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.

Improving performance by removing virtual keyboard

My biggest problem with G1 is not having enough ram. While checking what sits in my ram with MemoryUsage app I noticed virtual keyboard. Since I almost never used it, I killed it. This caused home to reload, but I believe that keyboard has not been loaded instantly.
But after some time, I could see it there again hogging my precious 9MB. Since my phone has usually only like 15MB ram free, this was quite annoying.
After doing some research and BACKUP, since I am rooted I decided to rename the application to see if it will work. The app in question is LatinIME.apk. I renamed it to LatinIME.apkBkp. While I have been there, I did the same thing with LatinImeTutorial.apk. Both files are located in /system/app.
You have to remount it writable first, search this forum for how to do it.
After renaming that file (and maybe killing the app, don't remember exactly) my phone tried to reload home. It failed to do so, force closed and then tried again, resulting in infinite loop.
I rebooted the phone and it worked well, starting normally. Now I have more ram and performance of my phone improved a bit. My free ram stays a bit higher and apps are not so often removed from it.
Overall I am happy about the result and I am looking for more unnecessary stuff to remove.
I am on CyanogenMod 4 btw., so there might be different keyboard apps on other roms.
I have not found anyone mentioning this here, only some tutorials how to change default keyboard, so hopefully someone will find this useful.
If you have any suggestion how to sqeeze even more ram from my G1, bring them on please. (I know of swap, compcache, 10mb hack and keeping low number of apps)

raqua said:
My biggest problem with G1 is not having enough ram. While checking what sits in my ram with MemoryUsage app I noticed virtual keyboard. Since I almost never used it, I killed it. This caused home to reload, but I believe that keyboard has not been loaded instantly.
But after some time, I could see it there again hogging my precious 9MB. Since my phone has usually only like 15MB ram free, this was quite annoying.
After doing some research and BACKUP, since I am rooted I decided to rename the application to see if it will work. The app in question is LatinIME.apk. I renamed it to LatinIME.apkBkp. While I have been there, I did the same thing with LatinImeTutorial.apk. Both files are located in /system/app.
You have to remount it writable first, search this forum for how to do it.
After renaming that file (and maybe killing the app, don't remember exactly) my phone tried to reload home. It failed to do so, force closed and then tried again, resulting in infinite loop.
I rebooted the phone and it worked well, starting normally. Now I have more ram and performance of my phone improved a bit. My free ram stays a bit higher and apps are not so often removed from it.
Overall I am happy about the result and I am looking for more unnecessary stuff to remove.
I am on CyanogenMod 4 btw., so there might be different keyboard apps on other roms.
I have not found anyone mentioning this here, only some tutorials how to change default keyboard, so hopefully someone will find this useful.
If you have any suggestion how to sqeeze even more ram from my G1, bring them on please. (I know of swap, compcache, 10mb hack and keeping low number of apps)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unused RAM is wasted RAM. The system will kill applications when more memory is needed. Don't worry about it.
And time for you to upgrade to CM6, don't you think?

lbcoder said:
Unused RAM is wasted RAM. The system will kill applications when more memory is needed. Don't worry about it.
And time for you to upgrade to CM6, don't you think?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Idiocy runs rampant at Dream forums, huh? Blame the stupid Advanced Task killer dev for getting all these idiots believing killing apps actually serves a purpose...
Anyway, if the OP is concerned about memory usage and bloat, I very much doubt CM6 is a step in the right direction. Maybe the latest CM 5 is a better option.

lbcoder said:
Unused RAM is wasted RAM. The system will kill applications when more memory is needed. Don't worry about it.
And time for you to upgrade to CM6, don't you think?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, I am very well aware how does it work, but killing the app and loading the other one uses CPU cycles and makes system slow. Especially if it happens all the time as it does on my phone. This is actually the biggest source of laggines imho.
Plus, I am pretty sure, that system apps are not unloaded (some of them at least) or they are unloaded as a last resort. Which was also the case here. I could see other apps being killed (which I did not wanted to be killed) while unused virtual keyboard was happily sitting there.
For the record, I do not use task killer of any sort, does not make significant difference for me and occupies more ram than it saves. So please save that 'idiot' for someone else.
I do not plan to switch to CM5 or CM6, because those need even more ram as CM4 does. Afaik, those roms use hw graphics support which prohibits 10mb hack. I definitely keep 10mb hack on my phone. Did a lot of good to it's speed.

Okay so what setup are you using?
I have tryed every which rom out there since i got into it and i usually only use my phone for browsing youtube music and normal phone stuff and am find these new firmwares to be getting sluggish. Basically i want a lightning quick basic build. I am interested in what exactly you are using.

elltg said:
Okay so what setup are you using?
I have tryed every which rom out there since i got into it and i usually only use my phone for browsing youtube music and normal phone stuff and am find these new firmwares to be getting sluggish. Basically i want a lightning quick basic build. I am interested in what exactly you are using.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am using last version of CyanogenMod from 4 series. That is Android 1.6 based.
I have apps2sd, 10mb hack and compcache enabled. No swap. Was not working for me. I removed all the apps that stay in memory like all widgets etc. The only things that is running in my memory permanently are: SeePU (to monitor my phone), JuiceDefender (to save battery), Battery Left widget and Astrid.
I set my phone to keep Home app in memory all the time, removed all the unnecessary effects in Spare Parts and removed virtual keyboard.
With this setup, my phone performs quite ok. Not as snappy as I would want it to be, but acceptable.
Hope it helps.

I have been using Super-D 1.9.3 with 10mb hack. Removed VPN, VoiceDialer, GenieWidget and some other misc things. Latest ADW instead of Launcher.apk, MusicMod 1.5 instead of stock music, latest 1.6 Phone.apk from Wysie. I also themed my lockscreen and Powertop widget. I has been about 4 months since I flashed it and it hasn't slowed down much at all (and I rarely reboot it). Not a singel FC! Battery lasts me thru the day (I have facebook, twitter and Gmail updating themselves). All in all, its one of the best set-ups I've used. I strongly suggest trying out earlier Super-D roms if you're looking for reliable daily driver (anything before 1.11 should be quite good, 1.11 is when it all went downhill)
Good luck.

raqua said:
I am using last version of CyanogenMod from 4 series. That is Android 1.6 based.
I have apps2sd, 10mb hack and compcache enabled. No swap. Was not working for me. I removed all the apps that stay in memory like all widgets etc. The only things that is running in my memory permanently are: SeePU (to monitor my phone), JuiceDefender (to save battery), Battery Left widget and Astrid.
I set my phone to keep Home app in memory all the time, removed all the unnecessary effects in Spare Parts and removed virtual keyboard.
With this setup, my phone performs quite ok. Not as snappy as I would want it to be, but acceptable.
Hope it helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have options.
-Remove apps2sd and use the mtd patch method. That way you cut out the slowest link on the phone: the memory card. With the MTD hack, you can get maybe 150 megs or more of internal space for apps on a donut rom.
-Use the latest version of setcpu since it doesn't stay in memory. You can try an overclock, it will help but shorten battery life some. Maybe 576 or 595 would be enough of an overclock to make it feel faster yet not drain battery like crazy.
-Keep CC on and lock home in memory
-remove the battery widget lol.
=Delete juicedefender and just use the power control widget.
-I usually remove apps that tend to launch on their own, such as the genie widget or the voice search, as well the the VK since I never use those. It's easy enough to write a script or remove them by hand from the terminal. for example, to remove the VK, open terminal and type
Code:
su
mount -o rw,remount /system
rm -f /system/app/LatinIME.apk
-reboot your phone often, and try clearing your cache using cachemate or similar

Accounts & Sync and RAM

I noticed something funny while setting up my wildfire.I found out that disabling the automatic sync for all accounts (except the weather) from the accounts & sync menu frees a lot of ram and makes the phone run very smooth and fast.I have now 150mb of ram free (instead of 60mb i had before disabling the account syncing).This is how the accounts & sync menu looks like now in my phone.

