Memory Usage slowly creeping up

[Guest mitchgixer6]

Hi all,

Running a rooted San Fran with Launcher Pro. Very few apps that I use, mainly RSS + Facebook. Don't have any games installed yet.

I do use Advanced Task Killer often. I have the shortcut on my homescreen and I usually tap it before putting the phone to sleep after use. This gives a note of the available memory figure every time it closes any apps.

I've noticed that the available memory figure slowly gets lower after a re-boot. And this seems to speed up battery usage also. When I re-boot I usually have around 300M available. This will drop to around 200M over the course of a few days. If I re-boot it will come back up to 300M and again start dropping.

I would have thought that Advanced Task Killer should take shut everything down that is not needed to run the phone. I have it set to the aggresive level.

Any ideas how to stop the memory + battery issues?

Edited November 22, 2010 by mitchgixer6

[Guest AndyHibberd]

I'm going to be brief and attempt to avoid engaging a mass debate.

Short:

Stop using ATK.

Ignore how much memory things are using. (There is no slow down even at 80%, if Android needs more memory it intelligently kills off the sleepers)

Battery life is mostly affected by data connections, active widgets, and screen time (brightness makes a diff). Obviously if you play games/watch vids/music then this will use up a bigger amount.

Long:

Task killers are doing more harm than good, if anything it's a placebo affect of "freeing up memory" under the illusion that this will speed up the system.

The way android runs is that it can have loads of apps sleeping in the background that just sit in the memory without taking up real-time resources. Think of it as a loaded gun. When you need them then they fire up.

Also the way the OS is designed is that applications can share underlying processes. When you kill stuff you are potentially harming other apps.

When you do a mass kill it forces the system to restart all the essential processes again, you'll be glad to hear that it is this restarting of processes that is using up a load of battery. Stop it.

See how your phone performs when sleeping. For example I unplugged mine at midnight after a full charge and left it alone with a fb widget and all google accounts sycning and news/weather syncing. After 8 hours it had used 8% battery. 3G was on the whole time. This makes me realise that I can leave 3G on without thinking my battery is getting rinsed. Obviously there is a diff between having it on and using it!

fyi just checked my phone and have 160mb free but there are many times when I have had about 30mb and not noticed any difference in performance.

What you are probably experiencing are not mem/batt issues but just smartphone power usage.

Do let me know if you ahve any further concerns.

Andy

[Guest rayraven]

+1. People should understand that it takes the same amount of power to keep nothing in memory as well.

If you think that runaway processess might kill battery life, use something like Watchdog.

[Guest AndyHibberd]

Maybe make a sticky of the whole "NO ATKs" cos it comes up a lot.

[Guest rayraven]

Yeah, with links to a couple of fully detailed explanations on how android works.

[Guest mitchgixer6]

Cheers Andy, a very comprehensive reply indeed.

Just off to un install....