Database Users

[Q] 340mb ram instead of 512mb?

My tw taskmanager shows only 340mb ram instead of 512mb, after some research I found that the rest of the ram is used for ramdisk,is that true?
If so,is there a way to use all of 512mb for ram?And does this make Epic inferior to Vibrant,Captivate and Fascinate or better?

All Galaxy S phones have 512 MBs of RAM. And I do believe all are the same. At least the i9000 and the Epic are.

The phone has a physical 512MB of RAM, but I don't believe that the stock kernel currently supports more than 340MB.

thephawx said:
All Galaxy S phones have 512 MBs of RAM. And I do believe all are the same. At least the i9000 and the Epic are.
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Check your built in taskmanager(by holding home button),it only shows 324mb total ram,so no they not all the same.Yes we do have 512mb but only 324mb(give or take few mb) is used for actual ram,the rest is used as ramdisk(cache).Vibrant and Captivate uses whole 512mb as ram and internal rom(hd) for cache,im not sure about original Galaxy or Fascinate.
Believe me extra ram not being available has huge impact on performance,i owned MT3gs with 512mb ram and 600mhz cpu and it felt just as fast as my Epic if not faster even with Sense.
This could explain big lag im getting with 4-5 apps open,i could have 10 apps open on Mytouch slide with no lag.

lviv73 said:
Check your built in taskmanager(by holding home button),it only shows 324mb total ram,so no they not all the same.Yes we do have 512mb but only 324mb(give or take few mb) is used for actual ram,the rest is used as ramdisk(cache).Vibrant and Captivate uses whole 512mb as ram and internal rom(hd) for cache,im not sure about original Galaxy or Fascinate.
Believe me extra ram not being available has huge impact on performance,i owned MT3gs with 512mb ram and 600mhz cpu and it felt just as fast as my Epic if not faster even with Sense.
This could explain big lag im getting with 4-5 apps open,i could have 10 apps open on Mytouch slide with no lag.
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There is a reason why. There is no dalvik cache push to sd for our devices yet. If we could get an ext2 or ext3 or ext 4 for our sd cards and move the cache there, it would be a whole new ball game. But it's no availible for us yet

Maybe to balance the phones out because epic has 2 cameras and keyboard
Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

I wonder if other models have same ram or they have full 512mb of usable ram without ramdisk,and does that makes epic faster or slower?
I know my MT3gs was way faster with stock sense 600mhz cpu and 512 ram(without sd cache),sounds like this phone needs that extra 128+ram because extra ram makes more difference than faster cpu,324mb ram I dont think is sufficient for 2.1 to run smoothly.Hope someone comes up with something so we can use whole 512mb as ram and internal rom or sd for cache.

The reason why we have only 320 showing is because samsung moved the cache there to prevent the lag some people here talkming about the galaxy s having.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

EPIC FAIL ...325 for me :-(
2012 the Evolution of Human Consciousness

supposedly the GPU uses 128mb of the ram

All 5 galaxy s phones have 512mb but the epic and fascinate are limited to the 300 and something because our phones are the only ones that don't have a massive amount of internal sd like the others. We ours uses the more typical smaller amount of rom and the missing ram is used to stop touchwiz from lagging! Why do manufacturers and carriers keep ****ing up android!? Love this device but I can customize it myself just fine without the extra tw layer eating my resources and slowing my upgrade releases!
Sent from my Epic 4G using xda app

We have 512mb rom which can be used for cache,i have all the apps I need installed in /system/app folder and still have 400mb free,how much should be dedicated to android swap 128,256?So there is plenty of room and for those people that have about 100 apps on they phone they need to wait for a2sd.
Still no one has answered if its possible to use whole 512mb for ram,this phone really neads it,most of the time I have 3-4 apps open and about 80mb ram free-thats not good.Epic has fastets rom out of any model,now if we could use it for cache and a2sd for apps,plus whole 512mb as ram,than this thing would fly.128 for swap is a waste,plus I think that this 128mb actualy takes away from GPU's vram.

I agree that we need more RAM. There has to be a way to edit the kernel and get more out of our hardware.

why does the vibrant not recognize all the ram even on 2.2

Guys, how can I get my samsung vibrant to recognize all the 512mb of ram. I thought froyo has all the software and kernels and stuff to recognize the full 512mb of my phone not just 308mb. Do I need to flash a new kernel or something. I have the nero v3 rom on my phone, with voodoo enabled. So how do we fix this?

