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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.
I've seen some people complaining about how low RAM they have left in their phones and others suggesting task killers to manage the RAM and save battery. Well, that is not the case. So, I've gathered some information from the web so you can understand...
How processes and activities work on Android
Activity lifecycle
An activity has essentially three states:
It is active or running when it is in the foreground of the screen (at the top of the activity stack for the current task). This is the activity that is the focus for the user’s actions.
It is paused if it has lost focus but is still visible to the user. That is, another activity lies on top of it and that activity either is transparent or doesn’t cover the full screen, so some of the paused activity can show through. A paused activity is completely alive (it maintains all state and member information and remains attached to the window manager), but can be killed by the system in extreme low memory situations.
It is stopped if it is completely obscured by another activity. It still retains all state and member information. However, it is no longer visible to the user so its window is hidden and it will often be killed by the system when memory is needed elsewhere.
If an activity is paused or stopped, the system can drop it from memory either by asking it to finish (calling its finish() method), or simply killing its process. When it is displayed again to the user, it must be completely restarted and restored to its previous state.
The foreground lifetime of an activity happens between a call to onResume() until a corresponding call to onPause(). During this time, the activity is in front of all other activities on screen and is interacting with the user. An activity can frequently transition between the resumed and paused states — for example, onPause() is called when the device goes to sleep or when a new activity is started, onResume() is called when an activity result or a new intent is delivered. Therefore, the code in these two methods should be fairly lightweight.
Taken from the Android Developers site
Android's built-in task-manager
What people don’t seem to realize is that android is designed to have a large number of tasks stored in memory at all times. Why? Well basically we are talking about a mobile device. On a mobile device things tend to be slower. The hardware isn’t as robust as say a desktop or a laptop, so in order to get that same “snappy” feeling, there have to be workarounds.
One of these is how android deals with memory. Android will load up your apps and then keep them running until they absolutely HAVE to kill them. This is because that way, if you want to re-open an app, the system already has it loaded and can then just resume it instead of reloading it. This provides a significant performance increase.
What a lot of people don’t realize as well is that android kernels have their own task manager. This means that:
it will be more efficient than any app-based task manager as it is run at the kernel level, and
it should be left up to that task killer to decide when to free up memory
There is only one case where having a task killer is a good idea, and that is when you want to kill ONE SPECIFIC APP. Killing all apps is never a good idea. You don’t know what operations they are performing or if they are necessary.
Said from a very experienced ROM cooker
CPU usage matters more
This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you’ll free by killing it. As we’ve learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the “autokill” feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it’s actually possible that this will worsen your phone’s performance and battery life. Whether you’re manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you’re actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn’t—killing apps that aren’t doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don’t, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don’t go off, you don’t receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you’re usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you’re more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.
Said from Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker
The more RAM available, the more Android will find ways to use it up which means your battery will be dead in hours.
From droid-life.com
So that's it. Let the lovely green robot do the job for you while you're playing games or using the xda app or whatever...
More detailed article
We almost hate to approach the topic of Task Killers on Android after all this time, but with so many new faces here at Droid Life and in Android in general, it’s something that needs to be done. In fact, after seeing the Amazon app of the day and reading through the Twitter conversations we just had with many of you, this thing needs to be posted immediately. Let’s see if we can’t get you all some better battery life!
If this was 2009 and we were all running something less than Android 2.2, that statement plastered on that red banner might be somewhat correct. But since it is 2011 and the majority of people on the planet are running Android 2.2, we need to get you away from the mindset that killing off tasks on your phone is a good thing.
So rather than me blabbering about the inner-workings of Android and how it manages RAM for the 10,000th time, I’m going to just pull from some posts that friends of ours have done that explain this in the plainest of ways.
First up is our boy @cvpcs who you may know from CM and his Sapphire ROM days. He knows Android inside-and-out, so when he goes into memory management which is done by the OS itself, you should listen up:
…What people don’t seem to realize is that android is designed to have a large number of tasks stored in memory at all times. Why? Well basically we are talking about a mobile device. On a mobile device things tend to be slower. The hardware isn’t as robust as say a desktop or a laptop, so in order to get that same “snappy” feeling, there have to be workarounds.
