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

Galaxy S gaming performance

I thought SGX540 that's superior than iphone4 would run new games without any lags but for new games such as 9mm and let's golf 3 i've face many stutter on those games. I'd like to ask others that you have problem like me or not ? or maybe next time i'd go back to ios or waiting ice cream sandwich. Those games are smooth in iphone4 but not in galaxy s that has superior GPU.

I didn't play to 9mm and I just tested Lets Golf3, but yeah... it's not strange to have some small lags sometimes.
If gaming on the phone is very important for you I suggest to use samsung roms and not cm7 or miui.
And yeah, maybe you should have buy an iPhone, Android still can beat iOS when it comes to games

im currently on JVT.firmware
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I notice the lags too. I strongly believe that the lags are caused primarily by low ram. On Froyo, I never had lags in games, and they were all super smooth. But on gingerbread, after a few hours of usage, the ram drops below 100mb, and the games will lag. The games don't lag on a fresh boot. Hence, the problem is not with the gpu, but with the fact that 512mb of ram is just not enough for gingerbread. If you want to remove the lags in games as well as in the phone interface, I recommend that you flash a 2.2.1 rom. ZSJPK was one of the best roms I've ever used.

Yeah, sgx540 is better than the 535 use in iphone 4, but it's all about drivers and optimisations. And we can't deny that Apple is doing a wonderfull job with iOS.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium

disclaimernotice said:
I notice the lags too. I strongly believe that the lags are caused primarily by low ram. On Froyo, I never had lags in games, and they were all super smooth. But on gingerbread, after a few hours of usage, the ram drops below 100mb, and the games will lag. The games don't lag on a fresh boot. Hence, the problem is not with the gpu, but with the fact that 512mb of ram is just not enough for gingerbread. If you want to remove the lags in games as well as in the phone interface, I recommend that you flash a 2.2.1 rom. ZSJPK was one of the best roms I've ever used.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
indeed, i also think the lags are caused by lack of ram...
when you move the camera around in the game it sometimes hangs and when the textures are in RAM, you can continue playing without fps drops or lag
a tip before you start playing:
- root your phone and install "autostarts" to disable all crap which boots up with android
- reboot phone
- after booting go to task manager and cleanup ram
- go to settings => applications => active services and kill unnecessary processes. (for example, when you close the facebook app, it still keeps running as a service, sometimes almost using 50MB ram)
i reduced lag in 9mm alot with the method above...

Is there a custom rom that has a very low ram consumption? that would fix this issues

Simplicitiy is very good!

alwo1303 said:
Simplicitiy is very good!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how many ram does system take with that rom?

For games playing, 2.2.1(JSD) is a Must!

titooo7 said:
I didn't play to 9mm and I just tested Lets Golf3, but yeah... it's not strange to have some small lags sometimes.
If gaming on the phone is very important for you I suggest to use samsung roms and not cm7 or miui.
And yeah, maybe you should have buy an iPhone, Android still can beat iOS when it comes to games
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
... what? You're suggesting Samsung over CM7/MIUI when you want more performance? Are you trying to troll or something?
_breez_ said:
indeed, i also think the lags are caused by lack of ram...
when you move the camera around in the game it sometimes hangs and when the textures are in RAM, you can continue playing without fps drops or lag
a tip before you start playing:
- root your phone and install "autostarts" to disable all crap which boots up with android
- reboot phone
- after booting go to task manager and cleanup ram
- go to settings => applications => active services and kill unnecessary processes. (for example, when you close the facebook app, it still keeps running as a service, sometimes almost using 50MB ram)
i reduced lag in 9mm alot with the method above...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Reboot my phone. Clear memory with task manager. Kill active services... just to game? Why not just close some apps? Common sense, people. It's a brilliant thing.
lpalvaro said:
Is there a custom rom that has a very low ram consumption? that would fix this issues
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, it's called V6 Supercharger Script. It's like a ROM, but it's actually just a script... and you can run that script on whatever ROM you want. What it does, is it lets you pick a number. That number decides how much free RAM you'll have. Then, like magic, you just have it.
There hasn't been a single piece of good advice in this thread...

upichie said:
Yes, it's called V6 Supercharger Script. It's like a ROM, but it's actually just a script... and you can run that script on whatever ROM you want. What it does, is it lets you pick a number. That number decides how much free RAM you'll have. Then, like magic, you just have it.
There hasn't been a single piece of good advice in this thread...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't use supercharger with semaphore kernel, and CF bigmem settings (98 mb) doesn't solve the performance issue.

