Develop Bugs

Google Android & Memory Management

Hello Android Gurus
I have bought Galaxy S (My first Android phone) 2 weeks ago and i have been experimenting with it since. I have noticed one thing regarding how android manages memory and its quite alarming.
When i start my phone I typically have around 160 Mb of RAM. As i load an application that requires 10 MB for example, the available RAM evidently drops to 150 MB but when I kill the application the RAM goes up but not to the previous level (e.g. goes up to 157).
little RAM is always lost as applications are opened and closed. This means that after a couple of hours of using the phone, the RAM goes down to 40 MB and the phone becomes REALLY laggy and you have to restart
The above behavior is typical of windows mobile, and that is exactly why i shifted to Android thinking it is better.
My questions to the android experts out there are the following:
1- Why is memory leaking like this. Such a behavior results in a phone with very bad user experience
2- Is this typical behavior of Android, if yes then i'd better sell my Galaxy S and look for an alternative OS
3- Is this due to TouchWiz by Samsung, if yes then i will wait for subsequent updates to see if this problem could be resolved by Samsung
4- Will the 2.2 Froyo update resolve this issue ?
I used to have an iphone 3gs before this one, and no matter how much you open or close applications, the UI is always smooth and responsive. The thing that made me really hate Apple and its products is their "Closed OS" that does not enable you to do much with your phone. That is why i moved to Galaxy S thinking it would give me a better experience
Thanks for your thoughts.

FREE RAM IS A WASTED RAM, golden rule of android.
Some time ago I did even a video so you can check what i'm talking about... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewxuy12KuUA

Dexter666 said:
FREE RAM IS A WASTED RAM, golden rule of android.
Some time ago I did even a video so you can check what i'm talking about...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's an awesome video! I never knew the games looked so nice. I'm on a download spree because of that video now

Strange
Dexter666 said:
FREE RAM IS A WASTED RAM, golden rule of android.
Some time ago I did even a video so you can check what i'm talking about... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewxuy12KuUA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is quite strange, the less RAM you have the more non-responsive the phone is and laggy.
Enough RAM has to be maintained to guarantee a smooth user experience.
If the phone requires 100Mb of RAM to run smoothly, then this much has to be maintained.
from my experience with the Galaxy S, there has to be atleaset 80 to 100 MB to maintain a somewhat smmoth interface.
Edit:
I also understand from your input that this is a Samsung problem, not an android problem, and that no matter how low the RAM is, the interface will always be smooth ??????

Mate, just one word - google.
There are about a billion articles online on android memory management, how to impoove it etc.

Dexter666 said:
FREE RAM IS A WASTED RAM, golden rule of android.
Some time ago I did even a video so you can check what i'm talking about... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewxuy12KuUA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i dont understand how this shows anything? You are manually exiting each one of the games, forcing it to quit anyways. A better test is just to hit the home button, and continually load up the next game.

andy2na said:
i dont understand how this shows anything? You are manually exiting each one of the games, forcing it to quit anyways. A better test is just to hit the home button, and continually load up the next game.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This means that after a couple of hours of using the phone, the RAM goes down to 40 MB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+red baloon on vid which says phone was used for >day, so "free" ram was <50MB, becouse browser etc. reserve some MBs for quick comming back.
And still was no problem to run anything I choose.

Dont quite understand..care to explain more? I'm getting puzzled abt this shortage of ram thingy. Some suggest to use task killer to free up rams while you say dont. But looking at your videos its fast..please explain. Thanks
Sent from my GT-I9000

Android handles the memory management itself. The moment it runs below certain amount of free memory it will start the kill apps. There is no need to run an app killer. Altho the default settings are not enough to provide a smooth experience. Check out the freememmanager app in the market to change the settings. As long as min 45 mb is free everything will run smooth.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

RADLOUNI said:
2- Is this typical behavior of Android, if yes then i'd better sell my Galaxy S and look for an alternative OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is typical Android behavior. See ya later.
Really though, if you're killing tasks, then you're already taking horrible advice from people who haven't an inkling of an idea on how Android manages memory.

Keep in mind that your phone is only using 256MB of its total 512MB of memory. Once a newer kernel is released with himem the phone will use all 512MB.
Android's garbage collection can be set to be more aggressive which would sort of fix your issue by killing more background applications. However, you might as well wait for the newer kernel which will fix your problem anyway.

