Database Users

Why auto-killer will NOT speed up your phone

This is for all those people that think auto-killer is the be all and end all of android.
Auto-Killer Does:
Kill Apps to free up RAM
Auto-Killer Does NOT:
Speed up your phone
Here is why!
The way RAM works is - it temporarily stores the files needed to run an application so that the CPU can access them quicker than from ROM/SD-Card.
RAM does NOT slow down when it has more information stored within it, therefore having 20 MB of free ram or 120 MB will make NO difference to the speed of your phone.
Ironically, having more free RAM may even slow down your app loading times because:
If you wish to launch an app and you have 120 MB of free ram with no apps loaded it will have to load the app from your ROM/SD into the RAM and then access it from there.
On the other hand if you have the app already loaded into the RAM, with only 20 MB of free ram, it will load quicker because it doesn't have to check the ROM/SD first!
Therefore, having less RAM free means that more apps will load quicker. In addition to that, Android already has a built in task killer which is designed to kills apps which haven't been used in a long time when you get to a very low ram figure.

btdag said:
This is for all those people that think auto-killer is the be all and end all of android.
Auto-Killer Does:
Kill Apps to free up RAM
Auto-Killer Does NOT:
Speed up your phone
Here is why!
The way RAM works is - it temporarily stores the files needed to run an application so that the CPU can access them quicker than from ROM/SD-Card.
RAM does NOT slow down when it has more information stored within it, therefore having 20 MB of free ram or 120 MB will make NO difference to the speed of your phone.
Ironically, having more free RAM may even slow down your app loading times because:
If you wish to launch an app and you have 120 MB of free ram with no apps loaded it will have to load the app from your ROM/SD into the RAM and then access it from there.
On the other hand if you have the app already loaded into the RAM, with only 20 MB of free ram, it will load quicker because it doesn't have to check the ROM/SD first!
Therefore, having less RAM free means that more apps will load quicker. In addition to that, Android already has a built in task killer which is designed to kills apps which haven't been used in a long time when you get to a very low ram figure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dude, you're talking to deaf ears.
n00bs doesn't care about memory management and schedulers and such stuff... so they do what they always did on their WinMo devices...

I can only hope some listen.

what about task killer is that the same ?
LOL JK

Hmm at about 26 meg left, my phone gets buggy, and slow moving.
'I dont believe appkiller makes my phone is faster, BUT It does´nt get slow...(26meg and lower)
So Autokiller will help my phone having more ram, and the phone is running fine
About the 120 meg free ram, I agree, just use a lower setting
BR.
MKrogh

btdag said:
having 20 MB of free ram or 120 MB will make NO difference to the speed of your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sorry but experience says it does.

case0 said:
I'm sorry but experience says it does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I love the way peoples minds work. Tricks of the mind buddy, tricks of the mind...

Sure, task killers will not speed up your phone, but they will end apps that drain your battery (i.e. facebook, etc.).

I hear what you say and understand what you mean but if that is the case can you explain to me why, after a day or so my phone slows to a crawl and clearing out the memory speeds it up again?

Betty_Swallocks said:
I hear what you say and understand what you mean but if that is the case can you explain to me why, after a day or so my phone slows to a crawl and clearing out the memory speeds it up again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Buggy apps wich leaks memory?

I know technically you are right but my Hero get s laggy once the RAM gets low probably due to to many background tasks running at the same time so `freeing up memory`ie killing background tasks definitely removes the lag and speeds things up again

I have to agree with kilsally here. What you have to think its that the more tasks that is open in the background in memory or not the phone will slow down due to the amount of processors running. Just like a PC the more running the slow that gets. One way to improve this is to increase system memory. In the phones case memory is not upgradable (but would be great if it could be!).
When you end tasks using task killer, it's like ending tasks on a computer and WILL speed it back up again (as there is no/very little processors running to slow it down).
Catch my drift?

