Database Users

Browser lag/memory leak solution thread.

I'm currently running Zmod4 with Cognition B7, and almost everything seems to work perfectly for me. (Thank you DG and everyone else! Your work is nothing short of amazing!) I always install from a reset back to stock via Odin and complete wipe/master clear and have tried about every Rom when it becomes available. Everything usually installs perfectly and this setup was no exception. I do notice that the interface is smoother and the phone runs quicker in general with the ZMod4, but the lag is still there in the browser. It's not a placebo effect for me because I have Cog 2.1.4 on a friends Captivate at work as well as another friend that I have set up with a SRE with overclock and after every different setup I try, I always compare the browsers.
No matter which rom or configuration I am running the browsers on 2.1 based roms are always faster. They load a little faster which doesn't really bother me, its when you try to scroll up and down the heavier content pages that you get the hitches and lag. I've even tried different variations of the libwebcore.so files. Can't seem to get it running as smooth as 2.1. I figured it must have something to do with the fact that this is a leaked version of Froyo, but the same problem is persisting with others in the I9000 forum with the official release so I'm a little discouraged. The lag and hitches that I get, especially in larger content pages like engadget, pocketnow, huffingtonpost, etc. kinda drives me crazy when I see with my own eyes the browsers running completely smooth on the 2.1 setups.
I'm hoping with all the expertise and brain power we have amassed here in the developers section that someone may be able to figure out a way to fix this.
As a band aid to the real problem, I've tried running autokiller to free up more available memory with pretty limited results.

Why couldn't you just have continued discussion in this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=803370
It's barely on MY page 2..

People usually disagree with me but I even found scrolling on busy webpages to be slower on my Nexus One with froyo vs eclair. This is with plugins either on demand or disabled.
I wouldn't expect it to get much better until scrolling/panning is offloaded to the GPU. Which should come first with Opera Mobile and hopefully the stock browser will support it in Gingerbread.
According to google engineers, the slow scrolling and hitching is due in part to garbage collection which ties up the CPU and keeps scrolling from being smooth.

Or maybe its because our froyo is leaked software?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

SkitchBeatz said:
Or maybe its because our froyo is leaked software?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this^ at least wait til froyo is released on the captivate before saying this.

maybe Flash is loading or something

richierich1212 said:
maybe Flash is loading or something
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried it both ways, flash on and flash completely disabled. Its better when disabled of course, but still far more laggy than it should be. I don't think a lot of people notice it because:
A. many people don't frequently go to sites that have enough content to dramatically slow the browser down and most of all........
B. Almost no one has two, let alone three different Captivates available, each running a different Rom to get a side by side comparison so its harder to see and measure the real world difference.
Maybe my expectations are too high but I do frequent larger web sites and I know that the browser does not have the lag on the 2.1 roms so it irritates the bejeesum out of me.

Id imagine the more active content on web pages due to flash 10.1 is going have an effect on scroll speed. Ive seen the same thing on an OCed droid. I havent played with cog 2.2 much as i really enjoy how smooth 2.1.7 is and didnt even need to OC it. Now that they have a new lagfix for 2.2 im thinking about flashing 2.2 again.

\/icious said:
Id imagine the more active content on web pages due to flash 10.1 is going have an effect on scroll speed. Ive seen the same thing on an OCed droid. I havent played with cog 2.2 much as i really enjoy how smooth 2.1.7 is and didnt even need to OC it. Now that they have a new lagfix for 2.2 im thinking about flashing 2.2 again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your comments made it occur to me that while I have "disabled" flash in the browser settings, I've never completly tried to uninstall it....so I just did. With TiBu, so I'll run it this way for a bit and see what the real world effects are and report back.

FWIW, I didn't see a difference in scrolling between having plugins disabled and uninstalling Flash on my Nexus One. Haven't tried it on my Captivate for that reason.

dalingrin said:
People usually disagree with me but I even found scrolling on busy webpages to be slower on my Nexus One with froyo vs eclair. This is with plugins either on demand or disabled.
I wouldn't expect it to get much better until scrolling/panning is offloaded to the GPU. Which should come first with Opera Mobile and hopefully the stock browser will support it in Gingerbread.
According to google engineers, the slow scrolling and hitching is due in part to garbage collection which ties up the CPU and keeps scrolling from being smooth.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is straight up discouraging. I thought it was just Samsung's crappy Froyo leaks, but this makes it sound like the Froyo browser just doesn't scroll as smoothly as the 2.1 browser.

I think something that kinda pisses me off with this browser hogging ram is the other problem that doesn't get brought up very much and when it does its shot down. The missing 208mb of ram that is supposedly being used by the gpu or whatever (I forget what I heard). With a browser that can easily creep up on 100 mb's of used ram with pages open and with give or take 150 mb's free at boot right there your down in the red zone where things start to lag. And the launcher takes 20 mb's so now your down to 30 free mob's. God forbid you wanna play angry birds too, you'd be screwed. So that makes multitasking not as efficient as it should be if we had the lost 208mb's. I do like this phone but I'm not real happy with Samsung. The galaxy s phones were advertised with 512 mb's, that's what we should get. People use to say that it would be available when froyo came out since eclair couldn't use all of the ram. Well here it is officially out on the i9000 and were still stuck with 304mb's.
Sorry about the rant. The only thing I miss from my iPhone 4 was booting it up and having 350 mb's free

di11igaf said:
I think something that kinda pisses me off with this browser hogging ram is the other problem that doesn't get brought up very much and when it does its shot down. The missing 208mb of ram that is supposedly being used by the gpu or whatever (I forget what I heard). With a browser that can easily creep up on 100 mb's of used ram with pages open and with give or take 150 mb's free at boot right there your down in the red zone where things start to lag. And the launcher takes 20 mb's so now your down to 30 free mob's. God forbid you wanna play angry birds too, you'd be screwed. So that makes multitasking not as efficient as it should be if we had the lost 208mb's. I do like this phone but I'm not real happy with Samsung. The galaxy s phones were advertised with 512 mb's, that's what we should get. People use to say that it would be available when froyo came out since eclair couldn't use all of the ram. Well here it is officially out on the i9000 and were still stuck with 304mb's.
Sorry about the rant. The only thing I miss from my iPhone 4 was booting it up and having 350 mb's free
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, what they did is pretty deceiving. I usually had more free memory on my Aria and it only had 384 MB of RAM.

di11igaf said:
I think something that kinda pisses me off with this browser hogging ram is the other problem that doesn't get brought up very much and when it does its shot down. The missing 208mb of ram that is supposedly being used by the gpu or whatever (I forget what I heard). With a browser that can easily creep up on 100 mb's of used ram with pages open and with give or take 150 mb's free at boot right there your down in the red zone where things start to lag. And the launcher takes 20 mb's so now your down to 30 free mob's. God forbid you wanna play angry birds too, you'd be screwed. So that makes multitasking not as efficient as it should be if we had the lost 208mb's. I do like this phone but I'm not real happy with Samsung. The galaxy s phones were advertised with 512 mb's, that's what we should get. People use to say that it would be available when froyo came out since eclair couldn't use all of the ram. Well here it is officially out on the i9000 and were still stuck with 304mb's.
Sorry about the rant. The only thing I miss from my iPhone 4 was booting it up and having 350 mb's free
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Galaxy S phones indeed have 512 MB of RAM. As for whether part of that is allocated by GPU (of which I believe no more than 32-64 MB must be for that), you still have to consider that android as an operating system sets aside a VERY LARGE chunk of RAM just for radio. It would be VERY STUPID of a phone to not set aside more than enough RAM to make sure the radio *always* gets top priority. Also, complaining about RAM getting "filled up" is a moot argument to begin with. Android honestly allocates RAM as fast as possible. It WANTS RAM to be as filled as possible, leaving between 50-75 MB free. If you use a task killer and kill everything, yeah you'll jump back up to 200+ MB free, but android will reallocate that memory just as fast to something else because that's what the OS is designed to do.
So, say we set aside 64 MB of RAM for VRAM, 128 MB for the GSM radio and other vital-to-operation-and-functionality processes that are specifically reserved and untouchable by us (these numbers are pulled out of my ass, for all I know the VRAM is 128 MB and the GSM only uses 75 MB... the point still stands) that drops us down to the ~300 MB range for user accessible functionality. Also, the browser RAM/smoothness issue you're referring to is a BUG because the froyo build is NON-FINAL, complaining about that is like saying "my knees hurt when I drag them on the ground." I assume this is something they will try to improve before final release, but I don't know, maybe they consider it "good enough."
On top of this, let's discuss the potential that maybe NONE of the RAM is set aside for the GPU and it runs itself. The complaint about a lack of the full 512 is also hard to discuss because HIGHMEM support was only added in 2.2 to have the full access to 512. Just because the potential to enable in 2.2 exists, doesn't mean they're taking advantage of it. I'd like to believe they are, so again, that drops back to the ~100 MB taken up by the GSM radio/phone functionality. As for whether this is "too much," that's not really up to you unless you want to go ahead and build a ROM from scratch. It's in the best interest of the company who made the phone to err on the side of caution and give it too much than too little. On top of that, the core OS allocates itself to set areas of RAM that you also can't change because man that would be stupid if they let you (want to see your phone crash? try to kill a process that controls the OS).
Basically, the RAM is there, we just don't have full userland access to all of it, it's pointless to complain. If it bugs you, take a stab at fixing it and prove you're better than samsung and make your own ROM.

