Database Users

Performance drops after some time

Hi,
I have noticed that my Nexus' performance starts to drop after some hours on: going from one home screen to the other becomes quite choppy, and so do the animations of opening an application.
Have you guys noticed that too, or is it just me?

It was like this for me until I bought Advanced Task Manager. I have it auto end applications that I don't need to run all the time. It runs much better now.

The issue is RAM. The kernel that shipped with the Nexus One doesn't support the full 512MB of RAM. However, CyanogenMod 5.0-beta4 does and the difference in speed is amazing. With 26 apps running I have 167MB free atm.
But like stickerbob said, you should have Advanced Task Manager at the least.

Deathwish238 said:
The issue is RAM. The kernel that shipped with the Nexus One doesn't support the full 512MB of RAM. However, CyanogenMod 5.0-beta4 does and the difference in speed is amazing. With 26 apps running I have 167MB free atm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?

frandavid100 said:
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep but some people just don't get that, ah well...

efeltee said:
Yep but some people just don't get that, ah well...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that doesn't really explain the performance drops. Does the phone run out of RAM, or not? It seems to be snappy again after a reboot, so there must be something.

frandavid100 said:
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is what I have read, but it did not work for me. I downloaded the free version of advanced task man to troubleshoot the problem and found that most of my apps were still running in the background even when my ram was down to 10-20mb. That is about when the phone would start acting up on me. When I ended the tasks the phone would act normal again. So I just broke down and bought the app for $.99. If you do this make sure you exclude some system apps, if you don't your phone could freeze while it is trying to restart them.

10-20mb free is normal operation. This is how the OS is designed to operate, linux and even windows7 now also operate in this fashion (show very little 'free' memory). there is no performance problem with low free memory, purely a misconception on modern memory managment. Whats going on is that you have a buggy application, which is why 'killing' apps looks to be resolving your issue. You're only resolving the symptom, not the problem.
I never kill apps and have had weeks of uptime without any slow down. This gets rehashed over and over again by people claiming task killers help performance. The reality is they do nothing for performance, only nice to have around for that great once and a while an app runs away from you, or in troubleshooting if you have a poorly written app. It should not be anyones habit to do a kill all on a regular basis, if it were the OS would do this automatically.
btw, compcache has been known to cause this slowdown over time issue, it has since been removed from most of the popular custom baked rom's.

frandavid100 said:
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it does...
bofslime said:
10-20mb free is normal operation. This is how the OS is designed to operate, linux and even windows7 now also operate in this fashion (show very little 'free' memory). there is no performance problem with low free memory, purely a misconception on modern memory managment. Whats going on is that you have a buggy application, which is why 'killing' apps looks to be resolving your issue. You're only resolving the symptom, not the problem.
I never kill apps and have had weeks of uptime without any slow down. This gets rehashed over and over again by people claiming task killers help performance. The reality is they do nothing for performance, only nice to have around for that great once and a while an app runs away from you, or in troubleshooting if you have a poorly written app. It should not be anyones habit to do a kill all on a regular basis, if it were the OS would do this automatically.
btw, compcache has been known to cause this slowdown over time issue, it has since been removed from most of the popular custom baked rom's.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well then there must be many buggy applications. I had to rely on Advanced Task Manager to keep my G1 running acceptably fast. The N1 slows down without its full RAM available so I needed to use Advanced Task Manager then too.
If the RAM is not the issue, why does having the extra 200 MB available make the phone run much smoother with 20+ apps running?

frandavid100 said:
I don't get it. Isn't Android supposed to kill unused apps when it's running out of RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well technically no, it reallocates what is being used and frees up memory for programs currently running but non the less the OS manages itself
personally i close apps that i do not have going with the task manager. i seem to notice a performance difference if i do it manually, it takes 2-3 extra taps for peace of mind rather than relying on the OS to figure it out for me...

Deathwish238 said:
The issue is RAM. The kernel that shipped with the Nexus One doesn't support the full 512MB of RAM. However, CyanogenMod 5.0-beta4 does and the difference in speed is amazing. With 26 apps running I have 167MB free atm.
But like stickerbob said, you should have Advanced Task Manager at the least.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The speed benefits of CM's ROM isn't due to the HIGHMEM supporting kernel, but rather other tweeks he's done with his build. Extra ram is nice, but there is certainly no limitation with the 213 or so userspace memory that is available now. Android itself does not even use this memory, it has its own reserved memory space, userspace memory is only for applications to be loaded in. And there is speed for keeping as much of your applications loaded in memory as possible.
swetland said:
Roughly 220MB is available to userspace in the shipping build (ERD79).
Quite a lot of memory is dedicated to the radio firmware (41MB), dsp firmware (32MB), display surfaces (32MB), gpu (3MB), camera (8MB), a/v buffers (41MB), and dsp buffers. Much of this needs to be set aside for these specific tasks due to hardware requirements of very large physically contiguous buffers which can be difficult or impossible to obtain after boot once the physical memory space gets fragmented.
The big limitation though is that the Linux kernel needs to do a 1:1 physical:virtual map of general purpose memory used by the kernel and userspace (which excludes the special purpose stuff described above). This eats into the available kernel virtual address space, which is also needed for cross process shared memory used by the binder, etc. Run out of virtual memory and things get unhappy.
In 2.6.32, HIGHMEM support for ARM will allow us to avoid this requirement for a 1:1 mapping which will allow us to increase memory available to userspace without running the system out of virtual memory adddress space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

The speed difference I'm talking about is what I experienced when running CM beta3 and CM beta3 w/ highmem. The difference was huge. I assumed the change was mainly attributed to the double RAM available.
Even now with the full RAM available, things run faster when I end the other apps running. It's not necessary, but the difference is there.
It would be nice to be able to pinpoint which apps caused slow downs.

The best way I've seen this put I found in a thread where someone wanted to disable apps from auto-starting entirely. I saved it, because I though it was very elegant way to explain androids mem management.
equid0x said:
I just wanted to chime in here about the whole apps on startup thing....
Android has the concept of services which are programs that typically have a frontend piece, like a GUI for IM that you would normally use, that only runs when you are using it, and a background piece, the service, which is constantly running to keep you connected to your IM servers. This will account for some portion of the things you see running on startup, depending on how many apps you have installed, and whether or not they were written to run as a service.
There are also some, usually older, android programs that existed before "services" were really used.. that basically use triggers to keep reloading themselves. These programs are less efficient, and probably should be re-written to use the official service method of operation, caveat emptor.
Android also makes several modifications to the stock process handling that comes with any Linux kernel, which is already radically different from what most would be used to seeing on Windows as it is. Android attempts to keep commonly used applications running(loaded into memory), but in a sleeping state (using no cpu), so that they may be quickly resumed on request. Android also contains some agressive modifications to the behavior of the OOM(out of memory) task killer in Linux, that seem to cause it to keep applications running until nearly all memory is consumed, killing apps it deems unnecessary only when absolutely necessary. However, Android also supports a methodology of saving the running state of a program, so that if it is killed due to an OOM condition, it may be restarted with relevant data restored, to give the appearance of never having been killed at all.
This functionality is not all to alien to Linux as a platform in general, though Android has many modifications which tend to favor aggressive app management in memory, and less so filesystem cache. This was likely a design choice made to suit the low-speed/low memory platforms Android targets.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Good read.
So then given that...only services running should slow down the phone and not the background apps running.
However, this doesn't really answer the OP's question. If it's not a memory issue...what's causing his slowdowns?

Could be too many widgets on the home screen, I don't run that many but its possible that while in an app for a while, and switching back to home the OS may have to kill a whole bunch of apps to allow it to reload all the widgets on the home screen.
I tested this, and loaded the crap out of my home screens with widgets, and then launched a game. When I exited the game there was a good 500ms - 800ms delay in my homescreens from displaying anything other than the background. However, after it loaded, scrolling between screens looks smooth. The new kernel with highmem support can help this, but I would suspect some crazy widget filled homescreen with a 3rd party live wallpaper (star's configured with too many stars) and all of that combined could be an issue even still. Apple combats this by allowing only one app at a time, they know people will go overboard if allowed.

Well, that doesn't really explain the performance drops. Does the phone run out of RAM, or not? It seems to be snappy again after a reboot, so there must be something.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's probably no easy answer to this question. There could be IO contention, a runaway process, high CPU usage, a memory leak, shoddy code in some app, etc etc... One would really have to take a look at the whole state of the system at the time the problem is happening to be able to ascertain what is causing the slowdown.
The phenomenon is in no way unique to Android. I'm sure nearly everyone is familiar with the common complaint "my computer is running slow". The reasons that can happen on a common PC are the very same reasons that can be happening here, and unfortunately there are many of those reasons. While in many cases, throwing memory at the issue may appear to solve the problem temporarily, it often is not a permanent fix.
The amount of userspace memory available really amounts to 1 thing and 1 thing only -> the total number of running processes that we can keep totally in memory at any given time. On stock android, slowdown due to an OOM condition should be minimal, since stock android doesn't swap. Discounting any other bottlenecks, there is a practical limit to the number of programs once would be able to run in the memory space that is available. Realistically speaking, android programs tend to be fairly small, so you'd really have to be running a lot of them to exhaust this space. It is far more likely one or 2 poorly written programs are hogging huge amounts of memory (and probably other resources), which is causing constant killing and restarting of other apps you are trying to run concurrently. You end up with contention on the slow flash, resulting in poor performance.
You can't even really compare the Nexus One to the G1 in this regard, because the G1 truly is terribly deprived of memory. Though, the argument in both cases could really be made that you are attempting to run the hardware beyond its design specifications...
Its been my experience that the culprit is usually one or 2 specific programs. Sometimes the best, although inconvenient, way to figure out which programs these are, is to keep watch of your usage habits, and if you suspect something is the problem, uninstall it, and see if the issue persists. Its time consuming but there really isn't any better way to figure it out without using all kinds of tools that android doesn't really provide convenient access to. There are a few apps on the market that help with this but I am not sure what they are called offhand.
Programs that were identified as sources of slowdown for me have been:
Weatherbug
The Weather Channel
Calorie Counter
Locale
SMS Popup
10000
USA Today
National Geographic Wallpapers
CNN News Widget
Streamfurious
Nav4All
Waze
Just about every app with Admob Ads
And this is really just what I can think off offhand... there are more...

equid0x said:
There's probably no easy answer to this question. There could be IO contention, a runaway process, high CPU usage, a memory leak, shoddy code in some app, etc etc... One would really have to take a look at the whole state of the system at the time the problem is happening to be able to ascertain what is causing the slowdown.
The phenomenon is in no way unique to Android. I'm sure nearly everyone is familiar with the common complaint "my computer is running slow". The reasons that can happen on a common PC are the very same reasons that can be happening here, and unfortunately there are many of those reasons. While in many cases, throwing memory at the issue may appear to solve the problem temporarily, it often is not a permanent fix.
The amount of userspace memory available really amounts to 1 thing and 1 thing only -> the total number of running processes that we can keep totally in memory at any given time. On stock android, slowdown due to an OOM condition should be minimal, since stock android doesn't swap. Discounting any other bottlenecks, there is a practical limit to the number of programs once would be able to run in the memory space that is available. Realistically speaking, android programs tend to be fairly small, so you'd really have to be running a lot of them to exhaust this space. It is far more likely one or 2 poorly written programs are hogging huge amounts of memory (and probably other resources), which is causing constant killing and restarting of other apps you are trying to run concurrently. You end up with contention on the slow flash, resulting in poor performance.
You can't even really compare the Nexus One to the G1 in this regard, because the G1 truly is terribly deprived of memory. Though, the argument in both cases could really be made that you are attempting to run the hardware beyond its design specifications...
Its been my experience that the culprit is usually one or 2 specific programs. Sometimes the best, although inconvenient, way to figure out which programs these are, is to keep watch of your usage habits, and if you suspect something is the problem, uninstall it, and see if the issue persists. Its time consuming but there really isn't any better way to figure it out without using all kinds of tools that android doesn't really provide convenient access to. There are a few apps on the market that help with this but I am not sure what they are called offhand.
Programs that were identified as sources of slowdown for me have been:
Weatherbug
The Weather Channel
Calorie Counter
Locale
SMS Popup
10000
USA Today
National Geographic Wallpapers
CNN News Widget
Streamfurious
Nav4All
Waze
Just about every app with Admob Ads
And this is really just what I can think off offhand... there are more...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm banking on it being an issue with an app that the OP has installed as well...not the phone or Android. I have only a handful of tried and true apps, and haven't experienced a slowdown even after 150 hours without a reboot.
OP... start uninstalling apps a couple at a time and wait several hours in between to narrow down the problem app.

I can't speak for the OP, but when I was having that problem I had 5 widgets running on my home screen. The Google Search, Sports Tap, Power Control, Calendar, and The Small Weather Channel. Does this seem like too much? I hope not.

stickerbob said:
I can't speak for the OP, but when I was having that problem I had 5 widgets running on my home screen. The Google Search, Sports Tap, Power Control, Calendar, and The Small Weather Channel. Does this seem like too much? I hope not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not just widgets that you should be thinking about... any app you've installed can throw something off.

stickerbob said:
I can't speak for the OP, but when I was having that problem I had 5 widgets running on my home screen. The Google Search, Sports Tap, Power Control, Calendar, and The Small Weather Channel. Does this seem like too much? I hope not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I removed the weather & news widget and the phone seems much faster now. I'll keep it like that for a day, see if it stays fast.

Browser killed after phone sleep for a while

If I load a few pages in a browser (have tried many different browsers, all works the same) they gets killed after a sleeping for a while, meaning I have to reload the content. It seems to happen after a certain time not being used.
This did not happen on my HTC Desire HD.
I tried today to place a browser (miren) into the /system/app folder, to see if that made any difference, but it didn't.
Why is this happning? any why not on the desire HD?
any hack I can do to fix it?
It's useful to when on fast internet load 10 pages and read them sometime later.

Just a guess, but it may be a RAM management thing. My N1 will exit the browser occasionally even when the phone is asleep to free up RAM.

I'm experiencing this issue as well and it's irritating. I wondered, too, if it was a ram management issue, but it'll happen even after just a few minutes with no other apps launched. None of my other phones have closed the browser for ram issues without a long time of inactivity and many other apps opened using lots of ram.
Is there some way to specify the browser as preferred or something so the system won't close it, in case it is ram management?

maxh said:
Is there some way to specify the browser as preferred or something so the system won't close it, in case it is ram management?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess it has something to do with ram management, so how to adjust that?
I tried putting it in system folder, that didn't make any difference, tried running it as root, no difference.
Maybe another kernel would do it differently? anybody knows? Don't want to spend lots of time installing a new kernel if it doesn't make any difference.

This is both a browser and a ram management issue.
Android automatically kills off apps that are using ram on the background after they are inactive for a period and most browsers, the stock one included, tend to hog a surprising amount of memory which in turn makes them priority number 1 for android to kill off.
I have no answer as to how to fix this problem aside from trying other browsers, sorry.

akselic said:
This is both a browser and a ram management issue.
Android automatically kills off apps that are using ram on the background after they are inactive for a period and most browsers, the stock one included, tend to hog a surprising amount of memory which in turn makes them priority number 1 for android to kill off.
I have no answer as to how to fix this problem aside from trying other browsers, sorry.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what you're saying is not completely accurate, because this does not happen in other phones, desire HD has less RAM also.
I don't think it's a browser issue, as I have tried many different and it will work the same. The ram does not need to be critically low before it gets killed, it might happen when there is more than 250mb free

It happens for me with messaging app also. It can be the only thing running with loads of free ram. And suddenly its killed, very annoying because its pretty slow starting again. Never happened in my SG SII
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

nick5000 said:
what you're saying is not completely accurate, because this does not happen in other phones, desire HD has less RAM also.
I don't think it's a browser issue, as I have tried many different and it will work the same. The ram does not need to be critically low before it gets killed, it might happen when there is more than 250mb free
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Note isn't my first android phone that does this (mind you I haven't owned any HTC devices) but if this is the case then it means that ram management on the Note is quite aggressive. The only way to "fix" this is with custom kernels unless Samsung does something about it themselves (and I wouldn't count on that)

I'm experiencing the same problem but I don't really mind since I don't open many tabs at time. So I just have to go to the history tab to reopen the page.
At least for the stock browser it would have been better just to save the URL while killing the browser so when u open it again it will reload all the pages.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

Is it possible the S-pen places greater demands on the Note's RAM than other phones? Perhaps it tries to keep a certain amount of RAM free at all times for this purpose.

Maybe, but remember that with higher resolution and higher amount of RAM the device will use more RAM.
An example is computers. I have a netbook and a standard notebook (laptop). The netbook has 1GB RAM and the resolution is 1024x600 and running Ubuntu. It uses 90MB at boot (after tweaking)
My notebook has 2GB RAM, and the resolution is 1366 x 768 and is also running Ubuntu. It uses 200MB at boot (same tweaks as the notebook)
- Higher resolution = More pixels and more information that needs prosessing on the screen
- More RAM = It can allow itself to use more
I've seen A LOT of this at Ubuntuforums and other places with people with 8 and 16GB RAM, and they are complaining about high RAM usage. It's the same with computers with HD screens.
I've tried to find the thread about this, but i can't find it

BazookaAce said:
Maybe, but remember that with higher resolution and higher amount of RAM the device will use more RAM.
An example is computers. I have a netbook and a standard notebook (laptop). The netbook has 1GB RAM and the resolution is 1024x600 and running Ubuntu. It uses 90MB at boot (after tweaking)
My notebook has 2GB RAM, and the resolution is 1366 x 768 and is also running Ubuntu. It uses 200MB at boot (same tweaks as the notebook)
- Higher resolution = More pixels and more information that needs prosessing on the screen
- More RAM = It can allow itself to use more
I've seen A LOT of this at Ubuntuforums and other places with people with 8 and 16GB RAM, and they are complaining about high RAM usage. It's the same with computers with HD screens.
I've tried to find the thread about this, but i can't find it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Excellent points.

solved
So I played with root explorer and moved many of the samsung apps that I don't use out of /system/app folder.
I'm not sure what exactly did it. The email program was the only one I deleted (by accident) - but it was set to not sync, so it shouldn't be working in the background anyway.
I also put the Miren browser in the /system/app folder. Didn't notice any difference to that at first, so not sure if that contributed at all.
Another thing I did was to install adfree. It didn't seem to work, but I don't know if it made any changes that would make a differnece. I'm just listing up everything I did that day.
But the biggest change after all this is:
BATTERY LIFE !!
has doubled! I used to get around 10-12 hours with moderat usage, yesterday I was at 50% after 12 hours usage. And Miren browser now does not shut down, except I push the phones with other ram hungry applications.
Funny is, that display used to be high up on the battery usage statistics, but now Andoird OS is very high, but the phones use much less battery! Doesn't make any sense, but I don't complain..
I'm running stock european 2.3.6 firmware that I downloaded from sammobile.com. I rooted it, but didn't notice any differnce before or after the root.

Can you list down what apps did u remove? Thanks

entaro said:
Can you list down what apps did u remove? Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I moved the following to /data/app, but they don't seem to work anymore, not sure what is needed to make them work, but anyway disabling them did the job.
Email was deleted.
Analogclock,
bluesa
buddiesnow
crayonphysics
days
dualclock
emailwidget
fmradio
kobo
livewallpapers
oceanweatherwxga
samsungapps
samsungappsuna3
samsungservice
samsungwidget_news
samsungwidget_stockclock
splannerappwidget
videoeditor
voicetogo
windyweatherwxga
zinio

nick5000 said:
If I load a few pages in a browser (have tried many different browsers, all works the same) they gets killed after a sleeping for a while, meaning I have to reload the content. It seems to happen after a certain time not being used.
Why is this happning? any why not on the desire HD?
any hack I can do to fix it?
It's useful to when on fast internet load 10 pages and read them sometime later.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am pretty sure it is not a memory management issue. I come from the GalaxySII and it never happened despite having many browser windows open. I think this phone now is harder trying to close unused apps, based on inactivity time, to improve battery life (which is much better than SGS2) and shuts down apps that may not allow the CPU to go to deep sleep.
To me it does not look like an issue, more like a feature, it is not like you get you work "killed" or unsaved. And you could always load pages from your browser's history. -I know, I know, you like to preload your webpages to look at them later.-
Also, updated versions for the note have several options to battery saving within the browser, have you tried them?

runaway64 said:
I am pretty sure it is not a memory management issue. I come from the GalaxySII and it never happened despite having many browser windows open. I think this phone now is harder trying to close unused apps, based on inactivity time, to improve battery life (which is much better than SGS2) and shuts down apps that may not allow the CPU to go to deep sleep.
To me it does not look like an issue, more like a feature, it is not like you get you work "killed" or unsaved. And you could always load pages from your browser's history. -I know, I know, you like to preload your webpages to look at them later.-
Also, updated versions for the note have several options to battery saving within the browser, have you tried them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More excellent points. I'll bet you're right.

runaway64 said:
I am pretty sure it is not a memory management issue. I come from the GalaxySII and it never happened despite having many browser windows open. I think this phone now is harder trying to close unused apps, based on inactivity time, to improve battery life (which is much better than SGS2) and shuts down apps that may not allow the CPU to go to deep sleep.
To me it does not look like an issue, more like a feature, it is not like you get you work "killed" or unsaved. And you could always load pages from your browser's history. -I know, I know, you like to preload your webpages to look at them later.-
Also, updated versions for the note have several options to battery saving within the browser, have you tried them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, it might be something to better battery life, but then it's the complete opposite of my recent findings that the battery life was much better while the browser does not get killed (after removing system apps).
I guess this issue/feature wouldn't have been a problem if I lived in a world with perfect high speed internet access all the time. here in China, it can get slow, some pages take a long time to load, so why should I want to reload them..
also, when I fly, i like to load up 10 pages and read them while up in the air. last week I was very disappointed when i found out that just leaving the phone by itself for halv and hour had made the browser restart.
Anyway, I'm happy now, after the mod Miren browser does not reload alot, only after loading several heavy progams in between. Still, it makes me want to optimise it more, so i could get even more free ram to use.

nick5000 said:
Yeah, it might be something to better battery life, but then it's the complete opposite of my recent findings that the battery life was much better while the browser does not get killed (after removing system apps).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wait, what? I interpreted your results as consistent with his hypothesis. You removed apps that were draining the battery, allowing better battery life. Perhaps that's why the system is no longer compelled to shut down the browser.

bigmout said:
Wait, what? I interpreted your results as consistent with his hypothesis. You removed apps that were draining the battery, allowing better battery life. Perhaps that's why the system is no longer compelled to shut down the browser.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
he said that the better battery life is because the browser gets shut down.

[Q] RAM Usage increases when Force Closing?

New owner of a Nexus 7 2013 here. Had it for a month or so now.
So the device came shipped with 4.3, I updated the device to 4.4.2 OTA. Weird thing is, everytime I "Force Close" an app from Settings, the RAM usage decreases, then it INCREASES!
Google Play Store (44mb), current RAM usage: 444mb
Force close Play Store, current RAM Usage: 400mb
*a couple of seconds later after display refresh*
current RAM Usage:480mb
This keeps going. No matter how many apps I force close, the RAM usage keeps increasing until the point where it reaches ~660-~700mb!
Is this normal? Does this happen to anybody else? Is there something wrong with the garbage collector? Also my RAM usage is in the 400mb range on startup and a LOT of apps run on startup which I need to force close manually (is it normal they run on startup?).
Thanks!

So memory usage is supposed to increase when you force close apps, so I take it this is usual for Android? But is there any explanation as to why ram usage increases instead of decreasing like on iOS? Is the garbage collection on this thing significantly different to conventional Linux kernels or for that matter Windows' variant too?
Sounds like a very stupid idea tbh

greatnoob said:
So memory usage is supposed to increase when you force close apps, so I take it this is usual for Android? But is there any explanation as to why ram usage increases instead of decreasing like on iOS? Is the garbage collection on this thing significantly different to conventional Linux kernels or for that matter Windows' variant too?
Sounds like a very stupid idea tbh
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK wrong forum this one is for the n7 2012 but your question is more to do with how android runs rather than specifically the nexus.
First of all forget everything you think you know about ram. In android the more ram being used the better the device will run. This is not always true but largely the more apps being held in ram the smoother android will run them. When an app closes it moves from running services to cached and the system will then call on that if you reopen the app or clear space if it needs it thus saving itself valuable power. The other reason for not force closing apps it they no longer run in the background as they were designed to. This is one reason task killers are bad for your system. If you close the mail app you won't get emails, if you close the clock your alarm won't go off, if you close the play store your apps won't update ect. Android is as far removed from windows as iOS is although windows 7 does use a similar idea towards ram. It doest need you to clear ram its perfectly capable of doing it itself. The exception to this is when you get badly designed apps that don't clear up after themselves and stay in the running services.
Try looking in your cached services you will probably find that's where your ram increase is. By force closing apps you make more work for the system reopening them.
Look here for more information about this
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=904023
Sent from my C5303 using xda app-developers app

Little ram saving trick for RamHog™ apps. Maybe it'll help. :)

On a phone that only has three gigs of RAM, (I got the 16 GB version, sue me) I knew there would be a little bit of tweaking involved.
Both chrome and Firefox, are highly functional, with social network sites like twitter, and facebook.
I realized my applications, were eating up nearly a gigabyte of RAM.
My simple tweak is this.
I deleted Facebook messenger, the Facebook app itself, and the twitter apps
I used chrome to go to Facebook, and sign in, and then saved it as a desktop button. (setting are the three dots, top right, selected "add to home screen")
One click and I'm back in Facebook. No app needed, and no RAM suck
Did the same thing with Twitter, and when I was done, I had nearly a gigabyte of free RAM on the phone, and the phone was seriously faster.
Hope it helps someone. I know there are people who get used to the UI of the apps, over the desktop sites, especially on mobile devices, but I barely noticed it.
It is basically using one app (your browser) instead of several apps. with previous versions of android, I got mixed results with this, but it seems to work really smoothly now
Thanks!

papamalo said:
On a phone that only has three gigs of RAM, (I got the 16 GB version, sue me) I knew there would be a little bit of tweaking involved.
Both chrome and Firefox, are highly functional, with social network sites like twitter, and facebook.
I realized my applications, were eating up nearly a gigabyte of RAM.
My simple tweak is this.
I deleted Facebook messenger, the Facebook app itself, and the twitter apps
I used chrome to go to Facebook, and sign in, and then saved it as a desktop button. (setting are the three dots, top right, selected "add to home screen")
One click and I'm back in Facebook. No app needed, and no RAM suck
Did the same thing with Twitter, and when I was done, I had nearly a gigabyte of free RAM on the phone, and the phone was seriously faster.
Hope it helps someone. I know there are people who get used to the UI of the apps, over the desktop sites, especially on mobile devices, but I barely noticed it.
It is basically using one app (your browser) instead of several apps. with previous versions of android, I got mixed results with this, but it seems to work really smoothly now
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do the same thing with anything that I can do using chrome, I don't get the app. Kind of pointless really. S you also noticed it frees up RAM, and on a side note without those apps running in the background constantly, it should save a little juice too!
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

I used to do that, but I found that being able to share something to FB using the picker menu was more important. I don't use twitter, so that's a non-issue for me, and messenger doesn't seem to take up a lot of ram on my device?
Besides, with Android and other modern systems, unused ram is wasted ram.
Not saying that your experience isn't valid. I'm sure that it is. But for me, I'd rather have the functionality than obsessing over a few dropped frames while swiping through my homescreens.

'Besides, with Android and other modern systems, unused ram is wasted ram. "
True...

Well, I used to use a bunch of apps, now I don't, the phone is faster, and has less clutter.
Can you explain the "unused ram is wasted ram"?
You are saying that maxing out the RAM capability of an android device will not affect speed or performance?
Thanks!

papamalo said:
Well, I used to use a bunch of apps, now I don't, the phone is faster, and has less clutter.
Can you explain the "unused ram is wasted ram"?
You are saying that maxing out the RAM capability of an android device will not affect speed or performance?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a constant misnomer thrown out whenever someone raises the android ram issue.
Essentially whilst it's partially true having lots of ram not being used is wasteful - having your memory constantly full or used up will result in degraded performance and many more app refreshes and less apps stored in memory. Just look at the Galaxy S6/Edge for an example.
There has to be a point where you have enough ram to run all your core applications and enough extra 'free ram' to enable other apps to be loaded and shuffled without causing excessive and aggressive refreshes.
So this 'free ram is wasted ram' is a misnomer based on a partial truth but ignoring important factors that mandate in order to maintain optimum performance you do need free ram to allow new apps and existing apps wiggle room to work / operate.
Sent from my XT1572 using Tapatalk

That is kind of what I thought. I figured a little balance was good. Basically of the 3GB RAM I try within reason to keep 1 GB free.
it made a noticeable difference in speed, and load times in general.
I wish there were clear guidelines by number, on app load, RAM limitations, and optimal settings to use the most stuff at the quickest speed.
Anyway, thank all for responding. I learn more every day.
P

Delete Facebook and Twitter apps? I don't see those anywhere on my XT1575.
Always shun the app and use browser instead if you can. The apps hog resources even when they appear "closed", surreptitiously slurp your private data*, and clog your network bandwidth (using your limited data on cell connection) sending your data to the mothership and serving obnoxious ads - all of which also uses more power too.
There is no such thing as a free app.
* Also look at the recent news about a slew of "free" apps hiding Chinese malware that REALLY utilizes your private data and bandwidth.

The idea behind effective usage of RAM is that apps' core functions are loaded and/or remain in RAM when not running an app. This is supposed to prevent the processor from working as much. Some open RAM is still good to have for those times in which an app or what not is not already loaded. Otherwise the system has to dump some of the RAM usage to make room so to speak. I am over simplifying the process but the take away understanding is the same. You want the system to utilize the RAM effectively by having the most used apps preloaded and stored even when not in use. You also want some free RAM for when it is necessary. Some apps you do have to watch out for though as they consistently take up large chunks of RAM (Facebook was one of those in past experiences).

Speed Up your Android and save your battery!

Smartphones these days are Super Fast and powerful, At least on paper! Never let your smartphones down in front of others. Your smartphones can perform better than you expect, even without Rooting it! Excited? Well without wasting your time, Let’s start!
Remove your Bloatware
Well, bloatware is common with almost all smartphones. Even Redmi devices packs with hell tons of bloat in it! If your phone has RAM of 3GB or above it’s okay. But if it has 2GB or 1GB of RAM, pain! There are many tutorials available showing how to remove bloat on Any android without root. But it’s sort of risky if you are a noob. But the good thing is you can remove the bloat in most of the android devices, I mean manufacturers are giving the option to uninstall unnecessary bloat. But some Google apps and brand based apps can’t be uninstalled by the way! The only thing you can do is just disabling them. Open settings, open application settings and disable unwanted apps. By doing this you can also save lots of battery.
2. RECENT
The Recent feature in Android is everyone’s favorite. As Android is upgrading Recents were also upgraded. The latest version Android 7 (Nougat) added a new feature to it’s recent. Yes, it’s multi-window mode. Apart from that, even you got 2 or 3 gigs of RAM while multi-tasking phone slow down and puts pressure on battery and phone tends to heat up! To avoid this just clear the apps after locking your device. Yes, Android system knows when to stop background activities but clearing tasks are necessary.
3. Managing Internal Storage
In the quarter two of 2016, the entire game of smartphones is changed. Brands started launching phones with a minimum of 2GB of RAM and 16GB of on boot storage. Well, it’s decent enough for an average user, But the hybrid slots. Okay, now let’s get to the point! The major important thing of Android is it’s internal storage obviously. It’s a physical memory where users can store all their files. Better buy a phone with a minimum of 16gigs of ROM. So that you can manage it for years. Store what you want in internal storage. I mean just keep the files which you access daily! Better spend 50–100 bugs and buy an OTG-Cable and an extra 4 or 8 GB pen drive. Store all your movies, TV shows kind of stuff in it and you can use the OTG on the go.
5. REMOVE UNNECESSARY WIDGETS FROM HOMESCREEN.
Android home screen, extremely customizable! Yes, we need to utilize that! But up to some extent. Widgets slow down your device. Now you may think, widgets? Really? Yes. Widgets occupy the space of Random access memory i.e., RAM and tasks in the background. So it’s better to use as many fewer widgets as possible. In my opinion, one clock widget and a search widget is enough. Anyways you can access Google Assistant on the go! So search widget is optional too.
6. Don’t fall into AUTO-SYNC! It’s a trap.
Almost every student or teenager is a social freak. Previously only Facebook, WhatsApp are on the play. But now Instagram, Snapchat, Gmail, Yahoo, Twitter etc, are added to the list. It’s the very good thing that you are aware of all social media. But you are not aware of Auto – Sync!! Auto-Sync kills your smartphone’s performance and it effects a lot on battery too! Let me explain if you are connected to many accounts on your smartphone. All those accounts will be saved in Accounts section in settings. But if the auto-sync is turned on, it keeps on syncing your accounts which reduce the performance of your Android device. So disable it and make your Android fast. Turning off Auto-sync saves lots of your battery life too.
7. Stop using Cleaning Apps like Clean Master and all.
Lot’s of famous technology sites say that use Du booster or Use clean Master for boosting your Android device. But, no use! Rather they will kill your device. What happens is in the process of boosting, those cleaners will kill your apps in the background, So apps take lots of time to open. It affects Random access memory and put pressure on battery. It’s better to keep your device away from that kind of cleaning apps. Here is a detailed article by our Team Member Dinesh.
Does Usage of System Cleaning Apps Really Increase Device’s Performance?
8. Using a right Launcher!
Sometimes your device may lag a lot! Even after you follow all the above steps, then it’s time to change your Launcher. If you are a third party launcher user, this happens to you. Shift to Nova Launcher or ASAP launcher. As this kind of launchers doesn’t consume your RAM. My suggestion is to go with nova. You can customize it as you want.
So these are some simple steps in which you can make your smartphone faster. Well, that pretty much it for this small article.

TechRagon said:
Smartphones these days are Super Fast and powerful, At least on paper! Never let your smartphones down in front of others. Your smartphones can perform better than you expect, even without Rooting it! Excited? Well without wasting your time, Let’s start!
Remove your Bloatware
Well, bloatware is common with almost all smartphones. Even Redmi devices packs with hell tons of bloat in it! If your phone has RAM of 3GB or above it’s okay. But if it has 2GB or 1GB of RAM, pain! There are many tutorials available showing how to remove bloat on Any android without root. But it’s sort of risky if you are a noob. But the good thing is you can remove the bloat in most of the android devices, I mean manufacturers are giving the option to uninstall unnecessary bloat. But some Google apps and brand based apps can’t be uninstalled by the way! The only thing you can do is just disabling them. Open settings, open application settings and disable unwanted apps. By doing this you can also save lots of battery.
2. RECENT
The Recent feature in Android is everyone’s favorite. As Android is upgrading Recents were also upgraded. The latest version Android 7 (Nougat) added a new feature to it’s recent. Yes, it’s multi-window mode. Apart from that, even you got 2 or 3 gigs of RAM while multi-tasking phone slow down and puts pressure on battery and phone tends to heat up! To avoid this just clear the apps after locking your device. Yes, Android system knows when to stop background activities but clearing tasks are necessary.
3. Managing Internal Storage
In the quarter two of 2016, the entire game of smartphones is changed. Brands started launching phones with a minimum of 2GB of RAM and 16GB of on boot storage. Well, it’s decent enough for an average user, But the hybrid slots. Okay, now let’s get to the point! The major important thing of Android is it’s internal storage obviously. It’s a physical memory where users can store all their files. Better buy a phone with a minimum of 16gigs of ROM. So that you can manage it for years. Store what you want in internal storage. I mean just keep the files which you access daily! Better spend 50–100 bugs and buy an OTG-Cable and an extra 4 or 8 GB pen drive. Store all your movies, TV shows kind of stuff in it and you can use the OTG on the go.
5. REMOVE UNNECESSARY WIDGETS FROM HOMESCREEN.
Android home screen, extremely customizable! Yes, we need to utilize that! But up to some extent. Widgets slow down your device. Now you may think, widgets? Really? Yes. Widgets occupy the space of Random access memory i.e., RAM and tasks in the background. So it’s better to use as many fewer widgets as possible. In my opinion, one clock widget and a search widget is enough. Anyways you can access Google Assistant on the go! So search widget is optional too.
6. Don’t fall into AUTO-SYNC! It’s a trap.
Almost every student or teenager is a social freak. Previously only Facebook, WhatsApp are on the play. But now Instagram, Snapchat, Gmail, Yahoo, Twitter etc, are added to the list. It’s the very good thing that you are aware of all social media. But you are not aware of Auto – Sync!! Auto-Sync kills your smartphone’s performance and it effects a lot on battery too! Let me explain if you are connected to many accounts on your smartphone. All those accounts will be saved in Accounts section in settings. But if the auto-sync is turned on, it keeps on syncing your accounts which reduce the performance of your Android device. So disable it and make your Android fast. Turning off Auto-sync saves lots of your battery life too.
7. Stop using Cleaning Apps like Clean Master and all.
Lot’s of famous technology sites say that use Du booster or Use clean Master for boosting your Android device. But, no use! Rather they will kill your device. What happens is in the process of boosting, those cleaners will kill your apps in the background, So apps take lots of time to open. It affects Random access memory and put pressure on battery. It’s better to keep your device away from that kind of cleaning apps. Here is a detailed article by our Team Member Dinesh.
Does Usage of System Cleaning Apps Really Increase Device’s Performance?
8. Using a right Launcher!
Sometimes your device may lag a lot! Even after you follow all the above steps, then it’s time to change your Launcher. If you are a third party launcher user, this happens to you. Shift to Nova Launcher or ASAP launcher. As this kind of launchers doesn’t consume your RAM. My suggestion is to go with nova. You can customize it as you want.
So these are some simple steps in which you can make your smartphone faster. Well, that pretty much it for this small article.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
can i remove the blootware with out root? i'm not willing taking the risk of root

TechRagon said:
2. RECENT
The Recent feature in Android is everyone’s favorite. As Android is upgrading Recents were also upgraded. The latest version Android 7 (Nougat) added a new feature to it’s recent. Yes, it’s multi-window mode. Apart from that, even you got 2 or 3 gigs of RAM while multi-tasking phone slow down and puts pressure on battery and phone tends to heat up! To avoid this just clear the apps after locking your device. Yes, Android system knows when to stop background activities but clearing tasks are necessary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the biggest bull**** I've recently read. Before you will write any guide, make a research first.
Apps left in recents doesn't drain your battery moreover that behavior saves battery life, because CPU doesn't have to load app from internal storage to RAM over and over again when you kill it.

kubapl66 said:
That's the biggest bull**** I've recently read. Before you will write any guide, make a research first.
Apps left in recents doesn't drain your battery moreover that behavior saves battery life, because CPU doesn't have to load app from internal storage to RAM over and over again when you kill it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True true!!

One little suggestion. Use Flick launcher instead of Nova.

kubapl66 said:
That's the biggest bull**** I've recently read. Before you will write any guide, make a research first.
Apps left in recents doesn't drain your battery moreover that behavior saves battery life, because CPU doesn't have to load app from internal storage to RAM over and over again when you kill it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
100% agreed!