Develop Bugs

[Q] Why no ones talk about the lag cause by Insufficient memory

I notice the phone start lagging when there are less than 100Meg of available RAM on both 2.1 or 2.2 SGS.
Questions....
1. How do i make sure there will always be min 130 available when not in use?
I'm currently using Froyo Task Manager, ATK and SystemPanel together to make that happen manually. A better suggestion or use of them will be appreciated.
I also tried MemoryPlus and Taskkiller (The red android logo)
2. There are so many background service running some of them start with com.samsung.... (what are these?) do we need them?
3. Why some Apps always run without us telling them to run, or ask us to give them to permission to run on background at will?

ATK
In ATK in settings you have auto kill level, which is disabled on default.

jakaka said:
In ATK in settings you have auto kill level, which is disabled on default.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using JPC, ATK autokill will not able to kill at a system level like SystemPanel, so after a day of active use, the memory will still continue to reduce as some of the background service start consuming more and more memory or run more background process. E.g. Touchwiz from 17 Meg to 25 Meg.
So at the start with ATK, i will have 130Meg, after a day of active use i left with 80Meg. With Apps killed.

I use autokiller set to aggressive. memory left 152mb

ivanchin99 said:
I use autokiller set to aggressive. memory left 152mb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, does that remain for few days? How often do you restart your phone?

free memory is bad memory!
why don't let android do it's job?! this ist linux with a clever memory management, not windows 95!!! deinstall all auto task killer android is handling the memory very well. it uses all it can get and if it's not enough it kills old uses apps from it. why have free memory, there is absolutely no reson for that! ram is fast, let the often used apps be there not on slow sd or nand!

Mykron said:
free memory is bad memory!
why don't let android do it's job?! this ist linux with a clever memory management, not windows 95!!! deinstall all auto task killer android is handling the memory very well. it uses all it can get and if it's not enough it kills old uses apps from it. why have free memory, there is absolutely no reson for that! ram is fast, let the often used apps be there not on slow sd or nand!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
QFT!
What is the point of having memory if it is constantly empty?
Think about it this way...If you had five friends at your house and you have five chairs, do you make 2 or 3 of your friends stand so there is always empty space or do you let everyone sit down and worry about something worthwhile?

Finguz said:
QFT!
What is the point of having memory if it is constantly empty?
Think about it this way...If you had five friends at your house and you have five chairs, do you make 2 or 3 of your friends stand so there is always empty space or do you let everyone sit down and worry about something worthwhile?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, upto a certain point... I don't think you need to have at least 100 or 150 mb free but it DOES seem to help to not let it get down to like 30mb...

For me:
-JM7
-animations off
-voodoo lag fix
-minfree manager set to preset agressive.
minfree manager customizes the android memory management system.
I love it this way, No lags when starting the Phone (DIALER) or anything else. The dialer annoys me the must, this must be lag free, if i want to dial i want to dial right away.

Btw, I think you have made some wrong assumptions about the Android memory management system, as mentioned, unused ram is wasted ram.

dagrim1 said:
True, upto a certain point... I don't think you need to have at least 100 or 150 mb free but it DOES seem to help to not let it get down to like 30mb...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed but I have never seen my Galaxy with free memory that low and I don't use a task killer. Of course I don't often have more than 3 or 4 apps running at the same time

This is not about letting ram do nothing.you surely don't wasn't your ram get used up by programs you don't want while you had no hand in this.All those services running I don't want.badly written programs that are hanging out in memory instead of closing.at least in symbian an app closed when you exited.

Why would you have 100MB free ? Do you have any application that needs 100MB to run ?! The android system already has enough memory to run so even if you could have 200MB of free memory you phone wouldn't run any faster you would just be able to lauch around 20 apps at the same time.
Read this:
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
Linux however isn’t generally affected by this. While I admit that I don’t know the architecture and reason for this… linux will run the same regardless of if you have 20mb free memory or 200mb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Finguz said:
Agreed but I have never seen my Galaxy with free memory that low and I don't use a task killer. Of course I don't often have more than 3 or 4 apps running at the same time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dunno, I just noticed that one time my phone was VERY sluggish and memory free was around 20mb or so. Cleaning it up did seem to help (unless one of the programs killed was causing the lag of course).
Ah well... Whatever people choose right?

