what for and why do OMNIA 2 reserved 50% of it RAM?

[Guest dwallersv]

Man, this issue is a real crapper!

My 920 was doing okay on the application close issue; I implemented the suggestions in this thread, and it was better -- could keep 4-5 apps open with about 20MB free.

Now, without changing anything, the phone has started to act like it is short of RAM all the time. I can't keep more than one app open at a time, with 50MB free, and even then the phone is closing the single app (like Pocket Player) that I'm running, seemingly with no reason at all!

It really, really, really sucks now. Anyone have any ideas before I wipe the beast and start over, reinstalling everything? I really don't want to have to do that.

[Guest Krecik2002]

There may be one more possible way of saving some memory. When you open SKTools, there is "Device Drivers" section, where you can find all dll's listed, responsible for handling various devices. I wouldn't believe that it's possible to disable anything here for real until I accidentally disabled RIL1: device and guess what... GSM part of my phone was instantly disabled and it lasted through soft reset (phone didn't ask for PIN, GSM functions were unavailable) saving me about 8MB RAM. Of course this is not a good example, but probably this is the way to disable functions that some people may not want to use (GPS, bluetooth, ipv6, fm radio, both cameras, compass, accelerometer etc). The main problem is to determine which driver is responsible for what and if it's safe to disable it. Also, I'm not sure if disabling each device would release significant amount of memory, but definitely it's worth trying.

[Guest Tarqon]

So, to sum all things i can tell you that increasing of Free RAM by reserved area is very problematic. In reserved space, there are hard coded addresses in drivers and kernel. You can not tell to kernel to squize some areas. Instead of that, you have to find all accesses to this part of RAM and patch values. But in most cases you won't able to reduce reserved blocks without loose some features. So, you can free 16mb of RAM and loose 3D. Free another 10mb and loose camera. Is it worth it? I don't think so.

Only one possible and harmless way to increase free RAM is to reduce PagePool size. Currently in eboot config area PagePool has been set to 20mb which is crazy high value. 10mb is high enough without loosing performance at all. So, you may expect around extra 10mb of free RAM without harm to performans or features.

Interesting. However, this has me wondering: how come the omnia 1 effectively had more useable ram than the omnia 2? Didn't it have to reserve memory for all these same things as well?

Edited January 24, 2010 by Tarqon

[Guest Krecik2002]

Interesting. However, this has me wondering: how come the omnia 1 effectively had more useable ram than the omnia 2? Didn't it have to reserve memory for all these same things as well?

No 3d acceleration and 4 times less pixels on the screen probably means much less memory used for video buffer.

[Guest b7610_fan]

Do memory clearing apps, for example FreeRAM part of SKTools, restore full memory without need of a soft reset?

there is no such thing as "ram cleaner" or "ram defragger".

it's impossible, it doens't exist. nor on pocket pc, nor on PC

[Guest ray1234]

there is no such thing as "ram cleaner" or "ram defragger".

it's impossible, it doens't exist. nor on pocket pc, nor on PC

Couldn't agree more.... all those 'ram cleaner' does is clear off some ram temporarily, so it looks like they have 'cleaned' up a few MB of ram. A few minutes later, those cleaned up ram will get used again and the available ram is the same as before.....

[Guest La Traviata]

So is there any way to establish how bad this RAM issue really is or which apps (or ROMs or whatever other factors) exacerbate it? I've been following the discussions here for a while now and some people say they can only keep 1 or 2 apps open, while others don't seem to have any problems at all. I'm desperate to upgrade from my i900, but I don't want to find that my new phone is all but unusable due to apps auto closing. I just don't know what to think as people's experiences seem to vary so wildly.

Edited January 25, 2010 by La Traviata

[Guest Craptastic0]

Just to add to the i920 tips and tricks to reclaim some of that limited ram we currently posses...Edit the Registry to prevent the default Today screen from loading up...

Does anyone know how to do this, and how much RAM it actually frees up?

I've scoured the forums trying to find out how to disable the Today screen from loading.

[Guest Baros008]

Does anyone know how to do this, and how much RAM it actually frees up?

I've scoured the forums trying to find out how to disable the Today screen from loading.

Attached are CABs to switch Today screen ON and OFF.

Disabling Today frees 5-10MB of RAM, I don't know exactly, I'm not using it right now.

Today_OFF.cab

Today_ON.cab

[Guest babyjosef17]

Attached are CABs to switch Today screen ON and OFF.

Disabling Today frees 5-10MB of RAM, I don't know exactly, I'm not using it right now.

May ask what does this do exactly? Does disabling today mean to disable to windows default(titanium) item on today screen. Or it disabled the today screen completely. (hmm wonder how that will look like)

[Guest tacchan23]

May ask what does this do exactly? Does disabling today mean to disable to windows default(titanium) item on today screen. Or it disabled the today screen completely. (hmm wonder how that will look like)

it will disable the today screen completely

[Guest Craptastic0]

Attached are CABs to switch Today screen ON and OFF.

Disabling Today frees 5-10MB of RAM, I don't know exactly, I'm not using it right now.

Nice, thank you.

[Guest xaznxplaya]

Guys does anyone knows why memory keeps going up while my phone is not in use? Currently using JA5 Rom with SPB Shell. I'm at like 62% when the phone restart 64mb free around then an hour later it's like at 78% 32mb free.

[Guest mihai_mihai]

installed P hon ex 2.2 and freed a lot of ram now 65 mb free

using spb and a few adther programs but in ph onex settings i checked disable WM phone

Edited February 4, 2010 by mihai_mihai

[Guest b7610_fan]

the cause is more likely sbp <-> myphone.

I don't know if you are familliar with spb software, they rock in memory leaks & bugs.

yet it's one of the most popular software for wm.

what version of sbp do you have ? and from where did you get it ? legal ?

try monitor with windows taskmngr.

Edited February 4, 2010 by b7610_fan

[Guest dwallersv]

FWIW, gang...

After having my 920 mysteriously go into 50MB RAM lower hyperlimit -- closing even the only single running application, while I was using it in the foreground, if RAM got below the magic 50MB limit -- I finally bit the bullet, backed up, hard reset, and started the long process of gradually rebuilding my phone configuration as I need things I had previously installed.

I have about the same memory usage as before (the big stuff -- MS3, S2U2, and a few other items are all running), but I'm able to keep 3-4 things running now, pushing RAM down below 50MB, without stuff closing.

Note that I had applied all the "fixes" outlined in this thread to improve the situation. I have a sick feeling that one of more of them caused things to go haywire.

For the benefit of the community, I will be gradually applying the fixes again, one by one, reversibly, to see if something jumps out as f*cking everything up, and will report back over the coming days.

Bottom line is, Samsung needs to fix this.

[Guest VitasLoWang]

Hello, I read several reviews and I was about to buy Omnia II but now I am really not sure if I want to bother with some crazy utils or settings to prevent my phone from closing apps I want to use :-\

Sorg thanks for the clear explanation where is that reserved memory, but can you please finish what you started and clarify how it is with that pagepool? Am I right that this can be changed only with custom ROMs? According to this thread it is as I say

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=466833

Rodrigofd february is here, so how does it look like with that XDA guru? Did she find anything? But I guess there is not much to look at now after Sorg's explanation :-\

Have anyone tried this EverApp http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/ppc-download-everapp.html if it can prevent Samsung's wm_close to kill applications? I guess it will not work in Omnia's case...

Anyway I agree with those who say Samsung is almost lying (as well as other smartphone manufacturers) if he says there is 256MB of RAM. I think that RAM is something totally different then this! In a computer world they would never include amount of graphics memory, CPU L2 cache or memory on the TV card or a sound card into total amount of RAM! Oh yes a GPU in pc can use some amount of RAM via AGP or PCIexpress, but this CAN BE set or even disabled. RAM which is invisible and cannot be used as a program memory should not be named RAM, but just "memory" or something like that and customers should not be bothered with numbers how much of it is in their phones if they cannot use it! Not talking about the situation when you have the same or even less available memory on your new phone then on the older model with "just" 128MB RAM just because your new one has more MPix in its camera :D

[Guest rhapthorne]

Not talking about the situation when you have the same or even less available memory on your new phone then on the older model with "just" 128MB RAM just because your new one has more MPix in its camera :D

This is just unbelievably ridiculous - some years ago 256MB RAM was sufficient to play GTA San Andreas, but today half of that amount needs to be sacrificed in order to get a stupid phone working... I really hope that Samsung will optimize this stuff or maybe WM 6.6 will leave more RAM available, otherwise I'll be forced to sell my O2 and look for sth else - i just don't want to strive for every single MB with a system which is just retarded in terms of memory management.

Edited February 14, 2010 by rhapthorne

[Guest VitasLoWang]

Oh yes, I read other topics and It does not look good :-\ I am thinking about HTC hd2, but it is much more expensive and also heavier. But I hope at least it does not suffer from similar problems like Omnia II, does it?

[Guest sesser]

@VitasLoWang, i thought about getting HD2 too, especially now, when new roms unlocked the hidden ram and now its about 320MB FREE RAM in HTC HD2!!!!

check by yourself -> http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=621070,

but still, the AMOLED display and perfect formfactor (size), at least for me: is what is keeping me from switching to HD2

another thing is, how it it possible to change PagePool size on i900 and not on i8000? i read that some dude from my local forum is going to change that, he was saying something about 160MB :D i hope trully hope he will manage this task!

[Guest siemi1-OmniaII]

It is possible but i think that only on WM 6.1 light version according to what mirek190 on pdaclub.pl sayas crating his own ROM TigerX

[Guest VitasLoWang]

I have a question: what about opening some big documents like PDF files? Do they work if they are for example 100MB in size? Have anyone tried viewing big PDFs?

[Guest jukefox]

I have a question: what about opening some big documents like PDF files? Do they work if they are for example 100MB in size? Have anyone tried viewing big PDFs?

No problem at all. Believe it or not: I managed to open a PDF with up to 4 GB even over the network! The file has been created by uncompressed scanned 600dpi DIN-A4 TIFs. Just couldn't believe it but it worked pretty well without extensive usage of RAM. Actually it seemed to be no difference to normal files. Performance wasn't excellent for sure but it worked extremely stable. Great job by Acrobat! In general I think you should not run in problems with any of your PDFs. Just give it a try.

[Guest kibiwi]

sorg you explained well the allocation of the whole ram and you said that with a patch on nk.exe we can change the pagepool. The matter now is how we can patch the nk.exe is there a tool or it is simple as copying a patched nk.exe in a cooked rom (with all wm versions out there 6.1 6.5 or 6.5.3) and it goes. Could you give us some hint?

Edited February 18, 2010 by kibiwi

[Guest sinancetinkaya]

When Samsung announced i8000, I was expecting an 256 mb ram pda must have 150-180 mb free ram. I gave up buying omnia 2. Now, I'm waiting for LG Apollo