Database Users

nexus s low mem info

hey guys...so I was playing with the phone, installed some apps here and there and went to mem info and i saw that my available memory is never over 70 mb off the 345 !!!!
this might be causing some lag and maybe overwork the processor and messing with my battery life
I moved most of the apps to the usb part and still...I reset it..went up but then drastically went down again
Im running superaosp 8.6 .... I have no idea why is this...MY nexus one there was always at least 100 mb left (used app2sd)..kinda annoying to be honest
any advice?

If you go through the list of running apps and services, is there anything out of the ordinary?
Try to close all of them and see what happens.
Greetz
PS: I have about 180mb free if I only let the vital stuff running - Google services, BLN, Maps (LocationService) and Swiftkey

I've got 156 MB free on mine.at least that's what the running services screen tells me.
However android optimizer tells me that I've got 35 MB free? What's going on? Is the stock android running services panel not showing everything?
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

^^^exactly my thing...On the running services are it shows about 140 free but on thememinfo i have about 50...really weird
Another thing ...my battery usage goes :
display 40 percent
isnt that a little too high??
autorotation off, auto brightness off

Well I think on the running services it probably only shows you services that are actually running (actively). Whereas other programs (such as android optimizer) tells you the memory used by all programs that have been started at boot time.
I'm now just guessing here but many of these boot started programas might have been passivated by the Android OS onto disk so they don't really take actual RAM until you switch to any of them. Only to get passivated again after you exit them.
I get 40% usage of screen as well. It's normal, it's what takes the most. I've got auto brigthness on and it's usually quite dim. Auto-rotation is always on.
I would only get concerned if the Android System starts taking much battery use, rising above 10%. This might indicate some program misusing the system and keeping the phone awake too much.
Go Weather had such an effect on my Nexus S so I switched it off. Other programs that track your location in real time (like some weather programs... Weather Bug, but can be configured) can take a toll on the wake time of the Android System.

running services shows my device having 234mb free ram

rault18 said:
hey guys...so I was playing with the phone, installed some apps here and there and went to mem info and i saw that my available memory is never over 70 mb off the 345 !!!!
this might be causing some lag and maybe overwork the processor and messing with my battery life
I moved most of the apps to the usb part and still...I reset it..went up but then drastically went down again
Im running superaosp 8.6 .... I have no idea why is this...MY nexus one there was always at least 100 mb left (used app2sd)..kinda annoying to be honest
any advice?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By saying "moved to the USB part" do you mean you moved most of them to the SD memory? If so, doing that will make your Nexus even slower. Memory and available app storage are two different things. I think you're confusing the two.
Nexus S and NS4G have:
1GB of app storage
16GB of SD storage
345MB of RAM
Also, having low memory available actually means your system is properly alocating all available recources. Do some reading on how androind manages memory. It's definitly not your typical Windows scenario Another thing to keep in mind is that RAM which is reported isn't accurate to what the usual "free memory" ideology is.

Awesome answer sir!!! Thank you..it def help me understand some of the stuff.still a little confusing tho
Nexus one and s are def little different from each other
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA Premium App

rault18 said:
Awesome answer sir!!! Thank you..it def help me understand some of the stuff.still a little confusing tho
Nexus one and s are def little different from each other
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, they are different but besides the specs same rules apply. SD storage will be slower to respond than internal app storage and ram is filled up just about the same way.
Btw, this is a Nexus S section, isn't it?
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App

Yes it is..thus I mentioned and compared my one to my s
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA Premium App

Nexus 10 memory leak

I got the new Nexus 10. Haven't installed many apps. I noticed that if I watch youtube for over an hour, youtube crashes back to main menu. Then I noticed that the entire tablet turned extremely sluggish. I went to Apps in Settings and everything wast in the process of Restarting! Also, almost the entire RAM is used leaving between 40 - 90 MB's of Ram free!
I tried to take a screen shot of the situation. But apparently there's not enough memory to save the screen shot!
So I had to take a pic of the tablet with my cellphone.
What's going on?
Details:
Brand new (less than a few weeks old)
Android 4.2.2
Non-rooted
Nothing running in "SHOW CACHED PROCESSES"
The 8 apps running continually "Restarting"
I force close the apps. But even with only Settings and 2 system apps in the "Restarting" state, the memory is still 1.2Gb used.

i thought this was independent to custom roms, as I've seen this happen on my aokp running gnex. it must be a bug in 4.2.2. hopefully it gets fixed officially, as most recent OFFICIAL builds of AOKP have already fixed the issue. something about the camera on the lock screen or something i read a while back. the only fix right now is a reboot.