lpalvaro said:
Is there a custom rom that has a very low ram consumption? that would fix this issues
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, custom roms, even so called simple and bare ones, use more ram than stock roms. I recommend ZSJPK 2.2.1, which has about 180mb of ram on boot, and an average of 120-140mb or ram after two days' usage.

lpalvaro said:
I can't use supercharger with semaphore kernel, and CF bigmem settings (98 mb) doesn't solve the performance issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then you do it without the script. What's the problem here? I have over 2,000 games on my phone. And no, that wasn't a typo. None of them lag.

upichie said:
Reboot my phone. Clear memory with task manager. Kill active services... just to game? Why not just close some apps? Common sense, people. It's a brilliant thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
because android automatically closes apps when RAM is low and services always keep running in the background, whether you need them or not.
why would you let a service use your ram when you don't even need it? THAT is common sense.

bigmem kernel may help? its what i use

upichie said:
... what? You're suggesting Samsung over CM7/MIUI when you want more performance? Are you trying to troll or something?
Reboot my phone. Clear memory with task manager. Kill active services... just to game? Why not just close some apps? Common sense, people. It's a brilliant thing.
Yes, it's called V6 Supercharger Script. It's like a ROM, but it's actually just a script... and you can run that script on whatever ROM you want. What it does, is it lets you pick a number. That number decides how much free RAM you'll have. Then, like magic, you just have it.
There hasn't been a single piece of good advice in this thread...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Learn some manners, people here are just trying to help. Have you actually tried the two games mentioned in op, you tell us you have 200 games installed is 9mm and lets golf included in these?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I've rolled back to froyo and now without apps in the background i0ve about 140mb of ram used, and now 9mm goes smooth. I'm not moving from froyo any more.
Also, now the battery lasts in 6 hours of screen usage, and with jvt only 4 hours

_breez_ said:
because android automatically closes apps when RAM is low and services always keep running in the background, whether you need them or not.
why would you let a service use your ram when you don't even need it? THAT is common sense.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you even use an Android phone?
leroys said:
Learn some manners, people here are just trying to help. Have you actually tried the two games mentioned in op, you tell us you have 200 games installed is 9mm and lets golf included in these?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are they though? When I help someone out, I tell them correct information. If I don't know the correct information, I don't tell them anything. Why? Because incorrect information is worse than not helping at all. Few people in this thread have given remotely acceptable advice. No one needs to do a 3-step process, including rebooting your phone, just to play games; likewise, no one needs to downgrade to Froyo in order to game either.
I have Let's Golf! 3D installed currently, but I don't have the most recent revision of 9MM—although I have played it in the past. I have my phone's CPU and GPU overclocked, like I'm sure many of us do here, and I can play both without noticeable lag. I didn't have to reboot my phone to play them. I didn't have to uninstall apps to play them. I didn't have to flash an entirely new ROM to play them. And I certainly didn't need to stand on one leg with the phone above my head to play them.
Bad advice is just bad.

upichie said:
Do you even use an Android phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I posted what helped reducing lag in 9mm on my phone.
if you don't need the help i posted, that's too ****ing bad. the fact this topic was started shows people are facing the same problem with lack of usable ram memory for 9mm.
looks like you have some sort of magic phone with unlimited amounts of ram memory that never lags
the reason why i told him to reboot his phone is because ram usage is much less in most cases, right after booting up.
and btw, next time do some more effort instead of posting one line if my information is not correct

[Q] Rooting made my phone working slower

Hello everyone!
Not so long time ago I've finally rooted my phone - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=24858619&postcount=18
Unfortunately there's a next problem... Before I rooted my Desire Z, phone was working smoothly and there was practically no lag. But now my phone is working much slowly than before, even when I'm using Advanced Task Killer to reduce active applications. It lags when I'm browsing applications, when I'm opening them (now after choosing application to run my phone is not responding for about 10 seconds, before there was not problems like this) and some other situations.
What is a cause of this problem and how to make my phone running like before rooting, or faster?
Thanks for advance.

TheReduxPL said:
Hello everyone!
I'm using Advanced Task Killer to reduce active applications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't do that.

