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My friend just got his phone from unlocked mobiles, i am still waiting for mine from Handtec... argh... but i just got him to check how much free memory he had from looking at advanced task killer and he only had 37MB free!!? Got him to kill everything and he only got about 130MB free in total.
Can other people check theirs to see, because its looking like the same problem that happened with the nexus one where only 256MB of the 512MB RAM was available to use, until they upgrade it to Froyo 2.2 or change the kernal to allow for Hi Mem support.
rubbish if they havent sorted this!
anyone?
ya.. its the same because of the limitation in 2.6.29 kernel not the phone. More reason to bug Samsung to upgrade to froyo or root the device
Yeah i don't think they've fixed it, ,my phone only reports about over 100 meg free.
where do you go to see memory available?
122m Avail. memory using adv task killer.
bugger, i thought they would have at least sorted out the kernal to support himem. if XDA developers can do it for android 2.1 then why cant samsung! very lame and annoying as I have seen my friends phone slow down quite a few times now.
I flashed froyo JPD + voodoo lagfix and my RAM manger shows
191 / 304 MB.
I choosed level 1 and 2 and clean memory, now it is using 144 MB.
I guess it is supposed to show 512 MB.
If I kill everything, 142M free (stock JVK). I used to be able to get ~170M free with JPY...
I'm of the, sometimes controversial, opinion that unused RAM is wasted RAM though and don't really care how much is free - as long there's no lag!
Valeo said:
I'm of the, sometimes controversial, opinion that unused RAM is wasted RAM though and don't really care how much is free - as long there's no lag!
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Click to collapse
I have same opinion. We will never see 512mb ram available, as someones may think..we HAVE 512mb ram, but due technical issues, it won't be all usable for us..and as a linux based system, it's good to have mem full as possible. Generally speaking...
There is many topics about ram in xda..with lots of information..
sent from my i9000 w/ xda premium
209\329, jvk
As far as i can remember, we don't see the whole 512 mb RAM (or at least 400+) because of PowerVR GPU, which reserves a lot of ram for itself.
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.
Sent from my GT-I9000 ADJF1 using XDA App
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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Click to collapse
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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Click to collapse
Hey, I'm just quoting from an official AOSP site
Mine shows 30 mb available under advanced task killer. What am I missing?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
@satta yeah that's what I meant and that's what I had read. Cheers
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
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 does the Captivate really have? Reason I ask is my friend's Droid Incredible constantly has about 270-280MB free, even when he was on 2.1. My Captivate has about 150MB free after doing a task kill. I thought these were supposed to have 512MB of RAM, but this post says that the new Samsung Continuum has the same 336MB as the Samsung Fascinate. So, who knows for sure, with rock solid concrete proof that these phones have 512MB??
"The device looks to have the exact same 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, 336 MB of RAM, and Super AMOLED display as the already released Fascinate (we assume the camera and battery are going to be the same as well). "
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/09/30/new-hi-res-images-info-on-verizons-samsung-continuum/
From what I have read. The cappy has 512 but can't use all of it till froyo. 2.1 can't see all 512.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
derek4484 said:
How much RAM does the Captivate really have? Reason I ask is my friend's Droid Incredible constantly has about 270-280MB free, even when he was on 2.1. My Captivate has about 150MB free after doing a task kill. I thought these were supposed to have 512MB of RAM, but this post says that the new Samsung Continuum has the same 336MB as the Samsung Fascinate. So, who knows for sure, with rock solid concrete proof that these phones have 512MB??
"The device looks to have the exact same 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, 336 MB of RAM, and Super AMOLED display as the already released Fascinate (we assume the camera and battery are going to be the same as well). "
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/09/30/new-hi-res-images-info-on-verizons-samsung-continuum/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are trying to hard.
Check out the official specs on samsungs web site:
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SGH-I897ZKAATT-features
If you don't believe that, then i don't know what to tell you.
alphadog00 said:
You are trying to hard.
Check out the official specs on samsungs web site:
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SGH-I897ZKAATT-features
If you don't believe that, then i don't know what to tell you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, so it says 512MB of RAM. Well why cant we access the whole 512MB?? People were just saying "well 2.1 cant access all of it", which was garbage. My friend's droid incredible on 2.1 accessed all 512MB of its RAM. Now that Froyo is out for Captivate, its own built in task manager says it only has 304MB of RAM.
So, how am I trying hard? And what am I trying hard to do? I'm just wanting to know a solid answer. Where the EFF is the rest of the 512MB of RAM that these phones supposedly have? I regret buying a samjunk phone every day. Should have never wasted a dime on Samjunk.
Take it back; sell it; get rid of it then.
No one forced you to buy it or keep it.
The spec sheet says it has 512MB of RAM - some speculate that some of it used as video memory; other mentions say there is a RAM disk taking up space.
I have many apps open and running and i have not had a problem with running out of memory - so I am not to worried about what is available.
The initramfs uses a few MB - not much, single digits. The stock kernels also include ramdisk support and set up 8 8KiB ramdisks iirc. None of this accounts for the amount "missing", but space reserved for two or three screen-sized buffers, and for texture memory, etc might explain it. I have no idea where people get this idea that eclair kernels can't support 512MB.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Unhelpful said:
The initramfs uses a few MB - not much, single digits. The stock kernels also include ramdisk support and set up 8 8KiB ramdisks iirc. None of this accounts for the amount "missing", but space reserved for two or three screen-sized buffers, and for texture memory, etc might explain it. I have no idea where people get this idea that eclair kernels can't support 512MB.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Thank you. Educated answer. I know it has a 512MB chip in it, I dont think anybody is disputing that. What I was wanting to know or figure out is where is the missing RAM? From 512 to 304 is a good bit missing. So out of the 304MB the OS takes up about 160-180, that leaves us with about 120-140ish for program memory. To me, it doesnt make much sense to put 512 in a phone then hide almost half of it from programs. I demo'ed a Moto Droid last November for a month and it came with 256MB and after doing a task kill it would have about the same as these Galaxy S phones do. My guess is that some of the system ram is being reserved for video ram, or other's have speculated that there is a ram disk in there. Maybe a combination of both, vram and ram disk. I think its wrong for samsung to advertise "512MB RAM" to compete with the likes of N1, Droid incredible, EVO 4G, all of which have a true 512MB, but our phones have a large portion of that 512, thats not accessible. It'd be a lot more honest if they advertised 304MB.
Actually 128 MB of the RAM is dedicated to the gpu. I don't know specifics but I'm guess this is part of the reason why the galaxy blows everything else away in gaming. It is a little dissapointing but whatever. I feel the same way bout it as everyone else.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
Anybody checked how does it look in i9000 or other GalaxyS-family phones?
Tear-downs have revealed that the phone does have 3 different chips that add up to 512 mb. Unfortunately a sizable portion is reserved for an unknown reason.
Has anybody been able to get a solid answer about where the missing 208MB of RAM is? Is it a ramdisk, is it video ram, is it a little of both? Who knows? Samsung knows but they wont admit that it doesnt have 512MB.
I've emailed samsung customer service several times explaining that my phone system information says 304MB RAM. They just reply, "Captivate does indeed have 512MB of RAM. Thank you for your inquiry.... blah blah blah."
It does have a 512MB chip in it, but what's it being used for, is what I'd like to know. N1 doesnt have this problem. Droid incredible doesnt have this problem. Droid X doesnt, etc. The G2 does, its advertised as 512MB but when you do system info on it, it has 380MB.
I just spoke to samsung level 5, its top secret and they will never disclose the answer! Muahahaha
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
itsjustaphone said:
I just spoke to samsung level 5, its top secret and they will never disclose the answer! Muahahaha
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
lol!
As much as I would also like to know where the rest of the ram goes, it doesn't matter so much when we dominate the quadrant scores with a small tweak
EDIT-forgot link: http://smartphonebenchmarks.com/
ThisWasATriumph said:
Tear-downs have revealed that the phone does have 3 different chips that add up to 512 mb. Unfortunately a sizable portion is reserved for an unknown reason.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could u please elaborate this? Or atleast could u pls link to that site?
it seems like i'm still showing ~300MB total RAM (90MB free) with the leaked Captivate Froyo rom. i'm using an app called "Android System Info". should i not be seeing closer to the 512MB mark?
Same around 300....But I don't think I will be multitasking to the extent where I will need 500MB. I close BG apps routinely I am not using.......to save data.
I usually keep all Email syncing on, Latitude and sync FB as needed.
The amount of ram its the same in froyo. I tried android system info and same results. Try using the built in task manager in your apps. I have a feeling its more accurate than asi. I'm showing much better ram usage with built in task manager. 190-230 free on froyo opposed to 50-120 free with 2.1.
Oh yeah you can just push and hold your home button and then hit task manager on the multi tasker.
Cognition Froyo 2.2 Rooted-Sideloaded-RyanZA's OCLF and Screaming Fast
Sent from my SAMSUNG - Cognition using Tapatalk
304 total. :-/
ATT might have the RAM locked at a lower number so we do not meet the requirements for Android 3.0. That way when everyone starts pissing and moaning when they don't release it, they can say sorry...
Or they saved some money and put in less RAM in the U.S. models. I don't have the box or spec sheet in front of me but I do not recall ATT ever saying the Captivate has 512 MB RAM. Everyone just assumed it because the Galaxy S and other variants do.
I never had an Android device before, does it show physical RAM or addressable? What does the Intl. Galaxy S show? If it is the same as us then I guess we can't complain as much.
Perhaps the badass GPU in our phones uses shared RAM? Or maybe the address space is limited for some reason.
Bjd223 said:
ATT might have the RAM locked at a lower number so we do not meet the requirements for Android 3.0. That way when everyone starts pissing and moaning when they don't release it, they can say sorry...
Or they saved some money and put in less RAM in the U.S. models. I don't have the box or spec sheet in front of me but I do not recall ATT ever saying the Captivate has 512 MB RAM. Everyone just assumed it because the Galaxy S and other variants do.
I never had an Android device before, does it show physical RAM or addressable? What does the Intl. Galaxy S show? If it is the same as us then I guess we can't complain as much.
Perhaps the badass GPU in our phones uses shared RAM? Or maybe the address space is limited for some reason.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Samsung says it has 512 mb
http://http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SGH-I897ZKAATT-features
Mac
Eclair is incapable of seeing more than 304 MB, and the leaked Froyo is still just a leak and not an official release. Just sit back and relax. If the official Froyo does not utilize all 512, then we'll have a reason to complain...
I've read somewhere around here that we will never see all 512mb of ram, because 128mb of that ram is dedicated to video... no sure how true it all is though.. my 2 cents
The phone only has 304MB available to the OS as RAM. The rest is reserved for some other function such as ramdisk or vram, or maybe both. I've emailed samsung numerous times but they wont even admit that. They just reply simply, "The Captivate does indeed have 512MB of RAM.... blah blah blah, etc etc etc." Getting a straight answer out of Samsung is like drinking soup with a corkscrew, just not possible. Its like trying to find out if JH7 had a GPS fix or not. They wont say definitively whether it did or didnt.
I've seen a lot of discussion on various Android/Droid forums on the web over the past month or two about the Bionic, and it having 512MB of RAM. A lot of people don't seem to mind, and some people have even said it doesn't matter because it's DDR2, which is faster than regular DDR.
Well, 512MB of RAM is not enough for a dual-core phone you plan to use for 2 years or more. Here's why, in a rather lengthy post that I also put on MyDroidWorld the other night. I've been on the XDA forums for a long time, though I don't post very frequently and I'm curious to see what people will think of my admittedly long post. So, here is why I think people should think long and hard about whether to buy the Bionic when it does come out, assuming it still ships with 512MB of RAM.
Caching.
Ok - let me explain. The single most important factor in performance of a computer is having enough RAM. When a computer runs out of RAM, it starts to use what's called a page file. It's basically a file on your hard drive that acts as additional RAM. Now, DDR3-1600 speed RAM transfers data at 12.8 gigabytes per second. Phenomenally fast. It also has a reaction time of around 5 nanoseconds, also ridiculously fast. When your operating system has to start using the page file because the physical RAM is full, the performance hit is EXTRAORDINARY. Even the best hard disk drives (not counting SSDs) like the latest Raptor from Western Digital cap out at around 155 megabytes per second for reading and writing, and it has a peak latency of 7 milliseconds for reaction time. 1 nanosecond is 1 million milliseconds, which makes the DDR3 RAM over a MILLION times faster reacting than the hard drive, and the transfer rate of the RAM over 80 times faster than the transfer rate of the hard drive.
In real-world terms, it's like you're talking about an ant versus a Porsche 911 Turbo. Most old computers that have long pauses or hang for several seconds doing even basic tasks, it's because they don't have enough RAM and it's caching stuff between the hard drive and the RAM.
Now, whenever Android runs out of RAM, (same with any operating system) it has to start using its page file, which means it starts using this monstrously slow flash memory as RAM. It's like merging onto a freeway that is gridlocked with traffic when you were going hundreds of miles per hour. The flash memory is a lot slower than the Raptor hard drive for data transfer rates, but it has a read time a lot faster; the best-performing ones are generally under 1 microsecond. 1 microsecond is a thousand times slower than 1 nanosecond. The write times are closer to hard drives, though; generally less than 1 millisecond, so like 10x faster than a hard drive but still 100,000 times slower reaction time to writing data than the RAM is.
What this means is, when your permanent storage is flash-based, it has a much faster reaction time than a hard drive but it's still dog-slow compared to RAM; so when Android runs out of RAM, it caches to the page file on the flash memory, and you'll have the same slowdown effect as you do on an old POS computer, but it's not as noticeable because flash memory reacts faster than disk-based hard drives.
The point of all of this is that, 1GB of DDR1 memory on a phone is FAR better than 512MB of DDR2 memory. The 1GB will prevent you from hitting that metaphorical brick wall of caching data to your flash memory when the 512MB won't. We already use 400MB, or more, of our 512MB of RAM on our existing phones just by turning it on and having a couple of widgets/services in the background above & beyond the stock ones. How do you expect to take advantage significantly higher-end applications and games, which also means (for games, primarily) that they take up more RAM, as well?
You can't have higher-quality graphics without needing more RAM, so when that new version of Angry Birds comes out this fall or something that requires two cores and looks amazing, but uses 250MB of RAM to run instead of the 80MB or whatever the regular one uses now, what do you think has to happen? That's right. Android has to cache that much extra data to your flash memory so it can unload it from the RAM, freeing the necessary space to load Angry Birds HD. This causes more of a delay as it's writing data, and will cause extra choppiness, etc. Another thing to keep in mind is that, as resolutions increase, so do the texture sizes for all applications and widgets that you use, assuming they support the new resolution. More size needed, which takes up more space in RAM.
Don't be fooled. When truly good and proper dual-core benchmarks come out, 1GB RAM dual-core phones will spank their 512MB RAM dual-core brethren for real-world performance in games, and other high-memory applications. Also, excessive caching greatly increases the chance of flash memory going bad. Not a common occurrence if it was fine when shipped, but still something to think about.
So, in summary, even though the performance hit from caching to flash memory isn't as bad as caching to hard disk drives, it's still a tremendous slowdown and it will matter for dual-core phones way more than for single-core ones. The average amount of RAM installed on dual-core desktop computers from Dell/HP/etc. was significantly higher than what the average was for the previous single-core generations were, and there are reasons for that. Primarily, the same reasons I just outlined. In simple terms, faster processors can do more things, which necessarily requires more RAM.
Sorry for the wall of text, I tried to be more concise but it kind of got away from me. I'm not buying a Bionic because it has 512MB of RAM. After owning it a year, it'll be having performance issues on top-end dual-core-required games that run just fine on phones like the Atrix.
I'm sorry because I know this is probably going to come across the wrong way, but WOW, you spent a lot of time writing that up, and too much time for me to read it alll, especially considering Motorola has pulled back on the Bionic and it's receiving "enhancements". I guess what I'm saying is why all the speculation/conjecture until we know the revised specs? Maybe it'll land with 8GB of DDR 6 RAM.
I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
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I disagree that ram is the single most important factor of performance of a computer.
hard drives are the biggest bottleneck in a computer. this is why I use a vertex 3 ssd.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App
gemro311 said:
I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
Sent from my ERIS using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I concur, really hope VZW pushes for a premier device
I disagree. Android isn't expanding as an OS at some breakneck pace and 512MB is definitely suitable for the near future. 1GB is absolutely not necessary for great performance in a phone. RAM is a bottleneck, but it is not something that magically allows for better performance if the device isn't hitting the pagefile anyway.
The way that Android manages applications will allow 512MB phones to be relevant for some time. The Bionic will be a solid phone for the next year, but there will always be something bigger and better next year. Phones aren't future-proof.
I was just checking out this thread and wanted to say maybe the reason that the atrix comes with 1gb of ram is because of the extra contraption that you can buy along with. It looks like a netbook but is not very well performing and who would even care to rely on it for anything I don't know.
gemro311 said:
I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
Sent from my ERIS using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I certainly hope Motorola makes the required improvements, but you also need to keep in mind Verizon approves and in many if not all cases specs the phones they want. They chose the specs, they had to live with the specs. I think once they saw what was coming they figured it was no longer premiere and wanted changes made.
Regardless of why its been pulled back the fact that it was is good, but if its going to take 4-5 months to get it out the door they should have just scrapped it altogether.
E30kid said:
I disagree. Android isn't expanding as an OS at some breakneck pace and 512MB is definitely suitable for the near future. 1GB is absolutely not necessary for great performance in a phone. RAM is a bottleneck, but it is not something that magically allows for better performance if the device isn't hitting the pagefile anyway.
The way that Android manages applications will allow 512MB phones to be relevant for some time. The Bionic will be a solid phone for the next year, but there will always be something bigger and better next year. Phones aren't future-proof.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, wait for Ice Cream and we'll see. Since the future Android version will also run in tablets, it is likely that it will have huge memory requirements.
By the way, my Acer Liquid A1 can't be officially upgraded to Froyo because it only has 256Mb. Later Liquid models with 512Mb are upgradeable. At the time I bought it, 512Mb seemed unnecessary because the Nexus One operating system only supported 256Mb, having the other 256Mb wasted. This was only 12 months ago...
galaxyjeff said:
I was just checking out this thread and wanted to say maybe the reason that the atrix comes with 1gb of ram is because of the extra contraption that you can buy along with. It looks like a netbook but is not very well performing and who would even care to rely on it for anything I don't know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you are on to something here. I think I read somewhere that the atrix only uses 512 mb when not connected to the dock. I have the inspire which has 768 mb, and I came from the captivate which was 512 mb, and I done know if is the ram or what but this phone performs way better than the captivate. Even when I bought the inspire, right out the box stock, preformed much better than a captivate overclocked with an ext4 filesystem kernel. Not that this is empirical evidence, but hey.
Sent from my HTC Desire HD using XDA Premium App
cryptiq said:
I'm sorry because I know this is probably going to come across the wrong way, but WOW, you spent a lot of time writing that up, and too much time for me to read it alll, especially considering Motorola has pulled back on the Bionic and it's receiving "enhancements". I guess what I'm saying is why all the speculation/conjecture until we know the revised specs? Maybe it'll land with 8GB of DDR 6 RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I lol'd. But seriously 512 MB of RAM is more than enough... It's a PHONE not a high end desktop system. I play tons of games on my x2 and with alot of crap in the backround open, and I notice zero performance hits. If you are spending all day monitoring your RAM on your phone and trying to measure FPS loss, load time differences, etc. I suggest that you try to pick up a new hobby ASAP, OCDing will be the end of you. Best of luck!
Edit: I wouldn't worry about it either! Bionic probably won't come out anyways, and if it does, another phone with 1GB to satisfy your OCD probably will be out by then.
As of now, I feel ALL future top tier smart phones need to come equipped with at least 1GB of DDR2. The G2x, for example, will most likely have issues running a custom ice cream rom. And people will be upset.. especially after putting up with all of the other various problems that particular phone has.
OP, I don't agree entirely with your explanation of the use of caching by the OS - for all 3 major computer OSes, no matter how much excess RAM you have, they will start caching data to the hard drive, whether you like it or not. Obviously if you run out of RAM, it has to do so, but it'll even do it long before you've hit that cap - just because it determines an application has gone "inactive". Now I haven't read up on Android enough to know whether this is 100% true for it, too, but considering it's running a linux kernel, I would imagine so. So just like the 8GB of RAM in my desktop doesn't necessarily help for everyday computing needs, 1GB vs 512mb on the Bionic may not make a huge difference.
raptordrew said:
OP, I don't agree entirely with your explanation of the use of caching by the OS - for all 3 major computer OSes, no matter how much excess RAM you have, they will start caching data to the hard drive, whether you like it or not. Obviously if you run out of RAM, it has to do so, but it'll even do it long before you've hit that cap - just because it determines an application has gone "inactive". Now I haven't read up on Android enough to know whether this is 100% true for it, too, but considering it's running a linux kernel, I would imagine so. So just like the 8GB of RAM in my desktop doesn't necessarily help for everyday computing needs, 1GB vs 512mb on the Bionic may not make a huge difference.
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i beg to differ
my captivate; even though its a single core...is still quite capable at most everyday tasks...only thing lacking is the RAM
my phone will slow to a crawl after entering twitter, switching to pulse and then going back to my homescreen....
not to mention my launcher keeps getting killed by android as it keeps running out of RAM
droid_does said:
i beg to differ
my captivate; even though its a single core...is still quite capable at most everyday tasks...only thing lacking is the RAM
my phone will slow to a crawl after entering twitter, switching to pulse and then going back to my homescreen....
not to mention my launcher keeps getting killed by android as it keeps running out of RAM
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I have to lol at this one. Absolutely none of those issues have to do with amount of RAM. In fact the launcher problem has nothing to do with RAM at all.
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While I appreciate other people who have the same amount of passion for phones as I do, I just have two words to say about anyone saying phones with 512 mb ram will not get Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus S.
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mb02 said:
I have to lol at this one. Absolutely none of those issues have to do with amount of RAM. In fact the launcher problem has nothing to do with RAM at all.
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it does as android keeps killing it to free up more RAM to use......
droid_does said:
it does as android keeps killing it to free up more RAM to use......
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Yea the task manager is killing the apps to keep ram freed up, as in stopping unused processes etc. That's just the aggressive working of the management software that would run just the same if you even had 8GB of ram.
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timothymilla said:
While I appreciate other people who have the same amount of passion for phones as I do, I just have two words to say about anyone saying phones with 512 mb ram will not get Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus S.
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Remember when everyone thought Gingerbread would require a 1GHz processor as a system requirement, which was later debunked?
http://www.talkandroid.com/23041-so...ngerbread-update-due-to-1ghz-cpu-requirement/
Nobody can say what will and will not get updated for sure, although I will venture to say that it's HIGHLY likely the Nexus S will be getting 2.4, you're right.
zetsumeikuro said:
I lol'd. But seriously 512 MB of RAM is more than enough... It's a PHONE not a high end desktop system. I play tons of games on my x2 and with alot of crap in the backround open, and I notice zero performance hits. If you are spending all day monitoring your RAM on your phone and trying to measure FPS loss, load time differences, etc. I suggest that you try to pick up a new hobby ASAP, OCDing will be the end of you. Best of luck!
Edit: I wouldn't worry about it either! Bionic probably won't come out anyways, and if it does, another phone with 1GB to satisfy your OCD probably will be out by then.
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512 mb is not enough for a dual core 4G phone it just isnt. the thunderbolt has 768 mb and its only single core and 4G and let me tell you it would be way faster with the 1024 mb of ram i cant imagine how laggy the bionic would be if you start doing anything with it! the 512 ram will be ate up in no time! i sure hope verizon reconsiders and adds more ram or i probably wont use this device as my daily phone either keep the thunderbolt with more ram which is sad cause it has been out for awhile now and the droid x also has 512 ram and it has been out for a year and they cant make improvements?? and they are going to want $299+++ for this phone ON CONTRACT! it better have more than 512 ram or it aint worth a lick! rip this phone open and put my own ram in it!