I have a similar issue, I'm running nothing more than stock apps (besides Os monitor and terminal emulator) am not rooted and stock ROM.
What I have found is that surfaceflinger is just slowly using up all the free ram where it gets to a point that the devices becomes unstable.
Install os monitor and see if its the same for you?
** was trying to post a screen shot of my device showing surfaceflinger using nearly 700mbs, but I can't post links.... sucks)

VanCatRabbit said:
I have a similar issue, I'm running nothing more than stock apps (besides Os monitor and terminal emulator) am not rooted and stock ROM.
What I have found is that surfaceflinger is just slowly using up all the free ram where it gets to a point that the devices becomes unstable.
Install os monitor and see if its the same for you?
** was trying to post a screen shot of my device showing surfaceflinger using nearly 700mbs, but I can't post links.... sucks)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no worries buddy, I got surface flinger growing in ram over less than a half hour cycle. just for my two cents, I've seen it start off with 60mb used, but these shots are a little after some web browsing and about 15 mins of sonic 4 episode 1.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_bkxTZXrpqwWGtoSTdIQUxmakU/edit
look at RSS. most of those were ran with just the tablet idling on the terminal screen. and this is also across different kernels and Roms. I hear something about aokp fixing a nasty leak but I haven't tested yet if this fixes it yet.

dakunesu said:
no worries buddy, I got surface flinger growing in ram over less than a half hour cycle. just for my two cents, I've seen it start off with 60mb used, but these shots are a little after some web browsing and about 15 mins of sonic 4 episode 1.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_bkxTZXrpqwWGtoSTdIQUxmakU/edit
look at RSS. most of those were ran with just the tablet idling on the terminal screen. and this is also across different kernels and Roms. I hear something about aokp fixing a nasty leak but I haven't tested yet if this fixes it yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not fixed, at least not completely. It does feel that surfaceflinger eats the memory slower on AOKP but nevertheless it still does it.

user64x said:
I got the new Nexus 10. Haven't installed many apps. I noticed that if I watch youtube for over an hour, youtube crashes back to main menu. Then I noticed that the entire tablet turned extremely sluggish. I went to Apps in Settings and everything wast in the process of Restarting! Also, almost the entire RAM is used leaving between 40 - 90 MB's of Ram free!
I tried to take a screen shot of the situation. But apparently there's not enough memory to save the screen shot!
So I had to take a pic of the tablet with my cellphone.
What's going on?
Details:
Brand new (less than a few weeks old)
Android 4.2.2
Non-rooted
Nothing running in "SHOW CACHED PROCESSES"
The 8 apps running continually "Restarting"
I force close the apps. But even with only Settings and 2 system apps in the "Restarting" state, the memory is still 1.2Gb used.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By far the most info I've seen posted on this situation has been on this Google support thread:
http://www.google.com/url?q=https:/...productforums.com/d/msg/mobile/-/GFnACv1nC0MJ
Specifically the posts by Виктор Манчев

I'm havin the same issue, running nothing more than stock apps and my free memory is 100mb, also can't use the keyboard because the lack of memory.
Should I root my nexus 10 and install a custom rom? I don't want to be having this kind of problems, I saved money to buy this **** and now it won't work, I put my faith in you damn nexus 10 .

I am experiencing the same memory leak on stock rooted 5.1.1. It is very painful to say the least. In my nexus 6 I'm having memory leak as well but there is 3 gb of ram so it's not as bad. Did anyone find a work around or a fix for this issue?

joshhayden10 said:
I am experiencing the same memory leak on stock rooted 5.1.1. It is very painful to say the least. In my nexus 6 I'm having memory leak as well but there is 3 gb of ram so it's not as bad. Did anyone find a work around or a fix for this issue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Using Chroma ROM 5.1.1. Fast, smooth, stable, no memory leaks.

I'm going to have to try that. Thank you.

[Q] Memory Leak? Avoidable?

