Forget the RAM Hack, disable soft keyboards for same effect? - G1 General

So I've been investigating into some recent issues I've been having with apps not staying open i.e. couldn't even keep one app open in the background, and home would reload every time I visited it from anything but the lightest apps. I didn't want to try any RAM Hack ROMs because I run 3D games quite a lot.
I'm using Blue Magic and I found out that both Swype and HTC Touch Input use 12-18MB of RAM even when in the background (according to Astro Process Manager). Since disabling them I've found things to be much snappier. I barely used them anyway. Has anyone else disabled soft keyboards for performance reasons?

don't mean to be an a$$ but i think most people know this, I for one, have my android keyboard set to ignored because i always use it, and have other keyboards disabled, as i don't use them, and i use ram hack, and i have a happy 45-50mb ram when everything is closed, i also have swap, and for the hell of it i've tested how many apps i can have open at one point, and they are news and weather, browser, opera, market, world war, phone, messaging, google talk, all of that open, and switching in between, none of them ever restarted, of course my phone was a little slower, but well thats the price you pay, our hardware is sorta outdated, but if you know how to boost it, it will help a lot, i got a 96swap

You have a point but I would never have thought that the keyboards would be such RAM hogs, especially when in the background, and it helps me a lot because I prefer to run without swap. So I thought I'd mention it in case people who don't really use them but haven't disabled them would like to give it a try.

CompactDstrxion said:
So I've been investigating into some recent issues I've been having with apps not staying open i.e. couldn't even keep one app open in the background, and home would reload every time I visited it from anything but the lightest apps. I didn't want to try any RAM Hack ROMs because I run 3D games quite a lot.
I'm using Blue Magic and I found out that both Swype and HTC Touch Input use 12-18MB of RAM even when in the background (according to Astro Process Manager). Since disabling them I've found things to be much snappier. I barely used them anyway. Has anyone else disabled soft keyboards for performance reasons?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Add up all the memory reported as used by astro. Compare that with the ACTUAL memory. Notice something funny about it? More memory in use than total memory?
Congrats. You have just become acquainted with VIRTUAL MEMORY. (not to be confused with swap space, which is very different).

I never noticed my G1 being any slower with the HTC IME running.

if there was a way to permanently disable Google Enhanced Search and Quick Search Box, that'll be another 10mb of Ram easily.

Related

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.

hd2 really pi***** me off now!

got a hd2, stock rom, latest, all patches,
and its doing my head in!
runs so slow, messages are so slow to load, and the phone sometimes doesnt come out of standby!
i love the size of the phone etc, but its tempting to sell it now
any suggestions?
same deal here, any help would be great!
runs so slow, messages are so slow to load,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
known issue with the messaging app. Only real help is to reduce the ammount of mesages you store.
and the phone sometimes doesnt come out of standby!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
called the 'sleep of death' No cure for it once a rom is installed that i am aware, however many of the cooked roms have cured this issue. (I haven't seen it for about a month now)
Long thread about not waking up HERE
samsamuel said:
known issue with the messaging app. Only real help is to reduce the ammount of mesages you store.QUOTE]
sorry for off topic, does Android w/ Snapdragon or Android in general have the same problem/s like Windows Mobile does?
All this stuff should be as quick as speeding bullet.
and another question,
what kind of processor do we need to get what we want out of WinMo?
From what I gather it would have to be atleast 2 to 3 ghz. (for it to never stutter.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im using a hero and an hd2 both freeze up from time to time. if you use Google apps a lot stick with android. if your lazy stick with android. if you have time to always tweak your phone go with winmo. and despite what you read windows has way more apps than android the only problem is most of the apps are 3 or more years old and not being updated anymore so not too finger friendly.
My HD2 (U.S. Tmobile - Stock Rom) runs like lightning, but not for lack of effort (well, not too much effort). I installed BsB Tweaks and Clean Ram, applied the performance tweaks in BsB (there's even one messaging that allows for "classic" style), and make sure to run Clean Ram (level two) once or twice a day. I also make liberal use of the task manager after opening any apps that fail to close with the press of an X (most?). Occasionally I'll notice a bit of slowdown, but Clean Ram will usually cure what ails it. Worst case scenario is I'll need to do a soft reset (which I always do after installing/uninstalling any apps), but, with BsB, it's a breeze as there's a command for it in the menu, so no need to wrangle with the battery cover and poke the red button!
As far as Android goes, I've no clue how it will run on HD2 level hardware, but, seeing as much of the issues with the HD2 seem to revolve around the Sense UI and HTC in particular, I would imagine some of the same issues will crop up. I'm coming over from Android (G1) to WinMo. My G1 had the same issues with messaging (HTC!!!) but, otherwise, didn't require much by way of maintenance. It was just slow and there was nothing I could do about it!
Play around with some of these tools on here. I'm a total WinMo noob, but I gotta say I'm loving the tweakability of the OS, and I'm especially enjoying learning about all of the cool stuff XDA has available for it.
No Lag here
Hey guys, I'm not sure if you guys are managing your opened applications properly... HD2 will keep all the apps you opened in the background running unless you actually closed them... and for most of the apps the only way to close them is to go to taskmanager (start>taskmanager>endtask, see a quicker way to do this below)....
Solution: you need to close the applications that are open!!!!
some tweaks that make this easier
- BsB Tweaks (solves many problems)
- Dutty's Taskmanager (allows you to switch between currently opened apps and also allows you to close them, it puts an icon on the top right corner in the taskbar) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

Why are so many programs starting on their own?

I downloaded Advanced Task Killer Free, and things like Sprint Navigation, Facebook, Voice Dialer, etc, the list gets 20 programs long after about 15 minutes... this makes no sense.
Can someone who has used Android longer please explain this to me? It seems that this OS needs much more babysitting than even WM, if it's really auto-starting all this crap for no reason.
It seems like all of the applications you described are system apps that were on the phone when you got them. They may be set to automatically run. I know you wont be able to remove any of them without the phone being rooted and having su access - but i may be wrong.
When you close them, it seems like the OS is just automatically reloading them.
Careful when you kill apps, it could cause some unwanted issues.
So many of these programs have nothing to do with day-to-day operation... this is bizarre.
Does Android supposedly have built-in memory-management? IE, you exit the camera app, it eventually FORCE closes it? So far, I haven't noticed that behavior at all. That's what caused so many issues on my old WM HTC devices.
Android does have built-in memory management. It is how the OS was developed.
If you have a program running on your screen, it will use whatever amount of memory it needs in order to run it.
If the program gets pushed into the background, but is still running, it will still use the memory, even though another program is being ran using up even more memory.
Having free memory will not make the phone run any faster. Eventually the program in the background will close if not used. It will also be force closed if the system is in dire need of memory.
Android knows when it is need of memory.
There are several threads already which explain memory use if you search. Since I'm using my phone I won't go into detail but I will say that task killers are not recommended. It's much better to let Android manage the memory and processes.
My personal experience bears this out as I had a lot of strange issues like losing wireless connectivity when I was using a task killer. Now I let Android handle things and my phone runs smooth. Using a Sprint Hero with Fresh 2.1.2 ROM.
-------------------------------------
Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App
Interesting... all my friends who use Android have task managers... Most engadget posts mention that too. Hrm... I guess I'll make sure auto-kill is disabled and just watch and see how the OS holds up.
I just got the phone this morning and was killing apps left and right. I started to get a lot of Force Close errors.
I rebooted the phone which would clear the memory anyways and I'm letting the OS handle everything now - Havent had any problems since.
good luck!
ScrapMaker said:
Interesting... all my friends who use Android have task managers... Most engadget posts mention that too. Hrm... I guess I'll make sure auto-kill is disabled and just watch and see how the OS holds up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly, if you are worried about a particular program running away and have reason to believe it, sure a task manager/task killer can be handy for that one program but historically, giving people task managers on Android causes more problems than it helps. Voice Dialer is your phone app for example and at the CDMA Hero forums, we've seen the phone do some crazy things when we removed it from the phone right after we got root (turns out that thing is hooked to more than just the "making phone calls" feature).
All that said, it's quite informative to google around about android's method of memory management. It's kinda cool!
I had a hero, and it least made it through the day. The Evo is way worse. I have no idea why some things run in the background that I've never used and have no reason to be running in the background. I'm using ATK and Auto Task Manager, which kills app once your phone goes to sleep. You just have to know what apps you shouldn't be killing. As a rule of thumb, I didn't kill any native google or HTC services. I did kill all Sprint services. Following this guide as well:http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06...attery-life-and-what-this-says-about-android/
here is why you don't really need a task killer.
with that, i can say that i do have one but, i don't have any autokill going. i only use it as a last resort to kill things if i have like multiple things producing sound at once.
Honestly I can tell you from experience, that sprint bloat wear will launch on its own all day long. Even if you set ATK or AMM to nuke it, it eventually will cost more batt. in the long run because of the system resources required to launch and kill over and over again. The only way to successfully deal with the issue is to rm the crap, which requires root.

