RAM and Task Manager/Killers explained! - Streak 5 General

This article was posted on Android Central and should be mandatory reading for everyone in these forums:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/andr...hat-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care

Good read, reminds me of how XP's memory handleing is compared to Vista/7's system.
Basic jist:
XP: System asks for very little: Task manager shows only ~100mb used on a very slim system
Vista/7: System uses ~40% of available memory if it's free, surrenders it back as programs are loaded that need it. Task manager shows ~2gb used on a slim system (assuming 4gb total rom)
What's it look like? Vista/7 uses 2gb vs XP uses 100mb.
What it does: Not much difference really, Vista/7 is just as stable with ram intensive apps (example: a virtual machine asking for 3gb ram on a 4gb system) both on XP and Vista/7 it will run and not bog the system down (from a ram perspective, we're completely ignoring cpu usage).
It's reasonably similar in android: recently loaded apps stay resident in memory, if the foreground app needs more ram android will unload older apps that arnt running. If you wanna run an app unloaded from memory, android has to reload it from storage.
If you task-kill everything immediately, android will ALWAYS have to reload from memory. The only exception is if the app didnt behave well in the first place (like auto-loading with a memory heavy service), if that's the case you're just as well off complaining to the dev because he/she needs to fix it anyway.
Though with the streak stageui is a pretty good example of this, widgets pretty much always stay loaded as they're widgets. Most of them use background services to update themselves and they're rather cpu/ram intensive.
You could task-kill them, but the right thing would be to freeze/completely remove them if you dont use them.

Thanks for sharing

I repair cell phones for a living and I notice carriers puting task killer on peoples phones....this is a phone killer some important processes get killed and I've had customers complain about phones not rotating right cause of thus also it causes alot of phone freezes and other problems cause of this....if u haveba task killer get rid of it and you will notice the difference..
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA Premium App

very useful.
personally never used task killers and the like , coming from the old school just dont feel at ease with applications doing things

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.

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.

[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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Ram always over 600mb...

My note's ram is always above 600 mb. ...pls help
Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA App
I always use back button to close apps. Clicking home button will not close apps but minimized. More apps opened equal more RAM used.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk
Totally normal. Apps are loaded into RAM so when you want to open an app it loads faster. That's how Android works.
My advice is to not go on a killing spree and kill every app that's running. This will make your device slower and it'll use more battery since it has to use more power to load the apps again and again - and again.
If you want to free up some RAM you can do this:
- Switch launcher. TouchWiz is a resource hog, and you'll gain some RAM if you switch to another launcher like ADW, GO Launcher or LauncherPro
- Freeze/Delete system apps that you don't use/want. If you're not using SocialHub, Reader and Swipe, there's no reason having them. Freeze them and they won't use RAM.
- Flash a custom ROM. You can flash a custom ROM if you want. Your device will be faster and use less battery. Some ROMs has been stripped for "bloatware" like SocialHub etc. so they're fast "out of the box".
I'm currently running ROMOW ROM with ADW EX (and i've frozen a lot of system apps), and my Note is only using around 250MB on boot.
What's the problem with that? You have 800 MB for OS and applications, it's meant to be used. Applications loaded, compiled and the code is stored in RAM, the more RAM you have the more apps you can keep open. With less RAM (like my previous phone, Galaxy S, which had only 330 MB available), the apps have to be unloaded from RAM when you open a new one, so the CPU works more, loading apps again and again.
The RAM contains compiled apps and cached data, to make access faster and save battery, it's good that it's used. Android manages the RAM itself, if you launch an app that needs RAM, it will make room for it, discarding the least used pages. You don't need to take care of this yourself.
In the Samsung system administrator there's a button to clear RAM, press it and it will unload even the touchwiz interface, you'll end up with 400 MB used, but it will increase soon, as apps are opened.
The issue is that when you run a high resource game, have a few web pages open or use google earth then the device closes down touchwiz to free up memory so you may find your homescreen empty or on other occassions android closes the internet application if you switch to another program even briefly so multitasking is poor on the Note.
Its absolutely true,RAM management is implemented very badly on the GNote.Even my HD2 has much much better RAM management with its mere 480MB.
However since this is my first Android device I am not quite sure if this is a Samsung thing or an OS inconvenience.
On my HD2 I could keep multiple web pages open for latter offline reading when internet access is not available and it would keep it in memory even though many services would still be running.
Unfortunately its not the same with my Note,it just rushes to close apps on the first occasion.
Say what you may but being a long time PDA user I found that the old shot-in-the-head by its very same creator the Windows Mobile is the best multitusker I have ever used despite the fact that on those days the RAM was just minimal.
High RAM usage is due to the high number of pixels that need RAM & processing to drive them.
On my old stock rom (KKA) I had the same....usually over 600Mb used.
A few days ago I flashed the latest LA4 stock rom. And what a big improvement that was. Smoother, 2 days on a battery with moderate use. And about 420MB ram used on average. A very big improvement.
I think it would be better if we know which version you have.
So you could upgrade to a newer version or just flash a custom rom.
most of the customroms are better than the stockrom
airwater9 said:
High RAM usage is due to the high number of pixels that need RAM & processing to drive them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, that's also correct.