I only sync Facebook&gmail

Actually, I've read on Lifehacker in an article about why task killers are not so good for Android , that having lots of free RAM doesn't help that much.
I don't have a link to the article right now but basically it explains that Android knows very well how to handle applications and free up RAM all by itself and that actually closing applications when you know for sure that they will pop up again is not such a good ideea. Because applications, when closing or starting, use more CPU cycles than when they stay open (somewhat in a suspended state in the RAM) and that leads to faster draining speed of your battery.

I sync everything manually (only the weather is auto) anyway so i dont have a problem.I use task killer only for certain apps (like games,opera,).Every system app (and apps like friends stream,news,email,messages ect.) is ignored by the task killer.

I heard about that thing with the free ram too.
First it seems very stupid why much free RAM could me bad, but then I just tried some things myself.
On my Kaiser I'm running a vanilla Android 2.1 (Polymod) and 1min after startup I have only 5mb of free RAM, but anyways I can use the phone for days and doesn't even recognize that it is nearly out of RAM it runs nearly as good and fast as the Wildfire, the only thing you can recognize are the 100MHZ less CPUspeed.
So if you think about that maybe 60mb of free RAM are as good as 160 and also as good as 6. (That would fit the things the normal Linux kernel shows us too)
Maybe someone who knows more about Dalvik VM and how the Android patched kernel handels the RAM should confirm or deny this, but I think that the idea that the amount of free RAM doesn't really matters should be right.

The fact that more ram is available means that some services do not execute.That could mean that the processor handles less processes,so the phone is more responsive.My point is that all the syncing processes seem to slow down the phone.Or is it just my idea?
I 'm using the Ruu 1.37 rom.

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.
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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
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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!!

[Q] What takes up so much RAM?

Hi,
i just bought an Ideos x5 and it's great.
I've loaded most of the usuall stuff including task manager.
Now i found that on average my free memory when i'm not using so much apps is around 180(that's how much free RAM i have).
Is this normal..i mean...the thing says it has 512 mb of RAM.
Sorry for beeing a noob..
Van

its said 128MB go to the GPU, 32MB are used by android system, which leaves about 352MB (353MB as shown in Elixir) for application use..
and then those google apps (Maps, Search, Market, etc.) all take up RAM in the background, plus other background apps you have installed and widgets you have enabled..
on average i usually have around 80-120MB free RAM left.. and since android 2.2 is said to have a good task manager which frees up the RAM when needed, i dont think its a place to worry about..

As iamelton said, Android's in-built task managing system does a good job of managing what apps are using the processor, memory and battery. Task manager apps don't really do all that much useful, and can sometimes be counterproductive if you're trying to use them to save battery. Lifehacker has a really great article on this called Android Task Killers Explained: What They Do and Why You Shouldn’t Use Them (I can't link because I don't have enough posts, but the article's a search away and is really worth reading). It runs through why it's generally best to avoid task manager/killer apps, plus it also explains how Android uses RAM - in a similar way to Windows Vista/7 (basically to speed up launching or re-opening apps).
It's probably worth noting that Android already has a function to force stop apps. If you go to Settings > About phone > Battery use, you'll get a list of what's been using the battery since it was last unplugged. Some widgets like Switch Pro have shortcuts to Battery use. It's useful if you've got Maps or a launcher or a rogue app sucking up battery in the background. As a rough idea, you may have an issue if anything not a system process is using more than 10%.
If you do need to force close an app, Battery use is generally the best way to go about it.

thx to cyvros for ur mentioning of the good article..
http://lifehacker.com/5650894/andro...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
its a good read indeed, and for this topics discussion, i think the following paragraph gives a very good view on androids ram usage:
The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck.
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