadse engine technology is that they would actually load entire gigabytes of frequently accessed tables in memory for extremely fast access.
In short, don't worry

Thank you for the replies like they say you learn something new everyday. I appreciate the input

I'm more curious to know how the system manages to use more RAM every year with every new device released. Are there really that many more new features every year where they gobble up RAM?

gator9422 said:
Thank you for the replies like they say you learn something new everyday. I appreciate the input
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http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/cache-memory

Techweed said:
I'm more curious to know how the system manages to use more RAM every year with every new device released. Are there really that many more new features every year where they gobble up RAM?
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My first computer had 512 mb RAM and it was fine at the time. Of course, with newer releases, they develop more features. With more features, more modules are created to support those features. Hence, more RAM usage.

^Wow, I think my first PC might have had 512 kb of RAM.

fbauto1 said:
My first computer had 512 mb RAM and it was fine at the time. Of course, with newer releases, they develop more features. With more features, more modules are created to support those features. Hence, more RAM usage.
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That's true but with Kit Kat we were supposed to get a leaner running OS so that it would run on even old devices with minimum RAM. And I don't see how Touchwiz by itself could add 1 GB of RAM usage between the Note 2 and Note 4.

I would disagree on wanting all the ram to be being used... On previous rooted phones I have had (GS2, GS3, GSA4) getting rid of bloatware/useless apps eating up my ram made it much more responsive and fluid when opening new programs while significantly increasing battery life. Seems people just spew the bull**** marketing lines of Google across the internet and expect people to take it as truth. User experience is what is important, and getting rid of the garbage on any android version will make it faster. Not a difficult concept to understand.

rcracer_tx said:
I would disagree on wanting all the ram to be being used... On previous rooted phones I have had (GS2, GS3, GSA4) getting rid of bloatware/useless apps eating up my ram made it much more responsive and fluid when opening new programs while significantly increasing battery life. Seems people just spew the bull**** marketing lines of Google across the internet and expect people to take it as truth. User experience is what is important, and getting rid of the garbage on any android version will make it faster. Not a difficult concept to understand.
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There is no bull**** here. Attend college and find out.
It is proven practice to use RAM
My source:
Myself with 15+ years as a software engineer

^^^This man speaks the truth. In my final year of my degree in software development and RAM utilization is common practice. User experience is different for everyone and what you "feel" is faster may or may not be an improvement.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using XDA Free mobile app

I think the goal of debloating should be to reduce the use of cpu by unwanted applications and reducing the amount of RAM taken up by them so that other applications may be cached instead. Whenever I debloat I start with watching applications that load and try to trim of the ones I know I don't need at all. I then move onto greenifying applications that run or cache themselves that I'll rarely use. Never in this process do I try to maximize free memory since doing so means applications that are not cached will take longer to launch. Im not sure if this is the right philosophy but it seems effective to me.

fbauto1 said:
There is no bull**** here. Attend college and find out.
It is proven practice to use RAM
My source:
Myself with 15+ years as a software engineer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I already have two degrees from a major big 12 university. And do a good amount of IT work for the business I work at. If you think that having your ram eaten up by programs you never use is good practice, maybe you need to re-evaluate the school you got your education. Using your logic our computers should be faster when they are full of **** running in the background... That's asinine. Full AND EFFICIENT utilization of ram is proven practice, not filling up ram full of bloatware.
muzzy996 said:
I think the goal of debloating should be to reduce the use of cpu by unwanted applications and reducing the amount of RAM taken up by them so that other applications may be cached instead. Whenever I debloat I start with watching applications that load and try to trim of the ones I know I don't need at all. I then move onto greenifying applications that run or cache themselves that I'll rarely use. Never in this process do I try to maximize free memory since doing so means applications that are not cached will take longer to launch. Im not sure if this is the right philosophy but it seems effective to me.
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Click to collapse
Well said, I agree. I guess I didn't make the distinction of when freeing up ram being eaten up by crap that will never be opened, What I mean is that cached memory being freed up is then able to be used by apps that I actually use. If over 2gb out of 2.92gb is being used all the time, (with the vast majority being eaten up by bloatware and the rest just being the base OS/UI) then that is not efficient utilization of ram. If you have to kill cached programs constantly and then load the new program you begin using, its going to take longer than having that program already having everything cached. In most times this is only milliseconds difference, but the fluidity of the transition is important to many as it is a significant factor in user experience. Who wants a phone that lags whenever a user input is made?

rcracer_tx said:
Well said, I agree. I guess I didn't make the distinction of when freeing up ram being eaten up by crap that will never be opened, What I mean is that cached memory being freed up is then able to be used by apps that I actually use. If over 2gb out of 2.92gb is being used all the time, (with the vast majority being eaten up by bloatware and the rest just being the base OS/UI) then that is not efficient utilization of ram. If you have to kill cached programs constantly and then load the new program you begin using, its going to take longer than having that program already having everything cached. In most times this is only milliseconds difference, but the fluidity of the transition is important to many as it is a significant factor in user experience. Who wants a phone that lags whenever a user input is made?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is interesting that the vast majority of 2GB of your RAM is being using by bloatware. Between the Touchwiz function for turning off unneeded apps and Android's algorithms for determining what should be kept in memory, I find that "bloatware" apps (i.e., app I don't use) are practically non-existent in RAM...at least for me. That said, even if you still have 0.92 GB free, Android is not likely to decide it needs to kill an existing process to accommodate another program.

rcracer_tx said:
I already have two degrees from a major big 12 university. And do a good amount of IT work for the business I work at. If you think that having your ram eaten up by programs you never use is good practice, maybe you need to re-evaluate the school you got your education. Using your logic our computers should be faster when they are full of **** running in the background... That's asinine. Full AND EFFICIENT utilization of ram is proven practice, not filling up ram full of bloatware.
Well said, I agree. I guess I didn't make the distinction of when freeing up ram being eaten up by crap that will never be opened, What I mean is that cached memory being freed up is then able to be used by apps that I actually use. If over 2gb out of 2.92gb is being used all the time, (with the vast majority being eaten up by bloatware and the rest just being the base OS/UI) then that is not efficient utilization of ram. If you have to kill cached programs constantly and then load the new program you begin using, its going to take longer than having that program already having everything cached. In most times this is only milliseconds difference, but the fluidity of the transition is important to many as it is a significant factor in user experience. Who wants a phone that lags whenever a user input is made?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are comparing RAM utilization to bloatware?
Where did you get your degrees, eBay?

fbauto1 said:
You are comparing RAM utilization to bloatware?
Where did you get your degrees, eBay?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No... he's not. Read it again. His point is that programs he doesn't need utilizing ram is bad.
We're playing a game of semantics here. He is working the angle that the original posts saying 'using ram is good' isn't true if it is crap that is using it.
Silly discussion at this point as both sides are correct based on the parameters of their view point.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A

Anyone tried this app?

I guess some OUYA users tried it for games that demanded more memory, but I'm not a OUYA user.
You can probably chalk this up to boredom, but I'm intrigued by the RAM Expander app by ROEHSOFT.
So I'm wondering if anyone's tried it with AFTV? And since I haven't read about it in these forums at all I'm guessing it's either incompatible or useless, since aftv comes with 2 gb and the app says "up to 2.5 gb"
Basically I'm just curious. I've heard it could put unnecessary strain on your device. Of course if it is safe I don't see the harm in using it. I'm just not certain it'll make a noticeable difference...and it is a bit costly but they offer a trial (I think.)
Like I said. It's a slow night. I'm just looking for some info or an opinion if you have it. Thanks.

If your Fire TV is slow something is wrong. Maybe some high quality streams or videos may jitter, but the function should never be slow. I Have yet to get down lower than 680mb of ram. 2gb of ram and four cores is more than enough for any device and should never be slow.

porkenhimer said:
If your Fire TV is slow something is wrong. Maybe some high quality streams or videos may jitter, but the function should never be slow. I Have yet to get down lower than 680mb of ram. 2gb of ram and four cores is more than enough for any device and should never be slow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not slow. In fact it's very fast. But a wise man said the more ram the better (2 things there--1. I'm paraphrasing horribly
2. I'm NOT the wise man
I do read here that people oc with hard to measure results. So while it was just an--I'm bored and curious type question, I feel like other people have considered possibilities of speeding things up. I've seen some streaming boxes from China with 4 gb yet the processor, I think, was on par or a bit less powerful than aftv.
I have no need to increase ram. Only scenario I think it MIGHT help (and this is through novice eyes) is if you're using the swap data option for games or perhaps storing thumbnails on usb. Maybe you'd get quicker reads??? But I could be way off there.
You did confirm what I thought--it's not necessary, but I'm thinking more along the lines is there any benefit?
Either way. I doubt I'll test it and definitely don't want to encourage any curious novices like myself to try. It's just if someone has tried it I'd be interested in hearing about it.

source of lag due to zram?