TheReduxPL said:
Hello everyone!
Not so long time ago I've finally rooted my phone - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=24858619&postcount=18
Unfortunately there's a next problem... Before I rooted my Desire Z, phone was working smoothly and there was practically no lag. But now my phone is working much slowly than before, even when I'm using Advanced Task Killer to reduce active applications. It lags when I'm browsing applications, when I'm opening them (now after choosing application to run my phone is not responding for about 10 seconds, before there was not problems like this) and some other situations.
What is a cause of this problem and how to make my phone running like before rooting, or faster?
Thanks for advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which rom are you running? Using task killer will just make things worse, 90% of the apps you see in the backround need to be running.

like the last two posts say, dont use a task killer, they cause more harm than good. if you must use watchdog (free in the market)
ok so we need more info, your rooted. what guide did you follow.
power off. then hold down volume down button when powering on - write down everything you see here.
then do you have a custom recovery? did you flash a custom rom? did you do a full wipe?
these are all things we need to know if you want useful help

I would suggest using the V6 Supercharger script(http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=991276). Moreover, you may wish to shift to a different ROM. I would recommend the following:
AOSP: ILWT (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1242480)
Sense: Android Revolution (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1493404)
ICS AOSP: Andromadus Audacity (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1349864)
ICS Sense: Most have certain problems and thus I suggest you hold a certain amount of patience if you wish to Flash a ICS Sense ROM.
Also, you may wish to note some recent non-ICS ROMs already possess built-in RAM optimizations.

Just gaining root won't slow your system down.
Did you flash a different ROM or anything?
And don't use task killers, they are actually more trouble than they're worth. Android already manages applications just fine.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA

You guys are saying that task managers are bad but im using sense4 and that has a stock task manager. Is it bad to use that as well? It usually frees up a lot of ram
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using XDA

Freeing up ram dosent always equal a good thing. Ram on an android device is not the same as on your pc. Android holds important apps and recentely used ones in ram so we can open apps faster, multitask, not loose important info ie messages.
The system itself will regulate what apps to keep in ram and when to close them down. I suggest watchdog as a task killer because it allows you to see if an app in ram is actually taking up cpu or not. Blindly killing apps often leads to undesireable affects as well as potentially faster battery drain and slower speeds as these "killed" apps try to reopen or are shut down when they should be open.
Do a google search you will find plenty of info on why not to use task killers and why it is ok sometimes
If this won't convince you know that cyanogen won't even look at a log cat to fix an issue if there is a task killer present
Sent from my HTC Vision using xda premium

OriginalGabriel said:
Just gaining root won't slow your system down.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 to this. Root is just a change in file permissions, it doesn't "do" anything extra that would slow the system down.
Task Killer on the other hand, may be the problem in itself. Task killers aren't needed in Android. Android manages tasks by itself. Killing tasks may actually be slowing the system down. Killing a task before its done just causes it to respawn, sucking up CPU cycles.
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
---------- Post added at 01:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:28 PM ----------
redpoint73 said:
+1 to this. Root is just a change in file permissions, it doesn't "do" anything extra that would slow the system down.
Task Killer on the other hand, may be the problem in itself. Task killers aren't needed in Android. Android manages tasks by itself. Killing tasks may actually be slowing the system down. Killing a task before its done just causes it to respawn, sucking up CPU cycles.
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or the issue can be some other change the OP made after rooting. The OP hasn't given much info (stock ROM or otherwise, or other mods) so its impossible to say what may be slowing the phone down.

But when I was using Advanced Task Killer in my previous Android Version (2.3.3; before rooting) I was experiencing a very big performance jump. I've only done these things I've added in my first post. Also I want to maximally increase my phone's battery life.
Which ROM should I use to increase performance and battery life? Cyanogenmod?

TheReduxPL said:
But when I was using Advanced Task Killer in my previous Android Version (2.3.3; before rooting) I was experiencing a very big performance jump. I've only done these things I've added in my first post. Also I want to maximally increase my phone's battery life.
Which ROM should I use to increase performance and battery life? Cyanogenmod?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ilwt or elitemod have been the best i have found for battery life so far

Or glite gslim

Thanks for recommendations, but do Cyanogenmod have other features than that mentioned in cyanogenmod.com?

TheReduxPL said:
Thanks for recommendations, but do Cyanogenmod have other features than that mentioned in cyanogenmod.com?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, there are heaps and heaps of interface, performance and other awesome things in it. I'd highly recommend it, i've been using CM 7.2 for about a week now and it's absolutely fantastic. I'd highly recommend it.
It's not just the features that are listed on their site, it's the speed and stability of it that makes it GREAT to use. Battery life is great too.