You guys can argue all you want that free RAM is a waste of RAM....
But it is a fact that the SGS runs much slower when the free RAM is low. This is the experience of all the SGS'es I have tried and my own as well. At least this is the case when running 2.1. I have not tested anyone with 2.2 yet.

It s starts to lag when memory is below 40 mb. So when it s low and you start an application it starts to lag. I set it to 50-55-60 and got hardly any lag. No need to keep so much free ram
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matty___ said:
It s starts to lag when memory is below 40 mb. So when it s low and you start an application it starts to lag. I set it to 50-55-60 and got hardly any lag. No need to keep so much free ram
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Which ROM are you using? as the low memory killer level for background apps is set at 40M which means you should have 40M free all the time or it will start killing background apps. This is also why task killers are useless, free ram is wasted ram for android.
I never had the experience that more free RAM is faster, perhaps with the stock rom but JC and upwards are all good by default. Animations off + Oneclick lagfix (or another) and the phone stays totally lag free.
Being an android user for 1,5 years now i'm very confident Taskkillers are useless except when an app is stuck. I've had periods where I used them allot but the phone only gets slower as the killed apps have to be loaded into the memory again.

Finguz said:
QFT!
What is the point of having memory if it is constantly empty?
Think about it this way...If you had five friends at your house and you have five chairs, do you make 2 or 3 of your friends stand so there is always empty space or do you let everyone sit down and worry about something worthwhile?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Provided you are not expecting anymore friends. The problem happens if all your 5 friends are happily seated and along comes 2 more friends a-visiting. So you have to now move 2 inactive (for want of a better word) friends out of the seats so that you can accommodate the 2 new ones. This takes time. So why not move these friends out as soon as they become inactive so that the space is readily available when someone comes calling?

Try to have a read about garbage collector before argueing about free memory.
The more you try to have a large amount of memory, the more you will need major GC (and during major GC all activity is frozen).
If you let the system manage memory, it does minor GC as needed when it reaches min memory waterline (seems to be 50Mo on SGS).
Let the system do its job.
Get rid of task killer.

Mykron said:
free memory is bad memory!
why don't let android do it's job?! this ist linux with a clever memory management, not windows 95!!! deinstall all auto task killer android is handling the memory very well. it uses all it can get and if it's not enough it kills old uses apps from it. why have free memory, there is absolutely no reason for that! ram is fast, let the often used apps be there not on slow sd or nand!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely disagree. OK, it is better to use memory, but the android memory management is extremely inefficient since it does not know which foreground and background processes are important to the user and which are not, even though it tries to figure that out. Since the Galaxy S does not allow the system to use the full 512MB of memory, this can be a critical factor. And the Galaxy S definitely lags massively when less then 70 or so MB of free RAM is available this is definitely a fact.
The biggest problem is that you cannot manually close apps and only have multitasking access to the last 6 apps used. If you use 7 apps simultaneously, the 1st app still consumes memory but you cannot even switch back to it. And there are so many useless background processes, starting up over and over again and consuming hundreds of MB memory if they are not killed in regular fashion.
Who needs gesture search, amazon mp3, layar, and all the samsung crap running in the background all the time. If you only have 10 such applications and each of them only consumes 15MB of ram, 150MB are wasted for nothing.
Every second market application registers itself as autostart on every boot, so to use a autostart manager is also mandatory.
Since everybody can easily develop for Android the application quality and resource efficiency is not always perfect. So in my opinion Android needs a task manager, this is why even Samsung integrates such a application.
Using a well configured ATK (set to ignore system applications, widgets and apps frequently used for multitasking and killing every else on screen off) and autokiller (strict setting) in addition to Autostart Manager (had to remove 40!!! useless apps from automatic startup) and lagfix, the SGS runs perfectly smooth.