its great that theres information out there stating how task killers and android shouldnt play together, but when it comes down to it, advanced task killer pro realllllllyyyyy helps keep my phone speedy. around 20 mb is where my phone gets clammy, around 65 mb is where it grows wings. at the end of the day, if i works for you do it. if not dont. THAT'S the beauty of open source <3

Well thats not really true. Although having 20mb or 120mb RAM free itself will not speed up the phone, when using a task killer to clean up running apps you see the speed increase through the lesser toll on the CPU.
When you close and app in android it very rarely closes (the developer will have to force the phone to close the process thread - its very messy), it goes to 'sleep' this often a good thing as it makes opening the app up again much quicker. however most apps leave background processes running all eating away at a chunk of CPU. using a task killer should providing there are a fair amount of apps running to start with boost the phones performance generally
</rant>
Wez.

Wezternator said:
Well thats not really true. Although having 20mb or 120mb RAM free itself will not speed up the phone, when using a task killer to clean up running apps you see the speed increase through the lesser toll on the CPU.
When you close and app in android it very rarely closes (the developer will have to force the phone to close the process thread - its very messy), it goes to 'sleep' this often a good thing as it makes opening the app up again much quicker. however most apps leave background processes running all eating away at a chunk of CPU. using a task killer should providing there are a fair amount of apps running to start with boost the phones performance generally
</rant>
Wez.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
exactly! background apps doesn't only use your ram. many apps uses the cpu aswell and there for slowing down the phone

Wezternator said:
Well thats not really true. Although having 20mb or 120mb RAM free itself will not speed up the phone, when using a task killer to clean up running apps you see the speed increase through the lesser toll on the CPU.
When you close and app in android it very rarely closes (the developer will have to force the phone to close the process thread - its very messy), it goes to 'sleep' this often a good thing as it makes opening the app up again much quicker. however most apps leave background processes running all eating away at a chunk of CPU. using a task killer should providing there are a fair amount of apps running to start with boost the phones performance generally
</rant>
Wez.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
which is exactly why when i have around 20mbs of ram left, killing apps makes my phone faster. people are thinking tooooooo technical about it. its not about memory being used, but whats in the memory (app) isnt slowing things down, but the fact that that app is causing cpu strain is!

It depends what you information you want to have 'pushed' to your phone. If you require it to be 'pushed' the app must run in memory to allow this to happen. Task Killer can kill apps that you don't require 'push' information.

I thought android paused cpu threads that wernt in use?
Also, doesnt matter if you have 20MB of free ram or 2TeraByte of free ram.
I've tried with and without task killers,far less problems without, and i felt it was faster without.
this kinda smells like RAM / registry cleaners for Windows, bull**** aimed at non-technical noobies.

SherlockHolmz said:
this kinda smells like RAM / registry cleaners for Windows, bull**** aimed at non-technical noobies.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly my thoughts.
tierra said:
Sure, task killers will not speed up your phone, but they will end apps that drain your battery (i.e. facebook, etc.).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How does facebook drain your battery? I run the app from time to time, never changes bettery life. Also the people talking about CPU hogs - most apps go to sleep in the background and do not take up cpu to continue to run (or at least a minimal amount) - if you're running apps which have memory leaks etc then i think you should choose a different app to use instead of relying on a task killer to kill the task every time it goes wrong.

SherlockHolmz said:
I thought android paused cpu threads that wernt in use?
this kinda smells like RAM / registry cleaners for Windows, bull**** aimed at non-technical noobies.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Programs that aren't in use do get 'paused' however nearly any program running needs to maintain some CPU activity to stop it from crashing, and some register services that run in the background aiding the program doing what ever it does, these often don't get stopped.
Reg cleaners on PC's are incredibly useful for older PC's, ones what have had a lot of stuff installed and un-installed, and ones with slower HDD's. Because programs don't always remove any reg entries they put in when installed the registry can become massive, with slower/older PC's that can reduce performance quite a lot because it takes longer to find the things that are required, obviously this won't be a problem on newish PC's (ones with sata or solid state, or even fairly new IDE etc) but ones with old 5400rpm IDE (old laptop drives) drives may struggle a little.
again, </rant>
Wez

RAM

I have rooted my Asus TF, Put on the H 3.1 os, used Clemsyn Blades kernel, running very nicely. I have rooted it, and uninstalled crap like facebook, books, splashtop etc...lot of useless bloatware is out...However here is the problem........LOW MEMORY....This machine has ram of 1GB, and only 800mb shows, so almost 200 for the GI, and out of that 800, about 400mb is always used, despite using various app killers, I think we should be able to get it to about 200mb used? anyone know where so much of ram is bieng eaten
My question to you great knowledgeable friends is;
1) how to get rid of more useless apps eating memory
2) does using a different launcher reduce ram eating?
3) is it possible to achieve about 200-300mb consistent ram?
This is an awsome machine, I think more tweks we can make is super. I have a Samsung GS2, I have removed most of the stock stuff on it and set up my ownlauncher etc. It runs with amazing memory, 500mb free, and awsome graphics interface. Less nonsense.

MasterfullDON said:
I have rooted my Asus TF, Put on the H 3.1 os, used Clemsyn Blades kernel, running very nicely. I have rooted it, and uninstalled crap like facebook, books, splashtop etc...lot of useless bloatware is out...However here is the problem........LOW MEMORY....This machine has ram of 1GB, and only 800mb shows, so almost 200 for the GI, and out of that 800, about 400mb is always used, despite using various app killers, I think we should be able to get it to about 200mb used? anyone know where so much of ram is bieng eaten
My question to you great knowledgeable friends is;
1) how to get rid of more useless apps eating memory
2) does using a different launcher reduce ram eating?
3) is it possible to achieve about 200-300mb consistent ram?
This is an awsome machine, I think more tweks we can make is super. I have a Samsung GS2, I have removed most of the stock stuff on it and set up my ownlauncher etc. It runs with amazing memory, 500mb free, and awsome graphics interface. Less nonsense.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you haven't done so already you could use Titanium Backup to remove more stuff (including system apps) since you're rooted. I would advise caution however in case you remove the wrong thing. Perhaps someone else can post regarding which particular system apps are safe to remove, as I haven't expreimented with this myself.

jonitfcfan said:
If you haven't done so already you could use Titanium Backup to remove more stuff (including system apps) since you're rooted. I would advise caution however in case you remove the wrong thing. Perhaps someone else can post regarding which particular system apps are safe to remove, as I haven't expreimented with this myself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ive done that and removed about 10 items. Its running well at 1.4GHz but only problem too much ram usage.

jonitfcfan said:
If you haven't done so already you could use Titanium Backup to remove more stuff (including system apps) since you're rooted. I would advise caution however in case you remove the wrong thing. Perhaps someone else can post regarding which particular system apps are safe to remove, as I haven't expreimented with this myself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He could just freeze them first and play with the tf a couple of days and if there are no problems, delete them.
Removing junk isn't a bad thing to do, but in my experience, app killers do more bad than good in android. Other than in windows, you don't need tons of free ram to run apps smoothly. Android has a great ram management that fills your ram with apps for fast access, and closes the least used/needed when another app requests more ram. So if you use an app killer, your tf will have more to do with restarting the apps you just closed and your performance will actually decrease. Google it and you'll know what I mean.
Regards
Qwer23
Sent from my rooted X10i using awesome custom roms

MasterfullDON said:
Ive done that and removed about 10 items. Its running well at 1.4GHz but only problem too much ram usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As i said before, much ram usage isn't necessarily a bad thing. It only eats performance if a running app is badly coded and doesn't give its ram free when required. Then you better kill this specific app instead of autokilling stuff. Well coded apps won't eat your performance, no matter how much ram is used.
Sent from my rooted X10i using awesome custom roms

300Mb oof ram are dedicated to Nvidia Tegra 2. For this reason you read "only" 700Mb. Maybe in near future we will able to allocate more memory than 256Mb to our Tegra 2

memory usage doesn't mean too much now if the app/programe is properly coded, when needed, android should be able to release them on the fly......
same goes to my windows 7 machine, it's got 8 gig memory but the free memory always remains under 500M because the system is using them to cache most recently used applications.
Constantly clearing memory will not help too much, and believe or not, it worsens both the performance and the battery life..
but again, android is not as robust as windows in the terms of memory management, so it's not a bad idea to occasionally take a look at the actual memory usage but just don't go too excessive...

Screwing around with app-killers is never a good idea. Are you actually experiencing issues due to insufficient RAM? I've never had an issue with RAM on my Transformer. Android is much better at handling its memory than people are, let it do its thing.
And for the record, RAM is there to be used. It's the fastest memory a device has, so the more it makes use of, the better. If something else needs more RAM, Android will flush out something that doesn't need it.
I think app-killers are one of the biggest issues with Android, in that people seem to think they're necessary. Unless you actually have some app that's misbehaving or has a memory-leak or something, you shouldn't ever really need to manage your running applications. Just leave it all alone for a while and see how you go.

Midda said:
And for the record, RAM is there to be used. It's the fastest memory a device has, so the more it makes use of, the better. If something else needs more RAM, Android will flush out something that doesn't need it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perfectly said. Don't mess your Transformer around with "Task Manager"-type apps.

Midda said:
Are you actually experiencing issues due to insufficient RAM? go.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not at all. The machine is fast, its very quick and loads things quickly. The only time I had problem is using logmein, it crashed and said out of memory...I was a bit perplexed. I cleared a lot on my SGS2, and it was much faster.
Let me know any ideas, otherwise, as suggested, I will see how it goes

From my previous experience with Android devices, it's nearly impossible to increase the amount of free ram. I've tried, and only found one solution that I'll talk about later.
This isn't a bad thing. Ram is not CPU usage, and ram is going to use roughly the same amount of electricity regardless.
What android does is fill up the ram with programs that you will potentially use. That way when you want to use the program, it's already loaded in memory. When you load another program into memory, say a game, it will close apps to make room for the new app.
If you really want more memory, the closest thing is a swap file or partition. I use one on my phone, and it helps a good bit. Don't know if it would help the TF101, since it already has 1GB ram.
If you are still set on more free ram, try a program like auto memory manager (there is also another program very similar, has a blue fish for a logo but I forget the name). This doesn't kill apps in memory. Instead it changes the the when android closes programs in memory based on how much free memory is available and the priority of the program. I used it before on my phone with pretty good success, but now I use a swap file instead.
Right now I don't use a swap file or memory manager on my tf101, sine it runs great without it.

Thanks for all your responses.

I think this article should explain how Android 2.x operates. Even though the article is not about Honeycomb (Android 3.x), I doubt Google has changed how it manages memory in Honeycomb.
Article here: h**p://lifehacker.com/5650894/android-task-killers-explained-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
(Sorry, can't link due to XDA's 8+ post policy...)

I only have 55xMB memory shown in the application though.
154MB Used 398MB Free

High RAM usage

Hi,
I noticed that ram usage on galaxy s4 is very high even when all of the apps are closed. I have used task manager to close all of the apps and then cleared the memory but there was still about 1.05GB of ram used. I don't know if this is normal since I haven't been using android phone for 2 years. Can somebody tell me if this is normal and why? If not what can I do to fix it? Thanks!
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda app-developers app

its normal for s4... some stock apps are being cached in memory for faster operations

unused ram is wasted ram. If an app needs extra space, something will be automatically killed to make that space.

i.amtom said:
unused ram is wasted ram. If an app needs extra space, something will be automatically killed to make that space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
all of this is true... also keep in mind, the gpu requires slightly more ram because of the 1080p resolution.

Ok. Thank you all for the help

This is the problem of Sammy ROMs, the only way to fix it is to... wait for a Custom ROM and Flash it

this is normal on SGS4 .
Reasons of that are mainly GPU and HQ resolution , cached services and process, and even more if you are using the included extra features (S-voice, NFC ...)
But the SGS4 come with 2 gb of RAM ! you still get like 800 free mb of memory that is good enough for all you needs ))
Personally when I close all apps i get 0.91 gb used memry and 0.9bg free memory

[Q] RAM manager

Hi,
I looked at my free ram and on daily use I have 1 GB of free ram.
So is there any sens to use ram manger to allow android use more ram (mean to not kill app and has less free ram)?

Unused RAM is wasted RAM (just before anyone else says it )
I have 1.3GB of RAM free on my N4. I wouldn't recommend a 3rd-party RAM manager, and just trust Android to handle it
Unrelated, but I have some weird memory leak issue on my N10 that basically causes all RAM to be taken up by something eventually, and all apps end up Restarting. Quite annoying, but the only thing I can do in this situation is reboot the tablet. Can't say I've seen or heard of this on the N4.

espionage724 said:
Unused RAM is wasted RAM (just before anyone else says it )
I have 1.3GB of RAM free on my N4. I wouldn't recommend a 3rd-party RAM manager, and just trust Android to handle it
Unrelated, but I have some weird memory leak issue on my N10 that basically causes all RAM to be taken up by something eventually, and all apps end up Restarting. Quite annoying, but the only thing I can do in this situation is reboot the tablet. Can't say I've seen or heard of this on the N4.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i cant say i like the way android does it, even though it does do it. i use greenify, and autostarts to prevent apps from starting in the background. also, i change the numbers to androids ram management. now im happy

But greenify make some apps start slower, yes? (because they have to start again)
How you change the number of free ram?

atomic339 said:
But greenify make some apps start slower, yes? (because they have to start again)
How you change the number of free ram?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ive never noticed that its slowed.

atomic339 said:
But greenify make some apps start slower, yes? (because they have to start again)
How you change the number of free ram?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have widgets on your lock screen or on your home screen they will use up ram. Uninstall any apps you rarely use to free up ram.

Don't see why you're worried. You have as much FREE ram as an s3 does on the box
On a more serious note, I doubt you'll see any difference by freeing up ram. 500-600 mb of free ram = smooth experience generally
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium

I'm no expert, but what I've read on these forums, it's best to just let Android take care of it. Android has come pretty far with memory management, and third-party apps might just end up taking more RAM/battery.

You're wasting your time worrying about it.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

Johmama said:
I'm no expert, but what I've read on these forums, it's best to just let Android take care of it. Android has come pretty far with memory management, and third-party apps might just end up taking more RAM/battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true, forget about ram manager and dont be paranoid about the free/used ram amout

Thanks for help, I will not use any ram manager etc.

[Q] RAM on I9505

Hello guys,
i can't understand where disappear 2Gb memory on SGS4 i9505. I use stock ROM, minimum one time per day i need clean memory through "active aplication" manager because phone unresponsive, it is same situation as on my old phone SGS1 I9000 (512mb RAM). Even all aplication cleared still used 1.2Gb RAM of 1.78Gb physically memory. This is normal or i need begin flash a lot of custom ROM's for find something useful that realy works??? What is better way?
Thanks in advance for answers.

speedfire said:
Hello guys,
i can't understand where disappear 2Gb memory on SGS4 i9505. I use stock ROM, minimum one time per day i need clean memory through "active aplication" manager because phone unresponsive, it is same situation as on my old phone SGS1 I9000 (512mb RAM). Even all aplication cleared still used 1.2Gb RAM of 1.78Gb physically memory. This is normal or i need begin flash a lot of custom ROM's for find something useful that realy works??? What is better way?
Thanks in advance for answers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stock ROM is full of bloatware and stuff. This means you have a ****load of useless apps running in the background, and some useful ones too. You should root your phone, go to application manager and DISABLE all of the useless bloatware you never use (use caution though - some things depend on others. For example don't disable google services if you intend on using any of their things).
There are many apps out there which show you what's running in the background and taking most space. Are you sure your phone feels slower or it's just the RAM that worries you?
Keep in mind that apps keep running in the background so you can later open them quickly, so if you force close them the next time you open them it will be slower.

frrlod said:
There are many apps out there which show you what's running in the background and taking most space. Are you sure your phone feels slower or it's just the RAM that worries you?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, i feel that phone slower, i wait too long time, while i check RAM it is almost full, and after cleaning RAM phone is more responsive.
Ok, i'll try disable some services in background with root phone, thank you.

I'm still using mine on the unbranded MDM which came with the phone.
I will wait a couple more days, and if they will not release a BTU update, i will flash the DBT one.
Since i have the phone ~May , i never had those lags and redraws like i see here from some users.
I'm not rooted at the moment and if i use apps/games and i just exit them, used RAM drops to ~0.98, i never clear them from memory, but if i do then the used ram drops to ~0.87.

speedfire said:
Hello guys,
i can't understand where disappear 2Gb memory on SGS4 i9505. I use stock ROM, minimum one time per day i need clean memory through "active aplication" manager because phone unresponsive, it is same situation as on my old phone SGS1 I9000 (512mb RAM). Even all aplication cleared still used 1.2Gb RAM of 1.78Gb physically memory. This is normal or i need begin flash a lot of custom ROM's for find something useful that realy works??? What is better way?
Thanks in advance for answers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
let the android system manage your ram.
any way, you want to see more free ram?
go to developers options and set "Background process limit" to 4 or less

samersh72 said:
let the android system manage your ram.
any way, you want to see more free ram?
go to developers options and set "Background process limit" to 4 or less
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you recommend doing this for battery life improvement?

frrlod said:
Do you recommend doing this for battery life improvement?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it saves a little bit of battery.
but setting limit is not so good for multi-tasking, some apps (not cached in the background) will take a little more time to open, maybe you will not notice that. so if you set limit for example to 2, open running app in setting and press on "show cached process", you will see only 2 apps are cached in the background

samersh72 said:
let the android system manage your ram.
any way, you want to see more free ram?
go to developers options and set "Background process limit" to 4 or less
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, i did it, now on phone "Background proccess limit" is 4 app, but in any case during normal phone job 1.1Gb is used.
Simply i compare with my previous phone galaxy s I9000 that flashed with custom ROM on android 4.1 (comparable software) and i it perfectly and stable work with 512Mb RAM and 1gb (one core) proccessor. I don't play with games and don't feel high difference between two absolutely different hardware's & devices (i don't speak about screens). Old phone work very smoothly, it only uses half as much system resources relatively to new galaxy s4 i9505. Why i need use "Background process limit" option on newest device with 2Gb RAM, even think about it? What is payment for biggest high quality screen?

speedfire said:
Yes, i did it, now on phone "Background proccess limit" is 4 app, but in any case during normal phone job 1.1Gb is used.
Simply i compare with my previous phone galaxy s I9000 that flashed with custom ROM on android 4.1 (comparable software) and i it perfectly and stable work with 512Mb RAM and 1gb (one core) proccessor. I don't play with games and don't feel high difference between two absolutely different hardware's & devices (i don't speak about screens). Old phone work very smoothly, it only uses half as much system resources relatively to new galaxy s4 i9505. Why i need use "Background process limit" option on newest device with 2Gb RAM, even think about it? What is payment for biggest high quality screen?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no need and not mandatory to set process limit, it is for dev and testing purposes.
linux is smart enough to manage ram

samersh72 said:
no need and not mandatory to set process limit, it is for dev and testing purposes.
linux is smart enough to manage ram
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course, but what reason unrational using memory on galaxy S4?
I can understand than system use 500Mb RAM even 700Mb but not over 1gb....

speedfire said:
Of course, but what reason unrational using memory on galaxy S4?
I can understand than system use 500Mb RAM even 700Mb but not over 1gb....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
on S4, for example, you are dealing with almost 1.14 GB of system apps,
a lot of bloatwares....

samersh72 said:
on S4, for example, you are dealing with almost 1.14 GB of system apps,
a lot of bloatwares....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, only one way remove excess system apps.
thanks for your help.