Database Users

Galaxy S Ram and Himem........

Hi all,
I am getting this phone on July 21 when it's avaible through T-mobile. However, I ran across an issue while reading on the vast number of threads about this phone regarding the available memory.
1. Is it true the Android 2.1 is limited to 256mb of ram unless "hi-mem" is installed/enabled by the rom?
2. Is hi-mem enabled on the SGS stock rom? From my reading it doesn't appear that it's properly enabled.
3. If hi-mem isn't enabled, does that mean the SGS is functioning with only 1/2 of it's ram?
4. If so, how much free ram is showing on the stock rom and how much should we see once hi-mem is enabled?
I'm assuming that since many Android phones come with 512mb of ram these days, that hi-mem has been properly enabled on some of them. How much free ram does a typical android phone running 2.1 or 2.2 have after bootup?
I'm currently using a Touch Pro 2 which runs out memory all the time and would rather not have to deal with that on Android as well. I assumed that 512mb is supposedly to be more than enough to run 10+ programs at the same time should I choose to.
Thanks in advance.

It doesn't appear to be using 512MB I only ever have around 100 meg free. I used to have a touch hd and know what you must be thinking but i can assure you even with only 256 available it is fast and hasn't run out of memory on me yet. be sure to download a memory freeing app like task killer.
It runs quake3, something i could never get my hd to do with out practically killing the os

Kernel supports 512M RAM.

with the new Gingerbread specs it REQUIRES 512MB .. now if its 256MB , that's something to worry about

Nex_1 said:
with the new Gingerbread specs it REQUIRES 512MB .. now if its 256MB , that's something to worry about
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Don't worry, it has 512mb. It's just that some older kernels didn't support more than 256mb of ram, so the phone simply didn't "see" all 512mb.
My concern was that the kernel out of the box was too old to support the full amount.

The phone physically has 512MB of RAM. However, I think Android 2.1 is limiting the availability to 256MB.
Froyo 2.2 will correct this issue.

[Q] 340mb ram instead of 512mb?

My tw taskmanager shows only 340mb ram instead of 512mb, after some research I found that the rest of the ram is used for ramdisk,is that true?
If so,is there a way to use all of 512mb for ram?And does this make Epic inferior to Vibrant,Captivate and Fascinate or better?

All Galaxy S phones have 512 MBs of RAM. And I do believe all are the same. At least the i9000 and the Epic are.

The phone has a physical 512MB of RAM, but I don't believe that the stock kernel currently supports more than 340MB.

thephawx said:
All Galaxy S phones have 512 MBs of RAM. And I do believe all are the same. At least the i9000 and the Epic are.
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Check your built in taskmanager(by holding home button),it only shows 324mb total ram,so no they not all the same.Yes we do have 512mb but only 324mb(give or take few mb) is used for actual ram,the rest is used as ramdisk(cache).Vibrant and Captivate uses whole 512mb as ram and internal rom(hd) for cache,im not sure about original Galaxy or Fascinate.
Believe me extra ram not being available has huge impact on performance,i owned MT3gs with 512mb ram and 600mhz cpu and it felt just as fast as my Epic if not faster even with Sense.
This could explain big lag im getting with 4-5 apps open,i could have 10 apps open on Mytouch slide with no lag.

lviv73 said:
Check your built in taskmanager(by holding home button),it only shows 324mb total ram,so no they not all the same.Yes we do have 512mb but only 324mb(give or take few mb) is used for actual ram,the rest is used as ramdisk(cache).Vibrant and Captivate uses whole 512mb as ram and internal rom(hd) for cache,im not sure about original Galaxy or Fascinate.
Believe me extra ram not being available has huge impact on performance,i owned MT3gs with 512mb ram and 600mhz cpu and it felt just as fast as my Epic if not faster even with Sense.
This could explain big lag im getting with 4-5 apps open,i could have 10 apps open on Mytouch slide with no lag.
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There is a reason why. There is no dalvik cache push to sd for our devices yet. If we could get an ext2 or ext3 or ext 4 for our sd cards and move the cache there, it would be a whole new ball game. But it's no availible for us yet

Maybe to balance the phones out because epic has 2 cameras and keyboard
Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

I wonder if other models have same ram or they have full 512mb of usable ram without ramdisk,and does that makes epic faster or slower?
I know my MT3gs was way faster with stock sense 600mhz cpu and 512 ram(without sd cache),sounds like this phone needs that extra 128+ram because extra ram makes more difference than faster cpu,324mb ram I dont think is sufficient for 2.1 to run smoothly.Hope someone comes up with something so we can use whole 512mb as ram and internal rom or sd for cache.

The reason why we have only 320 showing is because samsung moved the cache there to prevent the lag some people here talkming about the galaxy s having.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

EPIC FAIL ...325 for me :-(
2012 the Evolution of Human Consciousness

supposedly the GPU uses 128mb of the ram

All 5 galaxy s phones have 512mb but the epic and fascinate are limited to the 300 and something because our phones are the only ones that don't have a massive amount of internal sd like the others. We ours uses the more typical smaller amount of rom and the missing ram is used to stop touchwiz from lagging! Why do manufacturers and carriers keep ****ing up android!? Love this device but I can customize it myself just fine without the extra tw layer eating my resources and slowing my upgrade releases!
Sent from my Epic 4G using xda app

We have 512mb rom which can be used for cache,i have all the apps I need installed in /system/app folder and still have 400mb free,how much should be dedicated to android swap 128,256?So there is plenty of room and for those people that have about 100 apps on they phone they need to wait for a2sd.
Still no one has answered if its possible to use whole 512mb for ram,this phone really neads it,most of the time I have 3-4 apps open and about 80mb ram free-thats not good.Epic has fastets rom out of any model,now if we could use it for cache and a2sd for apps,plus whole 512mb as ram,than this thing would fly.128 for swap is a waste,plus I think that this 128mb actualy takes away from GPU's vram.

I agree that we need more RAM. There has to be a way to edit the kernel and get more out of our hardware.

why does the vibrant not recognize all the ram even on 2.2

Guys, how can I get my samsung vibrant to recognize all the 512mb of ram. I thought froyo has all the software and kernels and stuff to recognize the full 512mb of my phone not just 308mb. Do I need to flash a new kernel or something. I have the nero v3 rom on my phone, with voodoo enabled. So how do we fix this?

308 MB you phone is showing you is the correct amount, your phone does have 512 MB of RAM total. However, part of that is used by the phone and android system to supply your phone's graphics card and other functions such as a RAM disk if I remembered correctly. In addition, You don't want your phone to run out of memory because you are running a game and missed that all important call right? well part of the RAM is reserved to keep the "phone" portion of the Android working.
It is a common misconception that Froyo will "unlock" this hidden RAM, but in reality we are already using all the RAM that came with the phone. The reason some HTC phone shows 512 MB of RAM is either because the phone is reading the "TotaL" amount of RAM or in the case of G2 the phone actually came with more than 512 MB of ram but advertised as 512 MB (the extra RAM is used in the same way as the Vibrant, GPU/Ram disk/Android, etc).

What about the iphone, my cousin always gets 300t mb of free memory on his iphone 4. Android can't be that much of a ram hog. By the way doesn't the power vr gpu have dedicated ram for it self, I man come on, its a high end phone. Samsung is really messing up on there phones.

My question is *why* do you need more free RAM? Are you really running out, ever? Don't think of it like a PC where you need free RAM as overhead when apps start utilizing more and more. Android will free up more RAM as necessary by killing apps that are preloaded in the background. I've never run into a situation where I've run out of memory, couldn't even tell you what happens when you do. I don't use task-killers, run a ton of widgets, and I've never seen it dip below 60-70mb free.

Kubernetes said:
My question is *why* do you need more free RAM? Are you really running out, ever? Don't think of it like a PC where you need free RAM as overhead when apps start utilizing more and more. Android will free up more RAM as necessary by killing apps that are preloaded in the background. I've never run into a situation where I've run out of memory, couldn't even tell you what happens when you do. I don't use task-killers, run a ton of widgets, and I've never seen it dip below 60-70mb free.[/QUOTE
Yes I do run out of ram. Every time I watch a flash video and while leaving no heavy ram using apps to be multitasked, after I finish my vigo and go back to my other apps I finder them killed. It gets on my nerves. I expected more out of 512mb. I also spent too much money for my phone for it to perform under shar what it's specified.
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I run autokiller and always have 150ish.free. even if I didn't run it I would never run out id ram even when I had my g1
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

So much for multitasking, right?
Phone has 384 app accessible ram. Typically runs with ~100ish free after a fresh boot with a stock ROM. The browser can take ~30mb, so that doesn't leave much to multitasking with. When ur phone starts auto killing performance decreases. They should have h put the aeverised ram in the phone, instead of playing the semantics game. Even Verizon updated their fascinate specs to change that to 384.
I'll make sure to check this before I buy my next phone in a couple weeks tho (soooo excited!!!).
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

N8ter said:
So much for multitasking, right?
Phone has 384 apparently accessible ram. Even Verizon updated their fascinate specs to change that.
Galaxy tab uses the same social and its alwaysvshowing 400+ MB ram on everyone I checked.
I'll make sure to check this before I buy my next phone in a couple weeks tho (soooo excited!!!).
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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This means that this is a software issue, not hardware because the tab has the same processor found in the vibrant. 400t is allot better than just 300, not only but the tab also requires more resources with it's 720p screen.

helikido said:
This means that this is a software issue, not hardware because the tab has the same processor found in the vibrant. 400t is allot better than just 300, not only but the tab also requires more resources with it's 720p screen.
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It's not a software issue.
And yes, 100MB RAM in a smartphone is a lot.
It's like getting a computer with 4GB RAM and ripping a 2GB RAM stick out out of it.
There's 128 MB RAM that isn't accessible to the system The OS itself probably uses abut 100+ MB RAM, and once you start installing applications/services that start eating up resources.
Some say the 128 is dedicated graphics ram (fast graphics RAM to allow the Hummingbird to achieve it's faster GPU performance). What a waste. I'll make sure my next phone isn't built like a game console.
They should have at least added another 64MB RAM the way HTC did in the HD2/HD7.
The phone has as much App RAM as a mid-range Android device (think HTC Aria). It's factorable, especially if you want to multitask. Running multiple applications on this phone, I basically have to manage my apps they way I did on Windows Mobile (i.e. open task manager to FC the browser, etc.) because you don't want to be playing a game or doing anything somewhat important when the phone starts trying to auto-close background tasks to recover RAM (and some services will simply restart themselves immediately).
Good phone, bad execution in the software, and they should not have advertised it as having 512 RAM, because to anyone that isn't an idiot Graphics RAM is not synonymous with Application RAM, and 128 less RAM is quite a big chunk to be missing.

...Graphics RAM is not synonymous with Application RAM, and 128 less RAM is quite a big chunk to be missing.
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Virtually every computer on the shelf at Wally-World and Best Buy do exactly this - the motherboard graphics chip uses system RAM to operate. Admittedly does not directly correlate to a phone, and they should make a disclosure, but there is ample precedent in the general marketplace.

I don't understand why some of you attribute a free RAM amount (or lack thereof) as a memory hog?
If RAM is used instead of slower disk I/O it translates to a better user experience, the OS is good on keeping the taps on the memory and clean the thrash by itself, but nothing can prevent poor coding and a single rouge app can become the memory hog independent of how much RAM your system has, it might eat all of it.

The real problem is that the phone has only about 150mb of free ram and that'd on boot up. If the phone does have some ram dedicated to the gpu from the system ram (known as shared ram) then why
Don't other android devices do that too, and the iphone has more free ram on boot up then what is user acsesable to me. I thought the gloriose sgx540 had it's own high end dedicated ram for graphics?

N8ter said:
So much for multitasking, right?
Phone has 384 app accessible ram. Typically runs with ~100ish free after a fresh boot with a stock ROM. The browser can take ~30mb, so that doesn't leave much to multitasking with. When ur phone starts auto killing performance decreases. They should have h put the aeverised ram in the phone, instead of playing the semantics game. Even Verizon updated their fascinate specs to change that to 384.
I'll make sure to check this before I buy my next phone in a couple weeks tho (soooo excited!!!).
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
If you hate your vibrant so much why do you spend so much time on the forums? Dont seem to contribute much so just go get a new phone and leave us alone.

ionic7 said:
If you hate your vibrant so much why do you spend so much time on the forums? Dont seem to contribute much so just go get a new phone and leave us alone.
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There is an ignore list feature on these forums

helikido said:
The real problem is that the phone has only about 150mb of free ram and that'd on boot up. If the phone does have some ram dedicated to the gpu from the system ram (known as shared ram) then why
Don't other android devices do that too, and the iphone has more free ram on boot up then what is user acsesable to me. I thought the gloriose sgx540 had it's own high end dedicated ram for graphics?
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And how is that a problem?
Do you have an immediate need for something that requires 150+ MB after the boot?
Here's an absolutely healthy linux system with 2GB of RAM:
Code:
free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2049868 1982076 67792 0 146988 840748
-/+ buffers/cache: 994340 1055528
Swap: 6008824 820 6008004
I will be worried if my swap is being used a lot, but using my memory on the system is good.

I agree with this. 512 advertised, 308 seen, 150 Available after a boot....my phone keeps running out of memory so often its sad. It can never run my music player and my gps software at the same time. When I switch between the 2 apps, it closes the other one and its really really sad to see. ****ty job samsung, ****ty job. I hope the galaxy s mod gets ported for the ram which opens 338mb. At least its something.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

}{Alienz}{ said:
It can never run my music player and my gps software at the same time.
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I just went on a 700+ mile car trip with the music player and gps navigation software running the entire time. No problem. Was even able to simultaneously play games while my wife was driving.

}{Alienz}{ said:
I agree with this. 512 advertised, 308 seen, 150 Available after a boot....my phone keeps running out of memory so often its sad. It can never run my music player and my gps software at the same time. When I switch between the 2 apps, it closes the other one and its really really sad to see. ****ty job samsung, ****ty job. I hope the galaxy s mod gets ported for the ram which opens 338mb. At least its something.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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you have a rouge app/apps running that memory hog your phone, getting 30MB of more available RAM will not save it. You need to find what is hogging your phone, I am yet to see a message that my phone is low on memory, sometimes I do a lot of browsing, txt, mytracks and playing music with Pandora or stock player at the same time and it never complained that it was low on memory to run these.

ionic7 said:
If you hate your vibrant so much why do you spend so much time on the forums? Dont seem to contribute much so just go get a new phone and leave us alone.
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Who said that I hate my phone.I'm only truong to find out shar mashes it not recognize all it's ram. In this era, ram is a huge factor to run apps and most importantly newer os updates like ginger bread and honey comb. Don't wanna run out of ram right when you boot up your phone don't you? And if the tab can recognize more ram than this then this means it does gave something to do with software. I guess we have to wait for samsung to release froyo, because im sure that they will gave all threw tweaks that will boost this phone very high, bedside from shar I've noticed, all the,roms out thete dont really boost this phone allot. How do I know,i gave nero v3 and that only boosted me to 1137 on quadrant from 2.1 and with voodo enabled I get 1500 max on quadrant. Oclf the same thing too. so all I'm saying is that it's definitely a software issue. Pretty sure android does not hog 400mbt. And no sgx has its own ram for sure.

I still don't get how you're running out of RAM. Right now I've got Winamp streaming through BT and have started streaming a Flash video. Also running are XDA and Maps. No hiccups.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

What's your maximum available ram and how to increase it?

I'm only getting 1.58 GB and after the reboot my ram usage is like 1.31/1.58. I know it's 2GB device. So the question is why only 1.58gb can be used and how to increase it to 2.0gb? Anyone?

Cause probably the rest of the ram is used by core (not Android os) and hardware

Mine is 1.82 GB. Which is normal due to the conversion discrepancy between MB/GB.

1.82 or 1.72. Can't remember and don't want to look right now
The only way to increase it is by using swap. Either with an app like the rhoesoft ram expander (I think thats how it's wrote), or with a rom feature. But the ram you get with swap is not as fast as real ram. It will also degrade the life of the storage in that it is being stored. You can google more info about swap.
Are you sure you're reading it right? I usually have 1.2 GB ram free.
If you have 1.31 from 1.58 free then maybe you should consider uninstalling some apps. Cuz that's an unusual lot of ram usage

osvanberg said:
Mine is 1.82 GB. Which is normal due to the conversion discrepancy between MB/GB.
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2000/1024 isn't 1.82. And I don't know why mine shows 1.5. That's a 300 missing. I'm on 4.4 tw.

It's just like HDD's. You buy one with 500 GB storage and when you set it up it shows only 480 GB or so.
And yes, samsung kinda ripped us off. 9 GB of internal storage is not 16! and 1.82 GB ram is not 2 GB! It's basically false advertisement what they are doing..

4GB RAM is it enough?

Hello! I am thinking about changing my poor old Oneplus One for this beast. But I am worried about the RAM quantity. At this moment I have 3GB RAM and I don't know if 4 will be enough.
Isn't TouchWiz 4GB = 3GB AOSP debloated?

silverkin said:
Hello! I am thinking about changing my poor old Oneplus One for this beast. But I am worried about the RAM quantity. At this moment I have 3GB RAM and I don't know if 4 will be enough.
Isn't TouchWiz 4GB = 3GB AOSP debloated?
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Click to collapse
Of course it is enough + you won't keep your phone for more than 2-3 years. TouchWiz got better, but not perfect. My phone still has ~1.5 GB of Ram left. My notebook has 4 GB Ram with fast SSD, don't see any slowdowns on Win 10 Pro.

With the poor ram management 2.5 GB is enough because at no point it uses more than that on our phones. I have apps refreshing when I come back but only half of ram is being used.

in my opinion, 4gb is not enough..... For that kind of high-end phone, samsung should have put 6Go at least into it. I'm talking about ram managment which is pretty bad in android and when you take a look at speedtests (even if this is not reflecting real daily uses) you can see than phone with 6go of ram are able to keep many apps in memory way better than the s8. When you start to run heavy apps or games, the built-in memory killer kills a lots of background app and then when you need to switch back into an other recent app, the phone almost reload it :'( That's frustrating

4GB Ram is enough. More RAM means more apps running in background which means more battery consumption. So 4GB looks a good balance here atleast for S8 which has only 3000 mah battery.

i don't think so excuse me. Of course, more ram maybe means more battery consumption but i prefer that and kill apps runing in background manually to keep battery life rather than the os kills things that i still need :/

When you have 4gb then 4gb isnt enough, when you have 6gb then 6gb isn't enough... its never enough.

4GB is enough for most any smartphone. I also have a OnePlus 3 with 6GB ram and while it can keep more programs running in the background, it never totally accesses the entire 6GB ram. Read this XDA article on RAM: https://www.xda-developers.com/the-ram-conundrum-do-we-really-need-6gb-ram-on-android/

4 is enough, and please after buying it do not ask about why just a little of it is free! The ram is for holding services and apps in background so cpu should not work again to bring them up, if it's filled do not be sad, it's natural.

roro97230 said:
in my opinion, 4gb is not enough..... For that kind of high-end phone, samsung should have put 6Go at least into it. I'm talking about ram managment which is pretty bad in android and when you take a look at speedtests (even if this is not reflecting real daily uses) you can see than phone with 6go of ram are able to keep many apps in memory way better than the s8. When you start to run heavy apps or games, the built-in memory killer kills a lots of background app and then when you need to switch back into an other recent app, the phone almost reload it :'( That's frustrating
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Why should you want to keep many apps in memory? The S8 loads them so quick anyway.

Who needs in real day use to keep in memory 5-6 games plus 6-7 apps ? That's what they are doing in speed test , but in every day use it's not need for 6-8 GB ram in this moment. In my opinion for the manufacturer it's simpler to put more ram in a phone instead a better over all optimization.