[APP] BFreeMem Alternative - Indirectly Freeing RAM

I think many of us are using some kind of task killer. BUT, I find task killer sometimes cause more problem than it solves. And sometimes it doesnt really increase free RAM.
What I did was create a simple app to force Android memory manager to free RAM (by unloading tasks based on its own logic). This way you eliminate 3rd party task killer wrongful termination of tasks such as those active ones required by widgets etc.
This app just basically starts and creates a huge heap (forcing Android to free RAM) and then closes.
(You may still see this task linger in memory after you run it, but it will be unloaded the next time you start other app. You will see your free RAM increased a lot)
====Edit
You May not see free RAM increase immediately after running. You will see RAM increase a lot a bit later after you have started other app (which forces BfreeMem to be unloaded from memory)
Tip: Just put a shortcut on desktop. Click it when your RAM is low (<50-60Mb) and it will do its job. Dont run it when your free RAM is above 90Mb.

I'm trying it
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This app should be tested by more Samsung Galaxy S owners to see if is working as it should be or not.

Try already.... No diff.... What's the difference?
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cosmoboi said:
Try already.... No diff.... What's the difference?
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Click to collapse
mib1800 already had got ur all private data, no more diffs.

cosmoboi said:
Try already.... No diff.... What's the difference?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
You have to wait for BfreeMem to be unloaded. (If you are impatient use a Task killer to unload it and you see it frees up lots of RAM.
Basically BFreeMem is a very bloated. When it starts it force Android memory manager to unload other tasks to cater to its RAM requirement. After that if you start other app, Android mem mgr will unload Bfreemem thus freeing huge chunks.
I tweak it to works best if your free RAM is around 50-60Mb. When I run it and when BfreeMem is unloaded later, free RAM goes up to about 100Mb.
btw: this app requires no permission so your data is safe

AutoKiller is a much better alternative.

The concept sounds correct. Not entire sure if it will work in practice.

psychedelic'd said:
AutoKiller is a much better alternative.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My purpose is to have something that does not circumvent Android memory manager which keeps track of tasks and their stats. It knows better what tasks are best to kill based on their usage/last access/active state/priority. Furthermore, if Android memory manager kill a task due to low memory, it will save the state for that task so that the next time that task is used the saved state is restored.
3rd party task killers sometimes mess this up by killing tasks which are actively use (resulting in those tasks being restarted just after being killed leading to wasted power and more lag) or killing dependent tasks such as those used by widgets without saved state causing widgets to malfunction.
snapper.fishes said:
The concept sounds correct. Not entire sure if it will work in practice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am using it. It does free up RAM. Is it useful? Depends. If you have lots of active apps (widgets/service etc), those freed RAM is filled up soon as Android restore back those "killed" tasks. Not much gain here. On the other hand, if you have lots of zombie apps lingering in memory then yes. The extra RAM does give a boost to the next app you open

AutoKiller is less of a task killer and more of a memory manager. Sort of like what your app is trying to do, but much better. More information: http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
Your concept is good, but having an app that continually increases ram usage will waste battery. Then having to kill that app manually in order to free up ram is tedious. Just my 2 cents.
The new task manager in Touchwiz has a function to manually clear ram any way, which works great.

psychedelic'd said:
AutoKiller is less of a task killer and more of a memory manager. Sort of like what your app is trying to do, but much better. More information: http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
Your concept is good, but having an app that continually increases ram usage will waste battery. Then having to kill that app manually in order to free up ram is tedious. Just my 2 cents.
The new task manager in Touchwiz has a function to manually clear ram any way, which works great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK. AutoKiller is changing Linux configuration. Unfortunately, it needs root.
I have used the TouchWiz TaskMgr clean Ram at safe level - it still messed up my widgets (Beautiful widgets, weather & toggle)
Bfreemem app does not continually run or increase RAM usage. You just run it when the free RAM is low (or close to threshold). At this low RAM level it just knocks other tasks out of RAM. btw: You should NOT run it when you have huge amount of free RAM. You should run it when RAM is low like <50Mb.
You dont really have to kill Bfreemem task manually since it will be quickly unloaded by the Android memory manager when RAM is required since its state is finished.
JUst put a shortcut on the desktop and click it when you feel RAM level is low and it will do its job.

Can it be used with autokiller?
It could be also automated to check if memory is low, and automatically kill applications. Battery drain would be present in that case tho..

Never has the default task killer from samsung messed up my widgets including Beautiful weather, I tried using task killer and never saw the benefits of it since andriod automatically keeps 40MB of free ram...

EarlZ said:
Never has the default task killer from samsung messed up my widgets including Beautiful weather, I tried using task killer and never saw the benefits of it since andriod automatically keeps 40MB of free ram...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I try the option Level 1 - Clear Memory (in Samsung task killer), my beautiful widget clock stop working.
Soniboy84 said:
Can it be used with autokiller?
It could be also automated to check if memory is low, and automatically kill applications. Battery drain would be present in that case tho..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Personally, I dont use task killer. Not sure whether Autokiller kills tasks physically or just adjust some running config. Just have a feeling task killers (those that kill tasks physically) cause RAM leak. For example when my phone reboot, I can see at least 12 tasks (in Advanced Task Killer) and free RAM is about 95Mb. If I physically kill those tasks, my RAM may temporarily goes up to 130Mb but sometime later free RAM drops to 50-60Mb and there were no more tasks to kill.
When I use Bfreemem, my free RAM fluctuates betw. 60-100 Mb and I can still see all/most of those tasks that were there just after boot-up.
If you have one of those scheduler/timer app, you can just use those to schedule Bfreemem to run regularly. (I can build another timer app to schedule)

How much free RAM should I have?

I installed a single widget from Beautiful Widget yesterday and today I've had the launcher redraw itself multiple times and this is aomethig I've never seen before. How much free RAM should be available? I'm hovering around 120. Stock Nex HSPA running 4.0.1 on T-Mobile.
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

I usually hover around 350mb free... 120 is seeming a little low. Are you exiting apps with the home button or the back button?
Sent from my GSM Galaxy Nexus

Either or, no preference either way.
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

Are you stock?
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

Often i stay around 120mb free ram so i think you are functioning normally.

Free ram is unused ram.
You only need as much free ram as the next, uncached task will require. On Android this is unlikely to ever be more than 80MB.
On this basis, if you have 120 free you should be fine.

djmcnz said:
Free ram is unused ram.
You only need as much free ram as the next, uncached task will require. On Android this is unlikely to ever be more than 80MB.
On this basis, if you have 120 free you should be fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uh no. Free RAM consists of cached but not currently running apps and cached kernel resources. It is by no means "unused".
You also need a lot more free RAM than what the next app you are going to run requires, due to kernel caches and paging policy problems. If you are actually interested in learning how memory management works I suggest you read up on virtual memory first before giving others advice.

Chirality said:
Uh no. Free RAM consists of cached but not currently running apps. It is by no means "unused".
You also need a lot more free RAM than what the next app you are going to run requires, due to kernel caches and paging policy problems. If you are actually interested in learning how memory management works I suggest you read up on virtual memory first before giving others advice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't be snide, it's unbecoming.
"Free" in the context that the OP used it is exactly that, free and unused - as in not used by anything at all, empty. Perhaps you might want to look that one up.
I responded to him in context and accurately. From an end user perspective it's a more helpful answer than a technical one about paging, caches and kernels...

I suggest downloading Cache Cleaner NG (yes, the "NG" one) from the Market if you're having lag or other problems. This will help no matter which definition of "free RAM" you choose to adopt I can say, though, that in my experience a lot of lag and force close issues have had more to do with cache and app data than with "free RAM." For example, on my Fascinate I'd have 120 MB or so of "free RAM" according to my system settings, but I'd still have major lag and more force closes than a chain of Circuit City stores until I cleared app cache using Cache Cleaner NG. This is different from wiping the cache partition in recovery.
Terminators run on Android

djmcnz said:
Don't be snide, it's unbecoming.
"Free" in the context that the OP used it is exactly that, free and unused - as in not used by anything at all, empty. Perhaps you might want to look that one up.
I responded to him in context and accurately. From an end user perspective it's a more helpful answer than a technical one about paging, caches and kernels...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Free in the context? There is no context needed here, as there is no ambiguity. Free here refers to exactly one thing: the amount of free memory reported by the Android system. The Android system uses a Linux kernel and reports free memory the way all Linux systems report free memory: all kernel and userland caches are reported as free memory. Free memory is not unused memory. Free memory is physical memory pages that are not currently marked in use by any virtual page entries. Free memory is used as cache by the virtual memory system. If you understand the virtual memory system at all you'd realize that truly "free and unused" memory doesn't even make sense in a virtual memory system. Truly unused memory is just cold cache, once the cache has been warmed up, the idea of unused memory becomes irrelevant.

Basically OP, you should never have to worry about it. This phone has more than enough RAM to handle anything you throw at it. If it ever feels "sluggish" just give it a reboot. No need chasing your tail to free up 15MB of RAM that won't make a difference anyways.

Thank you. This is what I figured as I've had quite a bit of experience with Android dating back to the G1 (it's why I don't have a task killer installed). Yeah, the lag is annoying although it's way better than my Xoom's. I was just wondering what you guys were hovering at.
I do have an app that turns itself on in my running apps list (it's ESPN's Fantasy Football app) I want to keep the app but it's sort of annoying seeing it pop up there all the time. Is there a way I can force it to stay off?

BlazinGTI said:
Thank you. This is what I figured as I've had quite a bit of experience with Android dating back to the G1 (it's why I don't have a task killer installed). Yeah, the lag is annoying although it's way better than my Xoom's. I was just wondering what you guys were hovering at.
I do have an app that turns itself on in my running apps list (it's ESPN's Fantasy Football app) I want to keep the app but it's sort of annoying seeing it pop up there all the time. Is there a way I can force it to stay off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have a widget running for this app? Any app that has a widget on the main screen will automatically run because of said widget.

I personally think thats REALLY low. I'm typically sitting over 400MB free with a couple widgets running and battery monitor in the background as well.
As of this moment I'm showing 367 free. Apps running: Angry birds RIO, Phone, Google Music (with music streaming currently), battery monitor, settings page.
4.0.1 is not memory efficient at all compared to 4.0.2&4.0.3. Not only are the newer builds more efficient with RAM but the size of the ROM on disk is much leaner.

After a reboot and once the dust was settled seems like I have 346 MB of free RAM, something you should try just to see how much you are starting with.

So I'm assuming you're on a build other than 4.0.1? I just tried a reboot and am sitting at 290MB free, I'll monitor it to see how long it takes to get back to the low 100's.
As for the Fantasy Football app, it does NOT have a widget. And apps that HAVE widgets, like Pandora, Evernote, Music, Docs, Soundhound, none of those show up in running OR cached apps.

[HELP]Why my ram is above 160.

I have freezed the unuseful apps and im usin startup auditor, Why my ram is still too high? What can i do? Please help

Try Supercharger or [email protected]'s scripts. The threads are just a few blocks down.

Well v6 isnt effecting too, i used build prop. i wanna use local prop. its effective.

I use auto memory manager and my ram stays between 90 to 120 without any special scripts!! Try it and tell me if it wrks
Sent from my GT-S5360 using XDA

Not ram manager pro ??

IMO having less ram is not a good idea in android device. android device has different ram management. when an app is started, it will be stored in ram's cache to make it started faster when it started again. when the ram is almost full, it will automatically delete ram's cache and stop some some app. in this way, android devices will have better performance and battery saving. its almost useless to clear ram except in some cases when we need a huge ram space to run a big program.

kurotsugi said:
IMO having less ram is not a good idea in android device. android device has different ram management. when an app is started, it will be stored in ram's cache to make it started faster when it started again. when the ram is almost full, it will automatically delete ram's cache and stop some some app. in this way, android devices will have better performance and battery saving. its almost useless to clear ram except in some cases when we need a huge ram space to run a big program.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont understand you. When i clear ram its 80+ but now its 130+