308 MB you phone is showing you is the correct amount, your phone does have 512 MB of RAM total. However, part of that is used by the phone and android system to supply your phone's graphics card and other functions such as a RAM disk if I remembered correctly. In addition, You don't want your phone to run out of memory because you are running a game and missed that all important call right? well part of the RAM is reserved to keep the "phone" portion of the Android working.
It is a common misconception that Froyo will "unlock" this hidden RAM, but in reality we are already using all the RAM that came with the phone. The reason some HTC phone shows 512 MB of RAM is either because the phone is reading the "TotaL" amount of RAM or in the case of G2 the phone actually came with more than 512 MB of ram but advertised as 512 MB (the extra RAM is used in the same way as the Vibrant, GPU/Ram disk/Android, etc).

What about the iphone, my cousin always gets 300t mb of free memory on his iphone 4. Android can't be that much of a ram hog. By the way doesn't the power vr gpu have dedicated ram for it self, I man come on, its a high end phone. Samsung is really messing up on there phones.

My question is *why* do you need more free RAM? Are you really running out, ever? Don't think of it like a PC where you need free RAM as overhead when apps start utilizing more and more. Android will free up more RAM as necessary by killing apps that are preloaded in the background. I've never run into a situation where I've run out of memory, couldn't even tell you what happens when you do. I don't use task-killers, run a ton of widgets, and I've never seen it dip below 60-70mb free.

Kubernetes said:
My question is *why* do you need more free RAM? Are you really running out, ever? Don't think of it like a PC where you need free RAM as overhead when apps start utilizing more and more. Android will free up more RAM as necessary by killing apps that are preloaded in the background. I've never run into a situation where I've run out of memory, couldn't even tell you what happens when you do. I don't use task-killers, run a ton of widgets, and I've never seen it dip below 60-70mb free.[/QUOTE
Yes I do run out of ram. Every time I watch a flash video and while leaving no heavy ram using apps to be multitasked, after I finish my vigo and go back to my other apps I finder them killed. It gets on my nerves. I expected more out of 512mb. I also spent too much money for my phone for it to perform under shar what it's specified.
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I run autokiller and always have 150ish.free. even if I didn't run it I would never run out id ram even when I had my g1
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

So much for multitasking, right?
Phone has 384 app accessible ram. Typically runs with ~100ish free after a fresh boot with a stock ROM. The browser can take ~30mb, so that doesn't leave much to multitasking with. When ur phone starts auto killing performance decreases. They should have h put the aeverised ram in the phone, instead of playing the semantics game. Even Verizon updated their fascinate specs to change that to 384.
I'll make sure to check this before I buy my next phone in a couple weeks tho (soooo excited!!!).
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

N8ter said:
So much for multitasking, right?
Phone has 384 apparently accessible ram. Even Verizon updated their fascinate specs to change that.
Galaxy tab uses the same social and its alwaysvshowing 400+ MB ram on everyone I checked.
I'll make sure to check this before I buy my next phone in a couple weeks tho (soooo excited!!!).
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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This means that this is a software issue, not hardware because the tab has the same processor found in the vibrant. 400t is allot better than just 300, not only but the tab also requires more resources with it's 720p screen.

helikido said:
This means that this is a software issue, not hardware because the tab has the same processor found in the vibrant. 400t is allot better than just 300, not only but the tab also requires more resources with it's 720p screen.
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It's not a software issue.
And yes, 100MB RAM in a smartphone is a lot.
It's like getting a computer with 4GB RAM and ripping a 2GB RAM stick out out of it.
There's 128 MB RAM that isn't accessible to the system The OS itself probably uses abut 100+ MB RAM, and once you start installing applications/services that start eating up resources.
Some say the 128 is dedicated graphics ram (fast graphics RAM to allow the Hummingbird to achieve it's faster GPU performance). What a waste. I'll make sure my next phone isn't built like a game console.
They should have at least added another 64MB RAM the way HTC did in the HD2/HD7.
The phone has as much App RAM as a mid-range Android device (think HTC Aria). It's factorable, especially if you want to multitask. Running multiple applications on this phone, I basically have to manage my apps they way I did on Windows Mobile (i.e. open task manager to FC the browser, etc.) because you don't want to be playing a game or doing anything somewhat important when the phone starts trying to auto-close background tasks to recover RAM (and some services will simply restart themselves immediately).
Good phone, bad execution in the software, and they should not have advertised it as having 512 RAM, because to anyone that isn't an idiot Graphics RAM is not synonymous with Application RAM, and 128 less RAM is quite a big chunk to be missing.

...Graphics RAM is not synonymous with Application RAM, and 128 less RAM is quite a big chunk to be missing.
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Virtually every computer on the shelf at Wally-World and Best Buy do exactly this - the motherboard graphics chip uses system RAM to operate. Admittedly does not directly correlate to a phone, and they should make a disclosure, but there is ample precedent in the general marketplace.

I don't understand why some of you attribute a free RAM amount (or lack thereof) as a memory hog?
If RAM is used instead of slower disk I/O it translates to a better user experience, the OS is good on keeping the taps on the memory and clean the thrash by itself, but nothing can prevent poor coding and a single rouge app can become the memory hog independent of how much RAM your system has, it might eat all of it.

The real problem is that the phone has only about 150mb of free ram and that'd on boot up. If the phone does have some ram dedicated to the gpu from the system ram (known as shared ram) then why
Don't other android devices do that too, and the iphone has more free ram on boot up then what is user acsesable to me. I thought the gloriose sgx540 had it's own high end dedicated ram for graphics?

N8ter said:
So much for multitasking, right?
Phone has 384 app accessible ram. Typically runs with ~100ish free after a fresh boot with a stock ROM. The browser can take ~30mb, so that doesn't leave much to multitasking with. When ur phone starts auto killing performance decreases. They should have h put the aeverised ram in the phone, instead of playing the semantics game. Even Verizon updated their fascinate specs to change that to 384.
I'll make sure to check this before I buy my next phone in a couple weeks tho (soooo excited!!!).
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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If you hate your vibrant so much why do you spend so much time on the forums? Dont seem to contribute much so just go get a new phone and leave us alone.

ionic7 said:
If you hate your vibrant so much why do you spend so much time on the forums? Dont seem to contribute much so just go get a new phone and leave us alone.
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There is an ignore list feature on these forums

helikido said:
The real problem is that the phone has only about 150mb of free ram and that'd on boot up. If the phone does have some ram dedicated to the gpu from the system ram (known as shared ram) then why
Don't other android devices do that too, and the iphone has more free ram on boot up then what is user acsesable to me. I thought the gloriose sgx540 had it's own high end dedicated ram for graphics?
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And how is that a problem?
Do you have an immediate need for something that requires 150+ MB after the boot?
Here's an absolutely healthy linux system with 2GB of RAM:
Code:
free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2049868 1982076 67792 0 146988 840748
-/+ buffers/cache: 994340 1055528
Swap: 6008824 820 6008004
I will be worried if my swap is being used a lot, but using my memory on the system is good.

I agree with this. 512 advertised, 308 seen, 150 Available after a boot....my phone keeps running out of memory so often its sad. It can never run my music player and my gps software at the same time. When I switch between the 2 apps, it closes the other one and its really really sad to see. ****ty job samsung, ****ty job. I hope the galaxy s mod gets ported for the ram which opens 338mb. At least its something.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

}{Alienz}{ said:
It can never run my music player and my gps software at the same time.
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I just went on a 700+ mile car trip with the music player and gps navigation software running the entire time. No problem. Was even able to simultaneously play games while my wife was driving.

}{Alienz}{ said:
I agree with this. 512 advertised, 308 seen, 150 Available after a boot....my phone keeps running out of memory so often its sad. It can never run my music player and my gps software at the same time. When I switch between the 2 apps, it closes the other one and its really really sad to see. ****ty job samsung, ****ty job. I hope the galaxy s mod gets ported for the ram which opens 338mb. At least its something.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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you have a rouge app/apps running that memory hog your phone, getting 30MB of more available RAM will not save it. You need to find what is hogging your phone, I am yet to see a message that my phone is low on memory, sometimes I do a lot of browsing, txt, mytracks and playing music with Pandora or stock player at the same time and it never complained that it was low on memory to run these.

ionic7 said:
If you hate your vibrant so much why do you spend so much time on the forums? Dont seem to contribute much so just go get a new phone and leave us alone.
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Who said that I hate my phone.I'm only truong to find out shar mashes it not recognize all it's ram. In this era, ram is a huge factor to run apps and most importantly newer os updates like ginger bread and honey comb. Don't wanna run out of ram right when you boot up your phone don't you? And if the tab can recognize more ram than this then this means it does gave something to do with software. I guess we have to wait for samsung to release froyo, because im sure that they will gave all threw tweaks that will boost this phone very high, bedside from shar I've noticed, all the,roms out thete dont really boost this phone allot. How do I know,i gave nero v3 and that only boosted me to 1137 on quadrant from 2.1 and with voodo enabled I get 1500 max on quadrant. Oclf the same thing too. so all I'm saying is that it's definitely a software issue. Pretty sure android does not hog 400mbt. And no sgx has its own ram for sure.

I still don't get how you're running out of RAM. Right now I've got Winamp streaming through BT and have started streaming a Flash video. Also running are XDA and Maps. No hiccups.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

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:
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.

Poll: How much RAM do you use?

How much RAM are you using right now? I'm using 1.14GB/1.62GB
Seems like Sammy made a good call with 2GB of RAM. I didn't know an android device could make use of this much... and yet I frequently see myself using 1-1.3GB. In comparison, the 1GB models have a max of around 700MB available, which means I exceed this with my usage already, and I don't consider myself a "heavy" user. Even after clearing my RAM, it sits at around 600MB, again almost as much as most other phones have available. In the next year I can definitely see RAM usage increase to take full advantage of the 2GB, it almost does already.
Opinions? Am I wrong in thinking this is much more important than most people said it was going to be?

Well keep in mind the kernel is going to use more RAM if it has more to use just for cache purposes. So on a device with smaller RAM would be managing it differently.
I am currently only using 616MB with about 8 apps open.

punzada said:
Well keep in mind the kernel is going to use more RAM if it has more to use just for cache purposes. So on a device with smaller RAM would be managing it differently.
I am currently only using 616MB with about 8 apps open.
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Well said!
And I'm currently using .95GB. The 2 GB of ram is awesome. I love how much better everything runs when your app's / programs are cached and not closed. Have 16 GB in my pc for the same reason.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app

Note 2 JB VS S3 JB. My observation

-Overall, it's smooth but S3 is smooth too. No one can differentiate.
-The extra ripple effect when you release your hand while in the lockscreen is not present. This means that, that ripple effect that users have accustomed to in ICS will not be present in JB rom. Damn you Samsung!
-2GB of Ram equals extreme multitasking. No need to uninstall bloatwares.
-Smart rotation. a feature that can be easily enabled in S3 JB rom.
-Quick glance. while the phone's screen is turned off, user can put their hand in front of the top of the phone to summon notification for missed calls, and messages. I think this is useless.
-Multi Window. This is really a useful feature. Samfirmware tweeted that S3 will get it as well, but I'm not holding my breath. Samsung could say that S3 screen is not optimized for this feature or other ridiculous reason.
-There is no widget for "direct call, smart stay, voice cmd and S beam". this is really weird because S3 have it
So far, after trying Note 2 for a few minutes, I still love my S3. The reason is really simple, Note 2 is too large to be used as a phone. S3 is already pushing the limit, at least for me.

stfudude said:
-Overall, it's smooth but S3 is smooth too. No one can differentiate.
-The extra ripple effect when you release your hand while in the lockscreen is not present. This means that, that ripple effect that users have accustomed to in ICS will not be present in JB rom. Damn you Samsung!
-2GB of Ram equals extreme multitasking. No need to uninstall bloatwares.
-Smart rotation. a feature that can be easily enabled in S3 JB rom.
-Quick glance. while the phone's screen is turned off, user can put their hand in front of the top of the phone to summon notification for missed calls, and messages. I think this is useless.
-Multi Window. This is really a useful feature. Samfirmware tweeted that S3 will get it as well, but I'm not holding my breath. Samsung could say that S3 screen is not optimized for this feature or other ridiculous reason.
-There is no widget for "direct call, smart stay, voice cmd and S beam". this is really weird because S3 have it
So far, after trying Note 2 for a few minutes, I still love my S3. The reason is really simple, Note 2 is too large to be used as a phone. S3 is already pushing the limit, at least for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2Gb of ram is definitely equivalent to extreme multitasking. All those people who said "unused ram is wasted ram" despite my many attempts to explain how processors work, irrespective of the linux kernel, can't say anything about this now.
Anyway, multi-window is the only feature that I really want, but I doubt we'll get it.

stfudude said:
So far, after trying Note 2 for a few minutes, I still love my S3. The reason is really simple, Note 2 is too large to be used as a phone. S3 is already pushing the limit, at least for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which is why the I9305 is perfect in my opinion.