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

[Q] Lack of RAM - any solutions? HTC DZ

I'm getting quite annoyed at my phone's lack of RAM.
I browse the internet and constantly open new windows (up to the max 4 allowed by the HTC browser, but that's another story) so that I can quickly go back a page when I need to.
If for some reason I go and use a couple of other apps on the phone, and then come back to the browser I constantly find that the oldest 3 pages have dropped completely out of RAM, and the 4th one has as well, and that last one alone loads up again.
This is annoying, time-consuming and messes up my browsing session. Is there some way I can prioritise the browser so that most other apps get killed off before it does?
setspeed said:
I'm getting quite annoyed at my phone's lack of RAM.
I browse the internet and constantly open new windows (up to the max 4 allowed by the HTC browser, but that's another story) so that I can quickly go back a page when I need to.
If for some reason I go and use a couple of other apps on the phone, and then come back to the browser I constantly find that the oldest 3 pages have dropped completely out of RAM, and the 4th one has as well, and that last one alone loads up again.
This is annoying, time-consuming and messes up my browsing session. Is there some way I can prioritise the browser so that most other apps get killed off before it does?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try using firefox instead on the defualt browser .its not perfect yet but its getting
better and better with every beta release .
I don't think an alternate browser will help with Android unwantedly killing off processes.
Incidentally, I tried Firefox a couple of months ago and found it to be completely unusable - I take it it's worth checking out again now then?
Another possibility is to set the Android memory manager to be less aggressive in removing things from memory (you can use an app like AutoKiller to change the settings easily---try tweaking the settings to see if helps with your usage model).
I know AutoKiller will also allow you to lower the oom value for the process (the lower the oom, the less likely the memory manager will kill it in the background), but I don't think this will help for the browser (since the OS will dynamically change its oom each time you bring it to the foreground and send it to the background again). If someone knows a way to make the oom value permanently lower, that sounds like exactly what you want.
Maybe someone else has some ideas. I know often times launchers will have the option to keep themselves in memory, and CM6 has the option to keep messaging in memory (more like your situation), so it should be doable.
setspeed said:
I don't think an alternate browser will help with Android unwantedly killing off processes.
Incidentally, I tried Firefox a couple of months ago and found it to be completely unusable - I take it it's worth checking out again now then?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
defo ,its much better now i figured since you were annoyed by 4 tab limit
you might find firefox helpful. because it doesnt have limit or if it does its more than 4 for sure also it has an aption called (your tabs from last time) which again i think
you will find it usefull ,you can also sync it with you pcs firefox too .
EDIT: I just tried it to make sure, even if you reboot your phone
and open firefox again you can just press on (your tabs from last time)
and it will restore them all.
The way I see it there are a few things you can do...
Firstly, you could try a renice script. It does what other people have suggested and changes the oomph value to what you like. It was commonly used on the g1 for the dialer so that you wouldn't miss phone calls lol. Its easy to do if you know the syntax, I would make you one myself if I was near a computer lol.
Another thing you could do is try an aosp/CM based rom, as those generally have much, much lower ram usage compared to sense.
Lastly you could try a different browser. There are so many to choose from I'm sure one will fit your needs.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
I use autokiller on my DZ, you have to have root to use this tho... quite satisfied about it, almost all the time 90+ free ram even when doing heavy stuff... quits the unused shizzle...
cheers
I HIGHLY recommend Dolphin Browser HD.
It is significantly faster than the stock Browser and I have had no issues with Android closing it down. One feature I like is that there is actually an 'Exit' button in the menu for those individuals who have OCD like me and don't like the Browser running in the background when not wanted.
Thus far, this is the best mobile Browser I have used. That being said, I have not tried Firefox and have been a regular user of Opera Mini in the past on other devices.
You should try miren browser once, i'm using it now instead of dolphin hd, and there is a exit button in the menu to. I think its better styled, it has got all the features of dolphin HD without all the bloating around... no gestures tho
cheers
I think its more of poorly optimized software because im pretty sure that google devs don't even utilize the full 512mb of RAM in 2.2. Chances are its the HTC sense limiting you.
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App
Yeah I don't think this issue is anything to do with a lack of RAM.
I may try another ROM, however I'm just not up for flashing all the time like I used to with my old Desire or G1 before that. I want a 100% working ROM, preferably something that allows overclocking with a kernel that doesn't break stuff.
And I also want my HTC phone dialler/contacts as well, not vanilla or a cheap copy from the Market. Oh, and I hate the vanilla lockscreen - it's just hard to operate compared to the Sense one. I don't know why it's so hard to unlock side to side on Android - the iPhone takes a little flick and it's unlocked - vanilla Android is like a mission to ensure I've dragged it far enough across to unlock.
And I don't want my keyboard or capacitive keys or quick keys mullered up (I am running a Euro DZ).
If these issues can be dealt with easily when setting up the ROM/phone then I'm prepared to devote a little time to doing it.
So - any suggestions, please?
dont use htc sense roms.
I'm running the virtuous sense rom with his advanced kernel, ive ran the normal rom about 2 weeks, and ive yet to see differences other then a huuuuuuuge speed increase... i would just try it once if i were you its such a relieve...
I played with the latest over the weekend. I ended up uninstalling it. I'd hit a page with scripting and then firefox would lock up and crash.
Web2Go isn't perfect, but at least it doesn't crash as often.
This has nothing to do with RAM. This phone handles RAM just fine. Use Miren and thank me later. It's the best browser by far!
mr.boonet said:
You should try miren browser once, i'm using it now instead of dolphin hd, and there is a exit button in the menu to. I think its better styled, it has got all the features of dolphin HD without all the bloating around... no gestures tho
cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No text reflow = showstopper.
Unless I'm just being blind, I can't find any way to enable this in the settings for Miren.
It's sense. Sense roms use way more RAM than vanilla roms do. Also check out dolphin HD or dolphin mini browser.
Another issue I'm having which points to lack of RAM (whether this is due to Sense sucking it all up or not) is that programs do not stay in in RAM for that long, ie I go away from an app then return after using a few other apps (not massive games or anything) and when I return the first app's UI has been kicked out of memory and has to load up again, causing anything between a momentary (dialler, mesaging) to an annoyingly long (browser, maps, market) white screen, as data is downloaded again.
People talk a lot of sh*t about the iPhone, but cacheing (caching? sp?) a copy of the last screen for each app before it's closed so you instantly get a visual image of the UI of the app following the opening animation is a pretty good idea IMO.
Has anyone here used the Desire HD? I would think with the 768MB of RAM on that badboy this would be less of a problem.
setspeed said:
Another issue I'm having which points to lack of RAM (whether this is due to Sense sucking it all up or not) is that programs do not stay in in RAM for that long, ie I go away from an app then return after using a few other apps (not massive games or anything) and when I return the first app's UI has been kicked out of memory and has to load up again, causing anything between a momentary (dialler, mesaging) to an annoyingly long (browser, maps, market) white screen, as data is downloaded again.
People talk a lot of sh*t about the iPhone, but cacheing (caching? sp?) a copy of the last screen for each app before it's closed so you instantly get a visual image of the UI of the app following the opening animation is a pretty good idea IMO.
Has anyone here used the Desire HD? I would think with the 768MB of RAM on that badboy this would be less of a problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've now installed Enomther's Official rom - what a difference to the speed of the phone! It absolutely flies, even when clocked at a lower CPU speed, and it appears to retain stuff in memory a lot better than the standard Sense rom. Also, there's over 100MB more of free RAM afte a fresh boot.
I'm definitely sold on the efficiency of stock Android, but I'm now missing some of my HTC goodies... I don't think anyone can deny that the HTC dialler is a different level to the rudimentary Android one. And I am missing my HTC browser - that seems a bit smoother, and the text reflow is more reliable, the stock browser seems a bit temperamental on that front.
Other than that, I can live without all the other Sense stuff. So my next question is, can the dialler and browser be installed on my new rom? Do they have any dependencies which would prevent me using them? How would I go about ripping the apps from the HTC rom? I'm an ADB noob so I need some kind expert to tell me how

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