Kurotsugi post is cent percent correct.
You shouldn't run after cleaning your ram

I'm having 220+ ram for average use. my zenonia 4 is running smoothly and never got a problem with any app. as I've said, android device will store recently used app in its ram cache. thats why the ram usage will raise rigth after you clear your ram and start to use some app. this is normal and won't affect in your device's performance much. I thought our ram setting is balanced between running app, background app, and system app. you can change the setting with ram manager pro or minfree to have more space for running app and background app.

Exactly! So much of fuss about RAM. My RAM consumption is always 240+, even after a reboot. Never had any problems.

Woah 240+?? what u are using?

dont forget,only used ram is good ram in linux(android is linux).greeeeetz

renr29 said:
Woah 240+?? what u are using?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
240 is my minimum RAM usage. Well, Go Launcher, Go SMS, Go Notification, Go Locker and AI Type Keyboard are always running in the background. xP

Try [email protected] scripts
Try [email protected] battery and RAM Saver , Im using it and my ram is just consuming about 132 - 109

Im supercharged. It'l conflict.

more RAM = more battery consumption ?

more ram doesn't always mean your device will consume more battery. yes, its true that our device use more battery power to start up the program, write the onto the ram and run them. nevertheless, linux have unique method to save more battery. after a program is minimized, the program is not erased from the ram. it will be stored in ram's cache. in this way, our device could start the program without write the program onto the ram again. this method will avoid to repeatedly write and erase the program on the ram which consume a lot of battery power. this is also the reason why most android program doesn't have exit option.

owwww , thanx , i hav a bad habit of clearing ram every now and then , even if it is at 130 or 150 ..
m not gona clear it now unless system be lagging

that's normal if you have 160 ram that's the lowest ram that i've reach in my galaxy y even i press the clear memory its still 160 or below... if you feel that your galaxy y is lagging why you dont want to try Andrenaline Engine that imbawin made even if you reach 200+ ram it still fast even your ram are 60MB left

Can you lower the ram usage?

Hi there,
I have the ZF2 with 4GB of ram. After a couple of days of usage, it seems impossible to lower the ram usage below 1.8GB even when I clear the cache of all apps.
However, when I restart the device, my ram usage is below 1GB.
I have uninstall or disabled every app I could without rooting. & I don't want to root now.
Nonetheless, I would like to keep the ram usage of my device as low as possible (2GB of ram use seems a lot to me, especially when I have one or two apps open)
Did you find a tricks or ways to keep 2gb or more ram free at all time ?
Thank you.

Simply, there is no clear way and those numbers are normal. The best memory management is with native linux, not yet available on zenfone 2.

What's the point of always having 2gb of free ram? RAM is completely useless if you aren't using it.

yumms said:
What's the point of always having 2gb of free ram? RAM is completely useless if you aren't using it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not a question of useful or useless. It's a question of is it possible and if yes, how.

Yes, keep the phone in deep sleep with all apps closed and disable everything in autostart , better yet, you can just power off the device
p.s: not even custom roms will run that low, I had cm12.1 with lg g3 3gb ram, I disabled basically everything and phone will still boot with at max 2gb free ram, maybe 2.2gb if you start killing launcher and sytem apps lol
4Gb ram with 2.2-3Gb free Ram is plenty for a cellphone. Its even plenty for a desktop unless you run hard core 3d games like crysis.
The lowest I have seen is 150Mb/1Gb usage with Nexus 7 v1 tablet yet it was hell slow. Note that the more Ram you have, the more the system will use it and cache in it. This will increase apps loading speed since they are directly loaded from Ram vs local storage.
I would love to have an app that lets you select what to cache in Ram, e.g. large high-resolution PDFs that take forever to open and load :crying: I have 300-800Mb PDFs that will take 1 min just to open.

Indeed, an option to decide what to cache would be great.
Can we expect less usage and caching with the 5.1 update or with a custom Rom?
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