Database Develop

Full 512 mb available?

Does the froyo update make the full 512 mb ram available? I had heard earlier that only a part of it was available due to 2.1 limitations.
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They were always available, ~300Mb for Programs and the rest for the system files... Why should that change?

I think what the OP meant was whether one had more memory for apps as ht tp:// developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html claims that the 2.6.32 kernel upgrade would bring "HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB".
At the moment, we do not have the full memory available in the Linux system:
Code:
$ adb shell
* daemon not running. starting it now *
* daemon started successfully *
$ free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 333420 329988 3432 0 34724
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 333420 329988 3432
I do not know whether that is related to the graphics hardware taking some of the memory, or to the kernel version:
Code:
$ uname -r
2.6.29
Edit: What do you mean by 'system files'? The OS is stored on mass storage, right? And Dalvik and friends should appear as userspace processes taking up regular memory.

satta said:
I think what the OP meant was whether one had more memory for apps as developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html claims that the 2.6.32 kernel upgrade would bring "HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB".
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You do understand that this does not compute, since there has always been more than 256MB available
Or has there?

I was wondering about the same thing, kernel 2.6.32.9 (JP3) also shows a little more than 300mb...

buddy01 said:
You do understand that this does not compute, since there has always been more than 256MB available
Or has there?
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Hey, I'm just quoting from an official AOSP site

Mine shows 30 mb available under advanced task killer. What am I missing?
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@satta yeah that's what I meant and that's what I had read. Cheers
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I've seen Desire have over 400MB of memory available for applications in a video with a some sort of task manager on..

Are you sure, max i got on my nexus one was 312MB in some rare cases, using it without closing apps at all, never got below 100MB... But my Galaxy's max is 170MB, is almost half what my nexus gave me, that kinda suck (don't know if it matter bu tit feels bad in my head )

Desire has 576MB memory.. N1 has 512MB
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Maximum free RAM i got from my sgs is 210mb, easily achieved by using Astro's process manager and killing all non-essential services.

why t.f. do you guys always want to have lots of fre ram? please read a little about android memory management... free ram is wasted ram!

FadeFx said:
why t.f. do you guys always want to have lots of fre ram? please read a little about android memory management... free ram is wasted ram!
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So? We all still want our phones to be as future proof as we hoped they would be when we bought them. And we want the extra RAM simply because it's supposed to be there.
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FadeFx said:
why t.f. do you guys always want to have lots of fre ram? please read a little about android memory management... free ram is wasted ram!
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As long as it doesn't go below that ~70mb when the phones actually start lagging
Might also want to take into consideration that the counterpart Desire used in this thread is also an android phone, sure too much free memory is wasted memory but too little usable memory = lag and if there isn't a lot to use in the first place then it won't take much for the phone to start lagging.
Some help in JG and onward firmwares but it's still quite funny that a simple user can make a fix to create a solution for the entire problem and Samsung hasn't either thought about this or taken it into consideration. (Mimocan is my hero <3)
edit: WOO my first post after actually following these forums for almost half a year, just registered recently

Hey,
Actually you do not need that much RAM. Im running on JG5, which IMO is the most stable and usable firmware out there. Has been running the phone for 3 days straight without any ATK like apps, and has not experience any lags.
Another thing is that, IMHO ATKs slow down the system.
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The current Samsung froyo builds do not support highmem. It is a kernel compile time config option. Samsung will hopefully enable it in later builds.
Highmem made a noticeable difference in performance on my nexus one.

ed10000 said:
So? We all still want our phones to be as future proof as we hoped they would be when we bought them. And we want the extra RAM simply because it's supposed to be there.
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Nonsense. You are not entitled to more free ram in any way.
Every os uses a part of the ram for the kernel code and its buffers.
In addition the advanced graphics will need memory for its texture storage and graphic representation.
A froyo kernel will not make a major difference.
The sg has 512 memory today and it is using it as it should...

akselic said:
As long as it doesn't go below that ~70mb when the phones actually start lagging
Might also want to take into consideration that the counterpart Desire used in this thread is also an android phone, sure too much free memory is wasted memory but too little usable memory = lag and if there isn't a lot to use in the first place then it won't take much for the phone to start lagging.
Some help in JG and onward firmwares but it's still quite funny that a simple user can make a fix to create a solution for the entire problem and Samsung hasn't either thought about this or taken it into consideration. (Mimocan is my hero <3)
edit: WOO my first post after actually following these forums for almost half a year, just registered recently
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Click to collapse
lagging is actually not caused by to less free ram, in android there is no such. the used ram is caused by apps that you opened and then exited again. if you open a new app that needs more ram than aviailable (actually with a little gap of some mb) the system will close apps that are not used anymore and only kept in ram for faster opening. the lag comes from bad i/o speeds of the nand (internal memory) where apps data is stored. on i7500 there is 192mb of ram and it works ok with froyo (thanx to drakaz and gaosp team!) only thing is that every app you open forces the app you opened before to be kicked out of ram what makes switching between apps makes somewhat a pain.
also free memory and usable memory is apples and pears, useable is all memory that contains no actually running in foreground app or service. and free memory is the rest that contains absolutely no information and thus WASTED
edit: btw i7500 is running well with 20mb free ram.

I often have no more than 30 MBs free, and not running THAT many apps. What is strange is that sometimes there is 70-80 MB free, and I have not done anyting. What happens in the background is a mystery... Any suggestions?

how much ram do we really have?

i thought the cappy had 512 mb of ram... why do all the roms have like 341? im confused >.< either i looked at 3 faulty spec sheets for the captivate or we arent utilizing the full ram potential for the captivate. would someone explain the truth on this matter to a captivate noob like me?

i could be wrong but i believe the 341 is available to use ram, while the rest is being used by the phone to function.

nehal51086 said:
i could be wrong but i believe the 341 is available to use ram, while the rest is being used by the phone to function.
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that would make sense, but that makes the specs misleading... i traded my HD2 for a cappy because the spec sheet said 512mb of ram and the HD2 only has 411 available to the OS when running android from nand because the rest is dedicated to winmo only (which sucks massively), and i wanted more ram lol, guess i should have looked harder into things, but regardless the captivate is "better" in very many areas, but RAM is literally my deciding factor for so many things lately (like t-mobile with the sensation or sprint with the evo 3d, i would say evo 3d because it has 256mb or so more ram)

This question has been asked and answered several times....
the phone does have 512mb of ram. Like the person above me said the phones os and graphics take up a portion of the ram. All computers and smart phones work the same way.
As a side note android handles ram very well. You don't need to manage it at all by freeing it up. free ram is wasted ram as the os will have to load it back up anyways
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crystalhand said:
This question has been asked and answered several times....
the phone does have 512mb of ram. Like the person above me said the phones os and graphics take up a portion of the ram. All computers and smart phones work the same way.
As a side note android handles ram very well. You don't need to manage it at all by freeing it up. free ram is wasted ram as the os will have to load it back up anyways
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i know this very well, free ram can be considered wasted ram, unless you need 200mb or so free for a tegra class game, but i think android handles ram awesomely to an extent but can be improved by implementing autokiller memory optimizer in a knowledgable and appropriate way that doesnt hurt optimizations android already has in place, zipaligning, increasing the dalvik heap size, etc... can all be done, im not asking about how android handles ram or anything, and im sorry i didnt know the question had been asked several times i am brand new to the captivate today, literally, and was doing not but seeking information i didnt understand or know, thank you for the explaination though i appreciate it, and im glad to know that my new captivate will utilize the left over 171mb of ram for something unlike my HD2 that couldnt access the last 100mb because it was designated to winmo only. i had an idea that was the case and i was just clarifying to myself because i kept reading rom changelogs stating "enabled more ram now 341mb available" or something along the lines of that and thought to myself "there should be more available already" lol

I honestly think 341MB is enough.

341 MB is alot. But something is taking all that up too. On a fresh boot, half of it is used, and I have 140~170 MB. Its even worse on GB. Most ive gotten is 100 MB free.
So if the half of the 341 plus the mysterious 171 MB that is nowhere to be found, I dont get whats using the other 171 that is not part of the 341. Lol confusing

Same happens to me. Who knows, lol
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I think its the user interface graphics, like scrolling quality is good because that ram is dedicated to things
like that
Sent from cyanogen mod 7

Milestone available memory :(

My milestone run MIUI rom 1.7.8. Available memory is about 20-30 MB , so when I opened camera and taked a picture, It stucked there for a couple minutes. Then I rebooted my phone and Available memory is 40-50 MB, and nothing wrong with the camera ?? How can I fix the memory problem?? please help
Sorry for my English

I do believe that's because when you had 20~30 mb free, there were many others apps running in memory.
The camera app froze the phone 'cause it had no free memory.
When you restarted your phone you had more free memory because you were not running all those app you probably were before.
Sucks, but Milestone's memory is really low

felipefill said:
I do believe that's because when you had 20~30 mb free, there were many others apps running in memory.
The camera app froze the phone 'cause it had no free memory.
When you restarted your phone you had more free memory because you were not running all those app you probably were before.
Sucks, but Milestone's memory is really low
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No man, I open task killer and kill everything. When I bought it , It had about 150 MB free memory man . So confuse ??

