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.

Explaining RAM, CPU usage and why you shouldn't use task-killers

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"?

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).

Task Manager & Memory Apps for Marshmellow

When I updated to Marshmallow I was very disappointed to see their task/memory manager had been dumb down just to take the average memory use of apps. Instead of several versions before showing the running apps in live time.
With that now missing are there any good apps to use with or without root with a good task mananger? Preferably one without a bunch of other junk like clean master and the other apps like that. The one I've found that's the best so far is Task Manager by Hard Infinity.
Thanks in advance!

I should have added a poll from the beginning since I was looking for what most people were using and some possible suggestions. So I have added a poll in hopes to get some responses. Everyone of us has the occasion when an app goes rogue screwing things up, or sucks battery juice to no end, or just freezes up, so it just needs to be shut down. I would love to hear what everyone is using.
NOTICE: I do not condone killing tasks/processes just simply to 'free up' memory. That is the Android System's job, let it do its job.

Check out developer options then Running Services (6th from the top) to see actual live memory usage instead of the averages.
I personally have enjoyed a 'clear all' option in App switching mode from my days of my S4. I use gravity box now and integrated it in my navigation bar to clear and also indicate how much ram is free.
Lastly if you're having issues with any apps stuttering it can help to experiment with background process limit also in developer options, I believe it resets that setting after a restart though.
Hope that helps.

Didn't know about the dev options. The default task manager is really disappointing, couldn't figure out why my RAM was always at 80%. I figure that's no issue, but I like to be aware. Really miss the battery life in my Xperia Z3 and was hoping this would compare with the large battery and doze, but couldn't find the background processes that could be possibly draining my battery.

Poor RAM management

I'm finding the RAM management on the S8+ and probably therefore the S8 to be heavily throttled.
My device memory is split as:
4GB total:
System and apps: 2.8GB
Available: 600MB
Reserved: 639MB
The problem I am seeing is that I am never seeing memory consumption above 2.8GB so that the last 600MB is never touched whatever I open. This aggressive throttling is evident If switch between a mere 5 or 6 open apps, the first ones opened have been closed and have to completely re-open and re-load even though there is a is about a 600MB chunk of memory sitting around so this last 600MB is being totally wasted. This is validated when I go to the built in memory manager within Device maintenance and it only shows the last 3-4 apps opened as being active. Believe Samsung needs to adapt the memory management to be less aggressive here as it is impacting on multitasking quite severely.

Right now I have system and apps using 2.4gb., Available space 1gb, reserved 639mb.
I find that if you back out of an app by pressing back, it closes and you have to reload, such as facebook, messages, phone, gmail etc.
I find that if I use the home button to back out of apps they remain in memory. Apps like facebook have to resync when I go in but are still in memory.
What apps are you using to have them close on you?
Exynos or Snapdragon? Mine is UK Exynos maybe there is a difference.

I'm multitasking, so using the app switch button. I'm not backing out which closes apps. Processor is nothing to do with apps closing and I have Exynos. In my experiments I'm using the web browser, whatsapp, email, music player, maps and samsung health.

Hasn't it been like that for ages, Jonathan-H?

i can understand the op's point, especially if multitasking is needed, but the behavior described is actually a good thing for a phone. otherwise you can have too many apps eating up memory that you don't want. the phone doesn't know the user intends on multitasking back and forth. there was a time when there were pages of complaints about apps staying on after user moved on from it, so this is specifically something they would have designed for. there's no right answer here short of a full adaptable ai of some kind.

Unfortunately even Pixel is bad with RAM Management. Till now only Oneplus 3 and Xiaomi Mi5s Plus with 6 GB of RAM keep many apps in memory. I had an iPhone 7 Plus before S8 Plus and all the apps were in the same state like when I left them even after one day. So till now iOS is the fastest OS for me because it keeps apps in memory. Even Youtube stayed in Memory and on S8 Plus it reloads after one hour. I guess it's about keeping battery under control on S8 Plus and this is the reason. On the other hand, the first time launch of apps is faster on S8 Plus compared to iPhone. If somehow Android can keep apps in memory and also control the battery consumption, it can be perfect.

standard101 said:
i can understand the op's point, especially if multitasking is needed, but the behavior described is actually a good thing for a phone. otherwise you can have too many apps eating up memory that you don't want. the phone doesn't know the user intends on multitasking back and forth. there was a time when there were pages of complaints about apps staying on after user moved on from it, so this is specifically something they would have designed for. there's no right answer here short of a full adaptable ai of some kind.
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Click to collapse
If you never get to use the RAM you paid for then it is not a good thing. It's poor RAM management. We're not talking about it closing down apps once the RAM is even close to the limit, we're talking about it closing apps withing minutes and long before the last 20% of RAM is used up which is a sizeable chunk. And having RAM empty is old school thought which is now accepted to be bad practice and was just a benchmark used to see that your system was not being stressed. These days it's better to have as much in RAM as possible rather than waste it empty and have the system need to reload things.

standard101 said:
i can understand the op's point, especially if multitasking is needed, but the behavior described is actually a good thing for a phone. otherwise you can have too many apps eating up memory that you don't want. the phone doesn't know the user intends on multitasking back and forth. there was a time when there were pages of complaints about apps staying on after user moved on from it, so this is specifically something they would have designed for. there's no right answer here short of a full adaptable ai of some kind.
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Click to collapse
For serious multitaskers like me, it leads to the opposite problem: apps keep getting reloaded from scratch and that ruins battery life even more.

I'd like to add my voice into this. I am also a heavy multitasker. I have a set of standard 6-8 apps that constantly keep getting kicked out of memory and closed out of the carousel. It is not a RAM limitation issue as I am, like the OP, always below the limit. It just seems that Samsung made the memory management much too aggressive. I already set all possible options in the OS to control what is monitored and suspended and such, but this made no difference.

Same for me. At first reading this I though I posted this because of the exact numbers.

Jonathan-H said:
. Apps like facebook have to resync when I go in but are still in memory.
What apps are you using to have them close on you?
Exynos or Snapdragon? Mine is UK Exynos maybe there is a difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it is 'forced' to refresh the displayed content it is not keeping it in memory.
You need to use a device where the issue is not exhibited to see how memory management should work.
Sadly my S8 Exynos can not keep more than half a dozen apps fully in the background without then forcing the content to reload/refresh when going back into those apps, from Facebook, YouTube, Photos, Gallery, newsstand, Play Music.
dhorgas said:
I'd like to add my voice into this. I am also a heavy multitasker. I have a set of standard 6-8 apps that constantly keep getting kicked out of memory and closed out of the carousel. It is not a RAM limitation issue as I am, like the OP, always below the limit. It just seems that Samsung made the memory management much too aggressive. I already set all possible options in the OS to control what is monitored and suspended and such, but this made no difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly my issue and I have done likewise to no avail unfortunately.
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The last update of the Gallery from Play Store made it start almost instantly. Maybe they need to put all the stock apps in Play Store so they start fast. About the difference between App refresh and App reload, it's totally different thing. We all agree with refresh and we don't like reload.

Android Doze
The problem is Android Doze, which freezes every app once it's in the background. Solution is simple: Settings -> Device Maintenance-> Battery -> Battery usage -> Optimize menu -> All apps. Untick the ones you need and, probably, they will remain in memory for while. So far, working for me.

so no solution to this thus far?? any root tweaks or build prop tweaks useful to solve this??? or we still have a dump phone