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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
Hey Guys ... Did you look to the Ram status in the Galaxy Note ???
I have 600+/800 usage in normal situations !!! and when I clear ram it reached to 400+ which goes back to more than 600 Mb after moderate usage !!! what about in your Notes guys ??? Any solution for this ?? plz comments ....
What is it you are planning on doing with the free ram? Has the use of ram caused any problems? Don't worry about it and use the device. There is no point in trying to worry about something which is being used or not being used which is not affecting you in any way. Until it does have fun with the phone.
Do you think Android is running on air? The Note has 1GB RAM which the OS takes 200MB at boot. The rest is used by apps and other things. If you're not going to use the RAM, then why do you need it?
"My computer uses 50MB of RAM, And i have 32GB of it!" WHAT'S THE POINT?!
Try RAM Manager by Juwe. Be aware that the more memory you free up the worse multitasking will be.
Are you kidding me? Use RAM Manager when your device has 1GB of it? Please slap me as hard as you can.
This thread needs to be deleted.
RAM is there to be used.
I would use 100% of my RAM 100% of the time if I could. If it's not being used, it's being wasted.
Unused RAM is totally wasted. When 2GB devices come out OMG my device is using 1GB out of my 2GB!!!
To each his own, who are you to tell others what to do with their RAM? I'm not your typical "as much free memory as possible freak" but how comes that when I kill some apps before running something more intensive it's usually smoother and performs better?
pjm77 said:
To each his own, who are you to tell others what to do with their RAM? I'm not your typical "as much free memory as possible freak" but how comes that when I kill some apps before running something more intensive it's usually smoother and performs better?
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I've never had to manually kill apps with my G-Note, so I dont know what your doing wrong, Could be a faulty device as far as I can tell.
Thanks for your advice, I'm running to get it replaced.
pjm77 said:
Thanks for your advice, I'm running to get it replaced.
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600mb usage is totally normal on moderate use. Obviously you don't know how RAM Management work on Android. Go and replace your phone but nothing will change.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA App
Would you replace your computer because it's using to much RAM?
Chances are you would find the RAM hog and keep it from starting up when not neccesary.
600mb is normal usage.... if you are not happy with that high of usage delete the apps that have services running or are always in the background. Android does this for you as you approach full RAM usage anyways though...
garytube said:
600mb usage is totally normal on moderate use. Obviously you don't know how RAM Management work on Android. Go and replace your phone but nothing will change.
Ever heard of irony?
Of course I'm not gonna get it replaced I'm happy with the way it is.
Yes, I've read about Android memory management quite a while ago. Very smart and very convincing. Now on the other hand - every now and then after some intense moments - let's say I'm driving and I'm using offline satnav then online satnav then there is a phonecall, then I make a voice note, I get out, send a text, use my GTD app and whatever else - after hours of such use when I get home, stretch my legs and I fancy to play let's say Galaxy on Fire 2, I find it smoother and less likely to crash if I just press "kill all apps" button in Task Manager. And since I installed RAM Manager I don't have to do it. And I haven't noticed any side effects that would interfere with my style of using my phone.
So guess what - I really don't give a **** about Android memory management and all expert opinions because I know what works for me and I'm happy with that state of things.
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pjm77 said:
garytube said:
600mb usage is totally normal on moderate use. Obviously you don't know how RAM Management work on Android. Go and replace your phone but nothing will change.
Ever heard of irony?
Of course I'm not gonna get it replaced I'm happy with the way it is.
Yes, I've read about Android memory management quite a while ago. Very smart and very convincing. Now on the other hand - every now and then after some intense moments - let's say I'm driving and I'm using offline satnav then online satnav then there is a phonecall, then I make a voice note, I get out, send a text, use my GTD app and whatever else - after hours of such use when I get home, stretch my legs and I fancy to play let's say Galaxy on Fire 2, I find it smoother and less likely to crash if I just press "kill all apps" button in Task Manager. And since I installed RAM Manager I don't have to do it. And I haven't noticed any side effects that would interfere with my style of using my phone.
So guess what - I really don't give a **** about Android memory management and all expert opinions because I know what works for me and I'm happy with that state of things.
