Hi guys
I'm not a programmer by any means, nor do I know anything about developing software, so take this idea with a grain of salt.
The issue I notice from time to time with my PPC6800 is slowdown from lack of ram (or that I haven't closed the apps and they're hogging the ram). My phone only has 64mb....so this got me thinking.... Vista has a feature called Readyboost which uses any flash based USB key to act like virtual ram (or a pagefile).
SO, how feasable would it be to create software that would coule read/write off the microSD card as if it were ram? Basically a MobileReadyboost as it were.
Discuss amongst yourselves =)
PS: Forgive me if something like this already exists for our platforms...but I haven't seen it.
SD cards read and write slow...
What if deleating the extended rom partition (located in ram, right?) and using that for a pagefile instead?
most people don't seem to use the extended rom when cooking. why not just make it usefull?????!!!!!
S.V.I said:
SD cards read and write slow...
What if deleating the extended rom partition (located in ram, right?) and using that for a pagefile instead?
most people don't seem to use the extended rom when cooking. why not just make it usefull?????!!!!!
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Click to collapse
SD cards can be slow, but there are some models that are faster. Granted they cost more and are a little harder to find, because they are aimed photo people. But yeah.
extended rom in cooked roms is generally used for extra storage anyway so it isnt like it isnt being used
"SD cards can be slow, but there are some models that are faster. Granted they cost more and are a little harder to find, because they are aimed photo people. But yeah."
problem is that today it's not just sdcards which is the bottleneck the sd interface itself on the cpu is slow too
According to the specs the phone comes with 576mb of ram, yet when I got my new phone it only had 140mb available, which seems to me that you lose around 75% of the memory advertised before you actually get the phone.
Anyone know what is using up all this memory
walkerx said:
According to the specs the phone comes with 576mb of ram, yet when I got my new phone it only had 140mb available, which seems to me that you lose around 75% of the memory advertised before you actually get the phone.
Anyone know what is using up all this memory
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Android is using it. It doesn't RUN from ROM, no modern OS does that. ROM is merely where it's stored, it run's in RAM.
thanks for the response, i understand it doesn't run from ROM but just couldn't believe that you lose 75% of the ram.
walkerx said:
thanks for the response, i understand it doesn't run from ROM but just couldn't believe that you lose 75% of the ram.
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Click to collapse
You don't lose 75% of anything, it's still there. You're using 75% of it!. A phone that uses 0% of it's RAM would be a real-fancy paper weight after all.
If you try to open an app and you don't have enough RAM to run it Android will close activities and apps until there is enough. Any half way decent modern OS acts this way.
75% usage is fine and normal, don't worry about.
Perhaps your phone is developing Alzheimer's?
Actually you guys are confusing a lot here!
The 140MB that are available are ROM memory. The rest of the 512MB is used by the system and Sense etc.
That's not much available, since apps can only be installed into those 140MB.
Of the 576MB RAM, the system also uses some of it. But there's more than 140MB available.
it is indeed the rom, however, being that a massive majority of android apps are less than 1.5 mb in size, and if programmed properly use the SD card for storage means, the likelyhood of most people ever having a problem is minute.
I've read people on these forums with 70 odd apps on their desire and they have no issues whatsoever.
it really is not an issue.
after upgrading from the G1 with only 70mb-80mb available for installing apps unless you used the sdcard for storage was just a shock to only see 140mb available on the desire.
Agreed, it definitely is a problem if you install an app like Google Earth (22meg) and a few large games you will soon run out. On my G1 with apps2sd I had over 200meg of apps installed.
Meh, and HTC put 8GB of internal memory in the Droid Incredible (basicly the US desire), really don't understand why they don't put some internal storage in all of these devices..
Guys is there a tool where I could see how many rom and ram memory is available to install apps.
rhedgehog said:
it is indeed the rom, however, being that a massive majority of android apps are less than 1.5 mb in size, and if programmed properly use the SD card for storage means, the likelyhood of most people ever having a problem is minute.
I've read people on these forums with 70 odd apps on their desire and they have no issues whatsoever.
it really is not an issue.
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I'd have to disagree with you I'm afraid - it really is an issue.
My Desire has about 80 apps installed, including Google Earth, Navigon satnav, and about 5 games. I have literally less than 10mb of ROM space left - not even enough for another game.
The space supplied on the ROM for apps is pathetic, and the sooner the Desire gets rooted (to enable apps2sd) the better.
EDIT: I've just realised I've repeated what other people said, and also may have come off like a douche - no offence intended!
Adding SD Storage does not help!
abats said:
Meh, and HTC put 8GB of internal memory in the Droid Incredible (basicly the US desire), really don't understand why they don't put some internal storage in all of these devices..
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When you think about it, this will make the new HTC Incredible (coming this year) with 8GB on board a big seller for HTC, do feel a little bit let down by HTC on this
I have to admit up until today when I got an "out of space" message I assumed apps were going on the SD Card, I'm really gutted about this. But in my heart I knew at some point went rooting was possible I would do it anyway.
sdemmery said:
When you think about it, this will make the new HTC Incredible (coming this year) with 8GB on board a big seller for HTC, do feel a little bit let down by HTC on this
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Click to collapse
Afaik the 8GB onboard is as storage, not as ROM. So if android is still like today (only allowed application to be installed in ROM) those 8 GB can't be used as well. The main reason of this limitation is to prevent the piracy, but I read somewhere that there is a plan to add a function to store the encrypted application in the external storage. Hopefully that can be realized soon.
setspeed said:
EDIT: I've just realised I've repeated what other people said, and also may have come off like a douche - no offence intended!
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No worries. I probably sound like a douche most of the time, but after doing my job for as long as i have, i no longer really care. but no offence intended from my end either. i may be a grumpy sod, but i'm not an a-hole.
anyhoo, most people will get nowhere near 80 apps.
I've been on android since the magic and got nowhere near that yet. most people won't. but yeah, lets hope either HTC start putting more memory in the phones, or google just add pss2sd capability as standard.
either would solve this for those few people that it does effect.
abats said:
Meh, and HTC put 8GB of internal memory in the Droid Incredible (basicly the US desire), really don't understand why they don't put some internal storage in all of these devices..
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Click to collapse
but u cant use them as system memory so its like a 8gb SD
Yeah, perhaps I'm spoilt from having apps2sd on my Dream - I've got used to installing whatever the hell I like, and leaving it there!
Let's hope Paul from MoDaCo finishes rooting/getting write access to the system partition soon. Or indeed, any other dev who can manage it
How do you guys get so many apps? I have installed around 20 apps and it's telling me I'm running low on space.......quite annoying. Having to remove apps to instal others.
boge said:
Afaik the 8GB onboard is as storage, not as ROM. So if android is still like today (only allowed application to be installed in ROM) those 8 GB can't be used as well. The main reason of this limitation is to prevent the piracy, but I read somewhere that there is a plan to add a function to store the encrypted application in the external storage. Hopefully that can be realized soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL that was pretty much what I wrote originally & thought I was talking nonsense so I edited the post, should have left it I guess
For me its not the number of apps its that some are large. Anyone have copilot installed, im thinking of getting it but im worried the maps are going to fill the memory up & leave me room for no other apps! The Desire is a cutting edge device & we just shouldn't have to contend with this issue, Heck I never had this with Windows Mobile. Then again I never had any apps for Windows Mobile
OnlinePredator said:
How do you guys get so many apps? I have installed around 20 apps and it's telling me I'm running low on space.......quite annoying. Having to remove apps to instal others.
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Click to collapse
It's not only the issue with the number apps you can install. This issue is also limiting developers. There are a couple of reasons iPhone applications/games are usualy higher quality then the android counterparts. Storage problems is one of those issues sadly.
Hi.. im using cyanogen with d2ext.. but now my phone is very very slow.. :-S will a swap partition help? Or What Else could the problem be? :-D
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
SWAP partition is usually used when the RAM runs out and it doesn't increase the speed of the phone. It has the opposite effect....
the limiting factor is most probably the read/write access to your SD Card, using a higher Class Card (6 +) should increase performance.
I personally have my doubts if the sdcard will survive the many read/write cycles without a optimized (ssd) files system for a long time, but opinions differ here
Yep. Dirt slow and laggy unless you have a fast SD card. Things will improve quite a bit after the first few days of usage compared to the first, though.
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th3 said:
Yep. Dirt slow and laggy unless you have a fast SD card. Things will improve quite a bit after the first few days of usage compared to the first, though.
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- Sent via HTC Desire -
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whats the technical explanaition for that, some cache beeing build up or what?
Some accesss will definitely become cached, no doubt, but I'm not entirely sure as to the full happenings. I think the internal NAND management will move the data around to be more contiguous in placement and suitable to your access patterns for better performance and less misaligned accesses/fragmentation with some time. Clearing semi-full blocks and pages drastically helps NAND performance. The NAND filesystem you run can also have an impact.