I've been experiencing random lagging with my nexus 5x and I just noticed that the stock nexus 5x kernel implements zram.
Here's screenshot:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
For those that don't know, zram is basically a compressed in RAM swap space.
Everytime the kernel saves to and from zram, it has to compress/decompress the contents and that could be the source of some of the lag people are seeing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zram
I plan on rooting my phone as soon as I get my usb c to usb a cable and disable zram and see if that helps with the random lags that i've been experiencing.

Very interesting theory....I am experiencing lag too with my 5X. It is very frustrating to compare with my two year old Nexus 5 which performs lightening fast and noticeably smoother.
Keep us posted when you root and disable zram :good:

The fact that google added the swap space seems to confirm that 2gb isn't enough for these 64bit SOCs. They shouldn't have skimped.

dwang said:
The fact that google added the swap space seems to confirm that 2gb isn't enough for these 64bit SOCs. They shouldn't have skimped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If there is zram enabled in the 6P, then Google must have seen other problems. This is interesting though, thanks for informing us

0.0 said:
If there is zram enabled in the 6P, then Google must have seen other problems. This is interesting though, thanks for informing us
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good point.... Can anyone confirm is zram is enabled in the 6P?

Hi
dwang said:
The fact that google added the swap space seems to confirm that 2gb isn't enough for these 64bit SOCs. They shouldn't have skimped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not the reason. Swap space takes up memory! The reason it is added is because it protects the flash memory and improves performance. Rather than having the swap drive all on flash memory, it is compressed and kept in RAM (because 2Gig is plenty), this improves performance because any pages swapped out are swapped to DRAM which is considerably faster (and uses less power), and saves lots of small writes to the flash memory, which stops it wearing out.
Google and LG haven't just thrown the Nexus 5X together without knowing what they are doing
Regards
Phil

seems like the encryption is the source of the bottleneck. the encryption with no easy way to disable. i cant wait till sources are released and i can get off android.

That makes no sense.

Hi
m4r0v3r said:
seems like the encryption is the source of the bottleneck. the encryption with no easy way to disable. i cant wait till sources are released and i can get off android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've disabled encryption (so I could root it) and the phone performs identical, besides I'm not seeing any lag or problems. Only user data is encrypted anyway, it's not the whole device that is encrypted, so any performance loss is negligible as it is only a tiny amount of data that is going through a decrypt/encrypt process.
The Nexus 5X is as fast for me as the graphical animations allow, if people are seeing lag have they tried a factory reset, leaving the phone to update all the apps without choosing to restore previous apps/data and trying the phone out? It could be an app problem/service that isn't compatible and eating CPU cycles.
Regards
Phil

I remember ZRam being used in the Jolla phone by some of the community, and in that instance it actually improved the performance.

My experience was the opposite. Back in the g2 days there were roms that enabled zram and it was smooth at first but then it got laggy after a few days.
I'm coming from the nexus 6, and the nexus 6 is smoother than the nexus 5x. This is in terms of input latency, scrolling, and load times.
It may very well that I have a defective phone, but a lot of other people have reported these issues as well. If you aren't experiencing this, more power to you, but don't disregard other people's experience.

dwang said:
My experience was the opposite. Back in the g2 days there were roms that enabled zram and it was smooth at first but then it got laggy after a few days.
I'm coming from the nexus 6, and the nexus 6 is smoother than the nexus 5x. This is in terms of input latency, scrolling, and load times.
It may very well that I have a defective phone, but a lot of other people have reported these issues as well. If you aren't experiencing this, more power to you, but don't disregard other people's experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whatever the cause is, I've got this problem and I'm considering returning it as faulty and using my Nexus 5 for another year or two, because it's really bugging me now.

