How much free ram do you have normaly?

[Guest miragebg]

Let see how much free ram do u haveI have 65 on startup and later it drops to 33-35, sometime 40MB..

Edited January 1, 2010 by miragebg

[Guest Parano!d]

depends on the number of apps u have,running on back

when mine starts to lag,i realise and check its around 20

i use advanced task killer,kill all running apps & it give me around 110 free

[Guest Martyn.28]

Let see how much free ram do u haveI have 65 on startup and later it drops to 33-35, sometime 40MB..

I have around 70 startup this decreases to lowest of around 19 after use . then I run advanced task killer free and it goes upto 110

[Guest Dan Mullen]

I have around 70 startup this decreases to lowest of around 19 after use . then I run advanced task killer free and it goes upto 110

Sort of similar here... whenever it's lagging noticeably, I run ATK and it reports about 18MB free. I never kill all the apps as that can stop quite a few functions from working, but I close any that I'm not using any more. It usually goes to around 45MB and that gets rid of the lag.

[Guest starfarer]

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.

Took quite a few minutes in googling and best definition was lying just here in modaco ;).

Anyway always interesting to see and compare with others. Normally I've never been lower than 19MB. On average day-day usage I hover at 25-30MB. I'm no longer using any task killers as I find my Hero to be pretty responsive and fast and don't want task killers to be one of the running program itself.

And the last line in above quote :) .

Edited January 2, 2010 by starfarer

[Guest Repp]

Normally I have between 20 and 30. After killing everything, I have 110MB free (no sense).

Related question: Is there a way to make the system kill apps sooner? Now it seems like it kills apps sometime when it's below 20 (and laggy), but I want it to start killing some apps before it's laggy (maybe at 25?). I have looked for an answer to this earlier but never found anything... ;)

EDIT: I did actually find an old guide for the G1 but I'm hoping for an easier way

You can't really do any show offs in front of your iPhone-friends if it's laggy :) "eeehm.. I just have to kill all tasks..."

Edited January 4, 2010 by Repp

[Guest Caffeine Dependent]

On Startup: 60mb free...

post Taskiller: 100mb free

After some time: Approx 20mb free

post Taskiller: Approx 40mb-60mb free

Where does the ram go over time I wonder?

[Guest Repp]

On Startup: 60mb free...

post Taskiller: 100mb free

After some time: Approx 20mb free

post Taskiller: Approx 40mb-60mb free

Where does the ram go over time I wonder?

Sense (I think).. I stopped using it and since then I have always had ~110 free after kill all instead of 40-60 like you. Had the same effect on two different roms.

[Guest Unconn]

...EDIT: I did actually find an old guide for the G1 but I'm hoping for an easier way...

How about a link to that please? I might have a go, and maybe some peopel could script it, or build an app for root users....