[Q] Lollipop, The Aggressive App Killer

Does this even need an explanation? Lollipop kills apps like it's his hobby.
Even with only a few light (on RAM) user apps running in the background you sometimes find yourself staring at your launcher home screen that, you could've sworn, was just showing a different app a second ago.
Or the times when, after multi-tasking a bit, your phone starts becoming painfully slow. Turns out that some apps are so stubborn that they go on strike (continuously restarting) when LP kills them.
I'm sure many have experienced this. And I have seen some devs address this issue here and there. I though it would be useful to gather the info into one thread, to ease our (or my?) frustration on this issue.
What I wanna know is, what causes it exactly (why didn't it happen on KK?), and is there a solution to this? Or at some way to calm LP down a bit with his killing of innocent apps.
Thanks.

Djalaal said:
Does this even need an explanation? Lollipop kills apps like it's his hobby.
Even with only a few light (on RAM) user apps running in the background you sometimes find yourself staring at your launcher home screen that, you could've sworn, was just showing a different app a second ago.
Or the times when, after multi-tasking a bit, your phone starts becoming painfully slow. Turns out that some apps are so stubborn that they go on strike (continuously restarting) when LP kills them.
I'm sure many have experienced this. And I have seen some devs address this issue here and there. I though it would be useful to gather the info into one thread, to ease our (or my?) frustration on this issue.
What I wanna know is, what causes it exactly (why didn't it happen on KK?), and is there a solution to this? Or at some way to calm LP down a bit with his killing of innocent apps.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im running 1/8 FML with synapse injected R10 kernel on my toro and with ksm and laptop mode enabled in synapse, I haven't had a launcher redraw in days. I don't have anything whitelisted either. However, the trade-off I have at the moment is I cant seem to stream videos on my stock browser. Havent tried a different browser or anything. I just uncheck those two settings and reboot and all is well, but my phone certainly works much better now, and no redraws, with neph settings for LMK
Hope something helps someone!
Thanks

erk1725 said:
Im running 1/8 FML with synapse injected R10 kernel on my toro and with ksm and laptop mode enabled in synapse, I haven't had a launcher redraw in days. I don't have anything whitelisted either. However, the trade-off I have at the moment is I cant seem to stream videos on my stock browser. Havent tried a different browser or anything. I just uncheck those two settings and reboot and all is well, but my phone certainly works much better now, and no redraws, with neph settings for LMK
Hope something helps someone!
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perhaps you can noobify that a bit, lol. I had to google almost everything you mentioned. As I understand it, this Synapse allows you to tweak the kernel? And this KSM settings can improve this RAM issue? Care to elaborate? And what is laptop mode?
I've read about adjusting the LMK values to calm LP down a little. Any idea though why this was so necessary in LP, but not in KK? Is stock LP 'naturally' more RAM hungry than KK?

Djalaal said:
Perhaps you can noobify that a bit, lol. I had to google almost everything you mentioned. As I understand it, this Synapse allows you to tweak the kernel? And this KSM settings can improve this RAM issue? Care to elaborate? And what is laptop mode?
I've read about adjusting the LMK values to calm LP down a little. Any idea though why this was so necessary in LP, but not in KK? Is stock LP 'naturally' more RAM hungry than KK?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can try to elaborate little bit, as Ive been flashing things and researching xda a lot, but I am still noob in how/why things are the way they are. From what I gather lollipop just handles memory differently then kk did. I think that is some of the reason as to why the "recent apps" persist through reboots now. Remember, our device was not really supposed to run kk and certainly not meant to run lollipop. The developers here are without a doubt amazing in what they know and what they do for us users. A new kernel and driver was necessary to run lollipop on the aging gnex. Now, some of the issues we are experiencing is a google issue and will only seem to get fixed when they get around to it. I know my nexus 7 (old) has some memory issues and lag and redraws from time to time....not as much as I noticed with my gnex before the changes were made I stated in the above post. I recently helped my friend root and upgrade his oneplus one to lollipop and he has the same issues we all have, maybe not as bad, but they are noticeable
A lot of the questions you have, have been discussed recently in bsmitty83 kernel thread, since I asked them. There are links there as to what KSM and laptop mode are and what they do. KSM-kernel same page merging helps with RAM and I believe laptop mode helps to conserve power. A lot of these things are geared at devices with low ram like the aging gnex, but the developers have done a great job at making lollipop a daily driver. Most users I think use trickstermod from playstore to tune kernel settings, and that is ok, however, you must purchase the paid version to tweak low memory settings, which I did. However, synapse, also found on playstore can also be used to tweak kernel settings, but the kernel has to contain UCI support for the synapse app to work. Synapse has more settings available to tweak than trickster does, like KSM and laptop mode, which have helped me very much. The only kernel I'm aware of that has UCI support for synapse is bsmitty83 Full_Auto R10, because osmosis made it work
Hopefully this was rather accurate and helpful and not convoluted! ha.....im sure some more knowledgeable people will come and correct anything I said that may be incorrect, but in the meantime, read through the R10 kernel thread and see what you come up with
What ROM and kernel are you currently using?
Thank you

erk1725 said:
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The only kernel I'm aware of that has UCI support for synapse is bsmitty83 Full_Auto R10, because osmosis made it work.
...
What ROM and kernel are you currently using?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm currently using AOSP rom (by freshgimmi) and the Full Auto R10 you mentioned. I'll try injecting the new ramdisk now and see how it goes.

I noticed this issue as well for the first several days . However once I installed the new bootanimation from arter97 the issue doesn't occur anymore. Not sure if it's related but all I did was mount /system as rw and copied into the new lollipop boot animation from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/software/arm-arm64-android-5-0-lollipop-t3032247
Djalaal said:
Does this even need an explanation? Lollipop kills apps like it's his hobby.
Even with only a few light (on RAM) user apps running in the background you sometimes find yourself staring at your launcher home screen that, you could've sworn, was just showing a different app a second ago.
Or the times when, after multi-tasking a bit, your phone starts becoming painfully slow. Turns out that some apps are so stubborn that they go on strike (continuously restarting) when LP kills them.
I'm sure many have experienced this. And I have seen some devs address this issue here and there. I though it would be useful to gather the info into one thread, to ease our (or my?) frustration on this issue.
What I wanna know is, what causes it exactly (why didn't it happen on KK?), and is there a solution to this? Or at some way to calm LP down a bit with his killing of innocent apps.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

SpideyTheMan said:
I noticed this issue as well for the first several days . However once I installed the new bootanimation from arter97 the issue doesn't occur anymore. Not sure if it's related but all I did was mount /system as rw and copied into the new lollipop boot animation from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/software/arm-arm64-android-5-0-lollipop-t3032247
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know about this issue. It is a memory leak during boot. It is a good catch, though all you're changing is the bootanimation.zip. AFAIK, it should not affect your system's performance after boot, once your phone is up and running. My issue is a different thing entirely. I never got bootloops (that is, when not messing around with xposed).

Okay, you're right. As a test last night I switched from FML 5.0.2 to LiquidSmooth's LP ROM and I'm not seeing any aggressive app kills in LiquidSmooth.
Djalaal said:
I know about this issue. It is a memory leak during boot. It is a good catch, though all you're changing is the bootanimation.zip. AFAIK, it should not affect your system's performance after boot, once your phone is up and running. My issue is a different thing entirely. I never got bootloops (that is, when not messing around with xposed).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

erk1725 said:
Im running 1/8 FML with synapse injected R10 kernel on my toro and with ksm and laptop mode enabled in synapse, I haven't had a launcher redraw in days. I don't have anything whitelisted either. However, the trade-off I have at the moment is I cant seem to stream videos on my stock browser. Havent tried a different browser or anything. I just uncheck those two settings and reboot and all is well, but my phone certainly works much better now, and no redraws, with neph settings for LMK
Hope something helps someone!
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have got synapse up and running. I AM wondering though, what LMK settings are you using? Cause the neph settings I know of tell me to set empty app to 370, but synapse only allows max 320... If you're following different settings, could you link the post for me?

Djalaal said:
I have got synapse up and running. I AM wondering though, what LMK settings are you using? Cause the neph settings I know of tell me to set empty app to 370, but synapse only allows max 320... If you're following different settings, could you link the post for me?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you got everything up and running.....Im using Neph's settings for LMK, and your correct the empty app only goes up to 320 in synapse. There was a post somewhere where Neph said he was still tweaking his LMK values and I believe he mentioned about lower empty app to 330 or something, so I just set it to 320 in synapse and call it a day

[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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.