Database Users

[Q] Lenovo TPT HDD and RAM memory lower than in spec

Hi,
I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad tabled with memory specifications of 1GB RAM and 16GB HDD. All nice, until I go in Settings and check at settings/applications/storage use/running and all which show a disappointing values of total memory ~550MB RAM (almost half...) and ~12GB (almost 25% less...).
For HDD, I can not accept that the rest of 4GB are hidden because are used by Android 3.1 or used by file system format. Even so, Lenovo should be honest and declare total memory against available memory even is "eaten" by various reasons.
For RAM, I can not find any explanation why I see only half.
Q1-Can somebody explain me if tablet is faulty or has a kind of manufacturing issue ?
Q2-Can somebody to check if his tablet has the same memory discrepancies versus manufacturer specifications ?
Thanks!

All tablet's have this "cheaty" way of listing specs. But if you buy a laptop and it says 200gb. You can be pretty sure that windows 7 or what ever is installed is taking up space. The same applies to RAM. While the system may come with 4gb ram, the system has "eaten" som of it.
So, I don't really see the complaint here?

siggehandf said:
All tablet's have this "cheaty" way of listing specs. But if you buy a laptop and it says 200gb. You can be pretty sure that windows 7 or what ever is installed is taking up space. The same applies to RAM. While the system may come with 4gb ram, the system has "eaten" som of it.
So, I don't really see the complaint here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
The specs will never match the actual available memory since there is always space allocated to system whether it be ram or hdd
Sent from my GALAXY NEXUS using Tapatalk

sorinutzu said:
For RAM, I can not find any explanation why I see only half.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's likely that the other half is being reserved as video memory.

Hi,
Thanks for reply. I've done a check on other tablets and they show the same lower memory than spec, except Asus 501 I think with ICS 4.
However, I think it should be specified total phisical memory and available memory.

sorinutzu said:
Hi,
Thanks for reply. I've done a check on other tablets and they show the same lower memory than spec, except Asus 501 I think with ICS 4.
However, I think it should be specified total phisical memory and available memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Total available ram will be different and much less than the specs on any Android or mobile device. The system uses memory to load OS and for graphics.
Also the memory space will be less formatted and with all the system apps.
Just like a formatted hard drive or ssd is less than spec.
I do not know why people still complain about these things it is pretty ignorant. Have you ever owned a computer, tablet or cell phone before?
Sent from my HTC Rezound

Weird performance and sd card speed

I´m wondering how fast the S3 was after using S2 for long time.
S2 had reading sd card speeds of 100 mb/s.
With my S3 it goes between 35 and 45 mb/s. That´s weird...
Strangely enough, benchmarking my S3 and it doesn´t matter wich rom or kernel I use I get always the same speed.
For the rom generaly and for the sd card speed.
In antutu I only get between 12000 and 12300 (allways 1.4GHZ), no matter if I use stock roms/ stock kernels syah, speed mod or others.
In CM10 also the same.
I´ve large experience in benchmarking and android tunning with other devices, and with some tweaks here and there I was able allways to get different values with other phones.
Is somehow the S3 locked in some way?

Card speed won't vary with firmware. No matter what firmware you put in the phone, flash memory and SD card I/O is extremely slow compared to actual RAM. It is a hardware limitation, not a software limitation.
Having a Class 10 SD card helps a bit (as opposed to a Class 4).
Now to the benchmark issue:
None of the current benchmark tools are adequate to the S III. They are meant for single-core devices, and a quad-core CPU is an entirely different game.
Besides, no matter how much you overclock the phone and still keep it within a safe margin, there are other aspects that limit the result and which you cannot change. I/O is one of them. The inability of the benchmark tool to work with threads and paralel execution is another.
So, my advise is: forget about benchmarks: they are IMO utterly useless.

I mean the internal sd card not the external. I find it compared with the s2 very slow.

testadeferro said:
I mean the internal sd card not the external. I find it compared with the s2 very slow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine read close to 100mb/sec.

Very strange I never came up 50...
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

The s3 has dire i/o speed.
I have been doing tests all night to find out why my s2 is so much faster than the s3 and right now I See it as a combination of 2 things.
the s3 has much higher ram demands due to the higher resolution (and also the s3 tw roms are more bloated than s2 tw roms). (meaning less free ram)
secondly the i/o performance is worse on rom memory. On the s2 it has a internal sdcard for storage and dedicated rom memory, the s3 only has the internal sdcard which is also used for its rom. This dedicated rom memory on the s2 is way faster than the internal sdcard on the s3.
I also have a s3 mini here now which is also snappier than the s3. Again it uses way less ram than the s3 so more free ram for caching etc. but not as low ram usage as the s2. The s3 uses its intenral sdcard for rom like the s3 (so shares the same cost cutting as the s3) so suffers from the same low io speed.
free ram on tw fresh install.
s2 - 480meg
s3 mini - 412meg
s3 - 210 meg (yes ouch)
time to load widgets tab on tw launcher first time uncached.
s2 - 0.3 seconds
s3 mini - 1.8 seconds
s3 - 2.4 seconds
apps stay cached much longer on the s3 mini over the s3 which hides the poro i/o performance better.
I am curious if they fixed the i/o issue on the s4. But its easy to see why the s3 lte and s4 got given 2 gig of ram now.
This makes a mockery of those reviews that called the s3 mini underpowered, since the s3 mini has a smaller screen to power than the s3 as well as a smaller less bloated rom, meaning the s3 is more underpowered than the s3 mini. on aosp based roms the s3 is faster than the mini but the s2 remains faster than both.

chrcol said:
On the s2 it has a internal sdcard for storage and dedicated rom memory, the s3 only has the internal sdcard which is also used for its rom. This dedicated rom memory on the s2 is way faster than the internal sdcard on the s3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That'd be wrong. They all have an Internal Nand chip as the phones memory. No dedicated memory and then an actual SD card as the internal. Its all the same. Its all one chip. And the internal card usually has better performance than the external one.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

b-eock said:
That'd be wrong. They all have an Internal Nand chip as the phones memory. No dedicated memory and then an actual SD card as the internal. Its all the same. Its all one chip. And the internal card usually has better performance than the external one.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont know exactly how it works but I have s2 s3 and s4 and s2 is faster on ram (only on read/write) strange anywau. Makes sense what the other user sayed.
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

chrcol said:
...
the s3 has much higher ram demands due to the higher resolution (and also the s3 tw roms are more bloated than s2 tw roms). (meaning less free ram)
secondly the i/o performance is worse on rom memory. On the s2 it has a internal sdcard for storage and dedicated rom memory, the s3 only has the internal sdcard which is also used for its rom. This dedicated rom memory on the s2 is way faster than the internal sdcard on the s3.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe you are seriously confusing things here - the internal nand is very likely the same.
That being said the amount of free RAM is very important. Also on S2 you might see the external microSD (with certain ROMs) as UMS instead of MTP (which is the normal one in S3 - but there is UMS with rooted RONMs) - Universal Mass Storage can be a huge lot faster since it is "exclusive in block-device mode", while MTP is shared in a file-mode style.

Comparing s2 with s4 sd card test in antutu the diference is not great 345 s4 250 s2. Maybe processor is kicking things and memory is same?
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

Well RAM is not the same as the Internal Memory. RAM is RAM. And it's dedicated on every phone.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

xclub_101 said:
I believe you are seriously confusing things here - the internal nand is very likely the same.
That being said the amount of free RAM is very important. Also on S2 you might see the external microSD (with certain ROMs) as UMS instead of MTP (which is the normal one in S3 - but there is UMS with rooted RONMs) - Universal Mass Storage can be a huge lot faster since it is "exclusive in block-device mode", while MTP is shared in a file-mode style.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you are right in the sense I cant be sure that the onboard storage used for s2's rom is faster than the s3, it could be due to the software implementation or other reason.
But certianly most of the i/o related functions on the s2 are a lot faster than my s3. The s3 only is on par (or faster) when it hasnt got i/o to do such as loading a cached app or not having to write anything.
Im still working on the performance gulf as the gap is huge. Surely others would have noticed by now if it was such a big gap? hence I am still trying to treat it as some kind of config/kernel/rom issue.
on benchmark apps my s3 beats the s2 shame its not the same in real world performance. My s3 is also beating other s3 scores I have seen submitted.
---------- Post added at 08:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:16 PM ----------
b-eock said:
That'd be wrong. They all have an Internal Nand chip as the phones memory. No dedicated memory and then an actual SD card as the internal. Its all the same. Its all one chip. And the internal card usually has better performance than the external one.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
on my s3 the internall sdcard has space partitioned of for the rom as you said,.
not the case on my s2. or if it is the case on the s2 then the sdcard is bigger than 16gig.

chrcol said:
you are right in the sense I cant be sure that the onboard storage used for s2's rom is faster than the s3, it could be due to the software implementation or other reason.
But certianly most of the i/o related functions on the s2 are a lot faster than my s3. The s3 only is on par (or faster) when it hasnt got i/o to do such as loading a cached app or not having to write anything.
Im still working on the performance gulf as the gap is huge. Surely others would have noticed by now if it was such a big gap? hence I am still trying to treat it as some kind of config/kernel/rom issue.
on benchmark apps my s3 beats the s2 shame its not the same in real world performance. My s3 is also beating other s3 scores I have seen submitted.
---------- Post added at 08:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:16 PM ----------
on my s3 the internall sdcard has space partitioned of for the rom as you said,.
not the case on my s2. or if it is the case on the s2 then the sdcard is bigger than 16gig.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with you. S2 and s3 roms are more or less same size. And after install you get a lot more space in sd card. S4 as same prob. After rom install you have only 9 gis free!!!
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

Its a 16 GB Nand chip. Partitioned for the ROM size. that's why you have the different sized space available to the user. As the ROM gets bigger, less and less space is available to the user.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

b-eock said:
Its a 16 GB Nand chip. Partitioned for the ROM size. that's why you have the different sized space available to the user. As the ROM gets bigger, less and less space is available to the user.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if adding up space for user, cache, rom, on the s2 its bigger than 16 gig.
on the s3 it equals 16 gig.
conclusion?
on s2 rom is not on internal sdcard.
s3
1 gig cache
1.5 gig system
11.4 gig data + media
total useable space approx 14 gig.
s2
100 meg cache
500 meg system
2 gig data
12.1 gig media
total useable space approx 14.6 gig.
expected useable space on a 16gig sdcard 14gig. so where is this 0.6 from on my s2?

Well using all the s devices s2 s3 and s4 I feel always s2 smoother in ram operations. The s3 was a bit faster due better processor. That was allways my feeling. If the s2 was a exynos 4x with 1.2 where faster then the s3. Thats my feeling. From s4 to s3 its a huge improvment. It s not so a great diferrnce like from s2 to s3. Its more like from s1 to s2.
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

seen some clips of the s3 and other s3's seem faster than mine which has me curious if mine is faulty now as it remains clearly slower than my s2..

From time to time it happens to me. The workaround I found was to full format the phone. (there s some script around to do that). Reflash the phone full stock with odin and let it dtay for one or two days. After that phone works fast again. And when you feel phone laggy, restart phone. S3 as very bad memory menagement.
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

[Q] Nexus 7 maintenance apps for Lags?

I just read this http://androidandme.com/2013/06/opi...-from-the-best-to-worst-tablet-ive-ever-owned
I was wondering about that as well; aside from continued use, the lags are more evident when it reaches the 9gb mark.
I have a 32 GB ram Nexus 7 and seriously; out of the 32 GB, we actually only have 27.5 GB storage.
I usually need more than 9GB of storage free space so i can have a buttery smooth performance.
Estimate 9+ gb to 10GB which means i have 17GB left to work with.
So far, I only discovered 2 worthwhile apps in battling this Nexus 7 predicament for non root users.
Clean master and Forever Gone.
Clean master is a great app for clearing files and releasing load from the 1 GB Ram.
While forever gone seems to work better than restore factory settimgs., it is somewhat slow and inconvenient.
Anyway, is there any other way to have better performance out of the Nexus 7?
Up to how many GB of free space you leave off before it starts to lag?

There was a discussion about this on AAA last week, but no real conclusions as to what might be causing it. One thing they mentioned was the possibility of the flash based storage "giving out". One guy commented that there are no real garbage collection routines present, so without a lot of free space, storage must be manually erased before being written to, and that can take a lot of time. This is why SSD's have garbage collection or trim routines running at idle to erase unallocated blocks.
It sounds plausible as our tablets are either being used or sleeping, with no real idle time for garbage collection to occur. Of course this is all conjecture at this point. I certainly see more lag in my upcoming 1 year old N7, but nothing like the unresponsiveness originally reported by folks filling up their storage, nor the symptoms described in the article you referenced.
But when mine goes belly up, I plan to move to an iPad. The tablet experience on Android pretty much sucks IMHO, and in the better part of the year in which I have been using it, it hasn't got much better. Of the hundred + apps I have on it, I can count on my fingers how many of them are actually optimized for a tablet.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1971852

Are 16GB enough for you?

I've a Nexus 7 3G/32GB that I'm selling and I've just ordered a Gt-n5100 but I'm very scared about hdd capacity. Note 8 is only available in my country in 16GB format so I had no choice but since all apps are installed in primary memory and not on SD card now I'm asking to myself if I did a good buy. What can you tell me about this? Are 16gb enough for you? I changed my previous nexus 7 16gb (poor memory) for the 32gb version and it's true that they haven't SD expansion slot.. Do you think SD could solve the problem in any way?
----------------------
Nexus 7 3G - Tapatalk

I came from a Nexus 7 32gb, via a Note 10.1.
Unless you are a hard-core gamer then the 16gb is plenty sui long as you supplement with a micro sd card on which to store your media files etc.
The Note 8.0 is definitely the better device by a good measure, congratulations I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Sent from the mighty Note II

Having the microsd slot helps a lot. I have a DROID dna with only 16gb and I wish it had more. Games and media take the most space on a device. Media can easily be store on the microsd.
Sent from my GT-N5110 using XDA Premium HD app

16 GB is more than enough for me. I really only use the tablet for the note taking function. But even my 16 GB Galaxy S4 with a large medical library downloaded to the device, still leaves me with like 4 GB free. And I have all of my music stored on the main memory. If you move all of your personal data to SD, I don't see how you can run out of space on the main memory, using it just for apps and app data.

sputnik767 said:
16 GB is more than enough for me. I really only use the tablet for the note taking function. But even my 16 GB Galaxy S4 with a large medical library downloaded to the device, still leaves me with like 4 GB free. And I have all of my music stored on the main memory. If you move all of your personal data to SD, I don't see how you can run out of space on the main memory, using it just for apps and app data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
16 gb is to little for me to store my music and movies. But hey this is Samsung you have sd card slot

I hope that you are aware The advertised 16 GB is not the actual available capacity.
The fact is that on Galaxy Note 8 you will get around 9 GB for personal storage only on internal SD card as factory default (rest consumed by the default apps etc).
I had to add a 64GB MicroSd card (almost full already) and that gives me some room for stuff.
All depends on your usage but if you need space frequently , you cannot go wrong with an additional 32 GB micro SD card.
btw this tablet should also support the MicroUSB flash drives. so I would not worry much as this has room for expansion if need ever comes to that.

intelliriffer said:
I hope that you are aware The advertised 16 GB is not the actual available capacity.
The fact is that on Galaxy Note 8 you will get around 9 GB for personal storage only on internal SD card as factory default (rest consumed by the default apps etc).
I had to add a 64GB MicroSd card (almost full already) and that gives me some room for stuff.
All depends on your usage but if you need space frequently , you cannot go wrong with an additional 32 GB micro SD card.
btw this tablet should also support the MicroUSB flash drives. so I would not worry much as this has room for expansion if need ever comes to that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On my AT&T LTE Note 8 with 16GB internal memory I find that after loading all of my apps (76) and with the Samsung and AT&T apps and the operating system and TouchWiz I have 9.2GB free internal memory. This agrees with your findings.

No. 16g is not enough. Real dopey amount of storage for a tablet like this.
Sent from my GT-N5110 using xda premium

You cannot just say 16 gbs isn't enough. it's very subjective. On both my phone and tablet, even 8 gbs would've been enough for me. I don't play games or store moves/music. I use Slacker, Netflix and read news/magazines.

aerok said:
You cannot just say 16 gbs isn't enough. it's very subjective. On both my phone and tablet, even 8 gbs would've been enough for me. I don't play games or store moves/music. I use Slacker, Netflix and read news/magazines.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
agree completely; I put a 32 gig external sd card to store music, movies, and pix...I have over 100 apps on here, and still have 4.5 gigs of main memory space available..
plenty of room IMO...

The issue here is games. Clearly Samsung aren't factoring in gamers to their target market for this tablet. The gpu - the Mali 400 is evidence of that. The minimal amount of internal storage also shows Samsung don't expect N8.0 users to install more than 2 or 3 triple A titles at most.
'The Bard's Tale' alone is 3.5GB. 'Horn' is 2.7GB. 'Max Payne Mobile' is 1.4GB.
Bam, there's all your space gone, with hardly anything left for productivity apps.

no offense, but I doubt that any tablet is marketed specifically for gamers; they are more for business professionals/email/magazine/web surfers...
Hard core gamers use consoles or gaming pc's generally, and those folks dont think of tablets as effective hardware for them..

If we actually had 16GB it might be enough. On first power up you only have like 9GB to use...kind of false advertising.
Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk 2

the OS and cache have to go somewhere, dont they?

wase4711 said:
the OS and cache have to go somewhere, dont they?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So factor that into the design so that when you advertise a 16GB storage device people actually GET 16GB off storage. I think there is already a class action lawsuit against Samsung for the S4 due to this issue.
Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk 2

as you well know, EVERY device/tablet/laptop/pc maker pretty much says the same kind of thing when it comes to advertising the "size" of their machine; you know that a 2 TB computer never really has 2TB of "available space" on it, since the os/swapfile etc has to go somewhere, and this is how electronics have been sold for a long long time.
I'm not saying I dont agree with you, but I dont see this kind of "unrealistic" advertising od device space/capacity changing any time soon..

wase4711 said:
as you well know, EVERY device/tablet/laptop/pc maker pretty much says the same kind of thing when it comes to advertising the "size" of their machine; you know that a 2 TB computer never really has 2TB of "available space" on it, since the os/swapfile etc has to go somewhere, and this is how electronics have been sold for a long long time.
I'm not saying I dont agree with you, but I dont see this kind of "unrealistic" advertising od device space/capacity changing any time soon..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, if the class action lawsuit does enough damage and more start being held to task, it might change. I also get what you are saying, but the criticism of Samsung right now is that it's not just 1-2GB out of 16GB...it's almost half. In other words, it is unreasonable and excessive in it's advertising. So as much as I've been a Samsung supporter over the years, I hope they get beat pretty bad and start to change this negative pattern.

wase4711 said:
the OS and cache have to go somewhere, dont they?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if it's like the s4 then it's got a reserved 6GB partition (at least i read that somewhere). so they should advertise the useable space and the amount of memory shared for the video.
why they don't let you do a fresh install like any pc is beyond me. tablets have come too far to be still treated as less than a computer.
i'm still on the fence about getting the 8. i keep adding it to cart at amazon and then closing the tab. i almost got it at walmart after seeing the box and falling in love!

there's alot to love with this tablet..nobody who has seen one or bought one has anything bad to say about it...

I would like to see the Apps2SD stuff come from the Galaxy S4 or a setting to use the card in place of the internal data mounted as the sd card but yes, it is enough for me.
I would have bought a 64GB or 32GB model if possible but as games are the only big local data I have - I could use the card or a usb drive if I needed to have offline access to movies and music and such. Everything but games lives on my local server or in a cloud service; often both. So I can live with the storage.
Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk HD

[Q] RAM missing?

Hi
I´m kind of new here but still haven´t found an answer why my Nexus only shows 1097 RAM instad of 2000? Even tried different hardware checker and they all tell me the same. Have I made I bad flash?

Davidkallen said:
Hi
I´m kind of new here but still haven´t found an answer why my Nexus only shows 1097 RAM instad of 2000? Even tried different hardware checker and they all tell me the same. Have I made I bad flash?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 2GB ram on the device must accommodate both the operating system and graphics Ram before any apps are loaded. So what you see is normal. This is no different for laptops. Also the 16 or 32 GB internal storage shows less after formatting and Android OS plus Google apps (Gapps) are installed. At least with the Nexus 10 you have much less bloatware compared to other Tablets (eg. Samsung).
Sent from my Nexus 10 using XDA Premium HD app

3DSammy said:
The 2GB ram on the device must accommodate both the operating system and graphics Ram before any apps are loaded. So what you see is normal. This is no different for laptops. Also the 16 or 32 GB internal storage shows less after formatting and Android OS plus Google apps (Gapps) are installed. At least with the Nexus 10 you have much less bloatware compared to other Tablets (eg. Samsung).
Sent from my Nexus 10 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for you answer 3Dsammy.
I understand that you use RAM when things are installed, But I still dont get it. When I was on stock it showed in settings 2 gb RAM. And now Hardware info (app) System RAM 1097?. Same with Clean sweeper.

Davidkallen said:
I understand that you use RAM when things are installed, But I still dont get it. When I was on stock it showed in settings 2 gb RAM. And now Hardware info (app) System RAM 1097?. Same with Clean sweeper.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nexus 10 has never shown 2gb available, I've had it since launch and I believe the most I've ever seen was back on 4.2 was about 1400MB or so, and it has gone down from there on each update. You never get what they advertise on the box, every single one of my devices has less than whats advertised, my Note 3 is supposed to have 3gb available, but really its only 2.38 after its said and done..
1098 is normal on 4.4.2 for N10, I've attached a shot from mine ... I can only assume most of it is being reserved for the GPU and its super high resolution.
** These threads might have more information you are looking for.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2377356
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2463178

Hi,
As already stated here, just clearing a little the information for you .
The Nexus 10 has a huge screen resolution, therefore it requires a more powerful GPU, even having a pretty powerful graphic processors which is the MALI, it's not powerful enough for the 1600p screen, so they allocated ≈1GB to the graphic unit to prevent any possible issues.
Also, there are some apps running in background, so it takes some RAM too.
Hope this clarifies a little ,
~Lord
"All I Ever Needed Was A Little Piece of Hope" - World of Fantasy (Helloween)
Sent from my monstrous Xperia Z1

Thank for your help:good:

I did notice that with slim kat 4.2.2 I have 1647 ram available and with 4.4.2 slim kat I had 1099.
so I thought that Kit Kat uses less RAM but I don't really see it with those comparisons.
Joe