Kaik541 said:
The Galaxy S phones indeed have 512 MB of RAM. As for whether part of that is allocated by GPU (of which I believe no more than 32-64 MB must be for that), you still have to consider that android as an operating system sets aside a VERY LARGE chunk of RAM just for radio. It would be VERY STUPID of a phone to not set aside more than enough RAM to make sure the radio *always* gets top priority. Also, complaining about RAM getting "filled up" is a moot argument to begin with. Android honestly allocates RAM as fast as possible. It WANTS RAM to be as filled as possible, leaving between 50-75 MB free. If you use a task killer and kill everything, yeah you'll jump back up to 200+ MB free, but android will reallocate that memory just as fast to something else because that's what the OS is designed to do.
So, say we set aside 64 MB of RAM for VRAM, 128 MB for the GSM radio and other vital-to-operation-and-functionality processes that are specifically reserved and untouchable by us (these numbers are pulled out of my ass, for all I know the VRAM is 128 MB and the GSM only uses 75 MB... the point still stands) that drops us down to the ~300 MB range for user accessible functionality. Also, the browser RAM/smoothness issue you're referring to is a BUG because the froyo build is NON-FINAL, complaining about that is like saying "my knees hurt when I drag them on the ground." I assume this is something they will try to improve before final release, but I don't know, maybe they consider it "good enough."
On top of this, let's discuss the potential that maybe NONE of the RAM is set aside for the GPU and it runs itself. The complaint about a lack of the full 512 is also hard to discuss because HIGHMEM support was only added in 2.2 to have the full access to 512. Just because the potential to enable in 2.2 exists, doesn't mean they're taking advantage of it. I'd like to believe they are, so again, that drops back to the ~100 MB taken up by the GSM radio/phone functionality. As for whether this is "too much," that's not really up to you unless you want to go ahead and build a ROM from scratch. It's in the best interest of the company who made the phone to err on the side of caution and give it too much than too little. On top of that, the core OS allocates itself to set areas of RAM that you also can't change because man that would be stupid if they let you (want to see your phone crash? try to kill a process that controls the OS).
Basically, the RAM is there, we just don't have full userland access to all of it, it's pointless to complain. If it bugs you, take a stab at fixing it and prove you're better than samsung and make your own ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't seem to make sense that it would be the ram anyway because the browser is blazing fast on 2.1 on the same phones with the same amount of ram available.
By the way, completely deleting flash did not improve the browser speed at all so I don't believe this has anything to do with it either.

I've looked high and low for a definitive answer on where the "missing" RAM is. I havent found one yet. I guess samsung would need to weigh in on that. But I do know that on my captivate going into quadrant system info says we have 311,xxx KB's of memory available to Android OS. A coworker has a verizon fascinate, his has 332,xxx KB's of memory. Another coworker has a droid incredible and his has 422,xxx KB's of memory. They all start with 512MB and obviously some of it is partitioned off and reserved for other functions such as GPU, ram disk, radio, etc.

derek4484 said:
I've looked high and low for a definitive answer on where the "missing" RAM is. I havent found one yet. I guess samsung would need to weigh in on that. But I do know that on my captivate going into quadrant system info says we have 311,xxx KB's of memory available to Android OS. A coworker has a verizon fascinate, his has 332,xxx KB's of memory. Another coworker has a droid incredible and his has 422,xxx KB's of memory. They all start with 512MB and obviously some of it is partitioned off and reserved for other functions such as GPU, ram disk, radio, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, we definitely have 512 MB of RAM. Samsung just seems to reserve more of it for other as yet unknown functions than other manufacturers.

Kaik541 said:
The Galaxy S phones indeed have 512 MB of RAM. As for whether part of that is allocated by GPU (of which I believe no more than 32-64 MB must be for that), you still have to consider that android as an operating system sets aside a VERY LARGE chunk of RAM just for radio. It would be VERY STUPID of a phone to not set aside more than enough RAM to make sure the radio *always* gets top priority. Also, complaining about RAM getting "filled up" is a moot argument to begin with. Android honestly allocates RAM as fast as possible. It WANTS RAM to be as filled as possible, leaving between 50-75 MB free. If you use a task killer and kill everything, yeah you'll jump back up to 200+ MB free, but android will reallocate that memory just as fast to something else because that's what the OS is designed to do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem is that garbage collection doesn't come free. I agree that the operating system is designed to use RAM as data cache as much as possible but the problem with the Galaxy S models is the lack of free RAM to begin with. This causes more garbage collection calls than on other phones because phones with more ram have a greater chance of the program or library being already in RAM.
I agree that a task killer isn't a good solution. I find that making the garbage collector more aggressive works to reduce the stuttering much better. If a program needs to dynamically load library calls while it is running and you don't have enough free memory then you are going to see a lot of stuttering when the garbage collector gets called to make room.
So, say we set aside 64 MB of RAM for VRAM, 128 MB for the GSM radio and other vital-to-operation-and-functionality processes that are specifically reserved and untouchable by us (these numbers are pulled out of my ass, for all I know the VRAM is 128 MB and the GSM only uses 75 MB... the point still stands) that drops us down to the ~300 MB range for user accessible functionality. Also, the browser RAM/smoothness issue you're referring to is a BUG because the froyo build is NON-FINAL, complaining about that is like saying "my knees hurt when I drag them on the ground." I assume this is something they will try to improve before final release, but I don't know, maybe they consider it "good enough."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are assuming it is a bug. In my experience it isn't. The problem is exaggerated on the Galaxy S vs my Nexus One but that could easily be attributed to having 100+mb less available memory.