Lesson
mtnhan1996 said:
No man, I open task killer and kill everything. When I bought it , It had about 150 MB free memory man . So confuse ??
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Ok clearly you are new to milestone. The thing is when you bought the phone it was probably running 2.1 eclair or 2.0 which uses very little ram: it had the least features (no jit or a2sd) hence it's the lightest on ram. However you have to understand that since froyo google has been trying to add more features to android and use exisitng resources to boost performance and since Google's flagship phone at the time of froyo was the nexus one (which had 512mb of ram whereas the milestoen only has 256mb of ram) and so they used ram to boost performance which is essentiall what JIT is. So there's an issue. The milestone is already short on ram and 2.2/2.3 uses more ram which is why they are sometimes slower (not all, something like froyo mod or cronos ginger/ho!no! is bloody fast) which is why you have less free ram.
but over to MIUI which has even MORE features than stock gb which means it uses up even MORE ram which is why you have so little free ram. use this script, it should help the ram issue http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=991276

thre3aces said:
Ok clearly you are new to milestone. The thing is when you bought the phone it was probably running 2.1 eclair or 2.0 which uses very little ram: it had the least features (no jit or a2sd) hence it's the lightest on ram. However you have to understand that since froyo google has been trying to add more features to android and use exisitng resources to boost performance and since Google's flagship phone at the time of froyo was the nexus one (which had 512mb of ram whereas the milestoen only has 256mb of ram) and so they used ram to boost performance which is essentiall what JIT is. So there's an issue. The milestone is already short on ram and 2.2/2.3 uses more ram which is why they are sometimes slower (not all, something like froyo mod or cronos ginger/ho!no! is bloody fast) which is why you have less free ram.
but over to MIUI which has even MORE features than stock gb which means it uses up even MORE ram which is why you have so little free ram. use this script, it should help the ram issue http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=991276
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Click to collapse
Thank you very much, so now I got 2 options ,right? I can flash froyo mod instead of MIUI or I can use the script to icrease ram a little bit huh?

mtnhan1996 said:
Thank you very much, so now I got 2 options ,right? I can flash froyo mod instead of MIUI or I can use the script to icrease ram a little bit huh?
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well yes and no. in my experience you can have miui with zepplinrox's script but still only have around 30-45mb of free ram whereas on froyomod you can get far more.
I liked using cronos ginger but the thing is feeyo's roms have a lot of bugs and arent updated to the latest sources which is why they are usually a little bit behind.

Cronos GB 1.5.0 is really fast. And yes, it has bugs, but nothing impossible to live with.
This is the fastest GB rom I've tried ..

thre3aces said:
well yes and no. in my experience you can have miui with zepplinrox's script but still only have around 30-45mb of free ram whereas on froyomod you can get far more.
I liked using cronos ginger but the thing is feeyo's roms have a lot of bugs and arent updated to the latest sources which is why they are usually a little bit behind.
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With the script, you can use slot 3 to choose how much free ram you want.
Performance levels out beyond 30mb free tho.
And android will make more ram available if needed anyway.

I use Froyomod and I have around 37 MB free after startup. I tried to play Cut the rope but it keeps killing it. Also happens with Google Maps. Could this be a problem of low memory?

ruisan said:
I use Froyomod and I have around 37 MB free after startup. I tried to play Cut the rope but it keeps killing it. Also happens with Google Maps. Could this be a problem of low memory?
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Click to collapse
yea it is. but if your on froyomod why not try to use advanced task killer and zepplinrox's supercharger

Is it just me, or is Froyo faster than Gingerbread?

When I bought my galaxy s, it was on a 2.2 rom, though I don't remember the exact name. After a while, I flashed it with ZSJPK 2.2.1. Then, I went on to use JVP, JVQ and now, JVR. However, I felt that 2.2 and ZSJPK were both smoother and less laggy than JVP and JVQ. JVR is nearly as smooth as the two froyos, but it's RAM drops to very low levels, 70-80Mb after a day's usage. So, my question is, does anyone else experience such a thing in which their froyo roms were faster/less laggy? Or could it be that I somehow missed something when flashing the gingerbread roms? Thanks.

Why do you care about the RAM being "so low". Memory management works different in Linux than on MS systems. Android (or the underlying linux kernel) keeps apps in memory as long as possible to make a re-start of the app faster. As soon as the memory is needed by a different app, the memory is freed anyway.
My desktop with 4 GB RAM does the same on Linux: 64 MB are free, but if I take buffers and cache into account 1900 MB are available in case an application needs it....
I experienced a better battery life with smoother operation in every day use after installing GB (I guess first that was I9000XXJVK). This got only better with JVH, JVO, JVP, JVQ, JVR and now JVS.

I wouldn't care about the RAM, actually. But whenever my free RAM drops to below 80Mb or so, the phone begins to lag, because it has to close certain processes in order to start up the apps. Also, when the RAM is low and when I try to play certain HD games like the gameloft ones, the phone sometimes crashes.

elhennig said:
Why do you care about the RAM being "so low". Memory management works different in Linux than on MS systems. Android (or the underlying linux kernel) keeps apps in memory as long as possible to make a re-start of the app faster. As soon as the memory is needed by a different app, the memory is freed anyway.
My desktop with 4 GB RAM does the same on Linux: 64 MB are free, but if I take buffers and cache into account 1900 MB are available in case an application needs it....
I experienced a better battery life with smoother operation in every day use after installing GB (I guess first that was I9000XXJVK). This got only better with JVH, JVO, JVP, JVQ, JVR and now JVS.
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Click to collapse
An Android with free ram available is still much faster than an Android phone that continues to swap.
I've done tests in regards to this in System Panel. Plus on occasion whenever I clear my Dalvic Cache, I usually double my memory in System Panel, and my phone feels like "day 1" fast...
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium

ccrows said:
An Android with free ram available is still much faster than an Android phone that continues to swap.
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Where should the mem be swapped to? Android does not swap if there is no swap device or file specified.

elhennig said:
Where should the mem be swapped to? Android does not swap if there is no swap device or file specified.
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I'm saying that there is a benefit to freeing up ram...
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ccrows said:
I'm saying that there is a benefit to freeing up ram...
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
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Yeah, it's beneficial to have free RAM rather than to have to free up the RAM when you need it. If you already have free RAM, running a new application is fast, but if you don't, you cpu needs to free some RAM first before it can load a new application, hence causing some lagginess. That's what I meant when I said that froyo seemed faster, especially after a day of usage.

I was using Froyo for quite a long time before giving a chance to Gingerbread. And I must say I regret I didn't give a chance to GB earlier as the phone is "flying" now. At least for me it was a good switch. When I bought my SGS it was on 2.1 (Eclair) which was a real laggy disaster.

stiwipl said:
I was using Froyo for quite a long time before giving a chance to Gingerbread. And I must say I regret I didn't give a chance to GB earlier as the phone is "flying" now. At least for me it was a good switch. When I bought my SGS it was on 2.1 (Eclair) which was a real laggy disaster.
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Which froyo build were you using? Because the earlier froyos, ie 2.2, were rather lousy. I'm comparing 2.2.1 with 2.3.4

important question

on the specs, it says GS1 has 512mb of RAM. I know android OS takes space phone it self blah blah so we only get to use 3xx mb of RAM. but then usually half (if not more) of the 3xx mb of RAM is already filled!
before, (back in eclair & froyo days) android 2.3 will allow us to utilize ALL 512mb but ****, now even more RAM is in use..
also
someone told me Nexus S who has exact same specs as GS, can use ALL 512mb...
so is there a way to use all 512mb of RAM? or at least more than 329mb?

joonair said:
on the specs, it says GS1 has 512mb of RAM. I know android OS takes space phone it self blah blah so we only get to use 3xx mb of RAM. but then usually half (if not more) of the 3xx mb of RAM is already filled!
before, (back in eclair & froyo days) android 2.3 will allow us to utilize ALL 512mb but ****, now even more RAM is in use..
also
someone told me Nexus S who has exact same specs as GS, can use ALL 512mb...
so is there a way to use all 512mb of RAM? or at least more than 329mb?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You do use all the RAM, Android users shouldn't be worried about RAM as it is good to be used... Now Samsung's excuse for updating the GS1 to ICS is bull. but the reason you get 329 MB of RAM is because that 183 MB of RAM is for the system and cannot be given to the user. There are some kernels that offer like 344 MB of RAM(for Froyo), but that is it. No more, no less. Can't change it! Sorry bud.
Edit- we always are utilizing all 512 MB of RAM always. And when half of it is filled, that is always going to be there if the phone is turned on as some none system apps and system apps cannot be closed and are needed for the device to function.

I just recently got myself a Samsung Infuse, really like the phone. One thing that really bugs me is that it appears to be the same as my captivate in terms of RAM and ROM space, yet on my Infuse i get access to 452MB RAM yet on my captivate as stated we only get access to 329MB or 344MB.
Why such the huge difference?