Can anybody explain to me something about how the RAM works? So the phone has 512 mb of RAM, and only 330 available (I guess the OS takes the rest to 330). From those 330, around 100 are always used by something hidden. What is that?
Also if I stop some of the running services, sometimes that memory remains used.
What does eat my memory over time? I mean after some hours following a reboot my memory slowly starts to become used.
In the Running services tab there is a list of cached services and if I close any of them it eats more memory. How does that work?
I know, these questions are annoying.
128mb for tegra. that's why you have only 300mb+ for available memory
But why if I stop some processes such as the music player the RAM doesn't clear?
And why if I stop something from the Cached Processes tab it eats my RAM? (I can't find out what those cached processes are actually)
as far as i understand the system keeps it in memory in case you open something again and then it doesnt have to load everything over. and if there isnt enough for new apps it clears some ram.
this is not windows and the ram is supposed to be full. if im wrong about that someone correct me...
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Yes you're right but the way Android kills processes when needed can be optimized, as sometimes the system is slow to free ram. In fact there are threshold values for different situations, that say to the system to free ram.
So the solution is not a standard task killer, but an optimization of values that triggers memory clean up. It's done for example by scripts like the one I use, see in my signature.
Related
Hi guys thanks for your time, so this is my doubt
When i turn on my phone i have 170 MB available memory but after a while down to 70 MB sometimes to 40 MB, what should i install to have more than 100 MB free?? i already have [email protected] 256Hz #97 Kernel and 2.2.1 XXJPY firmware.
thanks
regards
Usually this won't matter because with the Android OS, it will usually keep all the stuff you close (internet, contacts, recently accessed menus etc) cached in it's RAM as a non active application until you happen to tab into it again, thus instantly loading.
Android is also smart enough to know since the application is inactive, if it's eating your memory, it will force-close these applications to free up memory for the new applications. ie, I'm running internet, close it, and my memory is up to 280mb, then try to run AngryBirds and it will close the Internet app + others if it has to.
So... usually not an issue, but if it does become an issue you can run a service/task killer app that will handle all nonactive apps and terminate them. Or you can just clear level 1+2 ram periodically and it will reset it back to default until it starts filling with crap again.
Ok i have advanced task killer but i was reading in some topics in this forum that some guys have more than 150 MB free without using a task killer
Advanced task killer eats your battery
android doesn't need a task killer, as it kills tasks itself.. i don't know why there are so many out there they just eat up battery..
one app I would suggest is 'auto-killer' its free and I have mine set to aggressive. that's all you need to do then forget about it.. it keeps your memory from getting bogged down.
ok thanks for the tips
Note Specs say 1GB RAM. My unit shows 385MB used by applications and 100 MB available. Is the rest used by the System?? How to check if my unit has really 1GB RAM installed???
Note has 1gb Ram, 200mb. reserved for GPU
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Galaxy Note RAM capacity
OK, buT 200MB plus 385 MB used + 100MB available still do not make 1 GB!
Note have 792 available on OS, some it is user by android stock apps and services.
When I boot the phone with about 30 services and 400 apps installed I always have free about 380mb, so look the permissions to see what apps are autostarting with the boot and change them.
Galaxy Note RAM capacity
"When I boot the phone with about 30 services and 400 apps installed I always have free about 380mb, so look the permissions to see what apps are autostarting with the boot and change them."
Please tell me how to "look permissions" and change apps at boot???
Moved To Q&A
Please post all questions in the Q&A section
I hope you'll find answer to your questions. By the way, I'd like people to understand that free ram is UNUSED/USELESS. Our target as users and/or developers is to achieve the "enough ram for every process and app" objective. That is, we absolutely want that every bit of ram is used to make the whole system faster and readier. If you have services you need ready to be executed in ram, and you have ram for all of them, you have the best resources / results ratio. If you have 1GB of free ram and every app you need must be raised from scratch, you're not using your resources the optimal way. My 2c - maybe ot?
Good luck with your findings, anyway.
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Galaxy Note RAM capacity
Thanks for your message. However, I read in many forum messages that too many apps in the RAM slow down the display reaction, which I found myself too.
However, I've just done the 10-second soft reset and found my RAM usage went down to 187MB used and 530MB available for services. Also found in applications management RAM capacity info: 372MB used out of 800MB. I suppose difference comes from the fact that the first capacity info relates to the space available for applications and the second used capacity includes applications AND System.
But in this case it means the Note has 800MB and not 1GB of RAM as advertised!
It has 1GB as stated. 200 MB are used by the OS. 800+200=1000.
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Galaxy Note RAM capacity
Thanks for the message.
But why the active applications list on the bottom says 187MB used and 530MB available RAM , while the task manager/RAM management shows 372 MB used space out of 800MB??
This is what confuses me: in one place it is shown that 178MB is used and in another 372 MB used !???
Please clarify !
Radivoj said:
Thanks for the message.
But why the active applications list on the bottom says 187MB used and 530MB available RAM , while the task manager/RAM management shows 372 MB used space out of 800MB??
This is what confuses me: in one place it is shown that 178MB is used and in another 372 MB used !???
Please clarify !
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Click to collapse
depends o nthe kernel you are using, but the note has 1gb of ram of whcih 800 is available for the system to use
Radivoj said:
why the active applications list on the bottom says 187MB used and 530MB available RAM , while the task manager/RAM management shows 372 MB used space out of 800MB??
This is what confuses me: in one place it is shown that 178MB is used and in another 372 MB used !???
Please clarify !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The difference is because the active applications list in running services does not include the amount of RAM used to cache apps. You can press option key while in running services, there should be an option called "show cached processes".
If you add the amount of RAM used for both cached and running apps in running services, the total should be similar as the amount of RAM used in Samsung task manager.
This is because Android considers cached apps as free memory. They are background processes that are not visible or directly affect our use of the device and can be killed to free up memory to run service processes (i.e. user launched apps).
The cached processes basically are a list of recently used apps stores in reverse order, i.e. the least recently used app is at top of the list and most recently used app is at the bottom of the list. This way if the phone is running out of memory, it will start to kill off app at top of the list, so the app that was last used will be the last one to be killed.
The idea of cached processes is to improve the start-up time of an app the next time the user needs to run it.
P.S. I'm not an expert in Android operating system, this is just my general understanding of how Android RAM management processes.
Thank you very, very much for clarification. Now everything becomes clear and consistent !
Best regards,
Radi
marmotash said:
Note has 1gb Ram, 200mb. reserved for GPU
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When I check running applications tab insettings, I can see total RAM as 800 MB. Thanks for clarifying. I had the same doubt. But is there any way to check how much RAM is allocated to GPU using any android setting? I am keen to know this.
Many Thanks,
Nikhil Bhalwankar
I know that android is very good at handling background processes and ram but I have so many apps that I don't use at all. They consume big amount of ram and for instance, sometimes browser loads pages again when I get back to it from another app. I assume this is because of ram. So I guess, if I can shut down some running apps in the background, available ram would be more.
I can see them at settings-apps-running(or cached processes).
For example, right now in "running" section I have 9 processes and 3 of them are poweramp, awesome beats, accuweather.com and in "cached processes" I have 10 processes and 6 of them are beautiful widgets,calendar storage,google account manager, google search, calendar, google play store. Other processes are system services that I have no problem with. When I go to developer settings-background process limit and block them, there are no cached processes anymore but that probably has a side effect. I wish I could choose which apps I want in the background.
I can shut down these apps manually but every time I restart the phone, they are there again. How can I stop them?
if you rooted, you can use Autostarts or ROM toolbox from the playstore. it can change the receivers of the apps not to start at boot
CooLasFcuK said:
I know that android is very good at handling background processes and ram but I have so many apps that I don't use at all. They consume big amount of ram and for instance, sometimes browser loads pages again when I get back to it from another app. I assume this is because of ram. So I guess, if I can shut down some running apps in the background, available ram would be more.
I can see them at settings-apps-running(or cached processes).
For example, right now in "running" section I have 9 processes and 3 of them are poweramp, awesome beats, accuweather.com and in "cached processes" I have 10 processes and 6 of them are beautiful widgets,calendar storage,google account manager, google search, calendar, google play store. Other processes are system services that I have no problem with. When I go to developer settings-background process limit and block them, there are no cached processes anymore but that probably has a side effect. I wish I could choose which apps I want in the background.
I can shut down these apps manually but every time I restart the phone, they are there again. How can I stop them?
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The simple answer is that you don't need to stop them!
As you say, Android is already very good at keeping track of background processes, to the extent that if a new program needs more RAM, Android itself will kill a background process that hasn't been used for a while to free up RAM for the new program.
The Cached processes screen SHOULD be full of recently used programs; it shows that Android is doing what it is supposed to do and is shifting inactive processes out of active RAM in case you want to load it again, without completely dumping the process memory.
Now, as for the side effect you mentioned, that would be a significant hit on battery life. By holding programs in RAM as it is supposed to do, the OS can load the program quickly and cleanly and more efficiently by simply reading the RAM rather than reading flash, writing to RAM, then reading from RAM. The general mantra for UNIX based systems is that unused RAM is wasted RAM.
Another thing to note is that if you do not close tabs when switching active programs (including going to homescreen) then the Browser is designed to hold that tab in memory. Even if you close the Browser (excluding closing the tab specifically with the "little x"). Even if you reboot the damn phone, it will still load the tabs/pages you had open last. The pages are not held in memory as such, just what was open and what tab order, so if you do open the browser after a while, it will load the last page from scratch.
TL;DR version: The running and the cached processes will remain exactly where they are until a new program needs more RAM than is available, at which point Android will kill something to make room. You do not need to do this manually. It will cause more power drain by making very inefficient use of RAM/Flash memory. Empty RAM is wasted RAM.
whilst Chaos is right, I notice severe performance drops when ram is filled, despite Androids theoretical advantage. It doesnt work...
Best to prevent from loading altogheter.
Root, lose warranty, backup apps, uninstall or freeze apps so the bloatware is removed.
For others, change autostart settings in Romtoolbox. So they wont start on boot.
Search for safe stuff to delete. There are lists for that
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Or just dont install the apps that you dont really need.
Via GtN7000
LoVeRice said:
Or just dont install the apps that you dont really need.
Via GtN7000
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Lol, even then you might still need to remove bloatware lol
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Thanks so much for detailed answers.
I've seen threads where people said that their i9000 they have ~200 MB of free available RAM. That's really surprising. Can this be caused by a kernel?
I have around 100 MB of free RAM at most times, running CM10, stock kernel.
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When you have big free RAM, it just means your Rom has only a few applications running, maybe because you removed all those apps that you feel are unnecessary or a Task Killer is killing the inactive apps.
See quote of Wikipedia on Android OS Ram Management:
"Since Android devices are usually battery-powered, Android is designed to manage memory (RAM) to keep power consumption at a minimum, in contrast to desktop operating systems which generally assume they are connected to unlimited mains electricity. When an Android app is no longer in use, the system will automatically suspend it in memory - while the app is still technically "open," suspended apps consume no resources (e.g. battery power or processing power) and sit idly in the background until needed again. This has the dual benefit of increasing the general responsiveness of Android devices, since apps don't need to be closed and reopened from scratch each time, but also ensuring background apps don't waste power needlessly.
Android manages the apps stored in memory automatically: when memory is low, the system will begin killing apps and processes that have been inactive for a while, in reverse order since they were last used (i.e. oldest first). This process is designed to be invisible to the user, such that users do not need to manage memory or the killing of apps themselves. However, confusion over Android memory management has resulted in third-party task killers becoming popular on the Google Play store; these third-party task killers are generally regarded as doing more harm than good."
GrippingSphere said:
When you have big free RAM, it just means your Rom has only a few applications running, maybe because you removed all those apps that you feel are unnecessary or a Task Killer is killing the inactive apps.
See quote of Wikipedia on Android OS Ram Management:
"Since Android devices are usually battery-powered, Android is designed to manage memory (RAM) to keep power consumption at a minimum, in contrast to desktop operating systems which generally assume they are connected to unlimited mains electricity. When an Android app is no longer in use, the system will automatically suspend it in memory - while the app is still technically "open," suspended apps consume no resources (e.g. battery power or processing power) and sit idly in the background until needed again. This has the dual benefit of increasing the general responsiveness of Android devices, since apps don't need to be closed and reopened from scratch each time, but also ensuring background apps don't waste power needlessly.
Android manages the apps stored in memory automatically: when memory is low, the system will begin killing apps and processes that have been inactive for a while, in reverse order since they were last used (i.e. oldest first). This process is designed to be invisible to the user, such that users do not need to manage memory or the killing of apps themselves. However, confusion over Android memory management has resulted in third-party task killers becoming popular on the Google Play store; these third-party task killers are generally regarded as doing more harm than good."
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I have cm10 rom so if i didnt use any task killer im getting lags in games.. so do you have any option fir that????
If someone help me i definitely HIT THANKS....
Try changing kernel or increase RAM. Some kernels have an option to increase RAM.
Or it may be necessary to try other Roms.
I'm using C-Rom and I can say I don't experience lag on this Rom.
But some games are just too demanding on RAM, designed for 2 or quad cores, that our phone may not handle.
Which kernel you would recommend to install?
Is it normal that p7 have always high ram usage? Just after boot my ram usage is always about 40% after playing 20min games like san andreas ram usage is 70% even if I close it from recent apps. At the moment when Im writing this my ram usage is 58% and I don't have any other apps running.
RICKROCKER said:
Is it normal that p7 have always high ram usage? Just after boot my ram usage is always about 40% after playing 20min games like san andreas ram usage is 70% even if I close it from recent apps. At the moment when Im writing this my ram usage is 58% and I don't have any other apps running.
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After I deleted all c..p from Huawei,all google services and all unwanted apk-s on my p7(untill he was working) ram usage goes extremely down.
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Why is it an issue? The RAM needs to be as full as possible with apps you frequently use.
When an app needs more RAM, but it's not "available", android removes an app from the RAM you didn't used a while. It's already in sleep mode by then.
Always the same threads in the forums about RAM....they shouldn't put the RAM-available option in the phone
Mwolthuis said:
Why is it an issue? The RAM needs to be as full as possible with apps you frequently use.
When an app needs more RAM, but it's not "available", android removes an app from the RAM you didn't used a while. It's already in sleep mode by then.
Always the same threads in the forums about RAM....they shouldn't put the RAM-available option in the phone
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i would not worry about the ram usage. as this is the google 4.4.2 designed for. ( you do do a google search to find lots of info...) 4.4 version will allow max no. of apps to 'stay' in the memory, but NOT active. so next time, it saves battery power to reload them. if you do worry about ram usage, you can set up the 'protected apps' and uncheck all the apps. then when the screen is off, the apps are killed. but next time if you want to use it,it will have to be reboot again.
I have unchecked almost all apps from protected apps. I'm aware of that if app needs ram android will delete apps from recent apps, but my problem is very much like this: At the moment my ram usage is 60% without any apps running or any app in recent apps. If I open GTA san andreas It's laggy as ........ but if I open it right after reboot when ram usage is 40% it's working like a charm. Here is my ram usage after night with no apps running.
RICKROCKER said:
I have unchecked almost all apps from protected apps. I'm aware of that if app needs ram android will delete apps from recent apps, but my problem is very much like this: At the moment my ram usage is 60% without any apps running or any app in recent apps. If I open GTA san andreas It's laggy as ........ but if I open it right after reboot when ram usage is 40% it's working like a charm. Here is my ram usage after night with no apps running.
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Your screenshot don't show that's your apps are closed.
Show a screenshot the tab "Active apps" under the options.
In one case I agree with you. Huawei apps takes to much RAM. My old phone Samsung Galaxy S3 had always ca 350 MB RAM free from 1GB RAM and I had more apps installed. Now with Huawei (my first Huawei), I have 2GB RAM and it's at most 800MB free RAM.
So then I compare, my Samsung used only 700 mb ram (with more apps and running apps) and Huawei take 1200MB RAM (with lesser apps).
What I saw sometimes, that's installed apps use more RAM on Huawei than on my Samsung.