Kaik541 said:
The Galaxy S phones indeed have 512 MB of RAM. As for whether part of that is allocated by GPU (of which I believe no more than 32-64 MB must be for that), you still have to consider that android as an operating system sets aside a VERY LARGE chunk of RAM just for radio. It would be VERY STUPID of a phone to not set aside more than enough RAM to make sure the radio *always* gets top priority. Also, complaining about RAM getting "filled up" is a moot argument to begin with. Android honestly allocates RAM as fast as possible. It WANTS RAM to be as filled as possible, leaving between 50-75 MB free. If you use a task killer and kill everything, yeah you'll jump back up to 200+ MB free, but android will reallocate that memory just as fast to something else because that's what the OS is designed to do.
So, say we set aside 64 MB of RAM for VRAM, 128 MB for the GSM radio and other vital-to-operation-and-functionality processes that are specifically reserved and untouchable by us (these numbers are pulled out of my ass, for all I know the VRAM is 128 MB and the GSM only uses 75 MB... the point still stands) that drops us down to the ~300 MB range for user accessible functionality. Also, the browser RAM/smoothness issue you're referring to is a BUG because the froyo build is NON-FINAL, complaining about that is like saying "my knees hurt when I drag them on the ground." I assume this is something they will try to improve before final release, but I don't know, maybe they consider it "good enough."
On top of this, let's discuss the potential that maybe NONE of the RAM is set aside for the GPU and it runs itself. The complaint about a lack of the full 512 is also hard to discuss because HIGHMEM support was only added in 2.2 to have the full access to 512. Just because the potential to enable in 2.2 exists, doesn't mean they're taking advantage of it. I'd like to believe they are, so again, that drops back to the ~100 MB taken up by the GSM radio/phone functionality. As for whether this is "too much," that's not really up to you unless you want to go ahead and build a ROM from scratch. It's in the best interest of the company who made the phone to err on the side of caution and give it too much than too little. On top of that, the core OS allocates itself to set areas of RAM that you also can't change because man that would be stupid if they let you (want to see your phone crash? try to kill a process that controls the OS).
Basically, the RAM is there, we just don't have full userland access to all of it, it's pointless to complain. If it bugs you, take a stab at fixing it and prove you're better than samsung and make your own ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The official 2.2 release is out for the i9000 is out and it has a total of 304 mb of ram. The os takes a big chunk of this so with nothing running the most that is possible to access EVER for programs is about 170mb. Your launcher takes 20. The browser even on 2.1 with a couple of large pages loaded can easily take 100 mb. That leaves you with maybe 50mb available if you lucky. This is when things might get a little slow and the os will start killing off processes as it sees fit. So if you have a game open that you want to keep open in the background it wont. It will kill it which makes muttitasking very poor on a phone where its supposed to be above the rest. The point is we only have around 170 mb's available to the user. That's pretty ****ty. This is on the OFFICIAL froyo release for the i9000 and I highly doubt it will change for us. There is 208 mb's that are missing that should be user accessible. I don't care what uses it the fact is that I can't. The phone was advertised with 512 ram not 304 mb's with 208 vram or whatever. I traded an iphone 4 in for this phone and I still think that was a great decision as I love this phone. But at least when I booted my iphone 4 I had at least 350mb's of user accessible ram which we will not see. We have half of that and I think that sucks. Sorry for stating my opinion. Here's my old phone not even after a fresh boot and I could access all of it
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di11igaf said:
The official 2.2 release is out for the i9000 is out and it has a total of 304 mb of ram. The os takes a big chunk of this so with nothing running the most that is possible to access EVER for programs is about 170mb. Your launcher takes 20. The browser even on 2.1 with a couple of large pages loaded can easily take 100 mb. That leaves you with maybe 50mb available if you lucky. This is when things might get a little slow and the os will start killing off processes as it sees fit. So if you have a game open that you want to keep open in the background it wont. It will kill it which makes muttitasking very poor on a phone where its supposed to be above the rest. The point is we only have around 170 mb's available to the user. That's pretty ****ty. This is on the OFFICIAL froyo release for the i9000 and I highly doubt it will change for us. There is 208 mb's that are missing that should be user accessible. I don't care what uses it the fact is that I can't. The phone was advertised with 512 ram not 304 mb's with 208 vram or whatever. I traded an iphone 4 in for this phone and I still think that was a great decision as I love this phone. But at least when I booted my iphone 4 I had at least 350mb's of user accessible ram which we will not see. We have half of that and I think that sucks. Sorry for stating my opinion. Here's my old phone not even after a fresh boot and I could access all of it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
blah blah blah, same old story. also, if you read, the JPM release got pulled and they're pushing a later release toward the start of November. Also, I included the option that the final release only gives 304 MB RAM to userland. if you're just going to ignore all my comments, then feel free. this is like complaining that you bought a computer with 2 GB of RAM and are mad that Windows says "I'm going to take 500 MB of that and run in there." go ahead, kill those windows processes and watch the system crumble... same thing on our phones. you're also ignoring the fact that I never said "208 mb to vram," good for you for getting just about everything else I said wrong. on top of that, comparing the iphone (a BSD-based mobile OS) against android (a linux-based mobile OS running inside a dalvik java VM) is like saying "why are burritos more filling than these peanuts?" iOS is designed to run on ONE base hardware by ONE base manufacturer, android is modular and designed to work on a VARIETY of platforms and tweaked as the manufacturer wants to.
Samsung advertises the phone with 512 MB of RAM, there is 512 MB of RAM in the phone. Where in their advertising ANYWHERE does it says "512 MB of userland RAM access"? You have nothing worth complaining about. If you miss your free RAM so much, go back to iphone or get a device that doesn't set aside so much of the RAM for *radio* (notice this word, radio, not VRAM... hell I even posited an option that says samsung may not be including the VRAM from the total at all). if you're upset your phone only grants you permission to 3/5ths of your total RAM, get a phone that doesn't. you aren't being "robbed," the hardware is there, it's Samsung's decision to set aside as much as they want for whatever they want. YOU CHOOSE TO ENCOURAGE THIS DECISION BY BUYING THEIR PRODUCT. If you don't like it, return the product, vote with your wallet. Get a device that allows more userland access to RAM and quit your *****ing and moaning.

2GB of RAM unnecessary?! LOL

This is the 4th time I've opened my task manager today and realized I was using over a gig. It easy to use over a gig when its there
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda app-developers app

a phone OS using more ram than Vista??? not a good sign. God where are the AOSP roms already :crying:

Kernel knows it has more memory available so apps are more likely to stay in their suspended state, rather than removed from memory.
But I enjoy the 2GB of ram for sure.

dardani89 said:
a phone OS using more ram than Vista??? not a good sign. God where are the AOSP roms already :crying:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Using RAM is not bad; needing RAM is bad. Android 4.0 can easily run with less than 400 MB, but some things can be a little faster when they don't have to constantly reload.

stuff said:
Kernel knows it has more memory available so apps are more likely to stay in their suspended state, rather than removed from memory.
But I enjoy the 2GB of ram for sure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This. Everything switches back instantly!!
One of the most frustrating parts of the HTC OneX for me was when i was reading a long page of comments on sites like the verge or typing up a forum post. If i left the browser to reply to a text or facebook notification, and then returned to the browser it would always reload a page, and at the top.
Even the (heavy) Sense 4 launcher would have to load up every now and then.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747

Voltage Spike said:
Using RAM is not bad; needing RAM is bad. Android 4.0 can easily run with less than 400 MB, but some things can be a little faster when they don't have to constantly reload.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i wasn't making fun of android, i was making fun of touchwiz. too much bloat.

If the RAM will mean Nova Launcher wont reload itself as much as it currently does on my Incredible, then that's reason enough for me.

Having had the 1X for a month the 2 gb ram was one of the reasons I switched.

The 2GB of ram (and LTE) has been excessively downplayed by the International crowd because..well..they don't have it. The fact is the 2GB of ram should allow a stock phone to reload things much less. If you want to look forward 6 months to a year, I think the difference will be potentially much larger when we start to see creative devs tweaking their kernels to really use this extra ram. This is a ground breaking hardware move. We haven't even really begun to see what is possible. Judging any of these based on stock software at release is pointless. Think about how much better other phones have gotten after a few OTA updates....this device, especially with the extra ram is really well equipped for a long time.
Sent from my DROIDX using xda premium

jamesnmandy said:
The 2GB of ram (and LTE) has been excessively downplayed by the International crowd because..well..they don't have it. The fact is the 2GB of ram should allow a stock phone to reload things much less. If you want to look forward 6 months to a year, I think the difference will be potentially much larger when we start to see creative devs tweaking their kernels to really use this extra ram. This is a ground breaking hardware move. We haven't even really begun to see what is possible. Judging any of these based on stock software at release is pointless. Think about how much better other phones have gotten after a few OTA updates....this device, especially with the extra ram is really well equipped for a long time.
Sent from my DROIDX using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This ^^^
Truth
XDA Mobile