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I liked your response, but it's not irony, it's sarcasm
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pjm77 said:
garytube said:
600mb usage is totally normal on moderate use. Obviously you don't know how RAM Management work on Android. Go and replace your phone but nothing will change.
Ever heard of irony?
Of course I'm not gonna get it replaced I'm happy with the way it is.
Yes, I've read about Android memory management quite a while ago. Very smart and very convincing. Now on the other hand - every now and then after some intense moments - let's say I'm driving and I'm using offline satnav then online satnav then there is a phonecall, then I make a voice note, I get out, send a text, use my GTD app and whatever else - after hours of such use when I get home, stretch my legs and I fancy to play let's say Galaxy on Fire 2, I find it smoother and less likely to crash if I just press "kill all apps" button in Task Manager. And since I installed RAM Manager I don't have to do it. And I haven't noticed any side effects that would interfere with my style of using my phone.
So guess what - I really don't give a **** about Android memory management and all expert opinions because I know what works for me and I'm happy with that state of things.
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it looks like to me that you posted in this thread just to promote RAM Manager
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TeeeJaay said:
pjm77 said:
it looks like to me that you posted in this thread just to promote RAM Manager
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I posted in this thread beacuse another user complained about the problem that I came across and found solution to. It's certainly not the best one, but it's the one that works for me.
In the meantime I got ridiculed by more social-oriented users who need to accept and be accepted. To which I got upset and posted some crap. As a result I hijacked the thread. I apologize and shut up.
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LordManhattan said:
Are you kidding me? Use RAM Manager when your device has 1GB of it? Please slap me as hard as you can.
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Samsung makes us fool it has only 800MB RAM. Even i thought it was 1GB.
It has 1GB. 200MB is reserved for the system.
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Memory usage
My daughter started a game where a photo is used in the programme, and I got the message "Free RAM low, resolution of photo reduced". Had to kill running services to be able to run it without the reduced resolution. Checked the overall Galaxy Note ram usage and just out of the box I have around 230mb free of RAM, I have an HTC Desire HD (768 ram) that has the same free and it is filled with running apps. When you get that kind of messages from a new phone, from some ****ty simple kid programme before I have even filled it up with stuff I get really annoyed. When I kill all I can i can get max up to 400mb.
Yup, TouchWiz is a greedy RAM eating whore. Wait for CM9 and then you'll see why custom UIs like TouchWiz and Sense is bull****.
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My phone shows ive around 120 to 140 ram is that enough so that the phone functions smothly without laggings? And i wanna know what free ram u guys have while using ur phone ....
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I mean total memory free***
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Around 100MB +/- 50 free is nominal, I guess.
The way I understand it:
It's going to vary quite a bit, depending on what your doing, number of additional serviced installed, etc. But generally speaking, Android is a very different animal compared to -- say -- Windows. Free RAM doesn't really have an affect on performance, it's just RAM that's not being exploited. There are several parameters that tell the OS how much RAM should be free in a number of different circumstances, also when and how often to kill other services. i.e. As RAM usage increases, apps and services with increasingly higher priorities will be killed to free up RAM. So like if you run Angry Birds, you may start with 100MB free which will drop down to say 70 maybe even 50, but after a few minutes of running, the OS begins to try to free up memory to get it back to what ever the desired free RAM is set to. So after a few minutes, your RAM may go all the way back up to 100MB. Where Windows would just start to pound away at a page file on the hard drive, Android will start to kill applications then eventually kill lower priority services in order to free up the RAM it needs.
So basically every time you run a RAM heavy program, Android will start to kill the previously used programs (settings screen, browser, facebook, whatever), as they are now deemed lower priority. It's always fighting to maintain a certain about of RAM.
I have an average of about 150mb on the latest CyangenMod build (not ICS). However once I start up my phone and run the auto kill after about 10 minutes, I can have 200+ (sometimes as high as 250).
Bobbar said it well in terms of how much you need. To be honest, when I was on the stock rom, I would sometimes have less than 70mb free, yet my phone still wouldn't lag much. You can help with any launcher lag by disabling desktop animations and such.
I'm generally in the range of 60 - 90 MB free RAM at any given moment. My D3 does not lag at all. What you are reporting is absolutely fine.