Just decided to use my Nexus 10 after about a day or two of inactivity, and I noticed it was real sluggish. Went over to Running apps, everything shown there is Restarting, and there is only about 77MB of RAM free.
I've had this happen a few times I believe.
Is this scenario avoidable in any way?

espionage724 said:
Just decided to use my Nexus 10 after about a day or two of inactivity, and I noticed it was real sluggish. Went over to Running apps, everything shown there is Restarting, and there is only about 77MB of RAM free.
I've had this happen a few times I believe.
Is this scenario avoidable in any way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Free RAM isn't usually a problem: Android will cache things in memory to help them load faster, so normally seeing <100mb of free RAM isn't anything to be concerned about, and will not affect performance at all.
The sluggishness and "restarting" services sound like something bad, though.
First, make sure you aren't running any kind of automatic task manager/killer. Next, after restarting your device, keep an eye on that running services tab in Android settings: apps. See if any of them seem to be growing in RAM use disproportionately to the others. It may take a few hours to show up.
I suspect you have one bad app with a leak causing low memory to force the other services out of memory.

Even after caching and such this tablet should normally have 400-600MB of free RAM though. The low amounts definitely come from a memory leak. Right now the general consensus is that it cannot be avoided because it is a problem with the GPU driver. How much truth there is to this I dont know. I do know that I myself did not have performance issues or memory leaks when I was back on 4.2.1 running CM10.1, so I still feel like something in 4.2.2 introduced a memory leak.

EniGmA1987 said:
Even after caching and such this tablet should normally have 400-600MB of free RAM though. The low amounts definitely come from a memory leak.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is normal and expected for free memory to dip lower than that during normal operation. It is simply inaccurate to tell people otherwise.
I would caution against claiming something is "definitely" anything with so little solid information.
It might be that there is a memory leak, but it is much more likely to be a user app than a kernel memory leak until there is hard data saying otherwise. As of now there is only one highly subjective user report.

During operation yes, but when you pick it up after days of the tablet idling with nothing running?
There is plenty of solid information if you have looked around the development threads with all the activity trying to pin down the memory leaks everyone is having, to say one doesnt exist just shows how little you have been getting around the threads.

ZanshinG1 said:
Free RAM isn't usually a problem: Android will cache things in memory to help them load faster, so normally seeing <100mb of free RAM isn't anything to be concerned about, and will not affect performance at all.
The sluggishness and "restarting" services sound like something bad, though.
First, make sure you aren't running any kind of automatic task manager/killer. Next, after restarting your device, keep an eye on that running services tab in Android settings: apps. See if any of them seem to be growing in RAM use disproportionately to the others. It may take a few hours to show up.
I suspect you have one bad app with a leak causing low memory to force the other services out of memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nothing in Recent apps, I had all my usual apps installed. Most of the time when I'm doing nothing I have hundreds of MB of RAM available as free space.
No Task Killers either. Couldn't even open a game I had (would instantly go back to launcher, no FC message) or take a screenshot even.

Just my personal experience, but I have owned my N10 since December and frequently let mine idle for days and have never come across this issue yet. Memory on mine is usually above 600MB everytime I check it in the Apps setting, I don't think I've ever seen it go under 100 since I've owned it, and I do go in there a lot to force stop certain things that autostart. I am leaning more towards what ZanshinG1 said that its a rogue app installed thats eating it

EniGmA1987 said:
During operation yes, but when you pick it up after days of the tablet idling with nothing running?
There is plenty of solid information if you have looked around the development threads with all the activity trying to pin down the memory leaks everyone is having, to say one doesnt exist just shows how little you have been getting around the threads.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I suspect we have different standards for what qualifies as useful information. Let's just leave it at that.
---------- Post added at 07:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:03 PM ----------
espionage724 said:
Nothing in Recent apps, I had all my usual apps installed. Most of the time when I'm doing nothing I have hundreds of MB of RAM available as free space.
No Task Killers either. Couldn't even open a game I had (would instantly go back to launcher, no FC message) or take a screenshot even.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have any apps which use OpenGL ES running? Games and live wallpapers are the usual suspects.

ZanshinG1 said:
I suspect we have different standards for what qualifies as useful information. Let's just leave it at that.
---------- Post added at 07:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:03 PM ----------
Do you have any apps which use OpenGL ES running? Games and live wallpapers are the usual suspects.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, nothing was open at the time, and had a normal wallpaper (non-Live).