disclaimernotice said:
2Gb of ram is definitely equivalent to extreme multitasking. All those people who said "unused ram is wasted ram" despite my many attempts to explain how processors work, irrespective of the linux kernel, can't say anything about this now.
Anyway, multi-window is the only feature that I really want, but I doubt we'll get it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unused ram IS wasted ram.
Nobody said that more ram isn't better, but empty ram is useless to you.
Ram uses the same amount of power whether it is full or empty.
Having full ram means more programs loaded and ready to go, less clock cycles, more efficient system.
you could have 1TB of ram, but if there is only 600mb of stuff in it, its a waste.
So, unused ram is wasted ram.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

nodstuff said:
Unused ram IS wasted ram.
Nobody said that more ram isn't better, but empty ram is useless to you.
Ram uses the same amount of power whether it is full or empty.
Having full ram means more programs loaded and ready to go, less clock cycles, more efficient system.
you could have 1TB of ram, but if there is only 600mb of stuff in it, its a waste.
So, unused ram is wasted ram.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Flipside of that is that most of us never argued that unused ram is wasted ram as to power cosumption, but that it should be our ram to waste and that i9300 is seriously lacking in multitasking department when stock, because of lack of free ram not even rivaling sgs2.
Or how easy it is to load slim rom, posting screenshots of freshly reset firmware without third party apps, or screen of ram usage before all the services are loaded, or screen of freshly cleared ram, none of which are representative of real world usage.
As I recall the original thread, that mantra has always been spoken in a way strongly hinting like we got plenty and don't need more, now just adding "we never said more is not better".
Waiting for JKay mod on GT-I9300

Idan73 said:
Flipside of that is that most of us never argued that unused ram is wasted ram as to power cosumption, but that it should be our ram to waste and that i9300 is seriously lacking in multitasking department when stock, because of lack of free ram not even rivaling sgs2.
As I recall the original thread, that mantra has always been spoken in a way strongly hinting like we got plenty and don't need more, now just adding "we never said more is not better".
Waiting for JKay mod on GT-I9300
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Click to collapse
Nobody ever said less ram is better than more, at least not that I know of.
If they did they were talking sh*t.
I'm speaking from a factual point of view, not a butthurt, trying to defend my purchase point of view.
I would love if the i9300 got 2gb of ram.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

btemtd said:
Which is why the I9305 is perfect in my opinion.
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Click to collapse
If only I9305 get as much support as I9300..

I am not targeting specifically you, as I know from your posts you're pretty even handed and factual person.
Referring to the whole discussion at the time of release of the phone when we found out nam versions are coming with 2gb of ram.
Waiting for JKay mod on GT-I9300
---------- Post added at 02:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:09 PM ----------
stfudude said:
If only I9305 get as much support as I9300..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never gonna happen.
Waiting for JKay mod on GT-I9300

Idan73 said:
I am not targeting specifically you, as I know from your posts you're pretty even handed and factual person.
Referring to the whole discussion at the time of release of the phone when we found out nam versions are coming with 2gb of ram.
Waiting for JKay mod on GT-I9300
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Click to collapse
Ya we got a raw deal when it came to ram.
But that's touchwizs fault, my nexus 7 has 'only' 1gb of ram and it multitasks like a boss.
Samsung screwed the pooch when they put tw on a phone with 1gb of ram.
The S3 isn't the phone it should have been, it should have had an exynos 5 CPU and 2gb of ram.
From now on I won't buy anything Samsung because vanilla android just runs so much better than skinned versions and it isn't ugly anymore.
Plus the 4.1.1 update hasn't dropped for everyone yet and my gnex and N7 are on 4.1.2 for over a week.
With 4.2 probably being announced on the 29th I think the S3 won't ever see it.
[/tangent]
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

totally agree
me yesterday go play note 2 (officially release in my country)
everything is same, play until boring

nodstuff said:
Unused ram IS wasted ram.
Nobody said that more ram isn't better, but empty ram is useless to you.
Ram uses the same amount of power whether it is full or empty.
Having full ram means more programs loaded and ready to go, less clock cycles, more efficient system.
you could have 1TB of ram, but if there is only 600mb of stuff in it, its a waste.
So, unused ram is wasted ram.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not exactly. If you have less than 100mb of free ram, when you start an app, the processor has to close several background processes in order for the app to start and work properly. This causes a momentary lag. Similarly, if you minimise an graphics intensive game to read your messages, the game is closed to obtain more ram.

disclaimernotice said:
Not exactly. If you have less than 100mb of free ram, when you start an app, the processor has to close several background processes in order for the app to start and work properly. This causes a momentary lag. Similarly, if you minimise an graphics intensive game to read your messages, the game is closed to obtain more ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That applies if you have too little ram, and I agree too little ram is not good.
My point is if you have ram and it isn't being used then it is wasted ram.
Ram is supposed to be utilised.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

stfudude said:
If only I9305 get as much support as I9300..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well Even with the Mods and tweaks available right now, It is more smooth and fluid then my BEST setup I had with the I9300. So I think about it like this. Everyone is trying to find the rom which makes there phone run beautifully. Well I already have the setup . And anything that comes now is going to be a bonus. It really has only been a few weeks since a few of the devs got there hands on the devices, and I think we are moving quite nicely. Soon we will have enough dev support to make us all happy. Soon as someone starts porting roms or Creating thats when the fun really begins. We already have 3 Roms which are Basic but its still a start And I can wait as the way my phone feels right now Is absolute butterness < if thats even a word

Note2 jb no lag but think maybe due to 2gm ram

nodstuff said:
That applies if you have too little ram, and I agree too little ram is not good.
My point is if you have ram and it isn't being used then it is wasted ram.
Ram is supposed to be utilised.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have free ram then it will be reserved for more apps to be loaded which means more rams you have then more apps can be run smoothly so I wouldn't say its wasted ram. More rams you have then More apps can be loaded and stay on background and process smoothly by users input.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

In my opinion more ram is more good for our devices because yes ram does run the applications and removes a lot of lag.....I have i9300 but I am very angry that why Samsung just releases their s3 new version and broke the trust of old s3 users.....
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

mustang2012 said:
If you have free ram then it will be reserved for more apps to be loaded which means more rams you have then more apps can be run smoothly so I wouldn't say its wasted ram. More rams you have then More apps can be loaded and stay on background and process smoothly by users input.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you not read what I said?
You are basically saying what I said, more ram is better.
Un-utilised ram, is wasted.
What is so hard to understand about this concept.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

nodstuff said:
Can you not read what I said?
You are basically saying what I said, more ram is better.
Un-utilised ram, is wasted.
What is so hard to understand about this concept.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I read it already but if there is more ram the more apps u can open at a single time example when ever u open ur dailer first time it takes 3 seconds to open which feels so much annoying at some times but if u have More ram then the dailer would be covered by extra ram until u use a lot of apps together...
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

nodstuff said:
Unused ram IS wasted ram.
Nobody said that more ram isn't better, but empty ram is useless to you.
Ram uses the same amount of power whether it is full or empty.
Having full ram means more programs loaded and ready to go, less clock cycles, more efficient system.
you could have 1TB of ram, but if there is only 600mb of stuff in it, its a waste.
So, unused ram is wasted ram.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my experience, keeping the ram free is better. Your phone/tablet is smoother and faster. And there is a logical explanation for that. The OS is loading in background data from applications. If you use one of those applications, yes, it will launch faster. But if not, room has to be made, so in fact you have to wait more then.
You don't save anything by letting the apps load to full ram. In fact, you consume more resources like this, because you can have loaded apps that you don't really need/use any time soon.
It's just a gimmick. Let's load some apps, when the phone is idle, based on what ever criteria so when the user is actually launching that app, he will have the impression that the phone is faster. But your are depending on the accuracy of that criteria.
Limiting the number of background processes works wonders for me. Maybe not so much for my S3, but for other lesser devices it's very obvious.

rsndetre said:
In my experience, keeping the ram free is better. Your phone/tablet is smoother and faster. And there is a logical explanation for that. The OS is loading in background data from applications. If you use one of those applications, yes, it will launch faster. But if not, room has to be made, so in fact you have to wait more then.
You don't save anything by letting the apps load to full ram. In fact, you consume more resources like this, because you can have loaded apps that you don't really need/use any time soon.
It's just a gimmick. Let's load some apps, when the phone is idle, based on what ever criteria so when the user is actually launching that app, he will have the impression that the phone is faster. But your are depending on the accuracy of that criteria.
Limiting the number of background processes works wonders for me. Maybe not so much for my S3, but for other lesser devices it's very obvious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nonsense.
Ask anybody that knows anything about computer systems and they will tell you it is better to have a program in ram waiting to be used.
It DOES load faster, it is the basis of all os's today.
It gives the impression that it loads faster because it does load faster.
No you don't consume more resources like that, by keeping apps open in ram you cut down on clock cycles associated with opening that app every time you want to use it, yes sometimes apps are dumped out of ram but that is because the system needs more ram for a bigger app and bumps out whatever it seems necessary because of oom settings.
Limiting background processes beyond a certain point means you are losing efficiency, battery and performance.
Fact.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium