Develop Bugs

[DISCUSS] Why are background apps closing so much more quickly?

Currently running: CM 10.1, build 0319 stock kernel and cpu settings.
TL;DR - The Hercules and its 1GB RAM suddenly seem like it can't multi-task like it once could. However maybe its app developers just heinously demanding more resources so their apps can look amazingly fluid because they forcefully killed everything else in the back?
What's the deal?
I remember a time in yesteryear yonder, whence I would have 5-7 apps running in the back without breaking nary a sweat. SO WHAT THE HELL happened Android? That was back on Touchwiz and Gingerbread!
Today I can't have utorrent and chrome open simultaneously. TWO apps. For instance if I've utorrent downloading, ill switch to Chrome (recent apps switch; not open) and maybe answer a Whatsapp immediately after; utorrent will undoubtedly be killed and must be reactivated.
Now I understand that chrome and utorrent are naturally RAM heavy applications, but it helps further my point. Why are apps being killed so quickly today? Was it Touchwiz that was great at ram management? Was it gingerbread? Or have apps been slowly updating over the last two years and demanding more allocation of RAM from the get go so that everything else gets forcefully killed? I remember when the Hercules was announced and all the reviewers claimed 1GB was such a stupid amount of overkill RAM and we'll never see it taxed. Now that 2GB has become the standard with the introduction of the GS3, I theorize app devs are being more liberal in demanding resources from devices without giving too much consideration for older models. So apps are killed more frequently to make room to the foreground.
So why do you care?
-The stock stopwatch app will die if you run a few more apps afterwards. This is just derp. Really, try this yourself. Can you imagine your morning alarm was silently force killed because you were reading a website before bedtime?
-Some audio apps can be killed as well. ie Doggcatcher. Audio actually stops if certain conditions of apps are opened after Doggcatcher. Derp.
-Device slows to a complete crawl during the course of a day. I don't believe I've ever owned a device (clamshell Sammy, Blackberry or Android) that didn't exhibit facepalm-worthy memory leak issues. If Android was designed to have its RAM filled, why do slowdowns exist?
-Incoming phone calls suffer lag when re-acquiring attention. This seems bizarre because in About > System you can see the Hercules indicates it has 768MB RAM, indicating a quarter is reserved for system apps. Which means it shouldn't really have this problem.
-Application settings requesting 'Persistent Notifications' to ensure app foreground attention. Apps like Tasker, utorrent, Battery Guru request this to remain alive. Is this the solution now? And is this 100% immune if system requires the resources?
-Apps take longer to open. I can't quite pinpoint this. Just a feeling.
Alright man relax, the Galaxy S4 and HTC One come packing with 2GB
Upgrading to a new flagship doesn't seem to be the solution to stifle this issue. App developers are excellent at what they do and naturally want their product to look its best with the resources available to it. With 3D games exhibiting the capabilities of a Snapdragon 600 and Tegra 4, where's the incentive to tell either to slow down? This same logic can be directly applied to the smartphone spec war and the recurring battery life bottleneck story.
Excellent read here from Gizmodo:
http://gizmodo.com/5992917/battery-life-is-the-only-spec-that-matters
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So what's your point?
I'm not sure I have one. I'm just observing whats happening. We are finally actually seeing applications that are pushing our hardware to its limits. While 1GB of onboard RAM used to be a drool inducing spec, 2GB is not really a huge leap considering the jump the Snapdragon S3 made to the S4, S4 Pro and now the 600 in magnitudes of processing power. 2GB would certainly be astronomical, if it took a trip back in time and only had to run 2011 apps. I guess my point is: I'm throwing a tantrum that the Hercules is showing its age, even if it's not its fault.
Forgive my rambling and lack of proof-reading. At work.

mettleh3d said:
Currently running: CM 10.1, build 0319 stock kernel and cpu settings.
TL;DR - The Hercules and its 1GB RAM suddenly seem like it can't multi-task like it once could. However maybe its app developers just heinously demanding more resources so their apps can look amazingly fluid because they forcefully killed everything else in the back?
What's the deal?
I remember a time in yesteryear yonder, whence I would have 5-7 apps running in the back without breaking nary a sweat. SO WHAT THE HELL happened Android? That was back on Touchwiz and Gingerbread!
Today I can't have utorrent and chrome open simultaneously. TWO apps. For instance if I've utorrent downloading, ill switch to Chrome (recent apps switch; not open) and maybe answer a Whatsapp immediately after; utorrent will undoubtedly be killed and must be reactivated.
Now I understand that chrome and utorrent are naturally RAM heavy applications, but it helps further my point. Why are apps being killed so quickly today? Was it Touchwiz that was great at ram management? Was it gingerbread? Or have apps been slowly updating over the last two years and demanding more allocation of RAM from the get go so that everything else gets forcefully killed? I remember when the Hercules was announced and all the reviewers claimed 1GB was such a stupid amount of overkill RAM and we'll never see it taxed. Now that 2GB has become the standard with the introduction of the GS3, I theorize app devs are being more liberal in demanding resources from devices without giving too much consideration for older models. So apps are killed more frequently to make room to the foreground.
So why do you care?
-The stock stopwatch app will die if you run a few more apps afterwards. This is just derp. Really, try this yourself. Can you imagine your morning alarm was silently force killed because you were reading a website before bedtime?
-Some audio apps can be killed as well. ie Doggcatcher. Audio actually stops if certain conditions of apps are opened after Doggcatcher. Derp.
-Device slows to a complete crawl during the course of a day. I don't believe I've ever owned a device (clamshell Sammy, Blackberry or Android) that didn't exhibit facepalm-worthy memory leak issues. If Android was designed to have its RAM filled, why do slowdowns exist?
-Incoming phone calls suffer lag when re-acquiring attention. This seems bizarre because in About > System you can see the Hercules indicates it has 768MB RAM, indicating a quarter is reserved for system apps. Which means it shouldn't really have this problem.
-Application settings requesting 'Persistent Notifications' to ensure app foreground attention. Apps like Tasker, utorrent, Battery Guru request this to remain alive. Is this the solution now? And is this 100% immune if system requires the resources?
-Apps take longer to open. I can't quite pinpoint this. Just a feeling.
Alright man relax, the Galaxy S4 and HTC One come packing with 2GB
Upgrading to a new flagship doesn't seem to be the solution to stifle this issue. App developers are excellent at what they do and naturally want their product to look its best with the resources available to it. With 3D games exhibiting the capabilities of a Snapdragon 600 and Tegra 4, where's the incentive to tell either to slow down? This same logic can be directly applied to the smartphone spec war and the recurring battery life bottleneck story.
Excellent read here from Gizmodo:
So what's your point?
I'm not sure I have one. I'm just observing whats happening. We are finally actually seeing applications that are pushing our hardware to its limits. While 1GB of onboard RAM used to be a drool inducing spec, 2GB is not really a huge leap considering the jump the Snapdragon S3 made to the S4, S4 Pro and now the 600 in magnitudes of processing power. 2GB would certainly be astronomical, if it took a trip back in time and only had to run 2011 apps. I guess my point is: I'm throwing a tantrum that the Hercules is showing its age, even if it's not its fault.
Forgive my rambling and lack of proof-reading. At work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol...I totally agree. My apps seem to close a lot quicker, yet my RAM never dips below 280 MB free. Don't really get it myself...

killed all for ground apps TouchWiz UI uses up 2gb of ram?

So this is pretty crazy and weird but I killed all the apps running in the background and it says I'm using up 2.07gb of Ram how is that possible?

gator9422 said:
So this is pretty crazy and weird but I killed all the apps running in the background and it says I'm using up 2.07gb of Ram how is that possible?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why does it matter? There is a ton of memory in this phone, and the OS manages it very, very well. You don't need spare memory. This isn't Windows, you won't run out of memory. It stores what it thinks it needs in RAM and keeps it there for quick access. It uses all the memory all the time (or at least it should). One of the things that prevents lag is to have the stuff loaded and ready at a moments notice.
Its a question of how the OS runs, not how much memory its taking. I would prefer if they hid that stat all together, then people would stop fixating on it, and loading efficiency killing memory manager apps.
Much like running defrag on a modern hard drive (they are supposed to be fragmented, they work better and faster that way) Android is supposed to run 90-95% used memory.. ALL THE TIME. Its the way its designed, and it works better that way.

One of the biggest misconceptions on all of XDA is about used RAM in a phone. People are always saying "OMG, there is only 500mb of unused RAM on my phone, it's going to slow down to a crawl!".
Just to be clear and hopefully people will understand it....unused RAM is wasted RAM. It does NOT have anything to do with slowing your phone down or anything like that. If there is 1gb of free RAM on your Note 4, that's totally fine.
Android manages RAM very well, don't stress. That's actually way more than it needs. You can only have 200mb of RAM free and your phone would still run fine. It's the way it's supposed to work. We have more than enough RAM in this phone.
I just hope this misconception will finally go away. I see at least a few RAM threads in every device forum.

It doesn't matter to me it's just the fact that I don't have any apps open and TouchWiz itself uses up 2gb of Ram to me that's a lot js

gator9422 said:
It doesn't matter to me it's just the fact that I don't have any apps open and TouchWiz itself uses up 2gb of Ram to me that's a lot js
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Click to collapse
It truly is a misconception. Android, windows, nix, any OS, for that matter. You would want too see your RAM being utilized. I would prefer to have my RAM used than not used at all because any unused RAM is a wasted RAM. This is also same with CPU. Unutilized cores are wasted cores. When writing software, one of the best practices is to learn how to use the memory to its full potential. You would want necessary stuff in RAM because using them when needed is faster if they are already loaded in memory than reinitializing the modules again and again every time for use. As far as memory location, RAM still provides the fastest. This is why in many companies that used gigabytes of data in their databases, a common practice in databadse engine technology is that they would actually load entire gigabytes of frequently accessed tables in memory for extremely fast access.
In short, don't worry

Thank you for the replies like they say you learn something new everyday. I appreciate the input

I'm more curious to know how the system manages to use more RAM every year with every new device released. Are there really that many more new features every year where they gobble up RAM?

gator9422 said:
Thank you for the replies like they say you learn something new everyday. I appreciate the input
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Click to collapse
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/cache-memory

Techweed said:
I'm more curious to know how the system manages to use more RAM every year with every new device released. Are there really that many more new features every year where they gobble up RAM?
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My first computer had 512 mb RAM and it was fine at the time. Of course, with newer releases, they develop more features. With more features, more modules are created to support those features. Hence, more RAM usage.

^Wow, I think my first PC might have had 512 kb of RAM.

fbauto1 said:
My first computer had 512 mb RAM and it was fine at the time. Of course, with newer releases, they develop more features. With more features, more modules are created to support those features. Hence, more RAM usage.
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That's true but with Kit Kat we were supposed to get a leaner running OS so that it would run on even old devices with minimum RAM. And I don't see how Touchwiz by itself could add 1 GB of RAM usage between the Note 2 and Note 4.

I would disagree on wanting all the ram to be being used... On previous rooted phones I have had (GS2, GS3, GSA4) getting rid of bloatware/useless apps eating up my ram made it much more responsive and fluid when opening new programs while significantly increasing battery life. Seems people just spew the bull**** marketing lines of Google across the internet and expect people to take it as truth. User experience is what is important, and getting rid of the garbage on any android version will make it faster. Not a difficult concept to understand.

rcracer_tx said:
I would disagree on wanting all the ram to be being used... On previous rooted phones I have had (GS2, GS3, GSA4) getting rid of bloatware/useless apps eating up my ram made it much more responsive and fluid when opening new programs while significantly increasing battery life. Seems people just spew the bull**** marketing lines of Google across the internet and expect people to take it as truth. User experience is what is important, and getting rid of the garbage on any android version will make it faster. Not a difficult concept to understand.
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There is no bull**** here. Attend college and find out.
It is proven practice to use RAM
My source:
Myself with 15+ years as a software engineer

^^^This man speaks the truth. In my final year of my degree in software development and RAM utilization is common practice. User experience is different for everyone and what you "feel" is faster may or may not be an improvement.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using XDA Free mobile app

I think the goal of debloating should be to reduce the use of cpu by unwanted applications and reducing the amount of RAM taken up by them so that other applications may be cached instead. Whenever I debloat I start with watching applications that load and try to trim of the ones I know I don't need at all. I then move onto greenifying applications that run or cache themselves that I'll rarely use. Never in this process do I try to maximize free memory since doing so means applications that are not cached will take longer to launch. Im not sure if this is the right philosophy but it seems effective to me.

fbauto1 said:
There is no bull**** here. Attend college and find out.
It is proven practice to use RAM
My source:
Myself with 15+ years as a software engineer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I already have two degrees from a major big 12 university. And do a good amount of IT work for the business I work at. If you think that having your ram eaten up by programs you never use is good practice, maybe you need to re-evaluate the school you got your education. Using your logic our computers should be faster when they are full of **** running in the background... That's asinine. Full AND EFFICIENT utilization of ram is proven practice, not filling up ram full of bloatware.
muzzy996 said:
I think the goal of debloating should be to reduce the use of cpu by unwanted applications and reducing the amount of RAM taken up by them so that other applications may be cached instead. Whenever I debloat I start with watching applications that load and try to trim of the ones I know I don't need at all. I then move onto greenifying applications that run or cache themselves that I'll rarely use. Never in this process do I try to maximize free memory since doing so means applications that are not cached will take longer to launch. Im not sure if this is the right philosophy but it seems effective to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well said, I agree. I guess I didn't make the distinction of when freeing up ram being eaten up by crap that will never be opened, What I mean is that cached memory being freed up is then able to be used by apps that I actually use. If over 2gb out of 2.92gb is being used all the time, (with the vast majority being eaten up by bloatware and the rest just being the base OS/UI) then that is not efficient utilization of ram. If you have to kill cached programs constantly and then load the new program you begin using, its going to take longer than having that program already having everything cached. In most times this is only milliseconds difference, but the fluidity of the transition is important to many as it is a significant factor in user experience. Who wants a phone that lags whenever a user input is made?