ZanshinG1 said:
I suspect we have different standards for what qualifies as useful information. Let's just leave it at that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For the record surfaceflinger will eat about 100 megs per hour of video when you watch YouTube through chrome. I've duplicated this on stock, CM, mrrobinson AOKP, and raspbean. At about 600 megs the tablet will start misbehaving, closing apps, being sluggish, keyboard won't come up in chrome when you go to the address bar, etc. If you can stand to wait it will eventually reboot usually when idle in my case. Oddly enough the YouTube app doesn't produce the same results on the same video.
The usefulness is debatable. The facts are not.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

Hopefully ROM dev's will add some newer AOSP commits to their ROMs too, such as:
Fix a minor leak in dvmCreateInlineSubsTable (commit to aosp)
minor leaks caused by failed initialization in JNI_CreateJavaVM (commit to aosp)
Fix a minor bug in dvmCreateInterpThread (commit to aosp)
Fix some leaks in VfyBasicBlock & BitVector (commit to aosp)
But it is probably a rogue app.

EniGmA1987 said:
But it is probably a rogue app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Chrome?
So for s&gs I installed naked browser and I'm not seeing the climb like I did with chrome. After about 4 hours of YouTube it went up 4 megs instead of 400 megs. I just saw another user seem to confirm this too.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

rxnelson said:
Chrome?
So for s&gs I installed naked browser and I'm not seeing the climb like I did with chrome. After about 4 hours of YouTube it went up 4 megs instead of 400 megs. I just saw another user seem to confirm this too.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't watch videos from Chrome, and it wasn't open at the time either (I may of opened it earlier before I noticed the memory leak, but I know I swiped it away from Recents when I was done with it). I didn't use the YouTube app either.

Had it occur again, although it wasn't "as" severe since I was able to load a game and take screenshots this time; performance was definitely slower though...
Running Apps:
Cached Apps:

Maybe run PS in terminal the next time and grab a screenshot. Then after reboot or return to normal do it again and compare usage?
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

I have my tablet reboot every night at 4am with Tasker-Secure Settings plugin. Maybe not a fix for the issue at hand, but enough to make this problem go away permanently and reliably.

Easy fix: don't use trash roms like aokp or cm
I personally use team eos and ktmanta and the system runs super smooth with no memory leaks what so ever. After 32 hours if I clean all apps I got 600 or 700 mb free.

lvnatic said:
Easy fix: don't use trash roms like aokp or cm
I personally use team eos and ktmanta and the system runs super smooth with no memory leaks what so ever. After 32 hours if I clean all apps I got 600 or 700 mb free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow. Talk about trash talk.
I've never ahd this issue on AOKP or CM, have on PA... I did enjoy Eos when I used it but found RootBox had the features I needed. Then again... I reboot every few nights typically. My mom leaves her Nexus 7 on for weeks on end with no issue, but its not a 10.

lvnatic said:
Easy fix: don't use trash roms like aokp or cm
I personally use team eos and ktmanta and the system runs super smooth with no memory leaks what so ever. After 32 hours if I clean all apps I got 600 or 700 mb free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't consider rasbeanjelly trash...

I think I've run into this bug once, after a couple days of usage, likely mostly inactive without charging. I noticed that everything I tried to do was really sluggish and once I saw all the apps restarting in the built-in task manager, I figured something was seriously borked, so I rebooted the tablet and it was back to normal. Given all the other stability problems others have reported with this tablet, I'm glad just a very occasional reboot like this is the worst of my problems. :victory: I'm running stock Android 4.2.2, with only a handful of apps installed, probably more default apps uninstalled than apps added.

Where is all my ram going?

I have noticed that on my handset (gsm, sim free device) that I never seem to have more than 656 free ram and is often as low as 200.
I only have 3 home screens running with the stock launcher and the only widget I have is the full size calender and the task manager. I'm not using any live wallpaper or anything either so where is it all going?
Sent from my LG-D802 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

hpsauce37 said:
I have noticed that on my handset (gsm, sim free device) that I never seem to have more than 656 free ram and is often as low as 200.
I only have 3 home screens running with the stock launcher and the only widget I have is the full size calender and the task manager. I'm not using any live wallpaper or anything either so where is it all going?
Sent from my LG-D802 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
restart your phone, or hold down the home button, and clear all. i have a metric **** ton of apps, and a quick reset yields me about 1-1.1k mbs of free ram

wasssabi5 said:
restart your phone, or hold down the home button, and clear all. i have a metric **** ton of apps, and a quick reset yields me about 1-1.1k mbs of free ram
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok so when i was previously using the task manager to close all apps and free up space it would typically leave me with around 656mb free.
My thinking was that there must be a rouge app or something so i have just deleted 2 apps. One was a wallpaper app (not sure if i should name or not) and another was a file extracter app. I then restarted my phone
I now have between 860 and 766 showing free and that with me currently streaming iplayer radio to a bluetooth speaker.
Whats interesting though is that neither of these apps were showing as 'running apps' in the task manager.

Mate, it has been discussed umpteen number of times, do not worry about Ram. Even if it has 100 mb free ram that is enough. Free Ram is wasted Ram. If need be Andorid memory mgmt will take over and make sure you still have no lags.

amankapoor4 said:
Mate, it has been discussed umpteen number of times, do not worry about Ram. Even if it has 100 mb free ram that is enough. Free Ram is wasted Ram. If need be Andorid memory mgmt will take over and make sure you still have no lags.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
but i have been noticing some lags which is why i wondered if this was the problem. The phone does just not feel as smooth as the xperia z1 i had which was just instant with loading anything, in and out of apps etc.
So far i have reduced animations etc in developer options and have now just tried the mod in another thread about going into the service menu and switching on the thermal throttling to see if that helps.
I know everyones perception of lagg is different but having come from the xperia z1 its one of the things that stands out to me and is a little frustrating.
If it were not for the fact that i like the onscreen notifications i get with email and messaging with the standard launcher then i would use nova etc but really just feel that i should not have to, didnt with my other phone and with these kind of specs these type of problems really should be a thing of the past now. To me it must be an optimization issue with lg's software as its not there with the z1.

hpsauce37 said:
I have noticed that on my handset (gsm, sim free device) that I never seem to have more than 656 free ram and is often as low as 200.
I only have 3 home screens running with the stock launcher and the only widget I have is the full size calender and the task manager. I'm not using any live wallpaper or anything either so where is it all going?
Sent from my LG-D802 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Post your Screen Shoot of Running Applications, may be we can help and is your phone rooted ?

hpsauce37 said:
but i have been noticing some lags which is why i wondered if this was the problem. The phone does just not feel as smooth as the xperia z1 i had which was just instant with loading anything, in and out of apps etc.
So far i have reduced animations etc in developer options and have now just tried the mod in another thread about going into the service menu and switching on the thermal throttling to see if that helps.
I know everyones perception of lagg is different but having come from the xperia z1 its one of the things that stands out to me and is a little frustrating.
If it were not for the fact that i like the onscreen notifications i get with email and messaging with the standard launcher then i would use nova etc but really just feel that i should not have to, didnt with my other phone and with these kind of specs these type of problems really should be a thing of the past now. To me it must be an optimization issue with lg's software as its not there with the z1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly Android with all the diff customizations, is tough to handle and difficult to pinpoint the exact cause. Did you try some other Launcher and see how it goes.

Nexus 4 uses only 512MB???

Hello
I'm, still shocked.
Today I've upgraded to kitkat from 4.3. Everything stock and OTA.
I've noticed that heavy apps are often killed from RAM, so that when I open them again it takes a startup time as if it were the first time.
Then I have noticed that regardless of the apps I open, my memory usage is always around 500-550MB leaving 1300MB free!!
WTF.
Chrome is the most painful example.
1) Open some tabs in Chrome.
2) Then open some heavy apps, like play music, hangouts, youtube and calendar (maybe you should open some more to fill as RAM as possible).
3) Then open again Chrome
4) Chrome will reload tabs since it has been re-started again
If you have a look to the memory usage you will see aroun 500MBs. What about our 2GB!!!!
Being chrome so heavy, memory management decides to kill it each time, delivering a terrible user experience...
Any idea? Any solution apart from restoring 4.3???
Thanks a lot.

No kidding I'm still surprised. In the beginning I was using 800mb but now it sits at 475~mb ram usage. This is ridiculous and I'm using the heck out of it. On the downside its kicking my hangouts out of memory. When I launch hangouts, it takes a while to start up.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

It looks like the system is trying to limit itself to use only 500mb. Maybe that's what Google meant with Kitkat being more optimized? so much for 2gb ram...
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Now you mention it I am noticing a lot of apps restarting now. And hangouts is a prime example.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

So does this mean there is now no benefit in having 2GB ram? Kind of like having a laptop with 8GB ram running a 32 bit operating system that can only see 2.

CalabiYau said:
Hello
I'm, still shocked.
Today I've upgraded to kitkat from 4.3. Everything stock and OTA.
I've noticed that heavy apps are often killed from RAM, so that when I open them again it takes a startup time as if it were the first time.
Then I have noticed that regardless of the apps I open, my memory usage is always around 500-550MB leaving 1300MB free!!
WTF.
Chrome is the most painful example.
1) Open some tabs in Chrome.
2) Then open some heavy apps, like play music, hangouts, youtube and calendar (maybe you should open some more to fill as RAM as possible).
3) Then open again Chrome
4) Chrome will reload tabs since it has been re-started again
If you have a look to the memory usage you will see aroun 500MBs. What about our 2GB!!!!
Being chrome so heavy, memory management decides to kill it each time, delivering a terrible user experience...
Any idea? Any solution apart from restoring 4.3???
Thanks a lot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Per Google, KitKat is designed to run in older phone too, even at 512MB RAM can still run KitKat. For example, Nexus One which has only 512MB RAM and still able to run KitKat, not stock ROM per se.

are you sure??? I tried it on purpose. I opened asphalt 8, Dragon Realms, turned the music on on the Play music, Hangouts,Facebook, Google Currents, Chrome, and music tuner in capture mode, and I am able to switch between them seemlessly. I opened settings and it jumps to 719 MB RAM.
On the other hand I faced some weird lag on my N4 these past days with KitKat. I must say I already forgot how laggy Android was long long ago, and now I am forced to remember it.....
Stock 4.4, not rooted yet (for observation purposes)

Even my tapatalk app seems to get killed off all the time.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

This is a huge problem, can someone confirm if this is only on nexus 4 or even on the nexus 5 ?

Federico_96 said:
This is a huge problem, can someone confirm if this is only on nexus 4 or even on the nexus 5 ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm maybe it's not only using 512mb... but mine reaches 1gb and kills stuff off relentlessly.

I just loaded around 11 apps. After switching to the first app; it refreshes. My ram never reaches 1GB.

Could it be something kernel side? I'm on faux kernel.

Now that u mentioned i checked on my phone .. i am on stock rooted.. my ram doesnt go above 600mb howmanyever apps i open it reaches 600 mb and then starts killing them .. this isnt cool ..!! now i understand why my apps restart on me sometimes .. this is a screwup .. whats the point in having 2gb ram and not getting the benefits out of it .. kitkat is supposed to support 512mb ram .. not make the max limit of the phone 512 mb .. hope this gets solved!

Can someone on stock do a backup then test faux kernel or some other kernel see if it's the same? As i sai mine reaches about 900-1000 before it starts killing off i still think this is a bit low. 2gb of ram so why not use it it's being wasted.

In stock is confirmed. Sometimes you can get up to 680-700 but then in some seconds they get reduced up to the 500 again...
A friend of mine has a Nexus 5. He did the same test and he get stable usage of 1Gb and no tab refresh/hangout re-start..
It is clearly a Nexus 4 issue. Final proof:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=322336
They say that it is logic management problem of android... Chrome has nothing to do except being so heavy... But it happens with lots of others...

I can also confirm this
I can also confirm this on Stock Nexus 4 Kitkat (Root).
I did not notice this before, since apps were loaded so seamlessly and quickly from cache (Is it because I'm using ART?), but Chrome gave it away since the tabs are refreshed.
It starts caching apps at ~800+ MB usage till it reaches ~500 MB.
It doesn't bother me performance wise, but is there a way to change the memory limit other than 800 MB on a rooted device?

Do you Know any custom kernel that allows this better usage?
The less intrusive possible since stock is fine for me except for this...
Faux? Semaphore? Another?

Im using semaphore but mine is same. Hangouts gonna restart, chrome refresh and launcher redraw. Maybe Google will fix it.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

i think your problem maybe related to OTA update .
i'm okay with Stock rom with factory image .
but i use franco kernel .

No wonder the kitkat makes my phone lag a lot.. Even apps like Facebook and whatsapp take time to load and lots of time to scroll.. And chrome gets stuck every time I scroll..
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk