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

[Guest nap_rz]

I've already emailed/inquired samsung yesterday about this thing....let's hope they answered and provide solution....if that's fail perhaps I'd ask in various sites....also the weird thing is, no review sites mentioned about this although this is a very serious problem that could and would hurt the phone rank against competition...

[Guest scenery]

I got the same problem. Half of the RAM is reserved, and only left about 30mb RAM free after soft reset. I am running on the official winmo 6.5 with spb shell 3.5 running only. The app auto closing prob is really annoying.

[Guest Breit]

can you please stop posting all your 'i have xx mb left after boot'?! yeah we know now how much ram is left after boot on the omnia 2! what we need is a solution to this and not a million people posting the same stuff all over again. if someone actually FOUND a solution and is posting it here, noone will ever find it 'cause of all the 'i have xx mb left after boot'-posts...

so no offense, but please keep the forum clean, thank you!

[Guest w.c.]

After some tests

I think that the lock screen of default wm6.5 would drain the RAM eventually from 80 to 50mb which I need to do softreset to recover it (with IK5 TF3D ROM)

try to disable the lock screen and you will have a relatively stable RAM size with about 66~76mb upon continuous usage with multitasking.

but one significant change from 6.1 to 6.5 is the increase of battery drain. the battery drops from 90% to 80% in 5 hours standby time for 6.5 whereas only ~3% was used for the same period of standby with 6.1...

[Guest nap_rz]

After some tests

I think that the lock screen of default wm6.5 would drain the RAM eventually from 80 to 50mb which I need to do softreset to recover it (with IK5 TF3D ROM)

try to disable the lock screen and you will have a relatively stable RAM size with about 66~76mb upon continuous usage with multitasking.

but one significant change from 6.1 to 6.5 is the increase of battery drain. the battery drops from 90% to 80% in 5 hours standby time for 6.5 whereas only ~3% was used for the same period of standby with 6.1...

lock screen eh? interesting, I'll test it

about the battery drain, also interesting, because I found it to be the opposite :D my battery is A LOT MORE long lasting that my Xperia X1 wm6.1...

weird reading someone find the battery drops so much.... :(

*edit*

btw, I remember reading somewhere that some reported that certain firmware drains more power than others, that could be the problem.

Edited November 30, 2009 by nap_rz

[Guest Breit]

lock screen eh? interesting, I'll test it

about the battery drain, also interesting, because I found it to be the opposite :D my battery is A LOT MORE long lasting that my Xperia X1 wm6.1...

weird reading someone find the battery drops so much.... :(

*edit*

btw, I remember reading somewhere that some reported that certain firmware drains more power than others, that could be the problem.

it is a bit off-topic though, but about the battery-thing: it STRONGLY depends on the conditions in which you use your phone! i doubt that your O2 drains the battery this fast with phone/wifi/bt switched off and no applications running in the background...

if you put your phone to standby in an area with bad network coverage and your phone tries to search for a new network all the time then of course your battery runs dry very quick. the same happens if you constantly using data transfers over 3g network while in standby. maybe you consinder using something like WMLongLife from Chainfire, it could really help keeping the battery alive...

[Guest unholygid2006]

Actually i find using spb, titanium and M2D eats lot of ram and battery life. Right now i'm using today screen with some spb today screen plugin and battery life and ram is even better.

With titanium, using 5-6 hours intensively... surfing web,msn and listening to mp3 at the same time. Battery will drop to around 20-40%. Ram at 50mb+ sometimes 40mb+

With Spb is a little better at around 40% ++ battery life and 40mb + of ran

With same usage on today's screen, battery is still at 60%++ with at least 60mb+ ram.

I'm on K5 Rom btw.

[Guest nap_rz]

it is a bit off-topic though, but about the battery-thing: it STRONGLY depends on the conditions in which you use your phone! i doubt that your O2 drains the battery this fast with phone/wifi/bt switched off and no applications running in the background...

if you put your phone to standby in an area with bad network coverage and your phone tries to search for a new network all the time then of course your battery runs dry very quick. the same happens if you constantly using data transfers over 3g network while in standby. maybe you consinder using something like WMLongLife from Chainfire, it could really help keeping the battery alive...

I'm positive I get a rather good battery life on my O2, today I used it as a bluetooth modem with my laptop for about 2-3 hours (not a constant downloading though, just web/forum surfing) and the battery is still at 30+% right now (about 12 hours from when I wake up today at about 7 AM which the battery was about 85%)....I would consider this is a very good battery life for a winmo device this high spec'ed.

okay, now I'm confused, how do I disable the phone lock? the samsung pimp'ed setting only allow me to enable/disable the lock after wake up, is that it?

[Guest nap_rz]

Actually i find using spb, titanium and M2D eats lot of ram and battery life. Right now i'm using today screen with some spb today screen plugin and battery life and ram is even better.

With titanium, using 5-6 hours intensively... surfing web,msn and listening to mp3 at the same time. Battery will drop to around 20-40%. Ram at 50mb+ sometimes 40mb+

With Spb is a little better at around 40% ++ battery life and 40mb + of ran

With same usage on today's screen, battery is still at 60%++ with at least 60mb+ ram.

I'm on K5 Rom btw.

that's a good amount of RAM, mine couldn't even came near 60MB of free RAM after I disabled touchwiz and practically doing nothing at all -not even opening an sms, lol-

if I knew the RAM would be this messed up (+ the unforgivable programs auto closing) , I wouldn't have bought this phone and considering HTC or other brands instead :D

Edited November 30, 2009 by nap_rz

[Guest lifemaximum]

that's a good amount of RAM, mine couldn't even came near 60MB of free RAM after I disabled touchwiz and practically doing nothing at all -not even opening an sms, lol-

if I knew the RAM would be this messed up (+ the unforgivable programs auto closing) , I wouldn't have bought this phone and considering HTC or other brands instead :D

Same here , if there is no solution for the RAM problem , I am going to dump this phone and get a new one , it is so annoying.

BTW any word from Samsung ? , I remember some guy said he has contacted Samsung.

Edited November 30, 2009 by lifemaximum

[Guest nap_rz]

I inquired them, still no news...

btw someone said in the other thread about disabling samsung dialer to prevent auto closing....

[Guest tacchan23]

okay, now I'm confused, how do I disable the phone lock? the samsung pimp'ed setting only allow me to enable/disable the lock after wake up, is that it?

yes, that should be enough.

you guys could give it a try, disable lock screen and Samsung dialer and see if it's any better (I have been doing that for a long time and honestly I didn't have any problems of apps closing themself, but I still suffer from memory leak due to SPB mobile shell I think)

[Guest johnchan]

lock screen eh? interesting, I'll test it

about the battery drain, also interesting, because I found it to be the opposite :D my battery is A LOT MORE long lasting that my Xperia X1 wm6.1...

weird reading someone find the battery drops so much.... :(

*edit*

btw, I remember reading somewhere that some reported that certain firmware drains more power than others, that could be the problem.

Yes, I have X1 too and the Omnia II with the same apps and doing the same things drains much slower. X1 could only barely last 24 hours, Omnia II can last maybe almost 2 days.

But RAM... the SE X1 never had a problem. I never even THOUGHT about it, because when you have almost 100Mb free RAM, it just never enters your mind.

NOW as a few suggestions/items to consider regarding the free RAM:-

1) RAM cache:- is the Samsumg reserved RAM of almost HALF all RAM being affected by the filesystem RAM cache or any cache like that? Glyph cache? Something else? I almost have to assume it is some sort of cache, Samsung media player cache, or some cache, because it can't be the actual programs themselves, as when you run the Media Player or other programs (even the Samsung ones) they use up FREE MEMORY, not the SAMSUNG RESERVED MEMORY.

2) The Samsumg "lost mobile" function. You know how you can set your phone to send an SMS if someone changes the SIM card, and how Samsung says it is almost impossible to find the memory address location to erase this (so even if they flash a new ROM or other things, you cannot erase this)? COULD IT BE that Samsung is using this huge memory allocation to hide this function and make it hard to find (so you have to search 100Mb of RAM, as opposed to searching only 5Mb if that is all it used)?

3) Hardware limitation:- You know how if you have a 32-bit Windows system like WinXP, and you have 4GB RAM installed, your system can only see/use about 3.2Gb RAM, and the rest is essentially "reserved"... ie. wasted? Could this be a case of Samsung's hardware limitation, and to "hide" this fact they call it "reserved"? In this case, we will almost never be able to use it even with nothing else running?

These are not answered but I see no one else mentioning the above potential solutions/answers, so just bringing them up so more experts can consider these options :-)

[Guest wakeupneo]

Yes, I have X1 too and the Omnia II with the same apps and doing the same things drains much slower. X1 could only barely last 24 hours, Omnia II can last maybe almost 2 days.

But RAM... the SE X1 never had a problem. I never even THOUGHT about it, because when you have almost 100Mb free RAM, it just never enters your mind.

NOW as a few suggestions/items to consider regarding the free RAM:-

1) RAM cache:- is the Samsumg reserved RAM of almost HALF all RAM being affected by the filesystem RAM cache or any cache like that? Glyph cache? Something else? I almost have to assume it is some sort of cache, Samsung media player cache, or some cache, because it can't be the actual programs themselves, as when you run the Media Player or other programs (even the Samsung ones) they use up FREE MEMORY, not the SAMSUNG RESERVED MEMORY.