By the time any phone will actually use 2gb of ram, im sure most of us will have moved on to a new phone already. Of course having the extra ram is good for bragging rights, but does it actually mean anything? I'll say no, but im sure some will argue that.

shook187 said:
By the time any phone will actually use 2gb of ram, im sure most of us will have moved on to a new phone already. Of course having the extra ram is good for bragging rights, but does it actually mean anything? I'll say no, but im sure some will argue that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
they already make use of 1.1-1.2GB of ram out of the box running all stock software.......imagine if custom roms/kernels were available that make use of it....it's not far off....."by the time any phone will use" is closer than you think

jamesnmandy said:
they already make use of 1.1-1.2GB of ram out of the box running all stock software.......imagine if custom roms/kernels were available that make use of it....it's not far off....."by the time any phone will use" is closer than you think
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is good in theory but everyone on here is talking like we have been missing two gigs all this time in our phones. If you are coming to the S3 from a single core phone of course this is night and day. My SGSII has NEVER.....I repeat NEVER run out of memory lost track multitasking or had to close out multiple apps to make room for more.....how many apps does one need sitting in a suspended state?.....I have 5 or 6 apps open at any given time with PLENTY of room for more...sure the extra ram is nice to have, but its completely unnecessary ....dual cores with a gig of ram have NO problem doing heavy multitasking .....ask anyone running as SGSII or Gnex.
The extra ram in the S3 is there to offset the loss of quadcore....its a nice helping hand to the Krait chip but not necessary for everyday multitasking that the average person does.....I don't know what phones alot of you guys are coming from but from the sounds of these posts they were serious under achievers.
Sent from........Somewhere In Time

tylerdurdin said:
This is good in theory but everyone on here is talking like we have been missing two gigs all this time in our phones. If you are coming to the S3 from a single core phone of course this is night and day. My SGSII has NEVER.....I repeat NEVER run out of memory lost track multitasking or had to close out multiple apps to make room for more.....how many apps does one need sitting in a suspended state?.....I have 5 or 6 apps open at any given time with PLENTY of room for more...sure the extra ram is nice to have, but its completely unnecessary ....dual cores with a gig of ram have NO problem doing heavy multitasking .....ask anyone running as SGSII or Gnex.
The extra ram in the S3 is there to offset the loss of quadcore....its a nice helping hand to the Krait chip but not necessary for everyday multitasking that the average person does.....I don't know what phones alot of you guys are coming from but from the sounds of these posts they were serious under achievers.
Sent from........Somewhere In Time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think the reason you never saw your device running out of room is likely because the system knew how much memory it had to work with and was always adjusting things to accommodate as much memory....if the system had more memory available to it it can behave differently....it's not about "how many apps one needs in a suspended state", it's about "the more apps you can keep in a suspended state the quicker the apps will run for the user"
i know this isn't x86 and it's not windows, but the analogy still stands, consider Windows 7
if you build a pc using it with 2Gb of ram it will run just fine, it will use somewhere around 1Gb of ram sitting idle, using it for the prefetch cache to be ready to launch your most used apps while maintaining a safe amount of memory for sudden useage/overhead
if you upgrade that same pc to 4Gb of ram, it will use close to 2Gb at idle.....it's not quite linear as that but you can see a direct correlation between available memory and memory utilization
the Linux kernel behind android appears to work very similarly, it will keep the most called upon code in local memory so that it launches faster when next called upon. the more memory available to the kernel, the less time it can spend killing apps in order to maintain that same level of free memory for the unexpected execution of a new app
the more memory it has, if it is written/compiled to take advantage of it, the more potential for performance is there.
I would say the 2Gb of memory is more easily utilized than the additional redundant cores in the Exynos kit. I have been looking for some real data on Android and SMP but I know recently Intel made a rare public statement about how it is not ready for even dual core utilization. I don't think Intel would make such a specific claim without data. I don't think the Exynos users are really getting much good at all from the four cores other than synthetic benchmark scores and I think they could see more benefits down the road from more memory than redundant A9 older technology additional cores.
disclaimer: I am still learning about all this so if some smart guy comes along and sees something above that is not quite right....it's not because I am making this up....it's what I understand to be true based on reading.

jamesnmandy said:
i think the reason you never saw your device running out of room is likely because the system knew how much memory it had to work with and was always adjusting things to accommodate as much memory....if the system had more memory available to it it can behave differently....it's not about "how many apps one needs in a suspended state", it's about "the more apps you can keep in a suspended state the quicker the apps will run for the user"
i know this isn't x86 and it's not windows, but the analogy still stands, consider Windows 7
if you build a pc using it with 2Gb of ram it will run just fine, it will use somewhere around 1Gb of ram sitting idle, using it for the prefetch cache to be ready to launch your most used apps while maintaining a safe amount of memory for sudden useage/overhead
if you upgrade that same pc to 4Gb of ram, it will use close to 2Gb at idle.....it's not quite linear as that but you can see a direct correlation between available memory and memory utilization
the Linux kernel behind android appears to work very similarly, it will keep the most called upon code in local memory so that it launches faster when next called upon. the more memory available to the kernel, the less time it can spend killing apps in order to maintain that same level of free memory for the unexpected execution of a new app
the more memory it has, if it is written/compiled to take advantage of it, the more potential for performance is there.
I would say the 2Gb of memory is more easily utilized than the additional redundant cores in the Exynos kit. I have been looking for some real data on Android and SMP but I know recently Intel made a rare public statement about how it is not ready for even dual core utilization. I don't think Intel would make such a specific claim without data. I don't think the Exynos users are really getting much good at all from the four cores other than synthetic benchmark scores and I think they could see more benefits down the road from more memory than redundant A9 older technology additional cores.
disclaimer: I am still learning about all this so if some smart guy comes along and sees something above that is not quite right....it's not because I am making this up....it's what I understand to be true based on reading.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are pretty spot on for the most part....but the difference here lies in the amount of ram needed to cache applications and perform extended tasks.....the reason my GSII never runs out of memory is because it has plenty for any array of tasks. While caching 8 applications I use all day...and still have anywhere from 325 to 400 megs available for any other array tasks .....I just can't see where I would need more.
As for your earlier mention of custom roms.....this becomes even less necessary ....right now a stock GS3 is using over a gig.....that's because its loaded chock full O'carrier BS on top of all samsungs layers of bloat and BS "features"....you strip all that crap out and you have a 275mb OS and more ram than you will know what to do with.
Bloat is the only thing requiring this extra ram because its running at system level which is also why Sense stuffed a dagger in the H1X.
Performance for launching is helped greatly by the processor for anything not in ram and the threshold for my phone is 64mb....which means my phone will not start killing of apps until that's met.....I could not seem to hit it just messing around.
Sent from........Somewhere In Time

tylerdurdin said:
You are pretty spot on for the most part....but the difference here lies in the amount of ram needed to cache applications and perform extended tasks.....the reason my GSII never runs out of memory is because it has plenty for any array of tasks. While caching 8 applications I use all day...and still have anywhere from 325 to 400 megs available for any other array tasks .....I just can't see where I would need more.
As for your earlier mention of custom roms.....this becomes even less necessary ....right now a stock GS3 is using over a gig.....that's because its loaded chock full O'carrier BS on top of all samsungs layers of bloat and BS "features"....you strip all that crap out and you have a 275mb OS and more ram than you will know what to do with.
Bloat is the only thing requiring this extra ram because its running at system level which is also why Sense stuffed a dagger in the H1X.
Performance for launching is helped greatly by the processor for anything not in ram and the threshold for my phone is 64mb....which means my phone will not start killing of apps until that's met.....I could not seem to hit it just messing around.
Sent from........Somewhere In Time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
right on, yeah i agree it's overkill right now. I just think within the next two years, we will easily see multiple areas where having more is better than having less. I am thinking way outside the box but I am seeing visions of custom kernels that are doing some extreme caching, even running a VM type environment.....actually I am thinking of running Android and perhaps there will be an opportunity to run Windows RT or some desktop version of Linux simultaneously......something a device with even four cores and 1GB of ram would have a hard time doing.....and that's not to say it would run well on the S4 US version either, but it is certainly more suited for it

jamesnmandy said:
right on, yeah i agree it's overkill right now. I just think within the next two years, we will easily see multiple areas where having more is better than having less. I am thinking way outside the box but I am seeing visions of custom kernels that are doing some extreme caching, even running a VM type environment.....actually I am thinking of running Android and perhaps there will be an opportunity to run Windows RT or some desktop version of Linux simultaneously......something a device with even four cores and 1GB of ram would have a hard time doing.....and that's not to say it would run well on the S4 US version either, but it is certainly more suited for it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like the way you think
Sent from........Somewhere In Time

tylerdurdin said:
You are pretty spot on for the most part....but the difference here lies in the amount of ram needed to cache applications and perform extended tasks.....the reason my GSII never runs out of memory is because it has plenty for any array of tasks. While caching 8 applications I use all day...and still have anywhere from 325 to 400 megs available for any other array tasks .....I just can't see where I would need more.
As for your earlier mention of custom roms.....this becomes even less necessary ....right now a stock GS3 is using over a gig.....that's because its loaded chock full O'carrier BS on top of all samsungs layers of bloat and BS "features"....you strip all that crap out and you have a 275mb OS and more ram than you will know what to do with.
Bloat is the only thing requiring this extra ram because its running at system level which is also why Sense stuffed a dagger in the H1X.
Performance for launching is helped greatly by the processor for anything not in ram and the threshold for my phone is 64mb....which means my phone will not start killing of apps until that's met.....I could not seem to hit it just messing around.
Sent from........Somewhere In Time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are partially right. My sensation xl and my friends galaxy note works multitask pretty well with just 768mb and 1GB ram. But that was on Gingerbread. Once we upgraded to ICS multitasking suffers tremendously. He even blamed me for persuading him to do the update. For GB 1GB is enough. For ICS 1GB is not enough if you want the best multitasking experience.

nativestranger said:
You are partially right. My sensation xl and my friends galaxy note works multitask pretty well with just 768mb and 1GB ram. But that was on Gingerbread. Once we upgraded to ICS multitasking suffers tremendously. He even blamed me for persuading him to do the update. For GB 1GB is enough. For ICS 1GB is not enough if you want the best multitasking experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to blame both device and OS....I am running ICS on my GS2 and have not even seen the slightest difference.....although my battery is just slightly worse.
Sent from........Somewhere In Time

nativestranger said:
For GB 1GB is enough. For ICS 1GB is not enough if you want the best multitasking experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You must be running some early leeks cause some of my phones like the GS2 and the evo 3d are running ICS flawlessly.

Very low available free RAM on GN 3 ... something to worry ?

Hello there.
As someone coming from a very laggy-slow-multitasker Galaxy S3, I am really looking forward to the possibilities the 3Gb of RAM of the GN III can bring to me in my every day lfe.
I mean, I would love being able to switch to multiple apps fastly without having to reload them each time because the system had to kill them due to low memory (nice work, OOM ^^).
And this upgraded multi-windows feature with mutliple apps instances is really looking awesome.
So, here's the thing.
According to that thread on GN II average available free ram : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1923380 people can enjoy up to 800-1Gb of free RAM which is great but at that time I could not and would not afford to purchase this device, the SGS III being quite new.
And as of today, I read a thread confirming the Samsung Exynos 5420 in the SM-N900 version.
But what almost killed me, so to speak, is the available free RAM on this screenshot (see attachment) : 14% out of 2700Mb, which is less than 400Mb. THE HELL ?? What am I supposed to do whith that few ...?
So what do you guys think ?

Free RAM is a waste ram, enough said. Only my note 2, the free ram stays at 200mb free on average, never ever faced any lag.

sohebq said:
Free RAM is a waste ram, enough said. Only my note 2, the free ram stays at 200mb free on average, never ever faced any lag.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I should have expected, I'm being answered with the "free RAM waste" speech.
Let me tell you that this is completely true. BUT the problem here is the free RAM you have at YOUR disposal on boot.
How much will Samsung leave you to play with ?
If the system and the home launcher utilize all the memory so that you have only 400Mb left (as in this screenshot) what can you do with that less ??????
I get about 250Mb left on boot with my SGS III and it is NOT ENOUGH to do some multitasking.
So I will not leave free RAM, I will use it to my heart's content to do MULTI-TASKING with the apps I want to USE and switch between AT WILL without having to RELAUNCHING them. That's all
Therefore if I have only 400Mb left, then this device won't satisfy me. I'll be better on a Nexus 4 I saw with CM and over 1.30Gb free RAM to play with ! ^^

THis 400mb ram left is not on boot man, it could be after several apps opened so when you open a new app, the task manager adjust itself by clearing old apps from memory to find space for new.

Mackovich said:
So what do you guys think ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's my N2 which I've never had a multitasking issue with. In fact, the number of apps it can keep alive in the background has always impressed me.
With 116 installed apps and dozens of Samsung's apps doing whatever it is they do I have 200MB of "free" RAM.
When I kill all active processes I have 850MB free.
Mali in the N2 reserves 250MB of RAM for itself. Adreno 320 reserves 500MB of RAM for itself in devices using it. Adreno 330 in the N3 will reserve at least that much, maybe more. I'm guessing that between Adreno's needs and the RAM some of their new apps (two concurrent instances of the same app, enhanced multitasking, updated S Note with Action Memo) need Samsung wisely included 3GB of RAM on the N3 to prevent the very scenario you're afraid of.
You do realize that open apps are counted in the "used RAM" the picture you posted shows? So that device that was being tested could have had a dozen apps open in the background for all we know. And a dozen apps open with free RAM still available would be good, not bad as you're indicating.
P.S. - The part you're missing about the "free RAM" speech is that the idea of having free RAM is kind of stupid. If an app can perform better with more RAM and the OS sees RAM available it'll allocate additional RAM to that app. If more apps join the party the first apps RAM will be reduced to provide a proportionate amount of RAM to other apps running. In other words there's absolutely no reason to have free RAM on an Android device; at least when apps are running.

Actually it's well explained that why we should not worry about ram anymore. good read.
http://www.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care

sohebq said:
THis 400mb ram left is not on boot man, it could be after several apps opened so when you open a new app, the task manager adjust itself by clearing old apps from memory to find space for new.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True enough.
If this device was running many apps in background while performing this CPU-Z scan (on the screenshot), then, I would not be worried at all. So I really hope that was the case.
What matters the most to me, is how much ram is allocated to the user, so that when I install my apps I can launch them and switch between them to my leisure without having to relaunch them.
Therefore I do expect to see very low available RAM, but only because of my doing : launching many apps, the apps I use every day. That's my all point.
BarryH_GEG said:
Here's my N2 which I've never had a multitasking issue with. In fact, the number of apps it can keep alive in the background has always impressed me.
With 116 installed apps and dozens of Samsung's apps doing whatever it is they do I have 200MB of "free" RAM.
When I kill all active processes I have 850MB free.
Mali in the N2 reserves 250MB of RAM for itself. Adreno 320 reserves 500MB of RAM for itself in devices using it. Adreno 330 in the N3 will reserve at least that much, maybe more. I'm guessing that between Adreno's needs and the RAM some of their new apps (two concurrent instances of the same app, enhanced multitasking, updated S Note with Action Memo) need Samsung wisely included 3GB of RAM on the N3 to prevent the very scenario you're afraid of.
You do realize that open apps are counted in the "used RAM" the picture you posted shows? So that device that was being tested could have had a dozen apps open in the background for all we know. And a dozen apps open with free RAM still available would be good, not bad as you're indicating.
P.S. - The part you're missing about the "free RAM" speech is that the idea of having free RAM is kind of stupid. If an app can perform better with more RAM and the OS sees RAM available it'll allocate additional RAM to that app. If more apps join the party the first apps RAM will be reduced to provide a proportionate amount of RAM to other apps running. In other words there's absolutely no reason to have free RAM on an Android device; at least when apps are running.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very interesting. Now I know where the GPU takes the RAM it needs.
And the part where an app is being less allocated in RAM is strange. I never really saw an app releasing RAM without being killed.
But anyway, with my current 1Gb SGS III, I cannot to do a lot of multitasking and I would really love to have at least 1-to 1.5Gb of free RAM on my GN III that I recently pre-ordered.

Mackovich said:
But anyway, with my current 1Gb SGS III, I cannot to do a lot of multitasking and I would really love to have at least 1-to 1.5Gb of free RAM on my GN III that I recently pre-ordered.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1GB on the Exynos SGS3 was probably too little. As Samsung adds sensors and features that are persistent they reserve RAM for themselves and don't release it when other apps need it. So with Mali taking up 250MB the Exynos SGS3 had 750MB of RAM that was usable not counting what Samsung's apps permanently reserved for themselves. The S4 SGS3 had 2GB of RAM because Adreno used more RAM than Mali. It ended up performing better at multitasking because there was only 130MB of that extra RAM dedicated to Adreno so there was lots more available for apps. HTC used 1MB of RAM in the S4 based One XL and it was a multitasking disaster because Adreno ate up 330MB of it and Sense itself is no featherweight.

Free RAM in GN3 via @NZtechfreak
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Adreno GPU taking about 600MB of RAM!

BarryH_GEG said:
1GB on the Exynos SGS3 was probably too little. As Samsung adds sensors and features that are persistent they reserve RAM for themselves and don't release it when other apps need it. So with Mali taking up 250MB the Exynos SGS3 had 750MB of RAM that was usable not counting what Samsung's apps permanently reserved for themselves. The S4 SGS3 had 2GB of RAM because Adreno used more RAM than Mali. It ended up performing better at multitasking because there was only 130MB of that extra RAM dedicated to Adreno so there was lots more available for apps. HTC used 1MB of RAM in the S4 based One XL and it was a multitasking disaster because Adreno ate up 330MB of it and Sense itself is no featherweight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's very detailed and interesting! I had no knowledge of this while looking for ways to enhance my SGS III multitasking experience. Now everything seems much clearer. Thanks!
CLARiiON said:
Free RAM in GN3 via @NZtechfreak
Adreno GPU taking about 600MB of RAM!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah ! Finally some good news! Is this free RAM upon boot and/or when clearing memory?
If so, then it would be expected that there won't be close to 2Gb of free RAM, since I expect that TW home launcher will use a lot of RAM with all new features such as AirCommand. Don't you think?
Anyway thanks for that screenshot!

If you're really insistent on having 'free' memory, you can change it with a tool like this, needs root
if however, you read (and understood) the article posted above by rl421403(good read, thanks for the link) you will realise that the Engineers who designed the system do actually know what they are doing.

Mackovich said:
Ah ! Finally some good news! Is this free RAM upon boot and/or when clearing memory?
If so, then it would be expected that there won't be close to 2Gb of free RAM, since I expect that TW home launcher will use a lot of RAM with all new features such as AirCommand. Don't you think?
Anyway thanks for that screenshot!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After cleaning RAM.
https://twitter.com/NZtechfreak/status/378461088678825984/
Well, no point having 3GB RAM if we are not going to use it..
However I think we have more than enough RAM to work with. 'Free' memory is more than GN2 if you check.

Here's another good article from Dianne Hackborn, a s/w engineer at Google that explains multitasking in detail. A lot of issues people have with certain apps when it comes to multitasking aren't due to Android or RAM but the way the apps themselves have been written (EG: sloppy).
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html

There is plenty of ram on the s3... lol these ain't windows phones
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda app-developers app

skally said:
If you're really insistent on having 'free' memory, you can change it with a tool like this, needs root
if however, you read (and understood) the article posted above by rl421403(good read, thanks for the link) you will realise that the Engineers who designed the system do actually know what they are doing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I tried something similar that used the MinFree values : zepplerinox supercharger script and eventually it was more than hassle though I had more multi-tasking capabilities.
But on many occasion my device froze because there was no memory left so I abandonned until I would find a better device.
CLARiiON said:
After cleaning RAM.
https://twitter.com/NZtechfreak/status/378461088678825984/
Well, no point having 3GB RAM if we are not going to use it..
However I think we have more than enough RAM to work with. 'Free' memory is more than GN2 if you check.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was worry sick about the 3Gb RAM, because a last minute serious rumour (few days before the IFA) stated RAM would be 2.5Gb and not 3Gb with a Antutu benchmark as a proof.
Then we learnt the real truth.
Anyway, it would definitely seem to be more free RAM than on the GN2, much not as much as one would expect when packing an extra 1Gb RAM, meaning Adreno 330 uses much more as long as TW home launcher.
By the way, is it me or your Twitter link does not work ?
BarryH_GEG said:
Here's another good article from Dianne Hackborn, a s/w engineer at Google that explains multitasking in detail. A lot of issues people have with certain apps when it comes to multitasking aren't due to Android or RAM but the way the apps themselves have been written (EG: sloppy).
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll read it
Now that I think about, when you said the GPU uses the system memory, does it use it on the go or does it have it's dedicated allocation no matter what ?
Because if I am correct, on the previous page, the screenshot shows 2.75 of available memory out of 3Gb. I gather the 250Mb is dedicated to the ROM, right ? So what about the GPU ?
chjema said:
There is plenty of ram on the s3... lol these ain't windows phones
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not for me. Even though I flash CM on it. A few services (twitter, music etc...), a few widget and you're fu**ed...
Meaning, upon boot, I have 200-300Mb of free RAM.

CLARiiON said:
Free RAM in GN3 via @NZtechfreak
Adreno GPU taking about 600MB of RAM!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2,38Gb?
Where are the 3Gb?
One screen shows 2,7Gb. That's ok. I suppose that rest of ram is for graphical purpose.
But in this screen I only see 2,38Gb? Where are the other 620 Mb? How much memory is graphical dedicated? 300mb or 600mb?

You can consider the new Adreno 330 from Qualcomm to use at least the same amount than it's previous version - Adreno 320- which is 550Mb as explained in page 1

sorry offtopic... but I heard that samsung will offer minimum 32 gb storage on galaxy note3 but according to op screenshot this is a 16gb N9000... so are they still offering 16gb versions for note3?

The amount of RAM in use at boot doesn't surprise me at all. Where do you think all those nifty new resource intensive features live? Even with that and Adreno's piggish appetite the N3 still has more free RAM when cleared than the N2 does. My N2 with memory cleared in on the left. @NZtechfreak said his N3 had no material apps on it and mine’s loaded so that may make a difference. Regardless, I don’t see RAM being an issue based on what’s been posted so far.

BarryH_GEG said:
Here's another good article from Dianne Hackborn, a s/w engineer at Google that explains multitasking in detail. A lot of issues people have with certain apps when it comes to multitasking aren't due to Android or RAM but the way the apps themselves have been written (EG: sloppy).
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly. And you can't expect there not to be errors with so many variants of screen sizes and OS updates.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda premium

The most annoying problems with G3 explained

Firstly, let me apologize for my English and the lack of technical terminology in my vocabulary.
Secondly, a disclaimer: I do not own any Samsung phone. I think that my wife's LG G2 is the greatest phone in the world.
Let's get to the point...
Polish site PCLab has just published a detailed review of G3 (European model) with some astounding tests' results that might shed some light on all disturbing reports about problems with LG's new flagship device. And while Polish journalist praise the phone for its incredible design, great UI, decent camera, they are at the same time very disappointed with some serious software and hardware problems that G3 is suffering from. I have read tons of different reviews, but it's the first one that explains why this phone "lags", overheats etc.
Problem: POOR BENCHMARKS' RESULTS, LAGS
Some reasons:
1. It seems that RAM sticks (is that the correct word?) in G3 are worse in terms of quality than the ones from G2.
2. CPU management is set to deliberately lower clock rate and restrict maximum clock rate to one core only in most of the cases. And when all four cores are in use, CPU management does not allow them to work at maximum rate at all. It has some serious impact on UI operations as well and makes better chpset in G3 perform worse than Snapdragon 800 in G2.
3. The temperature. G3 has some serious problems with heat distribution. When the CPU is working for longer period of time, the clock rate is lowered to 1.5 GHz and (what's worse) GPU clock is being seriously restrained. For example, after several minutes GPU clock rate is slowered by 40% (from, say, 20 fps to 12 fps)! It's the worse throttling among all new flagships.
4. There's no trimming in system's internal memory. That's one of the most important causes of "lags".
5. The new UI has some problems with memory management. Sometimes while using few apps there is only 174 MB of 2 GB of memory avaible! And the only way to free memory is to restart the device.
And yes, this review also confirms problems with oversharpening of the text on G2 dispay. The reviewer says that it's the software issue (or rather: "LG's conscious marketing decision").
You can see all the screenshots from various tests here:
http://pclab.pl/art58419.html
I have no idea if these problems might be fixed with some software updates, but I really do hope so!

I've only read a little of it but one of the things that caught my eye is that they are complaining about having only small amount of free RAM. Another poster on here asked about this, RAM is used differently in Android as it is in Windows for example. Free RAM in Android is bad not to mention that the kernel is using around 25% of RAM as ZRAM which I believe is standard in 4.4 kernels! So the article in that point is wrong. I've also looked at the CPU usage on my phone and measured it against temperature. During normal use the temp is around 45-60degC and the CPU is not throttling its sitting at it max 2.5Ghz. I posted a screen shot of this on another thread. They may have a pre production model with early OS version.
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk
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OK, CPU V temp graphs of normal usage. CPU is spiking to 2.5Ghz, no throttling and temps are normal. RAM usage shows around 400MB free always. Totally normal for Android as I said it fills the RAM then kills apps as needed.
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk
---------- Post added at 12:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:33 AM ----------
Batfink33 said:
I've only read a little of it but one of the things that caught my eye is that they are complaining about having only small amount of free RAM. Another poster on here asked about this, RAM is used differently in Android as it is in Windows for example. Free RAM in Android is bad! So the article in that point is wrong. I've also looked at the CPU usage on my phone and measured it against temperature. During normal use the temp is around 45-60degC and the CPU is not throttling its sitting at it max 2.5Ghz. I posted a screen shot of this on another thread. They may have a pre production model with early OS version.
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk
---------- Post added at 12:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:25 AM ----------
OK, CPU V temp graphs of normal usage. CPU is spiking to 2.5Ghz, no throttling and temps are normal. RAM usage shows around 400MB free always. Totally normal for Android as I said it fills the RAM then kills apps as needed.
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk

Batfink33 said:
I've only read a little of it but one of the things that caught my eye is that they are complaining about having only small amount of free RAM. Another poster on here asked about this, RAM is used differently in Android as it is in Windows for example. Free RAM in Android is bad! So the article in that point is wrong. I've also looked at the CPU usage on my phone and measured it against temperature. During normal use the temp is around 45-60degC and the CPU is not throttling its sitting at it max 2.5Ghz. I posted a screen shot of this on another thread. They may have a pre production model with early OS version.
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk
---------- Post added at 12:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:25 AM ----------
OK, CPU V temp graphs of normal usage. CPU is spiking to 2.5Ghz, no throttling and temps are normal. RAM usage shows around 400MB free always. Totally normal for Android as I said it fills the RAM then kills apps as needed.
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk
---------- Post added at 12:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:33 AM ----------
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure about that?
Whenever I have less than 200MB RAM left, my homescreen redraws, opening/closing apps and browsing through the menus is slow.
Whenever I have more than 500MB left my phone is as snappy as the nexus 5.
Sent from my Xperia Z1

Jiyeon90 said:
Are you sure about that?
Whenever I have less than 200MB RAM left, my homescreen redraws, opening/closing apps and browsing through the menus is slow.
Whenever I have more than 500MB left my phone is as snappy as the nexus 5.
Sent from my Xperia Z1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android fills RAM up as you open apps up and leaves the apps in the RAM so you can multitask. As soon as it needs more RAM for other apps it automatically kills the apps sitting in the RAM. Launchers have a big RAM footprint, you're better using a lightweight launcher such as Nova and using the "aggressive" setting which means it never gets killed and sits in the RAM permanently. If you look at your RAM usage whether you have 2gb or 3gb it will always be mostly full as that's how the kernel us handling its usage, its filling it up for multitasking. The article in the op states that the RAM is always mostly full, yes that's good as that's what its supposed to be doing.
http://m.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk

Bukary said:
Problem: POOR BENCHMARKS' RESULTS, LAGS
Some reasons:
2. CPU management is set to deliberately lower clock rate and restrict maximum clock rate to one core only in most of the cases. And when all four cores are in use, CPU management does not allow them to work at maximum rate at all. It has some serious impact on UI operations as well and makes better chpset in G3 perform worse than Snapdragon 800 in G2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is because LG is trying to run a QHD display on the Snapdragon 801 chipset. The Snapdragon 805 is required to run a QHD to achieve the same performance level as the Snapdragon 800 running on a 1080p display
You can read about it here - http://www.anandtech.com/show/8035/qualcomm-snapdragon-805-performance-preview/3
Manhattan continues to be a very stressful test but the onscreen results are pretty interesting. Adreno 420 can drive a 2560 x 1440 display at the same frame rate that Adreno 330 could drive a 1080p display.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Bukary said:
4. There's no trimming in system's internal memory. That's one of the most important causes of "lags".
(
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Click to collapse
No TRIM? Are you sure? Don't all devices with Android 4.3 and above have TRIM automatically enabled?

dhkx said:
No TRIM? Are you sure? Don't all devices with Android 4.3 and above have TRIM automatically enabled?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah. Android has that built in now.
All these reviews are annoying. The device just came out. A lot of this can be fixed via an update.

Lostatsea23 said:
Yeah. Android has that built in now.
All these reviews are annoying. The device just came out. A lot of this can be fixed via an update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Trim is built in, yeah. The G3 does have issues and the S801is at its limit pushing the QHD display but with ROM and kernel optimization there's still more performance in the phone.
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk

Jiyeon90 said:
Are you sure about that?
Whenever I have less than 200MB RAM left, my homescreen redraws, opening/closing apps and browsing through the menus is slow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is exactly what the reviewers says: when there was only 174 MB of free RAM the phone started to redraw homescreen and freeze. There was no way to get rid of this. Uninstalling apps and closing them did not help. One could only restart the device. The journalist claims that this software issue can be fixed with an update (if LG decides to release one).
dhkx said:
No TRIM? Are you sure? Don't all devices with Android 4.3 and above have TRIM automatically enabled?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, the reviewer also says that trimming at fixed moments (or while deleting files) is standard for Android, YET the test revealed that in system's memory of G3 there is no trimming. He is also surprised and says that the quality of this emmory (eMMC) is good, but no trim makes it laggy. (I hope I understood it correctly).
Lostatsea23 said:
All these reviews are annoying. The device just came out. A lot of this can be fixed via an update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also hope that it will be fixed. But so far there is no serious update. And it's been 5 (6?) weeks since Korean release. And, as far as I know, no other flagship device had such a serious problems. Can you imagine Z2 or S5 perform worse than Z1 or S4? And yet G3 with 801 (in some tests) performs worse than G2 with 800.

Bukary said:
YET the test revealed that in system's memory of G3 there is no trimming. He is also surprised and says that the quality of this emmory (eMMC) is good, but no trim makes it laggy. (I hope I understood it right).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What test? Would you care to link any of these sources

Enddo said:
What test? Would you care to link any of these sources
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Click to collapse
I linked this review in my first post in this thread.
I am no technical guy, so I can't check if the reviwer is correct, but I tried to translate everything accurately. I want to buy G3, so I am hoping that all these problems can and will be fixed by LG soon.

Jiyeon90 said:
Are you sure about that?
Whenever I have less than 200MB RAM left, my homescreen redraws, opening/closing apps and browsing through the menus is slow.
Whenever I have more than 500MB left my phone is as snappy as the nexus 5.
Sent from my Xperia Z1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Xposed App Settings to set your Launcher as 'Resident'. Got rid of this issue for me.

The CPU almost always staying at 300mhz is the largest issue I have with the phone - its not a huge issue, more of an annoyance. I am guessing its been done to maximise battery life and reduce heat.
I don't think this is due to thermal throttling, but if I am wrong please correct me - has anyone had success with turning the throttling off?

It looks like as an author of this article (I completely did not expect to find this link here ) I need to clarify few things.
Batfink33 said:
I've only read a little of it but one of the things that caught my eye is that they are complaining about having only small amount of free RAM. Another poster on here asked about this, RAM is used differently in Android as it is in Windows for example. Free RAM in Android is bad not to mention that the kernel is using around 25% of RAM as ZRAM which I believe is standard in 4.4 kernels! So the article in that point is wrong. I've also looked at the CPU usage on my phone and measured it against temperature. During normal use the temp is around 45-60degC and the CPU is not throttling its sitting at it max 2.5Ghz. I posted a screen shot of this on another thread. They may have a pre production model with early OS version.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm well aware that "RAM not in use is wasted RAM" and that Android keeps a lot of things in memory to make everything faster, not slower. When my G3 has ~300-400 MB of free memory, everything works fine, but after some time it fills up and there is no room form launcher, more than 1 tab in Chrome and so on. It clearly is some problem with memory management and as an long-time Nexus user I'd rather say it's a bug, not a feature
Enddo said:
What test? Would you care to link any of these sources
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Claim that every smartphone with Android 4.3 or newer allways has TRIM because it is "built-in" is not entirely true. There are different ways of supporting TRIM. Most common one is ext4 filesystem with discard flag active (ext4 without discard does not TRIM automatically), which was used even before ANdroid 4.3. Motorola has F2FS filesystem, which is optimized for NAND storage and has garbage collector allways active. There is also "Nexus way" TRIM with garbage collection demon running in background. In G3 data partition is ext4 without discard flag and in system logs there are no signs of any TRIM commands running in background, so AFAIK there is no TRIM support in G3 at the moment, or I have strange preproduction sample. The best way of checking that would be rooting G3 and running fstrim() manualy, but i can't do that with my review sample.
Enddo said:
This is because LG is trying to run a QHD display on the Snapdragon 801 chipset. The Snapdragon 805 is required to run a QHD to achieve the same performance level as the Snapdragon 800 running on a 1080p display
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not the whole storry. Yes, highier ressolution is part of it, but it looks like G3 has very small thermal headroom and during longer heavy GPU load it's clocks get cut by ~40%. (unfortunately i can't paste links in my posts yet). During 30 minutes long GFXBench loop, after ~15 minutes GPU throtling kicks in and this Snapdragon 801 gets much slower, than Snapdragon. Yes, allmost every new smartphone with S800/S801 throttles in such situations, but G3's case is most extreme one I've ever seen.
Lostatsea23 said:
All these reviews are annoying. The device just came out. A lot of this can be fixed via an update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And selling beta hardware with beta software for full price isn't annoying?
I'll try to figure out with Polish LG representatives if these problems are typical only for this specific sample, or it's something more common. At the moment my opinion is that G3 is very cool phone if your typical usage scenarios do not hit the "heat wall", but if they do this phone gets pretty annoying (backlight dimming, heavy GPU throttling and I've even managed to overheat camera so it stopped recording 4K video after 2 minutes 15 seconds).a
Unfortunately my english is not as good as I'd like it to be, but I hope I explained few things a bit.

bedlamite said:
I hope I explained few things a bit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you, bedlamite!
Could you tell us if any of these issues might be fixed with some software updates?

bedlamite said:
It looks like as an author of this article (I completely did not expect to find this link here ) I need to clarify few things.
I'm well aware that "RAM not in use is wasted RAM" and that Android keeps a lot of things in memory to make everything faster, not slower. When my G3 has ~300-400 MB of free memory, everything works fine, but after some time it fills up and there is no room form launcher, more than 1 tab in Chrome and so on. It clearly is some problem with memory management and as an long-time Nexus user I'd rather say it's a bug, not a feature
Claim that every smartphone with Android 4.3 or newer allways has TRIM because it is "built-in" is not entirely true. There are different ways of supporting TRIM. Most common one is ext4 filesystem with discard flag active (ext4 without discard does not TRIM automatically), which was used even before ANdroid 4.3. Motorola has F2FS filesystem, which is optimized for NAND storage and has garbage collector allways active. There is also "Nexus way" TRIM with garbage collection demon running in background. In G3 data partition is ext4 without discard flag and in system logs there are no signs of any TRIM commands running in background, so AFAIK there is no TRIM support in G3 at the moment, or I have strange preproduction sample. The best way of checking that would be rooting G3 and running fstrim() manualy, but i can't do that with my review sample.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the clarification.
Everytime I open my multitasking I have a look at my RAM bar and its always between 350-400mb so I don't think I have the problem you're having.
I have rooted and FSTRIM runs fine on my G3...
I do agree with you though, there is issues.
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk

Guys, the 801 is more than capable of handling QHD, the problem is heating, when the phone gets hot there's aggressive cpu throttling by LG software. The 805 is more powerful with less heat so that's why it more suitable for QHD devices. Same goes to the screen not so bright too much heat.

*OFFTOPIC*
Guys please put those high-res pictures in spoilers! They are totally overloading this thread.
Spoiler
( /SPOILER]
Thank you.

No TRIMM??
Is this serious?
I've always feared that most manufacturers don't include TRIMM or take it away from their phones because that way the phone slows down and forces the consumers to upgrade to a newer one.

Sensamic said:
No TRIMM??
Is this serious?
I've always feared that most manufacturers don't include TRIMM or take it away from their phones because that way the phone slows down and forces the consumers to upgrade to a newer one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The FSTRIM app works fine, I posted this above?
Sent From My LG G3 Using Tapatalk

RAM usage

Hi guys,
I am curious about your experience with RAM usage on your S6E+
If I'm not doing anything (just checking RAM usage with my SmartManager) it says: 60%
- 2.2GB System & Apps are using
To me it seems alot, since it leaves me "only" with 1,4GB of RAM left.
So I would like to see your experience and I could judge better.
best,
Dpool

I just dont understand why people complain about "Ram" usage on an Android, free Ram doesn't mean "fast" mobile.

DemonSoul said:
I just dont understand why people complain about "Ram" usage on an Android, free Ram doesn't mean "fast" mobile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, Free RAM does not mean that. But it means that I only have little Free RAM left, without doing anything. I'm worried about multitasking, since it supports split screen:
- 1 half of screen I'd play a game
- 1 half of screen I'd watch a YouTube video / Stream about the game
Well not all Android games support split screen, but just an example of where I can see heavy RAM needs.
Also, I did not complain, I am just wondering if it is normal to have 60% of RAM occupied by System itself. So, DemonSoul, may you share yours to compare?
Best,
Dpool

Dpool 8) said:
Hi guys,
I am curious about your experience with RAM usage on your S6E+
If I'm not doing anything (just checking RAM usage with my SmartManager) it says: 60%
- 2.2GB System & Apps are using
To me it seems alot, since it leaves me "only" with 1,4GB of RAM left.
So I would like to see your experience and I could judge better.
best,
Dpool
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mate,
Samsung system apps and other Google services are using a good amount of RAM. You could use App disable pro and disable some of the unwanted system apps to free up some more RAM. Samsung does have a feature to kill a process in every 10 mintues. So that app you don't want running in background you can use that feature.

Killing apps will decrease your battery life and hurt performance because Android will just load them back up. It costs cycles to constantly load & kill apps. Apps don't burden the processor when resident in memory, hence don't expend battery or reduce performance.
Keeping memory free on a Windows PC was important decades ago when we had <1GB, and when memory got full, programs were shuffled off to the swap file on the hard disk. None of this applies to Android. No phone with >2GB of RAM has memory problems under normal circumstances.