[q]very high system ram usage[lollipop][5.0][lrx21t]

Hi ,new user on xda
i have a nexus 4
running completely stock 5.0 LRX21T NO ROOT
i have noticed very high ram usage on 5.0 as compared to 4.4 after the update
normally had ~1gb Ram free but now only ~500mb remains free
on ruuning applications screen,it shows
system-~750mb
apps-~600 mb
why is system using so much Ram,wasnt the case in 4.4...
is it bcoz of ART ?
is this normal?
same problem..on my nexus 4 after 5.0 update
After reboot, system ram usage stays low (read 100 to 150mb) for 1 to 2 days.. But suddenly shoots up to more than 1gb.
Does anyone know the root cause.
I think i found the root cause to this..
In Settings -> Sound & Notifications
change the setting When Device is locked -- Don't show notifications at all
By doing this, the system ram usage never shot up above 200mb for the past 2 days for me.
previously I had to reboot my device every night before going to bed.
I will further observe if this is the root cause and revert back.
apv25 said:
Hi ,new user on xda
i have a nexus 4
running completely stock 5.0 LRX21T NO ROOT
i have noticed very high ram usage on 5.0 as compared to 4.4 after the update
normally had ~1gb Ram free but now only ~500mb remains free
on ruuning applications screen,it shows
system-~750mb
apps-~600 mb
why is system using so much Ram,wasnt the case in 4.4...
is it bcoz of ART ?
is this normal?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
art by default use more ram than dalvic to run applications so this might be normal for you. on top of that there is some memory leak found in android l.
the important thing to now is how android manage ram. when you open an application it is loaded in the ram. whether you close the application or let it run on the backround android does not clean the memory occupied by the application until it has to. android LMK (low memory killer) clean the ram memory occupied by a program denpending on the priority id of the app. for example system apps (system ui) has lowest priority so LMK never kills that app. other apps have different priority. an application that runs in the backround (facebook messenger or whatsup) have lower priority than a game so when android need more ram it will empty the ram occupied by the game first and if there is more need for ram it will later empty the ram occupied by the backround app.
Long story short android will handle the ram as it sees fit. unlike windows, android will keep the memory full so apps can be launched faster. the problem is that android l has memory leak so you need to reboot your device every few days if you feel it starts to have some lags.
apps like task killers do more harm than good in terms of performance or lags. also facebook and facebook messenger are very badly written apps so they will consume a lot of memory. also antiviruses (especially cm security) are responsible for lags and memory leaks.
hope i helped you somehow understand android and find your problem (if there is one)
P.S. sorry for the long post!!
ttheodorou said:
art by default use more ram than dalvic to run applications so this might be normal for you. on top of that there is some memory leak found in android l.
the important thing to now is how android manage ram. when you open an application it is loaded in the ram. whether you close the application or let it run on the backround android does not clean the memory occupied by the application until it has to. android LMK (low memory killer) clean the ram memory occupied by a program denpending on the priority id of the app. for example system apps (system ui) has lowest priority so LMK never kills that app. other apps have different priority. an application that runs in the backround (facebook messenger or whatsup) have lower priority than a game so when android need more ram it will empty the ram occupied by the game first and if there is more need for ram it will later empty the ram occupied by the backround app.
Long story short android will handle the ram as it sees fit. unlike windows, android will keep the memory full so apps can be launched faster. the problem is that android l has memory leak so you need to reboot your device every few days if you feel it starts to have some lags.
apps like task killers do more harm than good in terms of performance or lags. also facebook and facebook messenger are very badly written apps so they will consume a lot of memory. also antiviruses (especially cm security) are responsible for lags and memory leaks.
hope i helped you somehow understand android and find your problem (if there is one)
P.S. sorry for the long post!!
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Click to collapse
thanks
ttheodorou said:
art by default use more ram than dalvic to run applications so this might be normal for you. on top of that there is some memory leak found in android l.
the important thing to now is how android manage ram. when you open an application it is loaded in the ram. whether you close the application or let it run on the backround android does not clean the memory occupied by the application until it has to. android LMK (low memory killer) clean the ram memory occupied by a program denpending on the priority id of the app. for example system apps (system ui) has lowest priority so LMK never kills that app. other apps have different priority. an application that runs in the backround (facebook messenger or whatsup) have lower priority than a game so when android need more ram it will empty the ram occupied by the game first and if there is more need for ram it will later empty the ram occupied by the backround app.
Long story short android will handle the ram as it sees fit. unlike windows, android will keep the memory full so apps can be launched faster. the problem is that android l has memory leak so you need to reboot your device every few days if you feel it starts to have some lags.
apps like task killers do more harm than good in terms of performance or lags. also facebook and facebook messenger are very badly written apps so they will consume a lot of memory. also antiviruses (especially cm security) are responsible for lags and memory leaks.
hope i helped you somehow understand android and find your problem (if there is one)
P.S. sorry for the long post!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is why Google needs to give us an extended power menu. I understand they say it shouldn't be necessary under normal circumstances, but I consider every single nexus update to be a beta, of sorts...and we all know how buggy betas can be from time to time. They're very unpredictable, and you never know if you'll need to reboot. Saying it's simply never necessary for something that is basically beta is just plain egotistical as hell.
hp420 said:
This is why Google needs to give us an extended power menu. I understand they say it shouldn't be necessary under normal circumstances, but I consider every single nexus update to be a beta, of sorts...and we all know how buggy betas can be from time to time. They're very unpredictable, and you never know if you'll need to reboot. Saying it's simply never necessary for something that is basically beta is just plain egotistical as hell.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my philosophy is that when you buy a nexus device, because it is a very simple os without the good stuff that lg/sammy or any other oem android manufacturer put on their phone(i am refereeing to the shortcuts power menu or toggles and other things that make your life easier and not the whole change of the os like touchwizz) you have to root so you can do your own small changes as you see fit (and fortunately for me i live in europe where there is a European law that states that you have the right to do whatever you want to the software of your device an be eligible to waranty).
So if you root your device you can do everything you want. for me on kit kat it was xposed and gravity box. on android l, yesterday i installed simple aosp.
In my opinion pure android with a twist is the way to go! and of course a custom kernel for better battery life and ad free for no ads!!
P.S. a quote by a fellow nexus user: A nexus without root is like an angel without wings
ttheodorou said:
my philosophy is that when you buy a nexus device, because it is a very simple os without the good stuff that lg/sammy or any other oem android manufacturer put on their phone(i am refereeing to the shortcuts power menu or toggles and other things that make your life easier and not the whole change of the os like touchwizz) you have to root so you can do your own small changes as you see fit (and fortunately for me i live in europe where there is a European law that states that you have the right to do whatever you want to the software of your device an be eligible to waranty).
So if you root your device you can do everything you want. for me on kit kat it was xposed and gravity box. on android l, yesterday i installed simple aosp.
In my opinion pure android with a twist is the way to go! and of course a custom kernel for better battery life and ad free for no ads!!
P.S. a quote by a fellow nexus user: A nexus without root is like an angel without wings
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do have root access and a custom kernel, but I prefer the nexus factory images, and the only system change I want is an extended power menu. Have you ever actually looked for an odexed version of an extended power menu flashable zip??? Don't waste your time. The last one I saw myself was for Nexus S. It can be done, but it never IS done. Stuff like that I could almost definitely do myself, but I just don't have the time anymore to sit down and read how to do it, actually do it, test it, etc. I haven't done any android dev at all in a few years and I'm rusty as hell, not to mention how much things have changed for android in the last two years.

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