One of these is how android deals with memory. Android will load up your apps and then keep them running until they absolutely HAVE to kill them. This is because that way, if you want to re-open an app, the system already has it loaded and can then just resume it instead of reloading it. This provides a significant performance increase.
What a lot of people don’t realize as well is that android kernels have their own task manager. This means that:
it will be more efficient than any app-based task manager as it is run at the kernel level, and
it should be left up to that task killer to decide when to free up memory
There is only one case where having a task killer is a good idea, and that is when you want to kill ONE SPECIFIC APP. Killing all apps is never a good idea. You don’t know what operations they are performing or if they are necessary.
Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker suggests that you should be more worried about CPU usage than what’s going on with your RAM. We agree:
This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you’ll free by killing it. As we’ve learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the “autokill” feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it’s actually possible that this will worsen your phone’s performance and battery life. Whether you’re manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you’re actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn’t—killing apps that aren’t doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don’t, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don’t go off, you don’t receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you’re usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you’re more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.
More on how Android has a built-in memory-management system, but also on how killing all tasks is not a good thing:
Android was designed from the ground up as an operating system (OS) for mobile devices. Its built-in application and memory-management systems were engineered with battery life as one of the most critical concerns.
The Android OS does not work like a desktop operating system. On a desktop OS, like Windows, Mac OS X, or Ubuntu Linux, the user is responsible for closing programs in order to keep a reasonable amount of memory available. On Android, this is not the case. The OS itself automatically removes programs from memory as memory is needed. The OS may also preload applications into memory which it thinks might soon be needed.
Having lots of available empty memory is not a good thing. It takes the same amount of power to hold “nothing” in memory as it does to hold actual data. So, like every other operating system in use today, Android does its best to keep as much important/likely-to-be-used information in memory as possible.
As such, using the task manager feature of SystemPanel to constantly clear memory by killing all apps is strongly NOT RECOMMENDED. This also applies to any other task killer / management program. Generally speaking, you should only “End” applications if you see one which is not working correctly. The “End All” feature can be used if your phone/device is performing poorly and you are uncertain of the cause.
And we could go on for hours with source after source on why task killers do nothing but work against Android, but you probably get the point now don’t you? Ready for a quick recap? OK.
Basically, Android keeps tasks handy because it thinks you’ll want to perform them again in a very short amount of time. If you don’t, it will clear them out for you. It also likes to keep as many things handy as possible so that the overall performance of your device is top notch. If Android were to completely kill off everything that your phone is doing, then it would require more resources to restart all of them and you would likely run into slowness and battery drains. By keeping certain things available to you, your phone is actually running better than it would without. So please, stop killing off tasks and let Android do the work for you.
Your goal for the week is wash your brain of the idea that having little RAM available is a bad thing. The more RAM available, the more Android will find ways to use it up which means your battery will be dead in hours. Instead, let it manage itself, so that you can spend more time playing Angry Birds or reading Droid Life.
All good now?
EDIT: http://www.droid-life.com/2011/06/02/revisiting-android-task-killers-and-why-you-dont-need-one/
Thanks Chris and Dare Devil.
I wondered why people didn't really use task killers...now I know...
Sent from my X8 using xda premium
Very helpful post. I'm always using task killer whenever i want.. I mean before playing a game, after playing a game and sometimes for no reason at all because there are so many things loaded up in the memory.... I have been wondering what drained my battery and i think this is the cause... Thanks to you people.:angel:
nice info buddy,,,
thanks.
:thumbup:
Sent from my E15i using xda premium
1. RAM Manager Pro? Does it work or does it mess with Android's RAM management on Kernel level?
2. Why is that when I load up the phone under running services>show cached processes I have a lot of processes running and after a half a days usage, that same page shows "Nothing running"?
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.