Though it was more 320 out of 512
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

RADLOUNI said:
The above behavior is typical of windows mobile, and that is exactly why i shifted to Android thinking it is better.
My questions to the android experts out there are the following:
1- Why is memory leaking like this. Such a behavior results in a phone with very bad user experience
2- Is this typical behavior of Android, if yes then i'd better sell my Galaxy S and look for an alternative OS
3- Is this due to TouchWiz by Samsung, if yes then i will wait for subsequent updates to see if this problem could be resolved by Samsung
4- Will the 2.2 Froyo update resolve this issue ?
Thanks for your thoughts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has to do a lot with Android's garbage collector. The reason task-killers are not the best way to go, is because when you kill tasks a lot of the memory is not recovered (garbage collector does not work as it should). Android by default won't start killing apps until you get between 20-30MB of memory. For some reason, in the SGS, as you said, when ram drops below 70MB, the phone starts to feel pretty laggy; the best way to remedy this is to use applications like autokiller or minfreemanager, which require you to be rooted.
For a more in-depth explanation of how android kills processes see this http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details (from the developer of Autokiller).
I would like to know why the phone feels so laggy when ram drops below 70MB, from what I understand, this shouldn't be the case...

2- Is this typical behavior of Android, if yes then i'd better sell my Galaxy S and look for an alternative OS
--> No, this is not typical behavior of Android, i use my HTC Magic before Galaxy S, no lagging problem even the memory is lower than 15MB.

The galaxy S defaults are too low for when it starts removing apps from RAM, you need to root it and then install minfree manager or autokiller (which is not a task killer don't be deceived by the name)

Brantyr said:
The galaxy S defaults are too low for when it starts removing apps from RAM, you need to root it and then install minfree manager or autokiller (which is not a task killer don't be deceived by the name)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
doesn't solve the mystery because this is a non-issue on other android phones.
why do i need to keep 50-70mb free to get a smooth running phone where others can handle 30mb free without problems.

Goshh..thanks for simplified. Now ive removed the task killer..and stand firm by the android golden rules...cheers..
Sent from my GT-I9000

I noticed this same low ram behavior on my galaxy s. After boot the phone shows like 180 mb of ram free after a couple days the phone will drop down to 30 mb of ram all the while I'm killing apps running in the background with task killer.
The phone slows down significantly even after I kill everything.i thought android was supposed to circumvent these kind of low ram Issues.

inurb said:
I noticed this same low ram behavior on my galaxy s. After boot the phone shows like 180 mb of ram free after a couple days the phone will drop down to 30 mb of ram all the while I'm killing apps running in the background with task killer.
The phone slows down significantly even after I kill everything.i thought android was supposed to circumvent these kind of low ram Issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is.
And you're supposed to not be messing with how Android manages things cuz taskkilling screws it up.

reuthermonkey said:
It is.
And you're supposed to not be messing with how Android manages things cuz taskkilling screws it up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you suggest that I not force close any apps using taskkiller and just let android 2.1 do it's thing with memory management?
When I had the phone for the first week without taskkiller installed, the device ran very slow after the first couple days of use. Your saying that the slowness will go away as android dishes out memory effectively?
I'll uninstall taskkiller and let the device run longer than a week and see if it ever speeds up. thanks

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.

[Q] Could someone clarify?

Okay, so I hear in FroYo that you're not suppose to kill and end tasks? Does that means services as well? And if I wasn't suppose to kill them, then wouldn't that make my battery life worse because of all the things running in the background?
TIA
Sent from my Epic 4G

You shouldn't use a task killer in any version of android from Froyo on, froyo handles its memory management extremely well when left alone, using a task killer could result in apps constantly opening and closing in the back ground, which would use a lot of battery .
Texted while driving

Alright. I got rid of my task killers. Is ending services fine though? And what about the task manager that the phone provides? (I'm guessing the second one is a no?)
And what other precautions should I take for battery (other than having low brightness, of course)
Sent from my Epic 4G

Only use the one built into the touchwiz framework if you have an app running out of control hogging resources.
If you're looking to improve battery, I strongly suggest Juicedefender with ultimatejuice, I have almost tripled my battery since I started using them.
Texted while driving

063_XOBX said:
Only use the one built into the touchwiz framework if you have an app running out of control hogging resources.
If you're looking to improve battery, I strongly suggest Juicedefender with ultimatejuice, I have almost tripled my battery since I started using them.
Texted while driving
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Just got both. What do you reccomend I put the aggressiveness on?
Sent from my Epic 4G

I keep it on custom and 15 minutes every 2 hours.
Texted while driving

063_XOBX said:
I keep it on custom and 15 minutes every 2 hours.
Texted while driving
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wait, I'm a bit confused. What do you mean 15 min every 2 hours? Like I can only put my frequency to 15 min OR 2 hours? Sorry if I seem stupid lol
Sent from my Epic 4G

Data on for 15 minutes every 2 hours.
Texted while driving

063_XOBX said:
Data on for 15 minutes every 2 hours.
Texted while driving
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I figured it out
Thanks for everything.
Sent from my Epic 4G

I use the Advanced Task Killer for Froyo. Several apps I have like the Weather Channel and stock browser lower my available memory to a minute amount of what it was at boot up and do not reload if killed.
BONSAI 4 and loving it!

kennyglass123 said:
I use the Advanced Task Killer for Froyo. Several apps I have like the Weather Channel and stock browser lower my available memory to a minute amount of what it was at boot up and do not reload if killed.
BONSAI 4 and loving it!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The amount of memory available on your phone is supposed to become low. Apps are stored in memory when not being used. This does not take battery and allows the program to start in a faster fashion then otherwise.
Sent from my Incredible using Tapatalk

I'm sorry guys, but the information given in response here is really dangerous. Yes Froyo, and all versions of Android have built in memory management. HOWEVER, it is the job of the application developer to use the proper calls and closes to make sure the application isn't holding onto resources when in a background state. This is NOT always the case, and is constantly overlooked on all OS platforms, especially with how fast application development is happening on mobile platforms.
YMMV, when and if you should be using task killers.

linuxmotion said:
The amount of memory available on your phone is supposed to become low. Apps are stored in memory when not being used. This does not take battery and allows the program to start in a faster fashion then otherwise.
Sent from my Incredible using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No it's not. There is only 337MB of RAM available of which about 150 is used by system. If I keep loading apps that stay in memory when not being used I will have no resources or memory available for additional web pages or other apps. Why should the Weather Channel app load 50 MB of memory and stay there if I use it twice a week? When an app is closed I want it out of RAM. I can wait the 50 milliseconds to reload if I want to use it again.
BONSAI 4 and loving it!

Here we go again another argument of task manager for android
For me i use advanced task manager to kill some apps to speed up my phone a little and also use it to switch between programs that are already open where as if you try reopening some programs the restart,
I also ignore apps that i need to open and stay open like beuatiful widgets, word games to get more reliable notifications and widget locker.
I freeze with titanium some services such as drm and sns...

Free RAM is wasted RAM. Unless your trying to track down rogue processes, task killers are totally unnecessary.
http://lifehacker.com/#!5650894/and...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them

mattallica76 said:
Free RAM is wasted RAM. Unless your trying to track down rogue processes, task killers are totally unnecessary.
http://lifehacker.com/#!5650894/and...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like to save some for a rainy day

mattallica76 said:
Free RAM is wasted RAM. Unless your trying to track down rogue processes, task killers are totally unnecessary.
http://lifehacker.com/#!5650894/and...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What that article hints at but doesn't exactly explain is that due to how the Dalvik JIT works, killing those apps that aren't actively consuming CPU will cause worse performance over the long run. The JIT has to spin up everytime the app is loaded - if it is already in memory then it's already optomized.
At least that's my understanding! I could be totally talking out my arse
EDIT:
Here is its straight from the Dalvik lead dev.

Well don't know about performance but yesterday killing apps with ATK Froyo especially the browser, I came home with 62% battery left. Today had about the same use but disabled ATK and never used it and came home with 31% battery left. ATK is doing something for my battery and will give up apps loading quickly for battery life any day.

[Q] Out of RAM

Hi,
working daily with linux-OS and beeing actively using custom roms since Android 2.1 I have a bit of knowledge on RAM usage on Linux and Android. As many know and like to post "free RAM is wasted RAM" - we all know that. But why? Because all not actively used RAM (lets call it "free") can be used as a cache for applications you likely will need in future. But what if your GNEX runs out of free RAM an is not able to cache any more? What if you start a new huge application like your browser and free RAM has to be obtained to give it to your starting application? Yes - bad things can happen!
But lets start from the beginning:
1. If you go to Settings->Applications->Running you get the RAM-bar at the bottom of the screen. This is splitted in two parts: used and free (like defined above). Used RAM seems to be actively allocated RAM which cannot be used for other things like starting applications and free is the RAM which can be obtained because it only containes caches apps which are not running.
2. Directly above that bar you se a kind of brace which seems not to be just eye-candy but has some meaning: The lower and thiner part of that brace seems to show the part of that RAM (used or free) that is used by the applications/service in the list above. Example: if you switch to cached applications the brace will jump to that part of the bar and by killing some of the cached apps you will change the width of the brace.
Lets put things together:
viewing the used RAM you will notice that the brace does not cover the whole used-ram-bar but, in my case, about the half. I also noticed that the width of the brace does not change greatly with uptime of the device as all listed services will stay at their size more or less so their sum is not going to change greatly. In my case all services sum up to about 250MB meaning the braces width is about 1/3 of the screen assuming that GNEX has 700MB total RAM (the rest of 1GB total physical RAM is allocated to other parts of the SOC-chip like Baseband and GPU and not available to linux-kernel or android).
But one thing does change greatly!!! The part of the used-ram-bar which is not covered by the brace will be very small after rebooting and will grow with uptime. As the part covered by the brace is a fixed factor this means that the free ram is the trade-off for the growing uncovered part of the used-ram. In my case I get after rebooting the device: 250MB free, 450MB used of which 250 are covered by the brace, leaving 200MB used RAM for whatever (kernel, non-android stuff like filesystem caches, ideas?) After some days of usage this changes to 50MB free, 650MB used of which still about 250MB are covered by the brace, leaving 400MB used for other things (NOT app-cache).
Consequences:
From the assumptions above this means that android is not able to cache apps anymore (because they live in the free RAM) and my device beginns to lag while opening new apps. To obtain enough RAM for starting apps like browers (stock or firefox tested) it will even need to kill services!!! And in extreme low-memory situations it even kills the foreground app you are using (to me it happened while I used firefox). Also when you go to settings->applications->running again you will notice that android will be restarting your services over and over again to obtain more RAM without much success. In the situations my actively used firefox got killed something different happened: the launcher also had been killed because it was starting over but more importently settings->applications->running showed that much of the used RAM not covered by the brace was gone! Free RAM jumped from 50MB to about 200MB which is nearly what I get after a fresh reboot. I assume that in this extreme low memory situation also the kernel did clean up things.
From my observations you will get the following if your free RAM accoring to settings->applications->running is very low:
1. no cached apps if you swich to settings->applications->running->cached
2. laggy phone
3. your launcher gets killed more oftern when returning from e.g. browser
4. more apps get killed when returning to launcher meaning that they will get restarted if you return to that app
5. in low memory situations (app does not fit into free-RAM-part) services will get restarted frequently
6. in extreme low-memory situations kernel cleans up everything (i guess)
The question now is: what is using so much RAM and growing over uptime until our GNEX has no more free RAM? I alread checked different ROMs including stock 4.1.2, stock 4.2.2 slimbean 4.2.2 cm10-stable cm10.1-nightly and all of them show this behavior. The only thing I noticed: all 4.1 ROMS perform better in this area: their RAM does not fill up that quickly but it does. On 4.2 ROMs it takes just few days to run out of free RAM for me. I already wiped my device and installed only realy needed apps (20 out of 140!!!) but it still happens.

I think this happen in any OS
A daily reboot is always a must in my opinion, to free ram, to stop some services, to stop wake locks, to stop battery drain without sense..
Inviato dal mio Galaxy Nexus con Tapatalk 2

That's what always makes me ask : Is Gnex really have 1gb of memory?
Other phones with same spec. uses same OS have more than 693mb that in gnex , why the hell our phone has the lowest read ram in 1GB category phones
I'm sure this is the only weak-point in gnex

300MB is GPU reserved for camera.

madd0g said:
300MB is GPU reserved for camera.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

I didn't engineer the device. But I presume it's a requirement by the GPU PowerVR chip, since it uses alot of RAM on the Nexus S, which had the same chip only downclocked. It was 330MB usable out of 512MB advertised there. The amount reserved is bigger on GN obviously because of HD video capture option.

madd0g said:
I didn't engineer the device. But I presume it's a requirement by the GPU PowerVR chip, since it uses alot of RAM on the Nexus S, which had the same chip only downclocked. It was 330MB usable out of 512MB advertised there. The amount reserved is bigger on GN obviously because of HD video capture option.
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I agree GPU shared system RAM, but 300MB is wayy too much bro. I checked my N4 it has 1.82GB of 2GB total considering N4 Adreno and camera chip is more powerful than i9250

It's (again probably) not because of the speed/power etc. but that it's like that by design. Adreno ain't the same as the one used on GN, so there's no comparison.
I'm sure Google didn't allocate that much memory just to screw us up, but instead there's a legit need for it. For instance, the amount of RAM available on a Galaxy S2 is much bigger, around 830-850MB out of 1 GB and it has a completely different camera/GPU combo, spite full HD video and 8 mpix instead of GNs 5. That's why I presume it's just PowerVRs "fault".

Perhaps, i just checked galaxy tab 2 ics available ram, it less than 700, but after flashed stock JB, it shows more RAM, about 770MB. Tab 2 uses OMAP and PowerVR right? Imho. i just curious why it reserves so much ram. Searched google and can't found the reason :S
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

*Update*
An galaxy S2 with all stock (Android 4.1.2) shows the same amount of used RAM after 10 days of uptime (380MB free and 380MB used - a nearly perfect 50/50 ratio). No sign of degradation so far. Honestly this phone is not used much but still it feels very different from what I see on my Gnex.
Has someone shorlty fully wiped and reflashed his phone to stock 4.2.2 (JDQ39). How does the RAM usage look like after fresh reboot?

RAM problem
This is what i get today. Using liquidsmooth 2.4 fraco kernel. But i know its not abut apps i use. I dont know where are all that RAM. After reboot with same apps runing in background i have 230-260MB free RAM. But if i using phone day or so it look like this.
Phone get laggy, slow with high latency. Im not sure if its 4.2.2 bug for Gnex or just some mess with ROM but its same on any custom ROM. ill try flash stock and see what i get.

castaway1 said:
This is what i get today. Using liquidsmooth 2.4 fraco kernel. But i know its not abut apps i use. I dont know where are all that RAM. After reboot with same apps runing in background i have 230-260MB free RAM. But if i using phone day or so it look like this.
Phone get laggy, slow with high latency. Im not sure if its 4.2.2 bug for Gnex or just some mess with ROM but its same on any custom ROM. ill try flash stock and see what i get.
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I'm experiencing the same problem with AXI0M and AK kernel.

castaway1 said:
This is what i get today. Using liquidsmooth 2.4 fraco kernel...
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Hi, this is exaclty what i was talking about... very frequent service restarts and laggy phone and even basic things like keyboard and music-playback can quit while in use. While I tried to compose an email to send a screenshot to my desktop to post it here my stock-mail-app died and the phone rebooted. At least I have now both an after reboot and an after two days of using PARANOID ROM screenshot
I recently switches to PARANOID 3.55 and now have even more issues as the phone boots with just 200MB free RAM. This ROM seems to demand very much RAM.
BTW. I installed Stock for more than a week before switching to PARANOID and had around 260MB free after booting and around 150MB free after some days of usage. Increase was ways lower than on any custom rom. Can anyone comment on this? Same or contrary stock-experience?

Stock JDQ39 rooted. (running one week)
kernel stock or lean both are perfect and have no affect RAM or smoothness. Screenshot is after some days of full usage. Battery life i getting is about 1day with 2h screen on.
now someone tell me that its not custom ROM problem. 4.2.2 stock is just awesome. Im sad that custom ROMs not..

castaway1 said:
Stock JDQ39 rooted. (running one week)
kernel stock or lean both are perfect and have no affect RAM or smoothness. Screenshot is after some days of full usage. Battery life i getting is about 1day with 2h screen on.
now someone tell me that its not custom ROM problem. 4.2.2 stock is just awesome. Im sad that custom ROMs not..
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2h screen time is really bad..
But nice to know that stock works well for you..

Mach3.2 said:
2h screen time is really bad..
But nice to know that stock works well for you..
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its average +/- 30min and for me its not so bad for 24h

castaway1 said:
its average +/- 30min and for me its not so bad for 24h
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As long as it makes your boat float, why not?
Beamed from my Grouper

castaway1 said:
Stock JDQ39 rooted. (running one week)...
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Next step would be to deodex this ROM and to try again because Stock is odexed in contrast to any custom rom. I realy would like to figure out the reason for this bad RAM usage on custom roms.

fajabird said:
Next step would be to deodex this ROM and to try again because Stock is odexed in contrast to any custom rom. I realy would like to figure out the reason for this bad RAM usage on custom roms.
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yes im on odexed rom. and im curious if deodexing some custom ROM will help with this. I think about slighty modified vanilla rascarlo ROM with kernel that work perfect lean 6.4 is smooth like stock and dont broke anything. Its deodexed rom so i can propably try THIS to odex it.
http://fitsnugly.euroskank.com/?rom=rasbeanjelly&device=maguro-vanilla

castaway1 said:
... im curious if deodexing some custom ROM will help with this...
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I thing you ment odexing some custom ROM, right? I'm thinking about to try the odex-me apk you can find on XDA which will odex all apks from /system/app but leave the framework.jar stuff untouched. But its far more easy to deodex the stock ROM and to try again

[QUESTION] Apps being killed

Hello.
I got a Mi A2 Lite a few days ago, is my first Android One. My model have 3Gb of RAM.
I'm facing the following problem:
Let's say I'm playing Lords Mobile (the only game I play). Then, I receive a message on WhatsApp. I go there and reply. I then go to Facebook and/or Chrome to check something, and want to go back to Lords Mobile. The game was pulled out from memory, and need to reload again from zero. Same with Chrome, it shows all my tabs I had opened, but is surelly reloading again from zero. Is like the "clear all" of 'recent apps' on some other phones.
I think 3Gb of RAM is enough to handle these apps, don't? I don't have too much apps installed, and the memory use is about 2Gb. I don't know if this behavior is native, by the way. Another example: if I go to sleep just after play, when I go to game again in the morning, the game reload from zero.
Is this normal? Any way to make this model handle the memory in a better way, if is the case?
My device is on Pie, July security patch. No root.
Thanks in advice

It gets better over time. There is "AI" that figures out what to keep in memory.
But in general, pie seems to be worse than previous releases at keeping things in memory, even when memory is not full.

a1291762 said:
It gets better over time. There is "AI" that figures out what to keep in memory.
But in general, pie seems to be worse than previous releases at keeping things in memory, even when memory is not full.
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Thanks.
Is there a way to get rid of AI, or set an app to be excluded from this?

romulocarlos said:
Is there a way to get rid of AI, or set an app to be excluded from this?
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Not that anyone seems to know. Maybe custom ROMs help?
I just used my phone like normal and noticed that it got better at not unloading apps that I came back to regularly.
You can try to force Android Go mode, since it's designed for really small RAM use but I tried it and didn't like it (changes some things).

a1291762 said:
Not that anyone seems to know. Maybe custom ROMs help?
I just used my phone like normal and noticed that it got better at not unloading apps that I came back to regularly.
You can try to force Android Go mode, since it's designed for really small RAM use but I tried it and didn't like it (changes some things).
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Thank you. I don't go for Android Go, seems worse. lol
Any other suggestions will be welcome.

It's not AI, it's the Kernel's scheduler profile, and Xiaomi is famous for tuning it with an aggressive policy towards keeping as much RAM available as possible. The only way to improve it is by installing a custom kernel.

slimshady76 said:
It's not AI, it's the Kernel's scheduler profile, and Xiaomi is famous for tuning it with an aggressive policy towards keeping as much RAM available as possible. The only way to improve it is by installing a custom kernel.
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Well, custom kernel and ROMs means unlocking bootloader... I can't do this for now. But, anyway, thanks!

3 gigs of ram is barely enough for pie. On the 4 gig version I have barely 1 gig free at idle. But mostly, the app kill is done by a crappy A.I. system that does some battery optimization.

TheoXSD said:
3 gigs of ram is barely enough for pie. On the 4 gig version I have barely 1 gig free at idle. But mostly, the app kill is done by a crappy A.I. system that does some battery optimization.
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Well, taking in note what @slimshady76 wrote above, maybe the "Butterfly for daisy" will be a good deal. But I can't do it now.

I just made a test on last 2 days.
I uninstalled any optional app on phone I downloaded, and disabled a lot of system apps. Lords Mobile won't unload from memory when switching and/or when I sleep and back to game at morning.
So, is a lack of memory, but I still thinking 3Gb is enough to handle it. When 10.0.12.0 comes available to download, I'll try Butterfly kernel.