PhilipL said:
Hi
That's not the reason. Swap space takes up memory! The reason it is added is because it protects the flash memory and improves performance. Rather than having the swap drive all on flash memory, it is compressed and kept in RAM (because 2Gig is plenty), this improves performance because any pages swapped out are swapped to DRAM which is considerably faster (and uses less power), and saves lots of small writes to the flash memory, which stops it wearing out.
Google and LG haven't just thrown the Nexus 5X together without knowing what they are doing
Regards
Phil
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why there should be any swap space in the first place? Zram does indeed improve multitasking on systems with limited amounts of ram but there should be no reason to put it on an expensive device with "plenty of ram". Zram comes at a cost, cpu power and usable ram that is. If you do multi task a lot it's going to use more resources than necessary to keep up. If you are using an app that requires lots of ram it will slow your device down and cause a lot of heat because it is compressing/decompressing active pages. This is the reason most reviewers report that 5x is slower than the G4 (that has 1 more gb of ram) even though they have the same SoC.
It's the same Nexus 9 story all over again isn't it? Once again they used the absurd amount of 500+ MB which will cause the Low Memory Killer to kill everything except for the foreground app because there is no free ram.
But why did they do that? The 64bit android builds consume much much more ram than 32bit. If you disable zram on nexus 9 you will notice that it heats up much less and that it is faster with ram hungry applications but apps start dying even faster. Chrome will crash even with 1 tab open if the website is heavy. Launcher redraws will be everywhere. So we go from borderline usable to absolutely terrible.
I think they should have used 32bit builds on their 2gb devices. They would be faster and much more usable. There are no immediate benefits with 64bit anyway...

Hi
kdoul said:
Why there should be any swap space in the first place?...
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Because it is breathing space should memory run short for whatever reason. We don't know the ZRAM is even being used, we just know it is there. There is a lot of complicated stuff going on with the Linux kernel and memory management, but typically in order to not waste memory, memory gets filled with all sorts of cached data until it is fall. Think of memory like an infinity swimming pool where the water goes right to the top edge, it doesn't matter how small or large that pool is, the whole point is to fill it to the brim. If you look over the edge of an infinity pool it has a catch channel and drain, because as soon as you use it, some water gets pushed out because it is fall. Memory is the same, because the idea is to use it all, there is always something getting pushed out, and rather than discard that completely, it gets swapped out, so when there is space again, it can be brought back in as required. The ZRAM is a friendly way of doing that to avoid lots of writes to flash memory, and because it is compressed, we might lose 500Meg to ZRAM, but the compression means it holds more than is lost, so we get a net gain.
Generally as I understand it, it's main purpose is to stop a constant trickle of writes to flash memory, which otherwise is wear on the flash memory and uses more power. It's job is a buffer for all the ebs and flows of a complex memory management system.
All major operating systems do this sort of thing, regardless of the amount of RAM available, because if you want to fill something to the brim, you've got have a way of dealing with an overflow in the most efficient manner.
You are correct in that 64bit is really a complete waste in smart phones and uses more memory, we have it because it's marketing, however the move to 64bit also brings some new instructions that aren't in the 32bit architecture in ARM, so there are improvements to be had as a consequence, but we don't need 64bit in smartphones really.
Regards
Phil

zram is being used by the phone. You can just do a "free" from the terminal and you can see that the zram swap space is being used. I have zram disabled on my 5x, or I would paste the output here, but its very easy to do even without root.
Also, there is no swap space on the flash enabled regardless of whether zram is enabled or not, so there is no risk that the flash memory will wear out.
If you disable zram, it doesn't mean that a swap space is automatically enabled on the flash.
PhilipL said:
Hi
Because it is breathing space should memory run short for whatever reason. We don't know the ZRAM is even being used, we just know it is there. There is a lot of complicated stuff going on with the Linux kernel and memory management, but typically in order to not waste memory, memory gets filled with all sorts of cached data until it is fall. Think of memory like an infinity swimming pool where the water goes right to the top edge, it doesn't matter how small or large that pool is, the whole point is to fill it to the brim. If you look over the edge of an infinity pool it has a catch channel and drain, because as soon as you use it, some water gets pushed out because it is fall. Memory is the same, because the idea is to use it all, there is always something getting pushed out, and rather than discard that completely, it gets swapped out, so when there is space again, it can be brought back in as required. The ZRAM is a friendly way of doing that to avoid lots of writes to flash memory, and because it is compressed, we might lose 500Meg to ZRAM, but the compression means it holds more than is lost, so we get a net gain.
Generally as I understand it, it's main purpose is to stop a constant trickle of writes to flash memory, which otherwise is wear on the flash memory and uses more power. It's job is a buffer for all the ebs and flows of a complex memory management system.
All major operating systems do this sort of thing, regardless of the amount of RAM available, because if you want to fill something to the brim, you've got have a way of dealing with an overflow in the most efficient manner.
You are correct in that 64bit is really a complete waste in smart phones and uses more memory, we have it because it's marketing, however the move to 64bit also brings some new instructions that aren't in the 32bit architecture in ARM, so there are improvements to be had as a consequence, but we don't need 64bit in smartphones really.
Regards
Phil
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PhilipL said:
~text~
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Memory management on your desktop or laptop computer is vastly different than that of android. On a desktop you try not to kill anything, because if you do something might break. If you run out of ram it is preferable to use some sort of swap space (pagefile in windows) in your hard drive to temporarily store inactive bits of memory until you need to use them later. It is slow but it gets the job done.
On android devices, storage is (maybe used to be) slow to read and write on so you want to use it the least possible. The solution is to maximize ram usage and fill it all the way at all times. If you have no apps open and lots of unused ram android will start caching your most used apps in the unused space to reduce loading times. If you do have apps opened they will stay frozen in the background until you access them again. But what happens when the unused ram goes low? Ask a special program to go on a killing spree. The idea is that you care about what you see and everything past that is not critical. Frozen apps die first, then some background services, then the foreground services and at last, the foreground app.
Then there comes the zram. The idea is that you cut a part of your physical ram and make it work like the swap partition on your hard dive, but you compress the data first before you put them there. Since ram is much faster than your hard drive zram, if configured correctly, can save you from swap slowdowns when using more than 100% of your physical ram.
Zram is problematic on android. How do you decide what to swap and what to kill when you are low on memory?
Battery and processing power are also limited. Heat when constantly using the cpu for compression is an issue that can cause slowdowns because of thermal throttling. On this scenario you are taking a huge piece for that purpose (more than 1/4) of the available physical ram when you should be taking less than half of that.
The only acceptable place for zram on android is on budget phones/tablets that simply can't afford to have more than 1gb of ram and you want them to run memory hungry applications without crashing. But then again, they do slow down when it is used. A lot.
When you have an expensive (flagship) device and you see that it can't run properly with the amount of ram you have already supplied the only way to ensure it will work optimally is to add more freaking ram. Not enable zram or any other software feature to try and bypass that. Google was stupid with the Nexus 9 and once again they are being stupid with the 5X. Cheaper or equally priced devices have tons of ram nowadays so I just can't see a reason other than Google wanting to either save peanuts from using less or promote their higher end model because it feels faster???
I can accept bad cameras, ugly design, small batteries, ****ty audio or even mediocre processing power. What I can't accept is (purposely?) crippled devices that they are broken out of the box in a way that you can't possibly fix.
Small edit: I believe that you can use the new crypto instructions from the ARMv8 instruction set and still run android in Aarch32 (32 bit) mode. In that case everyone is happy except for the marketing team of course.

So I've been running with zram disabled (in addition to disabling encryption) for about a day now, and I've not noticed any problems. The random lag I've been experiencing before are now largely gone and the phone is just as fast and smooth as my n5 and n6.
When i first got the n5x and experiencing the random lag, I was seriously considering returning it, but now that I've disabled zram and decrypted the phone, I'm fairly happy now. Though there are still issues related to charging and battery life.

If you don't use live wallpapers, facebook chatheads and keep the background junk in check it should work just fine. If you have problems with chrome killing tabs too often, try firefox.
Custom kernels should help with the rest.

okay im unencrypted and rooted, how can i disable zram? I've looked everywhere and cant find an answer. thanks!

Hey Guys I am unlocked but not rooted as i want to keep using android pay and keep my phone encrypted. Some here said there is a way to disable zram without root...how would one do that?
MY girls nexus 5x is lagging pretty hard and just an FYI my Nexus 6P also has ZRAM enabled. i like to turn that off as well. No need for it with 3gb ram!