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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
Is there a particular rom which offers better ram management to allow for apps to stay in the memory longer, and cached apps get less priority?
I'm getting annoyed of apps that are suppose to be running all the time in the notification bar, but they are constantly restarting because the ram gets too low, but in fact, there is enough ram, but it's being taken up by cached apps instead!
Maybe I'm asking too much. Are there ROMS which:
1) offer more ram by being "trim"
2) manage memory better for multitasking
I really wanted to keep this phone stock, but this is pathetic! I feel that my old phone, with a "huge" 256mb ram chip was able to run more software in the background than my GN is! I've stripped all the useful apps off this phone and memory management is still an issue.
isn't the kernel responsible for that and not the rom?
zephiK said:
isn't the kernel responsible for that and not the rom?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good question. I figured some roms are made lighter by removing stuff on it you don't need, and when it's done on a system level, I assumed that less ram would be needed for the os to operate.
Maybe someone can explain this?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
I mean yeah, to a extent.. I'd believe that ROM and Kernel both contributes to it but kernel is the bigger player when it comes to optimizing "RAM."
I use AOKP + Franco Kernel if that helps. No lag problems, never even had it when it came to stock ICS. You'd might want to check your apps and see if there's a bad app causing memory leaks.
EP2008 said:
Is there a particular rom which offers better ram management to allow for apps to stay in the memory longer, and cached apps get less priority?
I'm getting annoyed of apps that are suppose to be running all the time in the notification bar, but they are constantly restarting because the ram gets too low, but in fact, there is enough ram, but it's being taken up by cached apps instead!
Maybe I'm asking too much. Are there ROMS which:
1) offer more ram by being "trim"
2) manage memory better for multitasking
I really wanted to keep this phone stock, but this is pathetic! I feel that my old phone, with a "huge" 256mb ram chip was able to run more software in the background than my GN is! I've stripped all the useful apps off this phone and memory management is still an issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AOKP and a few other roms have the option to change the minimum ram before android os starts killing background apps. The default is about 80MB I believe. You can decrease it (do not forget to check set on boot), but I do not think it is recommended to go too low.
If you are having low memory issues its probably because of a rogue app. Install System Tuner and check for background apps that use more than ~10-20MB of memory.
Ok so I was running an app to check on CPU speeds (unrelated research) when I noticed that this same app was saying I only had 340mb of RAM free...
This seemed a bit strange, considering this tablet has 3GB of RAM on board, and I'm not really running anything at the moment.
I went into the storage setting page, and looked at running processes, and it says that I am using 2.5GB of my RAM.
but... if I add up all the ram usage on all the running processes, it only adds up to about 500mb....
So what is using up the other 2gb?
If anyone has any suggestions, it'd be nice, as at the moment it seems I only have 1gb of usable RAM in this device...
EDIT:
Nevermind, I think I solved it... sort of. I found that the ram clearing button is in a different place than I remember, and I have managed to clear out some more space... though even after a full reset 1.5gb of ram is immediately being used. Seems a lot.
Though this is a stock rom etc so I suspect thats normal.
electrical tcfpain
nirurin said:
Ok so I was running an app to check on CPU speeds (unrelated research) when I noticed that this same app was saying I only had 340mb of RAM free...
This seemed a bit strange, considering this tablet has 3GB of RAM on board, and I'm not really running anything at the moment.
I went into the storage setting page, and looked at running processes, and it says that I am using 2.5GB of my RAM.
but... if I add up all the ram usage on all the running processes, it only adds up to about 500mb....
So what is using up the other 2gb?
If anyone has any suggestions, it'd be nice, as at the moment it seems I only have 1gb of usable RAM in this device...
EDIT:
Nevermind, I think I solved it... sort of. I found that the ram clearing button is in a different place than I remember, and I have managed to clear out some more space... though even after a full reset 1.5gb of ram is immediately being used. Seems a lot.
Though this is a stock rom etc so I suspect thats normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You probably aren't using all 2.5GB for actual running programs.
Windows 7 does a great job of managing money. If it has any unused memory it will hold often used programs or data in memory in case it's needed. If a running program needs that memory it's quickly shifted. Otherwise when you reopen that program you recently closed, it may load quickly from memory rather than from the drive. I suspect Android does things similar.
Modern systems programmers consider "free" memory to be wasted, so they put it to the best use they can anticipate. That gives you the benefit of all memory as often as possible. If they only allowed the memory to be used for what's needed right now, your Note would only have about 1 GB memory, and would be considerably slower.
It's a little like having the cook wash your car while waiting three hours for the turkey to cook. You get both the turkey and the car wash.
jnichols2 said:
You probably aren't using all 2.5GB for actual running programs.
Windows 7 does a great job of managing money. If it has any unused memory it will hold often used programs or data in memory in case it's needed. If a running program needs that memory it's quickly shifted. Otherwise when you reopen that program you recently closed, it may load quickly from memory rather than from the drive. I suspect Android does things similar.
Modern systems programmers consider "free" memory to be wasted, so they put it to the best use they can anticipate. That gives you the benefit of all memory as often as possible. If they only allowed the memory to be used for what's needed right now, your Note would only have about 1 GB memory, and would be considerably slower.
It's a little like having the cook wash your car while waiting three hours for the turkey to cook. You get both the turkey and the car wash.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm guessing you mean android, not windows 7
Though I imagine both do the same thing lol
nirurin said:
I'm guessing you mean android, not windows 7
Though I imagine both do the same thing lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used Windows 7 as an example because I know how it works. Like you, I imagine Android 4.3 does the same thing.
I was wondering about this as well. On my Note 2, when I clean the ram, it will go to 480-500 / 1.75g on this tab, ext I could get is 1.33/2.75.......
I went through and turned off a lot of the apps, it helped free up a little bit.
Does anyone have a list of the apps that are safe to turn off?
:beer:
Sent from my SM-P600 using Xparent Cyan Tapatalk 2
I have LTE version with Snapdragon and when I start the tablet, it uses about 890MB of 2,35GB available (yes, it has 3GB RAM, but graphic processor uses some of this RAM)... When it loads all apps to RAM (about 50 of them, we know android do this) and I start few apps(FB, Gmail, Chrome, Hangouts for example), I still use only about 1,3GB of RAM... So almost 1GB is still free
In Android having too much free ram is not a good thing. Let your apps use it, you don't have to worry about not having enough ram, OS manages it well for you.
ddavtian said:
In Android having too much free ram is not a good thing. Let your apps use it, you don't have to worry about not having enough ram, OS manages it well for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Android is a mobile OS which means that it can backup and restore not needed apps if necessary and the 3GB are only the runtime memory beside this it can use the whole internal memory for "running" apps. So long Android got enough memory it holds all apps in memory which speed up the whole device. Therefore it is positive that the Note use his whole 3GB memory and don't think that killing apps or free memory will be a good idea. It will slow your device and produce lags.
ddavtian said:
In Android having too much free ram is not a good thing. Let your apps use it, you don't have to worry about not having enough ram, OS manages it well for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Elim said:
+1
Android is a mobile OS which means that it can backup and restore not needed apps if necessary and the 3GB are only the runtime memory beside this it can use the whole internal memory for "running" apps. So long Android got enough memory it holds all apps in memory which speed up the whole device. Therefore it is positive that the Note use his whole 3GB memory and don't think that killing apps or free memory will be a good idea. It will slow your device and produce lags.
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Click to collapse
They are both right. Android is based on linux. Linux uses ram very effectively to cache apps and data to speed up your system. When something needs ram it removes a different app or data from the ram to keep moving. It works totally different from Windows. Check out this article.
http://www.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
Every day since Android came out someone asks this question somewhere... Is Google offline?
Sent from my SM-P605 using XDA Premium HD app
If you want to change how your ram is managed, and you have root, you can use the v6 supercharger or a simple minfree setting app. V6 is in the developer section of the general android forum on this site. I've found that m ram fills up from cached apps. V6 will let you auto clear however often you want.
Hello there
I have just bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 tablet. But it consumes too much ram.
This causes instability and excessive battery usage.
Do I have any chance about this?
Thanks
Android isn't compareable to windows in ram usage. Your tab will run smoother if 1gig is used instead of 600mb, because some data is still in the memory which means faster app starts...
If android needs more ram it cleans the memory itself
Then it's something you installed, because out of the box it's fine.
blckstr said:
But it consumes too much ram.
This causes instability and excessive battery usage.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you make that connection?
There are multiple posts here about RAM usage on this tablet and many more about RAM usage in Android. You don't need to worry about your RAM, OS does a good job managing it.
Hi again
I Use "Clean Master" to montior my RAM usage and it always shows ram usage is around 92%
I didn't install too much stuff. A couple of games which I play rarely and a few drawing apps.
Sent from my Sony Xperia Z1using xda app-developers app
blckstr said:
Hi again
I Use "Clean Master" to montior my RAM usage and it always shows ram usage is around 92% I didn't install too much stuff. A couple of games which I play rarely and a few drawing apps.
Sent from my Sony Xperia Z1using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IMHO a memory monitor could mess up with normal memory management, because if it is set to a too restrictive policy it could try to free memory that OS will reuse at once, and so on.
I would suggest trying to use your tablet without the memory monitor, then compare the behavior.
How does used ram cause battery drain? It does not. What causes battery drain is when your cpu is getting used. When your apps aren't precached your cpu will have to work a bit harder every time you start an app. Also your memory monitoring app will use more cpu cycles than it will save you. What you could look out for are apps that consume lots of cpu power. Sometimes apps are badly coded and consume lots of power. Those kinds of apps will most likely show up in the battery stats in the settings menu. No external apps are needed. They usually cause more harm then good.
Sent from my GT-P6800 using xda app-developers app
Yes maybe you are right. I managed to improved battery life. But I can't say the same for RAM usage.
Compared to my Sony Xperia Z1, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 responds real slow. Although it has more RAM. (2GB vs 3 GB)
I did a research about speeding up it. But couldn't come up with a sollution.
More ram doesn't really make a device faster. Nowadays it's a lot more about the software and drivers etc.. Samsung sometimes neglects that and focuses on adding software stuff that they can advertise. I wrote a guide on speeding the device up. It assumes you have root, but you can just see how many apps you can disable in the settings. Might be enough.
After applying all the steps and keeping my device clean it's the fastest tablet I ever had in my hands.
blckstr said:
Yes maybe you are right. I managed to improved battery life. But I can't say the same for RAM usage.
Compared to my Sony Xperia Z1, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 responds real slow. Although it has more RAM. (2GB vs 3 GB)
I did a research about speeding up it. But couldn't come up with a sollution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More ram usage is a sign of more services running.... which means there is loads of stuff running in your background..
If I dont run a single app my ram has 1.3 Gig ram left... go to application manager and check whats running... if you see stuff you dont need freeze it with titanium backup.. or unistall if you are sure its not needed.. your system does not simply use more ram randomly...
Greetings
blckstr said:
Hello there
I have just bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 tablet. But it consumes too much ram.
This causes instability and excessive battery usage.
Do I have any chance about this?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
RAM is there to be used. Free RAM is useless RAM. The more RAM it's using, the lower the battery usage because it doesn't have to go to flash memory for data.
Gasaraki- said:
RAM is there to be used. Free RAM is useless RAM. The more RAM it's using, the lower the battery usage because it doesn't have to go to flash memory for data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like he says when it comes to Linux the more ram in use the better.
Sent from my HTC6600LVW using XDA Premium HD app
I found the problem. It is TouchWiz.
After disabling it and installing a new launcher, Nova Prime, I have no ram and lag issues.
Yes I agree about ram thing but with a huge amount of ram usage multi-tasking is not efficent.
Been running Nova Prime with Lag for several months, still lags. Disable the card reduces the lag a bit. That though is not an option.
Via my Note 3
{Diemex} said:
More ram doesn't really make a device faster. Nowadays it's a lot more about the software and drivers etc.. Samsung sometimes neglects that and focuses on adding software stuff that they can advertise. I wrote a guide on speeding the device up. It assumes you have root, but you can just see how many apps you can disable in the settings. Might be enough.
After applying all the steps and keeping my device clean it's the fastest tablet I ever had in my hands.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BclingergFJ said:
Been running Nova Prime with Lag for several months, still lags. Disable the card reduces the lag a bit. That though is not an option.
Via my Note 3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Diemex's guide is really helpful. Try it. Great work Diemex
After freezing TouchWiz via Rom Toolbox. My device became a '14 Ferrari from a '68 Beatle
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?
Sent from my ASUS_Z00AD using Tapatalk