I chanced upon an app that could enable android users the ability to true multitask. Android is designed to cleverly close apps in the background that it deems unimportant. This feat is brought to fruitation through the assigning of minfree values. The higher the minfree value, the more seceptible the app is in being axed to conserve ram and computing space which inturn conserve battery.
With this in mind, theoretically, if we assign an app with a minfree value of 0, the apps will not be killed even when kingdom come. Pardon my attempt at humour if you aren't chuckling.
Now to the crux of this post. There is an inherent difficulty to assign minfree values and not everyone is a coder. Luckily there is an app on the market which let users assign minfree values and better yet, filters the apps into hidden apps and stuff. Simply download this free application from the market:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5ycy5hdXRva2lsbGVyIl0.
Go to settings, enable advanced mode to get access to the first three values. One simply inputs "0,0,0,0,0,0". And voila, theoretically all hidden/background apps will not be killed and true multitasking is achieved.
A quick test of some programs that are designed to close after home button is pressed does not close now. Am happy to report that this trick does not close any background app. Only downside is user has to manually close the apps, which for me is more than ok. Hope this helps!!
[Update] I have changed all fields to 0. So technically what I am telling the GSIII is "do not have coffee breaks,toilet breaks and oh, "I own your sorry ass".
Am excited to report that N.O.V.A. 3 still continued running after opening maps with GPS, XDA, Maps, Internet browser. All of which are running.
[Update 2] Edited the values to "0,0,1,1,1,1" as a failsafe in case all rams have been used up. E.g. NOVA3 and MC3 concurrently running due to carelessness. Will report any drastic behaviour or successfully implementation without much drawbacks.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
I'm interested to know how this affects battery life.
jiggytom said:
I'm interested to know how this affects battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am pretty sure this will suck the bejesus out of the battery. : ) Plus we aren't using the software for its intended use.
I did the same
Interesting to try...
sebarkh said:
I did the same
Interesting to try...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If in the event u have reached a satisfactory value do share! I was inspired by the "backgrounder" program of jailbroken IOS devices. It does the same thing except our way is different. From my Iphone days I have fetishes of true multi tasking. : )
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
The Linux/Android kernel WILL run OOM-Killer (Out-of-memory) with SIGKILL (removes the process from RAM and CPU without letting it any chance to save data or report) when the memory is full and it cannot continue operation otherwise.
Dalvik _should_ work around a full memory but by disabling this feature it won't so you might experience some data loss.
Consequently it is necessary to have a sufficiently large Swap-Partition on your SDcard to allow the kernel to get more memory whenever needed. It won't be fast when it hits the limit but at least it still works.
d4fseeker said:
The Linux/Android kernel WILL run OOM-Killer (Out-of-memory) with SIGKILL (removes the process from RAM and CPU without letting it any chance to save data or report) when the memory is full and it cannot continue operation otherwise.
Dalvik _should_ work around a full memory but by disabling this feature it won't so you might experience some data loss.
Consequently it is necessary to have a sufficiently large Swap-Partition on your SDcard to allow the kernel to get more memory whenever needed. It won't be fast when it hits the limit but at least it still works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well on top of that, the Minfree was programmed so that the CPU doesn't have to overwork and so it can run at lower frequencies.
Interesting app, but I'm going to leave the programming to the experts.
Plus prog is too much of a hassle for too little gains in this case. Hahaha.
I have to say that I miss the way the Palm Pre multitasked the best. I also like how pre handled contacts with multiple numbers/IM/google etc (something that ios6 is finally going to attempt to do). It would incorporate all of them into one message window using icons. If only some of that could be incorporated into Android!
As working for Microsoft, Specially with their windows project I found it very difficult to get a proper guidance or troubleshoot their problems when Microsoft stops supporting them.
Some of you might be aware to the fact as Windows 8 pro at 1,999/- INR price tag is coming without any support from Microsoft end and neither you have any trial option to check and decide whether u should buy it or not, It becomes utterly necessary to initiate a small contribution for the great lovers of the Microsoft.
Here what we are trying to do is to get all the answers for your beloved windows 8 and help you with the troubleshooting their causes.
I would also like to tell the moderators: Thanks for deleting my previous thread but it wasn't a direct commercialization what I was trying to do was to make available things which aren't free.
As piracy is strictly neither my policy nor this forum's so we needed to pay to Microsoft and that is what we were charging, it wasn't a product promotion it was making product available at a price which makes it nearly free.
Anyways back to the topic, folks please go ahead with the issues
I just gat the Asus Q200E and im wondering if I want to switch back to Win 7 will it be tough to get drivers or are they similar to the win 8 drivers. Ive onl used windows 8 for four days and will go on trying to get used to it but so far I dont think i will stay with it. I find myself getting to pissed off with it. I am figuring out most of it but its just not for me. Maybe when there is more support int he way of apps I will use it but its too querky for me as it is.
splatoid said:
I just gat the Asus Q200E and im wondering if I want to switch back to Win 7 will it be tough to get drivers or are they similar to the win 8 drivers. Ive onl used windows 8 for four days and will go on trying to get used to it but so far I dont think i will stay with it. I find myself getting to pissed off with it. I am figuring out most of it but its just not for me. Maybe when there is more support int he way of apps I will use it but its too querky for me as it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can always downgrade to the previous versions for the windows, though downgrading to the windows xp would be bit troublesome due to the compatibility issues but windows 7 and 8 more or less share the same architecture for the device driver compatibility so downgrading to windows 7 would not bring you major issues with ur device drivers until and unless you are having TPA module installed in your laptop
and for downgrading please do contact Microsoft for a downgrade key it is absolutely free
Thank you for your help. Much appreciated..
splatoid said:
Thank you for your help. Much appreciated..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
welcome
The only issue that i have is when I leave my computer on idle, after a,little while, system just takes over 25% of my cpu. I have a toshiba portege that originally had windows 8 release preview. Any method to prevent system from doing that?
Sent From My YP-G1 running Nebula beta 1
splatoid said:
I just gat the Asus Q200E and im wondering if I want to switch back to Win 7 will it be tough to get drivers or are they similar to the win 8 drivers. Ive onl used windows 8 for four days and will go on trying to get used to it but so far I dont think i will stay with it. I find myself getting to pissed off with it. I am figuring out most of it but its just not for me. Maybe when there is more support int he way of apps I will use it but its too querky for me as it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice, the first post in an 8 support thread is a question about 7.
goldflame09 said:
The only issue that i have is when I leave my computer on idle, after a,little while, system just takes over 25% of my cpu. I have a toshiba portege that originally had windows 8 release preview. Any method to prevent system from doing that?
Sent From My YP-G1 running Nebula beta 1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have this issue with my older computer; 2.2GHz single core AMD athlon 64 (socket 939). I'd be curious as to what is causing this too, but I only have the release preview on that computer. For me, the computer idles at 25% and it just feels really sluggish, like each process in the system isn't running as efficiently as it could. Conversely, a modified XP (unofficially modified: all components but the bare minimum removed and slipstreamed updates / registry improvements) runs perfectly fine on the same hardware. I know XP is faster than 8, and especially so the modified version I use, but it's clear that something is actually not right. The DPC latency isn't terrible, but it's consistently over 1000 microseconds, vs XP which averaged ~15 microseconds. It must be a driver issue I'm guessing? The hardware is old and I wouldn't be surprised if one of the components isn't running well for whatever reason under 8.
I think the issue is true for both x64 and x86, I thought some of my RAM might have been bad so I took them out and switched to 32 bit while I was at it (in case the 32 bit drivers were better).
Actually on my new gaming rig the dpc latency averages exactly 1000 microseconds with 8, and though I suffer no performance issues, this bugs the living hell out of me, knowing I used to have 15!
link68759 said:
Nice, the first post in an 8 support thread is a question about 7.