rcracer_tx said:
Well said, I agree. I guess I didn't make the distinction of when freeing up ram being eaten up by crap that will never be opened, What I mean is that cached memory being freed up is then able to be used by apps that I actually use. If over 2gb out of 2.92gb is being used all the time, (with the vast majority being eaten up by bloatware and the rest just being the base OS/UI) then that is not efficient utilization of ram. If you have to kill cached programs constantly and then load the new program you begin using, its going to take longer than having that program already having everything cached. In most times this is only milliseconds difference, but the fluidity of the transition is important to many as it is a significant factor in user experience. Who wants a phone that lags whenever a user input is made?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is interesting that the vast majority of 2GB of your RAM is being using by bloatware. Between the Touchwiz function for turning off unneeded apps and Android's algorithms for determining what should be kept in memory, I find that "bloatware" apps (i.e., app I don't use) are practically non-existent in RAM...at least for me. That said, even if you still have 0.92 GB free, Android is not likely to decide it needs to kill an existing process to accommodate another program.

rcracer_tx said:
I already have two degrees from a major big 12 university. And do a good amount of IT work for the business I work at. If you think that having your ram eaten up by programs you never use is good practice, maybe you need to re-evaluate the school you got your education. Using your logic our computers should be faster when they are full of **** running in the background... That's asinine. Full AND EFFICIENT utilization of ram is proven practice, not filling up ram full of bloatware.
Well said, I agree. I guess I didn't make the distinction of when freeing up ram being eaten up by crap that will never be opened, What I mean is that cached memory being freed up is then able to be used by apps that I actually use. If over 2gb out of 2.92gb is being used all the time, (with the vast majority being eaten up by bloatware and the rest just being the base OS/UI) then that is not efficient utilization of ram. If you have to kill cached programs constantly and then load the new program you begin using, its going to take longer than having that program already having everything cached. In most times this is only milliseconds difference, but the fluidity of the transition is important to many as it is a significant factor in user experience. Who wants a phone that lags whenever a user input is made?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are comparing RAM utilization to bloatware?
Where did you get your degrees, eBay?

fbauto1 said:
You are comparing RAM utilization to bloatware?
Where did you get your degrees, eBay?
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Click to collapse
No... he's not. Read it again. His point is that programs he doesn't need utilizing ram is bad.
We're playing a game of semantics here. He is working the angle that the original posts saying 'using ram is good' isn't true if it is crap that is using it.
Silly discussion at this point as both sides are correct based on the parameters of their view point.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A

Do you have this memory issue?

I just noticed that in the Running Services, System takes more than 800 MB of RAM and if I open the camera app, it could take up to 1GB of RAM. I tried to boot into safe mode, unfortunately it doesn't make things any better. System still takes more than 600 MB of RAM. And after 1-2 days on without a reboot, it takes more than 700 MB of RAM again.
However, everything's fine on my Nexus 5(6.0) and Z3C(5.1), system always uses at most 600 MB of RAM. I don't need to reboot these phones every 2 days which I have to do with my 5X otherwise it will become intolerable slow. People always say the reason your phone is lagging and stuttering must be related to those 3rd-party apps you've installed, but those apps I installed are exactly the same with my other phones.
I also found some people don't have any performance issue at all... But I don't think it's something with the hardware. Maybe system on nexus 5x need to use that much RAM because of the camera and fingerprint scanner? But one thing I'm pretty sure is that my phone gets very laggy after 2 or 3 days... App redraws are killing me...

I noticed the same thing. When I reboot my phone after 2-3 days I notice the speed different a LOT.
Even though the same usage is the same.
Is your phone encrypted / encrypted?

im running uber rom unencrypted and have similar system usage (790-810 MB).
Checked system usage an hour later and was back down to 600 MB.

5X is a 64bit phone, so the system and apps may use more memory.

Looks like 5x buyers run into the same **** like Nexus 9...? There is something going wrong in the OS and Google not able to fix it, or they have been fatally wrong when they decided that 2 GB is enough ram.

zurih said:
I noticed the same thing. When I reboot my phone after 2-3 days I notice the speed different a LOT.
Even though the same usage is the same.
Is your phone encrypted / encrypted?
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Encrypted. Will unencrypt my phone improve the performance?

shallowscar said:
Encrypted. Will unencrypt my phone improve the performance?
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Click to collapse
I'm not sure but I'm testing it now. I decrypted my phone yesterday and waiting to see if there any performance/memory advantages.
If not I might as-well encrypt it again for more security.

The NEXUS 9 was 64 bit and had 2 gb ram, likewise for the NEXUS 5x, however I found the memory management is much better, 3gb should have been used for 5x and 9 and 4gb for 6p.

How much free RAM do you have?

Hi everyone,
Been using my G4 for just over a week now and have noticed that the free RAM drops significantly after some use (just a few hours), on average I have about 80% RAM used meaning that I have around 550MB free, now I haven't noticed any slow downs/lags but am just curious, how much free RAM do you have and what kind of user are you? Lets gather some facts. I am a relatively light user, probably have less third party apps than the amount of apps preloaded (Google + LG).
Note: I am running the latest version of LG's stock MM, no root.

ShinOrochiX said:
Hi everyone,
Been using my G4 for just over a week now and have noticed that the free RAM drops significantly after some use (just a few hours), on average I have about 80% RAM used meaning that I have around 550MB free, now I haven't noticed any slow downs/lags but am just curious, how much free RAM do you have and what kind of user are you? Lets gather some facts. I am a relatively light user, probably have less third party apps than the amount of apps preloaded (Google + LG).
Note: I am running the latest version of LG's stock MM, no root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android is dicfrent than windowz android manages ram on its own if it runs low itll clear itself to make room for the new i run about the same. All these task killers waste battery now. Its ok leave it be. Ever since kk adroid handles much better

Yes using RAM in modern Linux systems and in Android means that the operating system pre caches things to actually speed up your device.
You had to went away from the idea of having as much free RAM as possible. Having unused RAM is actually a waste of resources isn't it? Why not using that free resources when not needed? Well and the result is a more or less intelligent handling of RAM usage where you will see high RAM usage.
So if you have less free amount of RAM it means all is fine :laugh: :victory:
Sent from my LG-H815 using XDA Labs

I also would like to point that apps like Messenger used around 80mb in my S4 Mini (with 1.5GB) and the same version of the app uses around 150 in this phone. So android is doing its good work using the memory efficiently so you have the best efficiency when switching apps and so.
Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

I was reading this article which pretty much explained everything RAM related. I used to own the OnePlus X which also had 3GB of RAM and with that I had around 1.5GB free, with the G4 I have less than half that . Then again the OPX pretty much ran on AOSP android with is feature-less.

anytime enough.You run out ram? Your device freezing?

kabirjedi said:
anytime enough.You run out ram? Your device freezing?
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Click to collapse
No my device doesn't freeze, I get occasional stutters/lags but these are minor. So it is not really a major issue, I was just curious. It is all about the balance, AOSP=fastest performance but least features, custom UIs=slower performance but much more features, for me the features and UI presentation are most important, I can slightly compromise on performance, AOSP is just plain boring, nothing about the UI appeals to me.

anybody else getting serious lag and ram being used up

I know unused ram is wasted ram, but I'm constantly at 90% ram and it's causing the phone to lag and stutter to the point its unusable unless I reboot then I'm good. Just wanted to see if anybody was going through the same thing or if I have a rouge app up to something.

I've noticed that myself.. That is why I have debloated my phone without root. I have also notice the biggest user of the ram is the Android OS 1.3 Gb.

Joe199799 said:
I know unused ram is wasted ram, but I'm constantly at 90% ram and it's causing the phone to lag and stutter to the point its unusable unless I reboot then I'm good. Just wanted to see if anybody was going through the same thing or if I have a rouge app up to something.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. It's a typical LG thing. Their Android mods are slick and lovely, but they're far from lightweight.
I moved from a Sony XZ1 Compact to a G7, and it is generally a significantly slower, laggier experience. With the Sony it would generally use less than 2gb of RAM at the outset. I could come back to an app a week later and it'd still be open. With this G7 I think it's rare to see it under 3gb consumption, and every time I open the camera I'm evicted most other apps from memory.
Then there's the lag! I thought a years newer flagship tech would have minimized the LG lag experience, but no.
Also no, at least for T-Mobile uS G7, no root, no AOSP and official device trees. I am made of regret, definitely never another LG, and Sony for me from here on out.

This phone has given me the least amount of issues with lag and freezes out of any phone I've had. I do a lot of gaming on here and rarely have an issue. I try to install as much as possible on my SD card, I don't know if that would make a difference with RAM usage, and I don't leave a bunch of apps running in the background.