My first phone regularly reported 25 - 40 MB free RAM at any given moment. Android runs fine on the D3 - it's best not to spend too much time worrying about it, IMO.
If you have a bunch of RAM free all the time it just means you're losing out on multitasking. Some people tweak their OOM values and such so that they have copious amounts of free RAM, this is not necessarily a good thing. IMO
Android aggressively pre-loads applications into memory. The most ideal situation is actually higher memory usage - as most apps don't need ridiculous amounts of memory to operate, and more apps cached in memory means faster launch times for those specific apps.
If you have a bunch of apps not closing and lagging your phone then try Auto killer.
Sent from my XT862 using XDA App
I've got 240MB free at any given moment with stock ROM and doesn't lag at all.
So, not to get off topic, what exactly do all these newer phones need 1GB of RAM for? Just to load up more apps into memory? I get it, it should make them load up faster...but is it necessary on Android?
It just blows me away how much these manufacturers charge for phones these days. Seems like we're just getting into the same kind of specs 'arms race' that people have been going through on their PCs for a while now, just so they can try to make more money. That's pretty sad, considering I have a fine experience with the D3 and G2x.
BenSWoodruff said:
So, not to get off topic, what exactly do all these newer phones need 1GB of RAM for? Just to load up more apps into memory? I get it, it should make them load up faster...but is it necessary on Android?
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1 gig of RAM would be a great thing, for instance for running GNU/Linux in chroot, which I do...
The prob is the Droid 3 doesn't have anywhere near enough total RAM, not to speak of free RAM.
BenSWoodruff said:
So, not to get off topic, what exactly do all these newer phones need 1GB of RAM for? Just to load up more apps into memory? I get it, it should make them load up faster...but is it necessary on Android?
It just blows me away how much these manufacturers charge for phones these days. Seems like we're just getting into the same kind of specs 'arms race' that people have been going through on their PCs for a while now, just so they can try to make more money. That's pretty sad, considering I have a fine experience with the D3 and G2x.
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Some.of.the Phones with 1gig ram have the lapdock, it docks with a keyboard/screen to be a pseudo laptop. When docked half the ram is set aside for the lapdock
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BenSWoodruff said:
So, not to get off topic, what exactly do all these newer phones need 1GB of RAM for? Just to load up more apps into memory? I get it, it should make them load up faster...but is it necessary on Android?
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Well, Android has gotten fatter, for one. Another would be Motos Webtop.
The more memory you have, the more apps you can have stored in it at any one time. Devices with small amounts of RAM (256 or so) may only be able run one major app at a time. But once you get into the 512 - 1GB+ range, users can freely switch between several heavy apps without them getting killed to free RAM. So you could switch between Angry Birds, then the browser, then YouTube or Email and Messaging without having to relaunch any of them.
So manufacturers tossing in more and more RAM does end up being a pretty good selling point.
It just blows me away how much these manufacturers charge for phones these days. Seems like we're just getting into the same kind of specs 'arms race' that people have been going through on their PCs for a while now, just so they can try to make more money. That's pretty sad, considering I have a fine experience with the D3 and G2x.
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Just looks at how powerful these devices are compared to just a few years ago. The innovation and power is increasing at an almost logarithmic rate. The price for a high-end smart phone has remained about the same, but the rate at which they are being cycled for newer, faster devices is crazy. So, in this sense, it may be accurate to compare it to PCs. But, it's only us enthusiasts that really feel the hit to the pocket book, because we always want to be on the bleeding edge. And most users, average users, will stay with the same device for a long time, they don't feel the same 'pain' as the enthusiasts group.
Back in 2005, before the iPhone and all that stuff, a smart would cost you almost $700 and it came with a steaming, stinking pile of Windows Mobile. We have it so good these days.
I have around 200MB at boot (CM7).
Yes, that should be enough RAM to use most apps without lagging. That's about what I had with stock, and I rarely ran out.
aman321 said:
My phone shows ive around 120 to 140 ram is that enough so that the phone functions smothly without laggings? And i wanna know what free ram u guys have while using ur phone ....
Sent from my DROID3 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
512mb it's a little down for me... because i like multitasking and for example if you download something from a web page, using opera mobile or stock browser and you open facebook's app while you listening music (poweramp or winamp) it will kill your internet browser (cancel your download) due to your less ram avaible.
A great solution for us would be if we can enable a swap on our droids but it seems to be difficult (or imposible due to our locked bootloaders)... but if somoene is interested here is a link to the current topic http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1407671
With swap enabled our device will move to virtual memory our background apps leaving free ram to our current app.
Hello,
I got the Tab S2 8 inch or WiFi only model - SM-T710 on launch day.
I was really excited for this since I was upgrading from an iPad 4, which felt slow.
However, I was disappointed with many things :
1. Most Apps are not tablet optimized.
2. Asphalt 8 tends to lag, although I never noticed this with my iPad.
3. Only 1GB of the 3GB RAM seems to be available most of the time.
4. The play store won't let me access the US play store from outside the US.
5. Part of the Tablet feels hot after light usage.
Can rooting my device help with the above mentioned problems?
How can I fix these problems? Normally I would have done these myself but since I'm completely new to Android I wanted to ask. I've been using iOS since 5 years and I've never had any problems like these. I'm also a fan of iOS jailbreak, tweaks, etc..
One more doubt : Is there a chance that the Tab S2 will get the Android M update?
Thanks,
Trix
Trix123 said:
Hello,
I got the Tab S2 8 inch or WiFi only model - SM-T710 on launch day.
I was really excited for this since I was upgrading from an iPad 4, which felt slow.
However, I was disappointed with many things :
1. Most Apps are not tablet optimized.
2. Asphalt 8 tends to lag, although I never noticed this with my iPad.
3. Only 1GB of the 3GB RAM seems to be available most of the time.
4. The play store won't let me access the US play store from outside the US.
5. Part of the Tablet feels hot after light usage.
Can rooting my device help with the above mentioned problems?
How can I fix these problems? Normally I would have done these myself but since I'm completely new to Android I wanted to ask. I've been using iOS since 5 years and I've never had any problems like these. I'm also a fan of iOS jailbreak, tweaks, etc..
One more doubt : Is there a chance that the Tab S2 will get the Android M update?
Thanks,
Trix
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. No issues on my s1
2. Can't help with that, don't play games
3. Perfectly normal on an Android device, Android doesn't waste ram, it uses it to make your device faster.
4. You probably need to load the firmware for your region.
5. Same as the s1
Trix123 said:
Hello,
I got the Tab S2 8 inch or WiFi only model - SM-T710 on launch day.
I was really excited for this since I was upgrading from an iPad 4, which felt slow.
However, I was disappointed with many things :
1. Most Apps are not tablet optimized.
2. Asphalt 8 tends to lag, although I never noticed this with my iPad.
3. Only 1GB of the 3GB RAM seems to be available most of the time.
4. The play store won't let me access the US play store from outside the US.
5. Part of the Tablet feels hot after light usage.
Can rooting my device help with the above mentioned problems?
How can I fix these problems? Normally I would have done these myself but since I'm completely new to Android I wanted to ask. I've been using iOS since 5 years and I've never had any problems like these. I'm also a fan of iOS jailbreak, tweaks, etc..
One more doubt : Is there a chance that the Tab S2 will get the Android M update?
Thanks,
Trix
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Unfortunately, that is going to be a common thing with Android. Google built scalable interface based off the resolution, which makes apps run on tablets. As opposed to the iPad, there isn't a scalable interface feature but instead it uses upscaling, which makes apps very large and blurry.
In addition to that, Apple forces the default settings of the app store search to only show iPad only apps. This means, if you didn't update your app to support tablet interfaces manually, you wouldn't show up on the default search. This pretty much *forced* all of the developers to update their apps, if they wanted it to be seen of course.
But, since Android scales all of this natively the developers are lazy and simply do not update their apps for tablet interfaces as much as iOS.
2. The Tab S2 is a very powerful tablet, but if you're comparing it to the Ipad Air 2 there's going to be no comparison on how the iPad is much stronger. The processer on the iPad is more powerful than some computers people have at home. However, Android really is not a gaming platform, it is more of a productivity platform. There are way more games on iOS than Android, so if you're into gaming (on mobile) stick with iOS. Both platforms have hardware that is compeltely overkill than what most of the gaming apps actually require.
3. That honestly is no different than the iPAD, the amount of memory free should not be a concern unless apps are closing more often than you would like. Keep in mind that iOS struggles with memory as well, you can browse the internet and minimize the app and come back and it will reload the entire page, losing the spot you were scrolled to. On Android, it actually remembers the last spot you were at, simply because it has better memory management.
Keep in mind tablets are solid state, with incredibly fast read and write speeds. Ram can actually become irrelvant, because it can simply page the memory to the solid state drive and it would be effectively the same speed as real ram; you could actually get away with running with 1GB of ram easily. It's just that there is a limited amount of read and writes to a solid state drive, so they still use dedicated RAM to extend the lifespan since it is cheaper than solid state drives in general.
4. You can use a VPN to bypass that restriction.
5. Both the Ipad and S2 will got hot if you try to game on it, these devices don't even have fans in them so I don't know what you are expecting.
With that being said, I much prefer Android over IOS. When I use my iPAD, I've pretty much given up searching for an app because it simply did not exist with such restricted permissions on the iOS platform. With Android, I can customize my tablet to my liking, and I really like the keyboard support on it; it is much better than Apple in that regard.
I own both tablets and I use the Android far more, both have their cons and advantages. But for me, I don't like mobile games, I find them too simple. Thats why I love Android because I can emulate all consoles up to PSP/DS ERA.
Brittany_Menton said:
Keep in mind tablets are solid state, with incredibly fast read and write speeds. Ram can actually become irrelvant, because it can simply page the memory to the solid state drive and it would be effectively the same speed as real ram; you could actually get away with running with 1GB of ram easily. It's just that there is a limited amount of read and writes to a solid state drive, so they still use dedicated RAM to extend the lifespan since it is cheaper than solid state drives in general.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The read/write speeds of ss flash memory is nowhere near as fast as ram.
The Tab s and s2 both have very fast ram.
If manufacturers relied on flash memory for caching and system read/writes with today's fast cpu's the system would bottle neck and crawl.
Fast cpu's need much faster memory to keep up and run smoothly.
Run some benchmarks and you will see the difference.
ashyx said:
The read/write speeds of ss flash memory is nowhere near as fast as ram.
The Tab s and s2 both have very fast ram.
If manufacturers relied on flash memory for caching and system read/writes with today's fast cpu's the system would bottle neck and crawl.
Fast cpu's need much faster memory to keep up and run smoothly.
Run some benchmarks and you will see the difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, there is no question that RAM is much faster, but if you're comparing it to normal usage most people wouldn't see the difference. The Surface Pro 3 64GB edition runs off 2GB of RAM and constantly runs at 90% peak memory and ironically performs just as fast as the 4GB version simply because the solid state has such a high read and write speed.
To a certain extent, all tablets page to the harddrive. As far as I know, there aren't many flagship android models that feature like huge amounts of super speed ram.
When you're comparing it to "much faster", say if you are travelling 500mph and you could go 1200mph, but you already get to your destination in less than a second so for the average user, they probably wouldn't even notice the difference.
I suggest you do more research on it.
ashyx said:
I suggest you do more research on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The average user is not going to notice their device is faster if the device is perfectly capable of loading basic tasks such as websites at reasonable speeds.
Trix123 said:
Hello,
I got the Tab S2 8 inch or WiFi only model - SM-T710 on launch day.
I was really excited for this since I was upgrading from an iPad 4, which felt slow.
However, I was disappointed with many things :
1. Most Apps are not tablet optimized.
2. Asphalt 8 tends to lag, although I never noticed this with my iPad.
3. Only 1GB of the 3GB RAM seems to be available most of the time.
4. The play store won't let me access the US play store from outside the US.
5. Part of the Tablet feels hot after light usage.
Can rooting my device help with the above mentioned problems?
How can I fix these problems? Normally I would have done these myself but since I'm completely new to Android I wanted to ask. I've been using iOS since 5 years and I've never had any problems like these. I'm also a fan of iOS jailbreak, tweaks, etc..
One more doubt : Is there a chance that the Tab S2 will get the Android M update?
Thanks,
Trix
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1) Yup that is android sadly there. Though more are coming out with tablet versions of the software... FINALLY!
2) I haven't noticed that myself on the device as I do play that game as well
3) As long as it free's it up, there is no issues with having ram used. It will dump memory as needed if apps require more. Typically most apps don't require that much ram so no issues.
4) Thats just a country/region issue with the device ID. If rooted you can fix it at least. I travel and when outside the US the store is still US to me.
5) Most devices are like this. Gaming will make it hotter as well, but that goes for Android to Apple as well. Now, this device is cooler than previous ones I've had under heavy gaming and light usage gets a little warm.
As for the new OS, we can assume so, but since its a little ways off it might take time still for it to "Officially" come to the tablets.
I just bought mine yesterday and one feature under the settings was missing... there's no user under the device the options only are:
-sounds and notif
-display
-motion and gestures
-applications
there is no user. also in the notification panel there is no manage user.. can somebody help me plsss.. thanks in advance!
Tab S2 problem
Hey guys, hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction. Looks like i got screwed with my Tab S2. I bought a 9.7" cellular version from someone on Kijiji (Equivalent to Craigslist in Canada) and it was working just fine. I installed some apps and was just playing around with it. About two days later it started freezing and restarting when i would play a game or watch a video. Since then it has gotten progressively worse. I boot it up and 30 seconds to a minute later it turns off on its own. I thought it may be a software issue so i did a hard reset but the problem still persists. I took it into a Samsung repair center and they said that it is a pre-production model (IMEI is 00000000000000) and they cannot help. Any ideas what i can do to repair it. I just hate the idea of having a $400 paper weight.
egogz said:
Hey guys, hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction. Looks like i got screwed with my Tab S2. I bought a 9.7" cellular version from someone on Kijiji (Equivalent to Craigslist in Canada) and it was working just fine. I installed some apps and was just playing around with it. About two days later it started freezing and restarting when i would play a game or watch a video. Since then it has gotten progressively worse. I boot it up and 30 seconds to a minute later it turns off on its own. I thought it may be a software issue so i did a hard reset but the problem still persists. I took it into a Samsung repair center and they said that it is a pre-production model (IMEI is 00000000000000) and they cannot help. Any ideas what i can do to repair it. I just hate the idea of having a $400 paper weight.[/QUOTE
Hi did you buy it brand new (in a sealed box)? Maybe i got a solution for you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Anyone experienced these probs?
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 Problems/Issues
Model#: SM-T815Y
Android Version: 5.0.2 (latest)
1. random hanging 3x-10x/day depends on usage.
problem: hanging that leads to black display screen
solution: soft reset -> press the power button+volume down for atleast 10secs
or until boot up screen shows up.
1a. random hanging usually happens
-when downloading or opening something in the Playstore.
-exploring the settings of the gadget.
NOTE: I noticed that it happens frequently when clicking/using apps
that is related to its Internal Memory.(eg. problem#2)
2. Calculating the Size of the Applications
problem 1: it keeps saying computing even after 30mins of leaving the screen.
solution: unmount sd card>remove sd card>insert sd card.
problem 2: can't clear cache of an application.
solution: need to restart the gadget for it to take effect.
3. Auto Restart then it didn't boot up properly. It only stayed in Samsung Screen.
CONCLUSION: it's not normal to have these kind of problems 3gb of RAM,32gb of internal memory, up to date updates.
: very few widgets are activated, very few downloaded apps installed.
: strongly convinced that the cause of problem is its hardware specifically its internal memory.
You're busy and don't have time to wait, which is why you need to stop reading this thread and get back to organizing your Pogs. Rate this thread to express how the LG Nexus 5X performs when multitasking. A higher rating indicates that the LG Nexus 5X keeps many apps in memory so that they don't need to reload, and that when moving between apps, transitions are smooth and performance is excellent.
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!
Does a pretty good job keeping apps in RAM considering it only has 2GB RAM. Can hold about 6 apps.
Holds up just fine with "only" 2GB of RAM. Would I want more? Sure. I don't think there is such a thing as too much RAM. However, the Nexus 5X does hold up just fine with 2GB RAM.
I think amount of RAM is fine, but...
Nexus 5X is very capable phone and multitasking is mostly fine, but I feel that it could be better if LG would use faster flash storage(throughput), when compared to lets say Samsung flash memory that is included in Galaxy S6 and such.
For the most part it seems ok, but i do frequently experience phone locks and lag. Snapchat seems to absolutely hammer the RAM and makes the phone practically unusable, known issue from what i've seen on the Play Store reviews.
Not sure if it's my configuration...
Maybe it's the apps and features I have configured, but I see the memory becoming a problem. I'm sitting at 80% or memory used most of the time, while my N5 (with the same amount of ram) is at 46%. My N5X leaves about 350MB free, which may not cut it for intense use. I'll need to look into tweaks to reduce the OS use of memory, but I'm surprised that the N5, with the same amount of memory but a slower processor, is running more smoothly.
Never had a dropped application. 2GB is enough. I only use 200MB and have 1.7GB available which is enough to run intensive games (which required around 800MB to run).
EDIT: I am using PureNexus as my ROM so it's probably due to optimizations.
2GB is good enough for now, but given that this is a 64-bit device that means installed apps are going to take up more space both in the storage and memory. 2GB may not suffice down the road, even though it's more than enough for now.
Yap, 2 GB is good enough for now.
I really don't think the 2GB is going to be a big problem for me personally.
The 5x seems to do nice job managing the memory. Granted i only use it for browsing and reading mostly. Also the occasional video. No lagging yet.
ProjectJourneyman said:
Maybe it's the apps and features I have configured, but I see the memory becoming a problem. I'm sitting at 80% or memory used most of the time, while my N5 (with the same amount of ram) is at 46%. My N5X leaves about 350MB free, which may not cut it for intense use. I'll need to look into tweaks to reduce the OS use of memory, but I'm surprised that the N5, with the same amount of memory but a slower processor, is running more smoothly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm looking into this also, the nexus5 was just right with my usage, but the 5x is just short with the same apps
Opera mobile which uses a lot but the system is also at 650-700mb ram
Less RAM Available!!
This is my main concern along with battery
I use tasker, twilight, autovoice, Google now, join, and many other apps that need to be kept in ram
That would let me a few MB for keeping other apps like chrome or tapatalk. I predict redraws for that apps... Right?
(I'm still deciding between 5x and moto x style)
Sent from my Redmi Note 2 using Tapatalk
Multitasking sucks on this phone!
Almost all of the apps refresh everytime, and the available ram is always around 400mb even when there's no apps running in the background.
Any way to.improve this?
Coming from Nexus 6 I have to agree the available memory is too low. Apps almost always close in the background and have to constantly refresh and lose progress. And its not like I've got tons of app running all at once, just simple apps like Firefox, inbox and WhatsApp. I'm running latest version of PureNexus Rom and available memory is always below 500MB. Wouldn't recommend this phone to anyone.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
After 10 months I still have no issues with RAM management on this device. My apps rarely reload and I've never seen a launcher redraw. I'm able to do GPS navigation in the hot sun while streaming Spotify and still able to answering a SMS with Google voice without any of them closing.
Those who load up on lots of background services might have issues, however starting with Android N that will no longer be a problem. See XDA article below on Android N limiting 3rd party background services.
http://www.xda-developers.com/how-android-n-will-improve-battery-and-memory-management/
on hindsight whether 2gb of ram is enough will depend on how app developers are able to optimize their apps so that it does not hog unnecessary memory. however in the wake of the latest android n os with increase system ram consumption. i believe much modifications will have to be done to keep the 5x optimise and smooth for daily usage
Since Android N, i noticed something strange in games.
For exemple in Deus Ex Go or The Room 3.
The games runs well, but after some minutes, it starts to lag.
Don't know what's happen, it's like game is loading its content, level after level but never clean it after levels are done.
fruity101079 said:
Since Android N, i noticed something strange in games.
For exemple in Deus Ex Go or The Room 3.
The games runs well, but after some minutes, it starts to lag.
Don't know what's happen, it's like game is loading its content, level after level but never clean it after levels are done.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's probably more related to CPU throttling.
Android is doing the best it can with what is has on this device, but 2 GB of ram just isn't enough to handle heavy multitasking without some rather large hiccups where the device just slows down and chugs for a bit.