I have this issue with my older computer; 2.2GHz single core AMD athlon 64 (socket 939). I'd be curious as to what is causing this too, but I only have the release preview on that computer. For me, the computer idles at 25% and it just feels really sluggish, like each process in the system isn't running as efficiently as it could. Conversely, a modified XP (unofficially modified: all components but the bare minimum removed and slipstreamed updates / registry improvements) runs perfectly fine on the same hardware. I know XP is faster than 8, and especially so the modified version I use, but it's clear that something is actually not right. The DPC latency isn't terrible, but it's consistently over 1000 microseconds, vs XP which averaged ~15 microseconds. It must be a driver issue I'm guessing? The hardware is old and I wouldn't be surprised if one of the components isn't running well for whatever reason under 8.
I think the issue is true for both x64 and x86, I thought some of my RAM might have been bad so I took them out and switched to 32 bit while I was at it (in case the 32 bit drivers were better).
Actually on my new gaming rig the dpc latency averages exactly 1000 microseconds with 8, and though I suffer no performance issues, this bugs the living hell out of me, knowing I used to have 15!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would like to add on to your post. Along with the reason you explained there is one more reason as windows 8 is programmed for giving max performance with the min power consumption, due to which at idle CPU tries to enter at low frequency stage and also if you have a very old system this issue arises as mentioned in the above post due to one more reason of HDD.
Windows 8 tries to keep alive threads running in background to save the power but due to CRC in the old HDD this loops the processor
Hey, I'm having problems sharing internet connected to VPN to my PS3. I've searched MS Answers forum and did come across this
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...indows-8/4e56a425-c685-4ab2-9b23-72b1cab4557e
But I'd like to reduce the steps of doing it to a single click like in a form of VBS or BAT file, how do I do that? And why is Windows 8 behaving like this like that guy said.
Hi dudes, I'm having the same problem as this guy over here.
Everytime I boot up, I have to quickly press "win+D" to get into desktop mode. If not it just hangs at metro start screen and I can do nth about it except "ctrl+alt+del". It just freezes there. Using windows 8 pro. Had this prob since yesterday. It was okay when I installed system updates on 15 Nov up until yesterday. I didn't make any software/hardware installations/updates in between this period of time.
Hope someone can help me out here! Thanks!
kay_kiat88 said:
Hi dudes, I'm having the same problem as this guy over here.
Everytime I boot up, I have to quickly press "win+D" to get into desktop mode. If not it just hangs at metro start screen and I can do nth about it except "ctrl+alt+del". It just freezes there. Using windows 8 pro. Had this prob since yesterday. It was okay when I installed system updates on 15 Nov up until yesterday. I didn't make any software/hardware installations/updates in between this period of time.
Hope someone can help me out here! Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
U need to refresh the system at secure boot
downloaderintruder said:
Hey, I'm having problems sharing internet connected to VPN to my PS3. I've searched MS Answers forum and did come across this
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...indows-8/4e56a425-c685-4ab2-9b23-72b1cab4557e
But I'd like to reduce the steps of doing it to a single click like in a form of VBS or BAT file, how do I do that? And why is Windows 8 behaving like this like that guy said.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this issue was already reported by me to Microsoft developers team and they are working on it possibly with a update in December the new fix would be forced in your systems update
mean while if you wan't to create a vbs script or batch file go through these tutorials
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/438621-batch-file-to-run-vbs-on-startup/
http://www.programmingforums.org/post196761.html
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/da/ITCG/thread/1743a39f-3a25-4d01-aa5c-af32e8e7c0ff
I'm actually having a minor cosmetic issue: taskbar is set to autohide, but sometimes it just won't hide until I restart explorer. Toggling the autohide settings or unlocking and moving it around don't help.
link68759 said:
I'm actually having a minor cosmetic issue: taskbar is set to autohide, but sometimes it just won't hide until I restart explorer. Toggling the autohide settings or unlocking and moving it around don't help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the "good old days" applicaitons would often un-hide the Taskbar so their notification icons could show an updated status and they could ensure it would be seen. I think this method has fallen out of favor, but older applications that haven't been updated could still be sending the commands to the system to show the Taskbar. Is it possible that you have an older app in the notification area that's affecting the Taskbar as described?
Open Task Manager and Regedit.
++ on the Start Menu & select 'Exit Explorer'
or use services.msc to temporarily exit explorer by killing the service "explorer"
In Regedit, navigate to:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop]
delete the value named 'Toolbars'.
In Task Manager, select 'File' -> 'New Task' -> type 'explorer' to restart
the shell.
If that doesn't do the trick, repeat deleting 'TaskbarWinXP' as well. in ur case it might be 'TaskbarWin8'
I've got a lot of old software but I haven't used any of it on my laptop. Something poorly coded may well be the issue, though this behavior is hardly exclusive to "old" software as windows 8 itself seems to actively embrace exactly this: by default the taskbar is auto hidden (this is not true of xp/vista/7) and if something isn't in the foreground and for whatever reason won't take focus, it will raise the taskbar and keep it raised until you click on said program in the taskbar.
I think it actually might be related to internet explorer and it trying to tell me that a download is finished, but gets stuck there. I'm going to see if it happens with IE running and nothing else before editing the registry.
OK I have a good question for you!
Enabled bitlocker on my C:\ drive. This killed the bootable recovery and also 8's ability to "refresh" without a DVD (it could not find the files needed).
How do I move the bootable recovery tools to the system partition? Will this fix the refresh problem? If not, how do I restore 8's ability to refresh without external media?
link68759 said:
OK I have a good question for you!
Enabled bitlocker on my C:\ drive. This killed the bootable recovery and also 8's ability to "refresh" without a DVD (it could not find the files needed).
How do I move the bootable recovery tools to the system partition? Will this fix the refresh problem? If not, how do I restore 8's ability to refresh without external media?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
have u made any changes in hardware or the system software after enabling bitlocker or ur system is running in dual boot
I am sure for one thing mere copying the bootable recovery tools to the system partition won't help.
I am also running my hp laptop with windows 8 encrypted but I am not facing any of these issues.
please elaborate your issue
meanwhile as I understand this might help u http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771778(v=WS.10).aspx#BKMK_WhatIsRecovery
and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee523219(v=ws.10).aspx
these also implies to windows 8
shreshth89 said:
have u made any changes in hardware or the system software after enabling bitlocker or ur system is running in dual boot
I am sure for one thing mere copying the bootable recovery tools to the system partition won't help.
I am also running my hp laptop with windows 8 encrypted but I am not facing any of these issues.
please elaborate your issue
meanwhile as I understand this might help u http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771778(v=WS.10).aspx#BKMK_WhatIsRecovery
and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee523219(v=ws.10).aspx
these also implies to windows 8
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know how you're not having "this issue" since enabling bitlocker *forces* WinRE to be disabled, including the ability to refresh.
I disabled bitlocker because ReAgentc.exe refused to operate with bitlocker enabled. The only solution I could find was to format the HDD, recreate a bigger system partition, reinstall windows and do things from the fresh install. I suppose I could refresh my custom image from there, assuming it would even work for 8 (the instructions I found were for 7).
link68759 said:
I don't know how you're not having "this issue" since enabling bitlocker *forces* WinRE to be disabled, including the ability to refresh.
I disabled bitlocker because ReAgentc.exe refused to operate with bitlocker enabled. The only solution I could find was to format the HDD, recreate a bigger system partition, reinstall windows and do things from the fresh install. I suppose I could refresh my custom image from there, assuming it would even work for 8 (the instructions I found were for 7).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
these also work for for 8 as I was told in training and specifically for 8 we are still waiting for the manuals
I can't access the windows app store in my wifi network which is secured by a proxy and i have to authenticate to browse. All desktop apps works well but not the windows app store. It asks for authentication bot when i give the username and password to it, it shows "your network proxy does not work with windows store contact your administrator". what should i do to access the microsoft app store.