Database Users

Performance drops after some time

Hi,
I have noticed that my Nexus' performance starts to drop after some hours on: going from one home screen to the other becomes quite choppy, and so do the animations of opening an application.
Have you guys noticed that too, or is it just me?

It was like this for me until I bought Advanced Task Manager. I have it auto end applications that I don't need to run all the time. It runs much better now.

The issue is RAM. The kernel that shipped with the Nexus One doesn't support the full 512MB of RAM. However, CyanogenMod 5.0-beta4 does and the difference in speed is amazing. With 26 apps running I have 167MB free atm.
But like stickerbob said, you should have Advanced Task Manager at the least.

Deathwish238 said:
The issue is RAM. The kernel that shipped with the Nexus One doesn't support the full 512MB of RAM. However, CyanogenMod 5.0-beta4 does and the difference in speed is amazing. With 26 apps running I have 167MB free atm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?

frandavid100 said:
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep but some people just don't get that, ah well...

efeltee said:
Yep but some people just don't get that, ah well...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that doesn't really explain the performance drops. Does the phone run out of RAM, or not? It seems to be snappy again after a reboot, so there must be something.

frandavid100 said:
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is what I have read, but it did not work for me. I downloaded the free version of advanced task man to troubleshoot the problem and found that most of my apps were still running in the background even when my ram was down to 10-20mb. That is about when the phone would start acting up on me. When I ended the tasks the phone would act normal again. So I just broke down and bought the app for $.99. If you do this make sure you exclude some system apps, if you don't your phone could freeze while it is trying to restart them.

10-20mb free is normal operation. This is how the OS is designed to operate, linux and even windows7 now also operate in this fashion (show very little 'free' memory). there is no performance problem with low free memory, purely a misconception on modern memory managment. Whats going on is that you have a buggy application, which is why 'killing' apps looks to be resolving your issue. You're only resolving the symptom, not the problem.
I never kill apps and have had weeks of uptime without any slow down. This gets rehashed over and over again by people claiming task killers help performance. The reality is they do nothing for performance, only nice to have around for that great once and a while an app runs away from you, or in troubleshooting if you have a poorly written app. It should not be anyones habit to do a kill all on a regular basis, if it were the OS would do this automatically.
btw, compcache has been known to cause this slowdown over time issue, it has since been removed from most of the popular custom baked rom's.

frandavid100 said:
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it does...
bofslime said:
10-20mb free is normal operation. This is how the OS is designed to operate, linux and even windows7 now also operate in this fashion (show very little 'free' memory). there is no performance problem with low free memory, purely a misconception on modern memory managment. Whats going on is that you have a buggy application, which is why 'killing' apps looks to be resolving your issue. You're only resolving the symptom, not the problem.
I never kill apps and have had weeks of uptime without any slow down. This gets rehashed over and over again by people claiming task killers help performance. The reality is they do nothing for performance, only nice to have around for that great once and a while an app runs away from you, or in troubleshooting if you have a poorly written app. It should not be anyones habit to do a kill all on a regular basis, if it were the OS would do this automatically.
btw, compcache has been known to cause this slowdown over time issue, it has since been removed from most of the popular custom baked rom's.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well then there must be many buggy applications. I had to rely on Advanced Task Manager to keep my G1 running acceptably fast. The N1 slows down without its full RAM available so I needed to use Advanced Task Manager then too.
If the RAM is not the issue, why does having the extra 200 MB available make the phone run much smoother with 20+ apps running?

frandavid100 said:
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well technically no, it reallocates what is being used and frees up memory for programs currently running but non the less the OS manages itself
personally i close apps that i do not have going with the task manager. i seem to notice a performance difference if i do it manually, it takes 2-3 extra taps for peace of mind rather than relying on the OS to figure it out for me...

Deathwish238 said:
The issue is RAM. The kernel that shipped with the Nexus One doesn't support the full 512MB of RAM. However, CyanogenMod 5.0-beta4 does and the difference in speed is amazing. With 26 apps running I have 167MB free atm.
But like stickerbob said, you should have Advanced Task Manager at the least.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The speed benefits of CM's ROM isn't due to the HIGHMEM supporting kernel, but rather other tweeks he's done with his build. Extra ram is nice, but there is certainly no limitation with the 213 or so userspace memory that is available now. Android itself does not even use this memory, it has its own reserved memory space, userspace memory is only for applications to be loaded in. And there is speed for keeping as much of your applications loaded in memory as possible.
swetland said:
Roughly 220MB is available to userspace in the shipping build (ERD79).
Quite a lot of memory is dedicated to the radio firmware (41MB), dsp firmware (32MB), display surfaces (32MB), gpu (3MB), camera (8MB), a/v buffers (41MB), and dsp buffers. Much of this needs to be set aside for these specific tasks due to hardware requirements of very large physically contiguous buffers which can be difficult or impossible to obtain after boot once the physical memory space gets fragmented.
The big limitation though is that the Linux kernel needs to do a 1:1 physical:virtual map of general purpose memory used by the kernel and userspace (which excludes the special purpose stuff described above). This eats into the available kernel virtual address space, which is also needed for cross process shared memory used by the binder, etc. Run out of virtual memory and things get unhappy.
In 2.6.32, HIGHMEM support for ARM will allow us to avoid this requirement for a 1:1 mapping which will allow us to increase memory available to userspace without running the system out of virtual memory adddress space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

The speed difference I'm talking about is what I experienced when running CM beta3 and CM beta3 w/ highmem. The difference was huge. I assumed the change was mainly attributed to the double RAM available.
Even now with the full RAM available, things run faster when I end the other apps running. It's not necessary, but the difference is there.
It would be nice to be able to pinpoint which apps caused slow downs.

The best way I've seen this put I found in a thread where someone wanted to disable apps from auto-starting entirely. I saved it, because I though it was very elegant way to explain androids mem management.
equid0x said:
I just wanted to chime in here about the whole apps on startup thing....
Android has the concept of services which are programs that typically have a frontend piece, like a GUI for IM that you would normally use, that only runs when you are using it, and a background piece, the service, which is constantly running to keep you connected to your IM servers. This will account for some portion of the things you see running on startup, depending on how many apps you have installed, and whether or not they were written to run as a service.
There are also some, usually older, android programs that existed before "services" were really used.. that basically use triggers to keep reloading themselves. These programs are less efficient, and probably should be re-written to use the official service method of operation, caveat emptor.
Android also makes several modifications to the stock process handling that comes with any Linux kernel, which is already radically different from what most would be used to seeing on Windows as it is. Android attempts to keep commonly used applications running(loaded into memory), but in a sleeping state (using no cpu), so that they may be quickly resumed on request. Android also contains some agressive modifications to the behavior of the OOM(out of memory) task killer in Linux, that seem to cause it to keep applications running until nearly all memory is consumed, killing apps it deems unnecessary only when absolutely necessary. However, Android also supports a methodology of saving the running state of a program, so that if it is killed due to an OOM condition, it may be restarted with relevant data restored, to give the appearance of never having been killed at all.
This functionality is not all to alien to Linux as a platform in general, though Android has many modifications which tend to favor aggressive app management in memory, and less so filesystem cache. This was likely a design choice made to suit the low-speed/low memory platforms Android targets.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Good read.
So then given that...only services running should slow down the phone and not the background apps running.
However, this doesn't really answer the OP's question. If it's not a memory issue...what's causing his slowdowns?

Could be too many widgets on the home screen, I don't run that many but its possible that while in an app for a while, and switching back to home the OS may have to kill a whole bunch of apps to allow it to reload all the widgets on the home screen.
I tested this, and loaded the crap out of my home screens with widgets, and then launched a game. When I exited the game there was a good 500ms - 800ms delay in my homescreens from displaying anything other than the background. However, after it loaded, scrolling between screens looks smooth. The new kernel with highmem support can help this, but I would suspect some crazy widget filled homescreen with a 3rd party live wallpaper (star's configured with too many stars) and all of that combined could be an issue even still. Apple combats this by allowing only one app at a time, they know people will go overboard if allowed.

Well, that doesn't really explain the performance drops. Does the phone run out of RAM, or not? It seems to be snappy again after a reboot, so there must be something.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's probably no easy answer to this question. There could be IO contention, a runaway process, high CPU usage, a memory leak, shoddy code in some app, etc etc... One would really have to take a look at the whole state of the system at the time the problem is happening to be able to ascertain what is causing the slowdown.
The phenomenon is in no way unique to Android. I'm sure nearly everyone is familiar with the common complaint "my computer is running slow". The reasons that can happen on a common PC are the very same reasons that can be happening here, and unfortunately there are many of those reasons. While in many cases, throwing memory at the issue may appear to solve the problem temporarily, it often is not a permanent fix.
The amount of userspace memory available really amounts to 1 thing and 1 thing only -> the total number of running processes that we can keep totally in memory at any given time. On stock android, slowdown due to an OOM condition should be minimal, since stock android doesn't swap. Discounting any other bottlenecks, there is a practical limit to the number of programs once would be able to run in the memory space that is available. Realistically speaking, android programs tend to be fairly small, so you'd really have to be running a lot of them to exhaust this space. It is far more likely one or 2 poorly written programs are hogging huge amounts of memory (and probably other resources), which is causing constant killing and restarting of other apps you are trying to run concurrently. You end up with contention on the slow flash, resulting in poor performance.
You can't even really compare the Nexus One to the G1 in this regard, because the G1 truly is terribly deprived of memory. Though, the argument in both cases could really be made that you are attempting to run the hardware beyond its design specifications...
Its been my experience that the culprit is usually one or 2 specific programs. Sometimes the best, although inconvenient, way to figure out which programs these are, is to keep watch of your usage habits, and if you suspect something is the problem, uninstall it, and see if the issue persists. Its time consuming but there really isn't any better way to figure it out without using all kinds of tools that android doesn't really provide convenient access to. There are a few apps on the market that help with this but I am not sure what they are called offhand.
Programs that were identified as sources of slowdown for me have been:
Weatherbug
The Weather Channel
Calorie Counter
Locale
SMS Popup
10000
USA Today
National Geographic Wallpapers
CNN News Widget
Streamfurious
Nav4All
Waze
Just about every app with Admob Ads
And this is really just what I can think off offhand... there are more...

equid0x said:
There's probably no easy answer to this question. There could be IO contention, a runaway process, high CPU usage, a memory leak, shoddy code in some app, etc etc... One would really have to take a look at the whole state of the system at the time the problem is happening to be able to ascertain what is causing the slowdown.
The phenomenon is in no way unique to Android. I'm sure nearly everyone is familiar with the common complaint "my computer is running slow". The reasons that can happen on a common PC are the very same reasons that can be happening here, and unfortunately there are many of those reasons. While in many cases, throwing memory at the issue may appear to solve the problem temporarily, it often is not a permanent fix.
The amount of userspace memory available really amounts to 1 thing and 1 thing only -> the total number of running processes that we can keep totally in memory at any given time. On stock android, slowdown due to an OOM condition should be minimal, since stock android doesn't swap. Discounting any other bottlenecks, there is a practical limit to the number of programs once would be able to run in the memory space that is available. Realistically speaking, android programs tend to be fairly small, so you'd really have to be running a lot of them to exhaust this space. It is far more likely one or 2 poorly written programs are hogging huge amounts of memory (and probably other resources), which is causing constant killing and restarting of other apps you are trying to run concurrently. You end up with contention on the slow flash, resulting in poor performance.
You can't even really compare the Nexus One to the G1 in this regard, because the G1 truly is terribly deprived of memory. Though, the argument in both cases could really be made that you are attempting to run the hardware beyond its design specifications...
Its been my experience that the culprit is usually one or 2 specific programs. Sometimes the best, although inconvenient, way to figure out which programs these are, is to keep watch of your usage habits, and if you suspect something is the problem, uninstall it, and see if the issue persists. Its time consuming but there really isn't any better way to figure it out without using all kinds of tools that android doesn't really provide convenient access to. There are a few apps on the market that help with this but I am not sure what they are called offhand.
Programs that were identified as sources of slowdown for me have been:
Weatherbug
The Weather Channel
Calorie Counter
Locale
SMS Popup
10000
USA Today
National Geographic Wallpapers
CNN News Widget
Streamfurious
Nav4All
Waze
Just about every app with Admob Ads
And this is really just what I can think off offhand... there are more...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm banking on it being an issue with an app that the OP has installed as well...not the phone or Android. I have only a handful of tried and true apps, and haven't experienced a slowdown even after 150 hours without a reboot.
OP... start uninstalling apps a couple at a time and wait several hours in between to narrow down the problem app.

I can't speak for the OP, but when I was having that problem I had 5 widgets running on my home screen. The Google Search, Sports Tap, Power Control, Calendar, and The Small Weather Channel. Does this seem like too much? I hope not.

stickerbob said:
I can't speak for the OP, but when I was having that problem I had 5 widgets running on my home screen. The Google Search, Sports Tap, Power Control, Calendar, and The Small Weather Channel. Does this seem like too much? I hope not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not just widgets that you should be thinking about... any app you've installed can throw something off.

stickerbob said:
I can't speak for the OP, but when I was having that problem I had 5 widgets running on my home screen. The Google Search, Sports Tap, Power Control, Calendar, and The Small Weather Channel. Does this seem like too much? I hope not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I removed the weather & news widget and the phone seems much faster now. I'll keep it like that for a day, see if it stays fast.

CM/Nexus slowdown (of the terrible kind)

I'm having some awful slow-down issues with my N1. Like, 3 second delays between clicking widgets and their intended effect, and even longer switching between home screens (if the screens switch at all).
There's no auto task-killer enabled, I've very recently wiped and re-installed CM, and cleaned out my unused apps. I've got around 200MB of RAM free, constantly. SetCPU is keeping my processor at 461MHz or higher. This is obnoxious as balls, and I can't think of much. :s
Any suggestions?
I'm running CM 5.0.6, btw.

i have the same problem

My N1 is not rooted and I am experiencing slowdowns. When opening txt messages now take 3-5 seconds, and typing completely locks sometimes for 20 seconds. Gmail now takes 5+sec to open and other apps are also seeing this. I just had 10+ programs update themselves and all these issues started appearing suddenly. Also when exiting apps my desktop will be blank for 3-5 seconds. This just happened all within the past 2 weeks or so.

reddragon72 said:
This just happened all within the past 2 weeks or so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, the issue is very recent for me too. Last week.

I am wondering if Google sent out an OTA that is prepping the phone for the 2.2 update??? The reason I say this and not point to an app is the simple fact that I have all my apps stopped completely and the issues still exist.

reddragon72 said:
I am wondering if Google sent out an OTA that is prepping the phone for the 2.2 update??? The reason I say this and not point to an app is the simple fact that I have all my apps stopped completely and the issues still exist.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mmm, I dunno about that. I'm running CyanogenMod. I don't get OTA updates. Do you remember, recently, getting an OTA?
Unless it was pushed inside of a market-updated Google app (uhh.. No.), I wouldn't have got it.

Zak Jones! said:
SetCPU is keeping my processor at 461MHz or higher.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You set your CPU at 461Mhz?? Sure it slow down and lagging. What the point buying a 1Ghz processor phone decide let it run at 461Mhz?
Check the profile if you are not set at 461Mhz, maybe accidently make a profile setting and enable.
Or set your setCPU setting from on demand to on performance.

What kernel are you running?

Andrewtst said:
You set your CPU at 461Mhz?? Sure it slow down and lagging. What the point buying a 1Ghz processor phone decide let it run at 461Mhz?
Check the profile if you are not set at 461Mhz, maybe accidently make a profile setting and enable.
Or set your setCPU setting from on demand to on performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think he's setting the minimum at 461 hence the "or higher" part.

Well, I can't actually help much except to suggest that perhaps you could try Kang-o-rama (see my sig) and see if that works. It's a stable and fast bundle with no apparent lag. At least I know that setup works.
If you did proceed then posted your results in that thread I might be able to assist. You shouldn't be experiencing lag with this phone... and if you still are after installing Kang-o-rama we could look at logs for you.
No promises but I know Kang-o-rama works...

Success? Sorry for the laggy reply.
JCopernicus said:
I think he's setting the minimum at 461 hence the "or higher" part.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, Copernicus is right, it's at a minimum of 461MHz (now 499MHz.), with a max of 998MHz, running 'on demand'.
antoniouslj said:
What kernel are you running?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using whichever kernel comes with CM. (2.6.33.2 is specified in the relevant section of his changelog.)
djmcnz said:
Well, I can't actually help much except to suggest that perhaps you could try Kang-o-rama.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, won't lie, I'm sick of reinstalling all my stuff, so I don't want to do it again. If I keep having issues, I'll look into it though.
Just last night, I wiped both the data partition (factory reset?) and cleared the Dalvik(sp?)-cache. Started from scratch (without Google settings sync.), and reinstalled apps one by one. SO FAR, I haven't had the slowdown, but who knows. All I've got installed yet are the applications that I actually had desktop shortcuts to. (I didn't have very many more, but these are the ones I actually used frequently.)
Anyway, yeah, I'll see how this goes.

K, need a suggestion.
Zak Jones! said:
Anyway, yeah, I'll see how this goes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sooo, it's not going. Still experiencing the slowdown. I honestly can't think of what's doing this. Advanced Task Manager reports > 190MB free (28 processes running), SetCPU is still running at 499MHz or greater (I can't get 'show CPU to work in Dev Tools?).
Ending everything in the "All Apps" tab does not fix the problem; it's speedy for about 30 seconds, then resumes being slow, with the same problems (so maybe it's a process taking up all my CPU cycles? (But my CPU isn't scaling up like it would in that situation...))
Anything I can try doing before re-flashing and/or wiping? I'd rather avoid that, but, of course, if it's the only solution, whatever. Maybe try flashing a new ROM?
Can't think of what else to do here, gentlemen.

Get rid of SetCPU. I had it installed and it started weirding out on me, would not set the processor higher than 384 and nothing I did in the profiles would set it back to 1 GHz. After I uninstalled, my phone returned to it's normal speeds.

Zak Jones! said:
Sooo, it's not going. Still experiencing the slowdown. I honestly can't think of what's doing this. Advanced Task Manager reports > 190MB free (28 processes running), SetCPU is still running at 499MHz or greater (I can't get 'show CPU to work in Dev Tools?).
Ending everything in the "All Apps" tab does not fix the problem; it's speedy for about 30 seconds, then resumes being slow, with the same problems (so maybe it's a process taking up all my CPU cycles? (But my CPU isn't scaling up like it would in that situation...))
Anything I can try doing before re-flashing and/or wiping? I'd rather avoid that, but, of course, if it's the only solution, whatever. Maybe try flashing a new ROM?
Can't think of what else to do here, gentlemen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might not like my advice but it's likely to work:
Don't uninstall SetCPU but set your CPU min to 245 and the max to what you want. Disable profiles but select 'Set on Boot' and 'On Demand'. Do nothing else with SetCPU, leave it alone and do not use the active widget. Your current setup is crazy.
Full wipe (as you've done before) data, cache, dalvik-cache, battery, rotate and then install Kang-o-rama 0.7b1 (no, I'm not simply pushing it, I just know it so well that I can assure you it works).
Do not, under any circumstances restore any data or apps for any application with any application. As soon as you set up your Google account go into Settings | Privacy and disable "Back up my settings" and hit Okay.
Install a task manager if you like for monitoring purposes. Install SetCPU as above if you like for OC.
Install no other apps (now that's the painful part) and use your phone for long enough for you to know with certainty whether it's working as you expect.
In all honesty, if it's still broke after that then you've probably got a hardware issue. If it's working after that then slowly add your apps back until you find what's causing the problem.
Good luck, report back.

So far, uninstalling SetCPU is doing wonders for me. Y'know, over the last 15 minutes. I'll use it throughout the day and see if it keeps performing.
Space for future updates:
****ING BALLSACK. <--- First impression of Kang-o-Rama (I decided to just go for it and flash as soon as I saw it included CM.)
^^^^^^^^^^^^ That text is to be read: Kang-o-Rama is amazing. The theme is sexy, I LOVE the Desire camera, and the bundled stuff (kernel, apps, etc) are quite awesome. We'll see if it solves my performance issues.

I was getting the same thing....
Task kill setcpu and reboot it again. If you keep getting the lag then stop using setCPU.

Zak Jones! said:
****ING BALLSACK
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It takes a twisted mind to interpret that as a complement.
Zak Jones! said:
...Kang-o-Rama is amazing...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But thank you!

Delete all widgets that profile your cpu in any way. Stop killing tasks with task killers. Uninstall setcpu. Set exchange email app to "PUSH". Download "Quick System Info Pro" and check what's using up Cpu.
I had the same problem and it turned out to be 2 things: SetCPU widget and exchange email app stuck in a sync cycle.

Maybe theres an ill-performing app that you installed. Since it seems you wiped your phone a couple times including cache. Did you happen to restore apps thru Titanium backup or manually one at a time thru the market.
I always wipe my phone completely and reinstall all apps manually, time consuming, but I have never had a problem.
To further diagnose your problem, see if after installing each app, try the phone to see if there are any slowdowns afterward. Again, I know this is time consuming, but trying to find the problem rather than living with it would be better.
I'm also using 5.0.6 but with no problems or slowdowns.
You can also post a logcat or look thru it yourself if you know how and see if any errors or hangups occur. Logcats are a great way to see the commands being given to your phone and this will most likely reveal your problem.

Same problem, it's annoying.

the lag vs apps

Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.

robnil said:
Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't used it in a while, but "spare parts" in the marketplace tells you which apps are consuming your processor IIRC. This will obviously give you a temporary hit to your ability to load and run processes but will let you know more details about your phone that you don't already have and the battery use section of settings obviously only talks about what is using your battery but that isn't going to tell you the whole picture.
I am also someone who says you shouldn't use ATK, at least the way you do, but I have it installed and use it a bit differently. What I try to do is kill all tasks after I've used the marketplace or before I do anything intensive (gaming, GPS tracking) and I kill all apps including ATK. ATK will consume processor, battery and will free up memory which then Android uses to open more tasks you don't need (using processor and battery in the process -> repeat cycle). If you need to free up memory 1-5 times a day I think my way will save maybe 15-30% of your battery over a 24 hour period while costing you less than a minute of hassle (too much for some, sure). Again, I only kill after marketplace (because everything opens to check for updates, AFAIK) and before something that will use heavy memory and processor.

robnil said:
Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Forgot the first part of your question, forgive me. I believe, the reason for more apps causing more lag is at least 2 fold. There are more apps that can be opened when you have free memory (in the vicious cycle I described above). There is also something that might be a bit unique to our phone, and I've only recently read this, it's a bit of speculation so I'm not trying to pass it off as fact but I think it's likely to be knowledgeable on the issue, even if not completely correct. Samsung's internal storage method is an SD card, that allows extra apps to be written to the internal storage but comes with a trade off of lag due to a potential combination of:
slow random-access
bad partition
I think I'm missing an important reason, I'll try to look and edit.

When I initially got my SGS I loaded it with a heap of apps and suddenly noticed the lag and quick battery drain. Problem was I couldn't track down the culprit.
I recently reset my device and was a bit more organized with what I installed. One of the things I started doing was checking what services were being used in the process which you can find under the manage apps part of the system.
So while you can load apps and they may/may not be killed by android or a task killer, the services will always be running - taking up memory, sometimes cpu, network. Things like weather checking, news checking, even email sync are some examples. These services plus any apps you run are I think what starts the lag. You need to be aware of which apps are also run as services.
Yes, there are some bad apps (last Facebook version was found to be a heavy drain) but I think they tend to add up with all the other services running.
As for 'Aggressive' depends on the app killer but my understanding (with the one I use), is that there is a memory limit before the app is killed. Once the limit is reached on aggressive, it doesn't take much before memory is cleared.
One thing to install is SeePU as this gives an indication of CPU, memory and network on the top menu bar. This also helps when the system lags (usually CPU is high and memory is low) and helps to know when to clean (or what threshold to set).
Hope this helps.

This may help your battery life.

Today I had been experimenting with my battery life again and stumbled across this.
If you download advance task manager from the market. *NOTE* It is a paid application or *NOTE* This is illegal but you can download an .apk but again it is illegal and I am not encouraging you do it. *NOTE* You can purchase it and return it within 24 hours with your money back.
Step 1- Get advance task manager.
Step 2- Go into your home system and go into your default home or your home system.
Step 3- Now choose a screen in the home. Eg: 1,2,3 etc...
Step 4- Keep your finger tap'ed on the empty screen or somewhere empty in the screen. You can also just press the menu button and tap *ADD*.
Step 5- Choose widgets and find advance task manager.
Step 6- Now when you tap the widget icon, it will terminate all your applications.
Step 7- It will then direct you to a choice for your home application/s.
Step 8- You can just press lock and not choose your home and it will stay draining very little battery.
*Note* I do not guarantee this to work but it worked for me since I had my phone on the lock where I had a choice of home screen since 3:00 PM and it is now 6:00 PM...
3 hours and still full battery.
I have also previously managed to keep the battery up for 3 days and in the 3 days I was left with 15 percent battery.
I will post images if you people are having trouble *JUST PM ME OR POST BELOW IF YOU WANT IMAGES*

Appreciate the tip but since the inception of the Android OS this was one of the first and biggest tips amongst all of the community. It's nothing new. The Android OS actually does a damn good job of killing apps by itself. Unused RAM is useless RAM. It's a *nix based system.
The only time where this is good is when you have a stray app that's using CPU when it opens in the background when it shouldn't. Especially when it's keeping things awake. I only advise that you use this before locking the phone intentionally, and when you'd like it to go into a deep sleep.
I use task killers only when I'm putting my phone away for a while. Works better than when I used task killers. I'm also mindful about the apps I install and I uninstall and reinstall when need be, format my phone occasionally (I am an extremely heavy user) and defrag my SD card because of the heavy usage.

bongd said:
Appreciate the tip but since the inception of the Android OS this was one of the first and biggest tips amongst all of the community. It's nothing new. The Android OS actually does a damn good job of killing apps by itself. Unused RAM is useless RAM. It's a *nix based system.
The only time where this is good is when you have a stray app that's using CPU when it opens in the background when it shouldn't. Especially when it's keeping things awake. I only advise that you use this before locking the phone intentionally, and when you'd like it to go into a deep sleep.
I use task killers only when I'm putting my phone away for a while. Works better than when I used task killers. I'm also mindful about the apps I install and I uninstall and reinstall when need be, format my phone occasionally (I am an extremely heavy user) and defrag my SD card because of the heavy usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree but this worked for me and I recommend trying this. Also I agree with everything you have said and sometimes when I am out somewhere I tend to keep the phone in a deep sleep but I do not want to miss any calls or texts happening to me so I do this.
Appreciate what you have told me as well.
Also what good does formating do? (NOT SAYING IN AN OFFENSIVE MANNER, I AM JUST CURIOUS)

zm4 said:
I agree but this worked for me and I recommend trying this. Also I agree with everything you have said and sometimes when I am out somewhere I tend to keep the phone in a deep sleep but I do not want to miss any calls or texts happening to me so I do this.
Appreciate what you have told me as well.
Also what good does formating do? (NOT SAYING IN AN OFFENSIVE MANNER, I AM JUST CURIOUS)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bongd is absolutely correct in what he says, the whole android system is designed to manage apps automatically, therefore while an app may appear on the task manager, they do not necessarily waste battery as they are sitting "idle"- that also means that an app will load up quicker when you go to open it, rather than if you kill the task.
Also my other point, and this is the big one, killing tasks can not only corrupt an app from working correctly but also it can cause instability to your system in the long run (because you are also killing certain tasks which are system processes) thus you notice bugs ion your phone and required to flash firmware again.
I've used advanced task manager and task panel side by side quite religiously for a while, yes it is faster and battery life does SLIGHTLY improve but trust me your phone doesn't like it.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

zm4 said:
I agree but this worked for me and I recommend trying this. Also I agree with everything you have said and sometimes when I am out somewhere I tend to keep the phone in a deep sleep but I do not want to miss any calls or texts happening to me so I do this.
Appreciate what you have told me as well.
Also what good does formating do? (NOT SAYING IN AN OFFENSIVE MANNER, I AM JUST CURIOUS)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Formatting is good because just like a computer, things can get f***ed up for no reason. You can have all the correct settings but things don't happen as anticipated. It happens with any complex electronic devices, so this is why I recommend it every few months but this varies depending on how intensely you use your phone.
I use mine like crazy and tweak the hell out of it. I do it about once a month, but then again I have cell phone OCD.

The task manager helps to close apps that constantly keep connecting to the Internet, it's not about freeing up RAM it's about using the Internet connection

Some "apps" are some bad hogs when it comes to the phones recourses
Some "apps" are quite some hogs when it comes to the phones recourses.
Internet connection, Syncing, Updating ads and so on.
Some of these "bad hogs" also keep running "at full speed" in the background.
They have no whatsoever routines to save energy/recourses once loaded (background or not).
Designers of these "bad apps" don't care about battery-life, or they simply have no whatsoever knowledge/experience about mobile devices and how an application should behave on a such device.
If one are the kind who downloads lots of "cool" applications from the market, a task-killer can help allot, depending on how many "recourse hog" application one have installed and loaded in the background.

SysGhost said:
Some "apps" are quite some hogs when it comes to the phones recourses.
Internet connection, Syncing, Updating ads and so on.
Some of these "bad hogs" also keep running "at full speed" in the background.
They have no whatsoever routines to save energy/recourses once loaded (background or not).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah but we don't have any app that tells us which app is using the battery and data connections right? sure the android OS tells us the battery usage, but data?

A app to stay away from is eBay it hogs cpu time and constantly refreshes in the background, my batt goes from 2days down to 8ish hours when the eBay app is installed
Sent from my X10a using XDA App

tookieboy said:
yeah but we don't have any app that tells us which app is using the battery and data connections right? sure the android OS tells us the battery usage, but data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System Panel can do this

Taskkiller stuff is not welcomed by my X10. When I kill all the apps , sometimes my connection to my operator goes down. I don't know how many necessary process' this taskkiller stuff kills as well.. I avoid "kill all" , instead I kill the ones that I'm sure that they're using internet and cpu in vain. Wish all the mobile developers use the close() method , then we won't be facing that kind of problems..

Users average RAM available

Hi all,
I've had this phone for a few days now and love it. However I find I have very little RAM available.
I have on average around 30-40mb of ram available and the phone sometimes slows down quite a bit. I've ad a look at the running apps and the main culprit was SPB Shell launcher which was using around 50mb. I have since stopped using this but I am still only getting around 40-50mb remaining (with timescape disabled) and again a sluggish phone at times.
How is everyone else's?
I am thinking of doing a factory reset and start afresh to see what app may be causing the problem.
Any other suggestions or is this normal with this phone?
Thanks for your replies.

I have the same. I thought it was down to having over a thousand contacts all duplicated in exchange and google.
I have 130m of internal space available. Is there any way of re assigning it as you can in windows mobile?
Sent from my LT15i using XDA App

My Average Free ram @150 MB

135 - 140ΜΒ here.
Have been checking with Advanced Task Killer (ofcourse NOT automatically set to kill everything, but fully manually every now and then), and noticed that there were times when the phone just left plenty of unnecessary apps wondering around in the background. Apps that are not the "always-on" by android system. So I kill EVERYTHING else except from:
1) Clock
2) TrackID
3) LiveWare
4) Media Sharing
5) Maps
6) Hanashi (WTF is that?!? it ALWAYS comes back by system.)
7) Setup wizard
(What remains always active by system also depends on the widgets you have, e.g. I have TrackID widget, you might not have it, so you wont need it.)
and have even noticed better battery performance...
EG, during nightime, I left the phone untouched (not used ATK), and when I woke up, I had a 12-13% battery drop, while the other day, after a fresh cleaning before sleeping, got around 4-5% drop. Both times with same conditions...

I have about 140 free and nerver under 100
Sent from my LT15i using Tapatalk

What to you recommend to stop the unused processes from re starting again?
Sent from my LT15i using XDA App

Try Advanced Task Killer

Yeah I have about 150mb free.
And can I say coming from the x10, this phone is rediculously smooth. I love it!

Can we expect more free RAM once it's rooted/a custom fw is available?

This obsession about RAM needs to stop!!!!! 2.3 manages memory very well and you shouldn't be having any issues with the phone, unless you start messing with it (task killing the wrong things for example).. My phone is running really smoothly.

im_iceman said:
This obsession about RAM needs to stop!!!!! 2.3 manages memory very well and you shouldn't be having any issues with the phone, unless you start messing with it (task killing the wrong things for example).. My phone is running really smoothly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason I asked is that my phone does not run smoothly at times but very laggy and some items (contacts, emails etc) can take an age to load (well not an age but seconds but it feels like an age )
I was just wondering if this was the norm or not.

im_iceman said:
This obsession about RAM needs to stop!!!!! 2.3 manages memory very well and you shouldn't be having any issues with the phone, unless you start messing with it (task killing the wrong things for example).. My phone is running really smoothly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeap, 2.3 handles RAM almos perfectly. EG, if you open as many apps as you want and just leave them in the background, when you try to launch a HUGE game (eg Asphalt 6), the system will free as much RAM as required for the game to run smoothly.
BUT, I have noticed that some apps are left idle without me usng them (and without being system triggered apps, which when closed, are not resprang), and are not automatically closed by system. I tested leaving overnight the phone without killing anything after a days usage (with more than 15 apps in the background), and while being at 15% when left at night (around 01:00 am), it was off in the morning (7:30 am).
Then I did a fresh reset to the device, noticed what apps are automatically opened by system, and protected them (unchecked them) from Advanced Task Killer (which was set to manual), so that it will not shut them down when I click the "kill all" button. Next night, I killed all non-system apps (that do not restart if you do no action), and left the phone overnight again to see if there is any difference. Battery dropped around 5%.
I did this twice under same conditions (same time gap, BT open etc.), and results were almost the same +/- 2%.
So IMHO, if you use a task killer app wisely, you could manage to get better battery performance when the phone is idle, but you will NOT get better performance (smoother UI etc.)
Again, all these IMHO.

@dragunov - completely agree with everything you're saying.. it's the difference between knowing what you're doing and blindly killing tasks because someone said it helps!!!
for the OP - would suggest figuring out what it is you've got running that's causing the lag cos it's not the phone hardware/ OS that's at fault - This is the only drawback of Android vs iPhone -the QA of the apps on the market doesn't pick up this sort of problem.

im_iceman said:
for the OP - would suggest figuring out what it is you've got running that's causing the lag cos it's not the phone hardware/ OS that's at fault - This is the only drawback of Android vs iPhone -the QA of the apps on the market doesn't pick up this sort of problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, thats what I intend to do. A factory reset and the re-install gradually my apps to see which ones are the problems.
When I first got the phone I loaded it up with apps so it will now be difficult to retrace so a fresh start is what I will do.

A quick update. I have done a factory reset and although the phone is smoother I still only have 40-50mb free (only app I installed was swype).
Can I just ask what free ram other users have?
Thanks

Right now.. 60Mb.

I had about 150 out of the box while taskkiller always said about 5 apps running background (not installed by me).
Now yesterday my arc froze while browsing the web and rebootet itself (screen was scary, single pixles loosing light while some were still on till everything was off).
Now that was the only time the arc did that and afterwards task killer now (after killing apps) only shows 2 or 3 apps running background and up to 195MB free RAM which is cool but scary at the same time ...
Still can recieve phone calls though and everything works ... well Im happy for more RAM
Oh yeah, got swype on my whitelist.

Honestly I don't understand the need for more ram?
having 60mb is similar to having 200mb, it's all about applications reserving their spots, once they needed they'll kick in, otherwise they stay idle ( talking about system apps and well developed applications )
even if you have 60mb you still can run games that require 100mb... smoothly
the lag some face is due to background application using the processor

I usese autokiller memory optimizer. See unlike the other appear that kill everything, autokiller mo just optimizes the Android system so you wont have to go hunting for those apps.
Sent from my CM 7 Monster Evol.

MJ_QaT said:
Honestly I don't understand the need for more ram?
having 60mb is similar to having 200mb, it's all about applications reserving their spots, once they needed they'll kick in, otherwise they stay idle ( talking about system apps and well developed applications )
even if you have 60mb you still can run games that require 100mb... smoothly
the lag some face is due to background application using the processor
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesn't matter how many times we say it people just won't get it!!..
Spare memory is WASTED memory.. this is ANDROID/ Linux.. this is NOT MS Windows... it's DIFFERENT!!