2) The Samsumg "lost mobile" function. You know how you can set your phone to send an SMS if someone changes the SIM card, and how Samsung says it is almost impossible to find the memory address location to erase this (so even if they flash a new ROM or other things, you cannot erase this)? COULD IT BE that Samsung is using this huge memory allocation to hide this function and make it hard to find (so you have to search 100Mb of RAM, as opposed to searching only 5Mb if that is all it used)?

3) Hardware limitation:- You know how if you have a 32-bit Windows system like WinXP, and you have 4GB RAM installed, your system can only see/use about 3.2Gb RAM, and the rest is essentially "reserved"... ie. wasted? Could this be a case of Samsung's hardware limitation, and to "hide" this fact they call it "reserved"? In this case, we will almost never be able to use it even with nothing else running?

These are not answered but I see no one else mentioning the above potential solutions/answers, so just bringing them up so more experts can consider these options :-)

1) Most likely... Too much pagepool and others are the case I think.

2) Well... No. If you hard reset your device it just goes away. Most people don't even use it anyway.

3) We are talking about 256MB, not 4GB. The current limitation is very far...

Edited November 30, 2009 by wakeupneo

[Guest nap_rz]

Yes, I have X1 too and the Omnia II with the same apps and doing the same things drains much slower. X1 could only barely last 24 hours, Omnia II can last maybe almost 2 days.

But RAM... the SE X1 never had a problem. I never even THOUGHT about it, because when you have almost 100Mb free RAM, it just never enters your mind.

NOW as a few suggestions/items to consider regarding the free RAM:-

1) RAM cache:- is the Samsumg reserved RAM of almost HALF all RAM being affected by the filesystem RAM cache or any cache like that? Glyph cache? Something else? I almost have to assume it is some sort of cache, Samsung media player cache, or some cache, because it can't be the actual programs themselves, as when you run the Media Player or other programs (even the Samsung ones) they use up FREE MEMORY, not the SAMSUNG RESERVED MEMORY.

2) The Samsumg "lost mobile" function. You know how you can set your phone to send an SMS if someone changes the SIM card, and how Samsung says it is almost impossible to find the memory address location to erase this (so even if they flash a new ROM or other things, you cannot erase this)? COULD IT BE that Samsung is using this huge memory allocation to hide this function and make it hard to find (so you have to search 100Mb of RAM, as opposed to searching only 5Mb if that is all it used)?

3) Hardware limitation:- You know how if you have a 32-bit Windows system like WinXP, and you have 4GB RAM installed, your system can only see/use about 3.2Gb RAM, and the rest is essentially "reserved"... ie. wasted? Could this be a case of Samsung's hardware limitation, and to "hide" this fact they call it "reserved"? In this case, we will almost never be able to use it even with nothing else running?

These are not answered but I see no one else mentioning the above potential solutions/answers, so just bringing them up so more experts can consider these options :-)

ah someone with the same experience as me :D

1. makes sense, however I cannot think/believe any kind of phone software that requires so much cache...

2. er what? :(

3. unlikely, several phones already had 256MB of RAM and no such limitation.

are such reserved memory exist on i9x0 Omnia?

[Guest DunKnow]

Hmm, maybe all the 3D eyecandy stuff from Samsung is taking up the reserved part of the ram, such as the 3D cube, the samsung menu which loads up very fast once u click to activate them. If it is not loaded into the ram, it would not have appear so fast.

Edited November 30, 2009 by DunKnow

[Guest johnchan]

1) Most likely... Too much pagepool and others are the case I think.

2) Well... No. If you hard reset your device it just goes away. Most people don't even use it anyway.

3) We are talking about 256MB, not 4GB. The current limitation is very far...

1) Indeed. But even with a huge Pagepool... would it use up almost half of the available RAM like that?

2) As a suggestion... not a matter if you actually USE that function or not, but Samsung must run it anyway, so I'm guessing as a _possibility_ that they sort this function RANDOMLY within the 100Mb reserved RAM and put random chars all over the rest of the reserved RAM so no one can find that specific function carefully. This is again just guesswork, but if I was instructed to make such a function, I might do that too to try to obfuscate/hide that function.

3) Indeed, but I'm not familiar with the Saumsung chipset limitations. I know Windows Mobile itself has no problem going much higher to 512MB RAM, but I'm just suggesting that maybe its a Samsung limitation.

[Guest TheGoDxxxx]

The second one sounds really dumb, but than again, the also thought it'd be a good idea to let the customer stick needles in that hole next to similar looking hole wich houses the sensible antenna :D

BTW, that function is completly useless, since its sending a sms everytime u boot up the phone or change from 2g to 3g. I got like 20 messages on my second number.

3.)

That would be false advertissing on my book. I mean, if u cant use 256 MB, dont put 256 MB in it. And most importantly dont tell people that it is a 256 MB device!

The really bad thing is, u cant even use the little ram samsung left us because as soon as u go beyound 40 MB, Windows goes Terminator on the background apps.

[Guest fifd2005]

If you look at the available RAM from windows settings menu it shows that There is total 140.70 MB ram and there is 60-70 MB free ram after soft reset in WM 6.1

So windows reports that there is total 140 MB RAM in Omnia II. Windows cant see more. Rest of the RAM ıf there is such ram really doeasnt available to WM

[Guest Breit]

3) Hardware limitation:- You know how if you have a 32-bit Windows system like WinXP, and you have 4GB RAM installed, your system can only see/use about 3.2Gb RAM, and the rest is essentially "reserved"... ie. wasted?

it is a bit offtopic as well, but i just want to clear this: windows32 is indeed capable of adressing and using the whole 4gb, it is that just all adresses have to fit in the virtual 32-bit adress-space, which includes all pci-devices and their specific space as well in a pc. this includes the adressable graphics ram for instance and all the option roms for pci-controller/network controller etc, which are mapped into the 4gb adress space. there are techniques to circumvent this, but mainly for compatibility reasons this is often not used (e.g. pci 64bit adressing in a 32bit system).

so btt: i highly doubt that wm6.5 is not capable of using the whole 256mb (arm-11 is a 32bit cpu so 4gb should be adressable). maybe samsung is reserving so much ram for some kind of caching mechanism accessable only from inside the kernel. it seems that we have to wait for some custom cooked roms to make use of it.

can someone please check what other/similiar wm6.5 devices have to say about reserved memory? how is htc (e.g. with leo) handling this?

[Guest lifemaximum]

Hmm, maybe all the 3D eyecandy stuff from Samsung is taking up the reserved part of the ram, such as the 3D cube, the samsung menu which loads up very fast once u click to activate them. If it is not loaded into the ram, it would not have appear so fast.

unlikely but probable , how do we go about removing that cube , i have no use for it.

where can we get a clean win mobile 6.5 without all these fancy stuff...??

Edited November 30, 2009 by lifemaximum

[Guest TheGoDxxxx]

So windows reports that there is total 140 MB RAM in Omnia II. Windows cant see more. Rest of the RAM ıf there is such ram really doeasnt available to WM

How is that on other devices? Is it common for WM to not report the whole advertized ram or is this somethin entirely new so far?

Edited November 30, 2009 by TheGoDxxxx

[Guest wurzelsepp]

Can't be the cube, on my omnia pro the same amount of ram is reserved,

I cant imagine that the reserved 120mb are useful for anything, what was Samsung thinking when doing this :D ???

I mean samsung makes the best hardware (AMOLED, and so on) 

but in terms of software they should invest more because the best hardware is nothing without good software.

Edited November 30, 2009 by wurzelsepp

[Guest Tarqon]

are such reserved memory exist on i9x0 Omnia?

As far as I know the i9x0 does not have this problem, but the B7610 Omnia Pro does. I wonder if the B7300 does as well?

[Guest johnchan]

it is a bit offtopic as well, but i just want to clear this: windows32 is indeed capable of adressing and using the whole 4gb, it is that just all adresses have to fit in the virtual 32-bit adress-space, which includes all pci-devices and their specific space as well in a pc. this includes the adressable graphics ram for instance and all the option roms for pci-controller/network controller etc, which are mapped into the 4gb adress space. there are techniques to circumvent this, but mainly for compatibility reasons this is often not used (e.g. pci 64bit adressing in a 32bit system).

so btt: i highly doubt that wm6.5 is not capable of using the whole 256mb (arm-11 is a 32bit cpu so 4gb should be adressable). maybe samsung is reserving so much ram for some kind of caching mechanism accessable only from inside the kernel. it seems that we have to wait for some custom cooked roms to make use of it.

can someone please check what other/similiar wm6.5 devices have to say about reserved memory? how is htc (e.g. with leo) handling this?

Other devices simply have the apps of the phone running in regular memory. In Samsung's case, the "reserved memory" is COMPLETELY unusable and inaccessible to Windows Mobile OS itself. That is, Windows Mobile cannot even SEE this RAM that Samsung "reserved". Doing more checking, this means it is NOT the WinMo cache or filesystem cache or anything like that.

This appears to be memory that is actually divided off from normal operational memory BEFORE Windows Mobile OS is actually loaded!!! So that means WinMo/apps/us have no ability to control this whatsoever.

Considering this, I highly doubt it is memory that has any use by WinMo or any Samsung WinMo applications, since it is being controlled outside of the OS itself.