Free RAM on HTC Hero? (sorry, bit of a newbie)

[Guest The_IMF]

Hi all,

I've been rooting and upgrading my phone as we go along but I finally decided to register as I still don't see it as fast as some people are making out. It slows down to a slugs pace when I run browser...

Currently I have killed all tasks using Taskiller and I have 92mb free RAM.

Is this normal?

When I start up the phone I have to run taskiller straight away as I start off with 28mb RAM!

My question is - what has happened to the other 190mb worth of RAM?

I'm currently on MoDaCo's 2.9 firmware and have an 8GB Class 6 SD in there.

[Guest kendon]

Hi all,

I've been rooting and upgrading my phone as we go along but I finally decided to register as I still don't see it as fast as some people are making out. It slows down to a slugs pace when I run browser...

Currently I have killed all tasks using Taskiller and I have 92mb free RAM.

Is this normal?

When I start up the phone I have to run taskiller straight away as I start off with 28mb RAM!

My question is - what has happened to the other 190mb worth of RAM?

I'm currently on MoDaCo's 2.9 firmware and have an 8GB Class 6 SD in there.

if you are really talking about RAM (not internal memory!) i would guess that your android system is loaded into it... it is not that different to a pc, where your operating system (probably windows) is loaded into the ram... together with other programs.

[Guest The_IMF]

Thanks Kendon... yeah I was talking about RAM not the internal memory. My internal memory is now at 48mb after moving all cache's apart from the k-cache to the SD card and that doesn't seem to change at all.

I keep getting rubbish loading in my RAM when I don't even do anything which makes no sense.

i.e. I sometimes like to use the dolphin browser but even when I haven't even surfed the web the whole day; the damn dolphin loads up in memory anyway taking up 10mb of RAM no matter how many times I kill it in TasKiller.

Another app is "London Tube Status" which is handy when I need it... but the damn thing keeps loading itself into the memory when I haven't used it in days. I keep killing it using TasKiller but an hour later; it's there again!

Those are just 2 examples of many. Any way I can stop these applications from loading when I haven't used them the whole day?

I tried having my desktop blank with nothing on there but a clock and still all this crap loads into memory!

[Guest chucky.egg]

48Mb of storage sounds low - I've got about 120Mb.

Are you using A2SD (Apps to SD)?

Some apps do load, even when you haven't used them, but they should do it consistently - if they're not consistent then it suggests there's a problem with them.

I don't use Dolphin or Tube Status, but I can imagine the latter loads and downloads status updates periodically so it's always reasonably up to date. If that's how it works then you can't stop it without uninstalling and re-installing when you want it again.

There are some in-ROM apps you can remove (such as Peep, Stocks, Footprints) if you never use them - see the ROM thread.

[Guest kendon]

Thanks Kendon... yeah I was talking about RAM not the internal memory. My internal memory is now at 48mb after moving all cache's apart from the k-cache to the SD card and that doesn't seem to change at all.

I keep getting rubbish loading in my RAM when I don't even do anything which makes no sense.

i.e. I sometimes like to use the dolphin browser but even when I haven't even surfed the web the whole day; the damn dolphin loads up in memory anyway taking up 10mb of RAM no matter how many times I kill it in TasKiller.

Another app is "London Tube Status" which is handy when I need it... but the damn thing keeps loading itself into the memory when I haven't used it in days. I keep killing it using TasKiller but an hour later; it's there again!

Those are just 2 examples of many. Any way I can stop these applications from loading when I haven't used them the whole day?

I tried having my desktop blank with nothing on there but a clock and still all this crap loads into memory!

there are several triggers that can start an application. for example my xbmc (media center) remote control is triggered everytime i receive a call or sms, because it can display these information on my tv if xbmc is running. so even if it is not startet, after i receive a call or message it is started. there is an app called "autostarts" where you can disable the start of apps based on events, it is very handy, and for 0.69€ well worth its money. if you can't find it it is due to a market-not-showing-protected-apps in mcr2.9 (i am gaving this issue).

[Guest The_IMF]

48Mb of storage sounds low - I've got about 120Mb.

Are you using A2SD (Apps to SD)?

Some apps do load, even when you haven't used them, but they should do it consistently - if they're not consistent then it suggests there's a problem with them.

I don't use Dolphin or Tube Status, but I can imagine the latter loads and downloads status updates periodically so it's always reasonably up to date. If that's how it works then you can't stop it without uninstalling and re-installing when you want it again.

There are some in-ROM apps you can remove (such as Peep, Stocks, Footprints) if you never use them - see the ROM thread.

Think quite a few people have the space issue with the MCR 2.9...

[Guest The_IMF]

there are several triggers that can start an application. for example my xbmc (media center) remote control is triggered everytime i receive a call or sms, because it can display these information on my tv if xbmc is running. so even if it is not startet, after i receive a call or message it is started. there is an app called "autostarts" where you can disable the start of apps based on events, it is very handy, and for 0.69€ well worth its money. if you can't find it it is due to a market-not-showing-protected-apps in mcr2.9 (i am gaving this issue).

Found it. Bought it. Gonna try it and let you know.

Figured out it was one of my low ram using apps which was causing quite a bit of stuttering on my phone so I got rid of that one. Still would like to stop some apps for randomly booting up!

Thanks again. You've been a great help :)

[Guest kam187]

Everyone gets confused about memory on android phones! Here's how it works roughly..

288mb RAM

- 32 Mb [sMI] used for Radio bootloaders and baseband firmware

- 32 Mb [sMI] used for camera, ADSP, MDP, GPU0 buffers

- 8 Mb [EBI] used for GPU1 buffer

- 1 Mb [EBI] for framebuffer

- 17 Mb [EBI] for baseband firmware

~ 198Mb left

If you type 'free' in a shell the 'total ram' is the final value after all the above, so about 198Mb. Thats whats available to android. This gets used for the kernel and other processes.

Any free ram is used for the vm_cache. This preloads parts of core processes, the kernel and other processes that might be used shortly. Think of it a bit like a disk cache, it predicts what might be loaded next and buffers it into RAM. This cache memory is considered free, and the cache will be dropped if you need more RAM free.

You can see the state of the cache by doing this:

cat /proc/meminfo

The 'Cached' value is how much free ram is being used for the vm_cache. If you type 'free' and add the cached value above to the 'free' value there you'll get the total free RAM available to programs - the value you see in programs like Taskiller.

You can force caches to be dropped by typing this:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

And so typing something like this:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches ; cat /proc/meminfo ; free

should tell you the real memory available to new programs. There's a bunch of tweaks you can run to force more or less free memory being usable for the vmcache too.

You can also run 'ps' or 'top' to see what processes are running and how much ram they could potentially use. Remember programs arent always loaded in their entirety into RAM.

[Guest kam187]

p.s. be carefull with autostarts. If you disable some of the google services market won't work - unless u open gtalk first. Also your syncing may not work either. Its better to leave the google stuff running and kill it on boot. It has to run at least once to initialise stuff.

Same with alarmclock and calender, they need to run at least once to schedule your alarms with the OS. You can kill them after the first time.