I also think meletron's Ext alignment scripts help here when you have +20% of your NAND used up. Remember, NAND gets slower as it fills up, or more correctly, the more cells that have been written to (even if they are not in use anymore).
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Hi,
i have the problem of not enough memory OR a slow system. Currently im using a class6 16gb microsd with default app2sd from the rom (JB spazedog), but the app data fills up the internal memory nonetheless. If i move everything (not just apps) to the sd the system is getting slow and unresponsive.
It is worth getting a faster sd (class 10) and moving everything to sd or do i have no choice but keeping apps to a minimum?
Thx
drdoomgod said:
It is worth getting a faster sd (class 10)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, but it would probably be worth to change to some rom which is not in beta and fits in /system small enough to have /data big enough to keep dalvik on nand and give more space for apps.
When using 6class and 10class i feel no significant changes in speed of app2sd area.
running speed test, write speed is usually about the same, read gives little higher results.
attachment below 16gb Transcend 10class vs Adata 8 gb 6class
I'm using ICS Spazedog and DiskManager is working fine. Sometimes I have to switch pages when looking at app storage to get it to work. Maybe it didn't install properly, maybe your partitions need to be aligned, maybe the SD card needs to be reformatted. Could be quite a few things doing it.
Nope
Class 6 -> 10
If you use App2SD, definitely no.
If you use Data2SD, it is possible to see some differences.
oxyg3n89 said:
When using 6class and 10class i feel no significant changes in speed of app2sd area.
running speed test, write speed is usually about the same, read gives little higher results.
attachment below 16gb Transcend 10class vs Adata 8 gb 6class
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In terms of memory, you have to keep in mind that using a2sd means sending the dalvik (if you choose so) ans the app to the sd-ext. While it allows to more internal space, it still decreases.
The sd-ext partition is practically limited to 1024mb by the desire inter storage size too, meaning that going over 1gb of sd-ext size wouldn't be better.
Now like erklat said, it is better to switch to more stable ROM as JB ROMs offer few space and their behavior have not yet been standardized.
Recap: In terms of memory, it is not necessary to change to an upper class, but it is always a nice harmless improvement.
In terms of speed, I have seen that changing to class 10 gives great speed changes in terms of massive gaming:
Due to the higher read speed and also with the read ahead bumped I was able to increase greatly the loading time of such games as Modern Combat 3 and Nova 3. I was surprised since I thought that it was because of the processor mainly that it was so slow. There is an increase in performance when switching to an upper class, but frankly you cannot notice it unless you benchmark the results by testing with a ressource eater app.
To recap: It is worth the change only for the read speed. I'm not sure but I think that write speed is somewhat limited somehow by the hardware. (I'm thinking about windows here, if someone could confirm that please. )
________________________________
Please press thanks if I helped you in any way.
Sent from my HTC Desire using the xda app.
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I am using class 10 transcend 8gb for spazedog JB rom and class 6 transcend 8gb for cm7 rom. No issues.
Sent from my HTC Desire using xda app-developers app
Hello,
I'm using an app called RAM EXpander to increase swap in order to unlag my phone wich is running many many apps...
Since our Xperia S doesnt have much ram, this was the only solution to keep everything running and to not make lag in my phone..
So the question is, how safe can be the use of this kind of apps in relation of the flash memory usage (readings/writings)..
AFAIK it'll do some harm in the long term, but what long term means?? 2 years? 1 month and it'll kill my phone flash memory?? 10 years??
I've seen in XDA and all over the web, people that comment on how bad is using flash as a swap because of the writing limitations in flash memory, but still havent seen an actual case of a dead flash memory... LOL
thank you in advance
As far as I know the only "downside" of using Swap is that it degrades the SDcard, shortening it's life, but it's only noticeable after long periods of usage ( 5/6 years ? ) because of the constant write when swapping inactive blocks from the RAM to the swap partition. Neither you or I have seen dead SDcards because almost no one keeps the same phone for so many years, considering that those who use SWAP tends to need more performance from the phone and, consequently, ends up upgrading the phone itself in about 2/3 years maximum.
Even tho, I don't see swap as a good alternative for "better" multitasking.. sdcard has much slower write/read speeds comparing to RAM (even SSDs are much slower), so re-opening purged apps can be way faster than just swapping it back to the RAM. But it's my opinion