Common Android Myths/Explanations

[hookbill]

Watch your language. We have a family friendly forum. I don't care if the censor catches it or not vulgar language will not be tolerated. I will give an infraction if it continues.

 

[TuBitMittens]

Watch your language. We have a family friendly forum. I don't care if the censor catches it or not vulgar language will not be tolerated. I will give an infraction if it continues.

not to be defiant but I thought that's what the sensors were for. But nevertheless, I apologize for my language. it must be because it's not as regulated in other forums I've been in but I will keep it clean here. no disrespect intended.

 

[dmo580]

I'd like to say that Android is NOT built perfectly and is not bulletproof. Just because Google's engineers choose to defend its OS to the very bottom doesn't mean anything.

Obviously we know the DROID gets laggy or so when you go below 30 MB of RAM. This can occur sometimes because minfree is set to 32MB by default. This means the system will try to kill apps to maintain 32MB of memory AT LEAST. You could go below and this is where teh system tries to free up some memory. Even 30-ish memory isn't that great. 50MB is where things really get a lot smoother.

Now the arguments state that its wasted real estate... yeah but your system is unresponsive. Do you keep your Windows system loaded down with no free memory? Don't even argue Windows or Linux or whatever. The fact is the system would have to waste CPU cycles to clear up some memory for you to have a responsive OS. And if you have very little memory left, you would have to kill more apps (even if this is done automatically) to make the experience decent.

Now I admit Android does a pretty good job on its own, but you can't say its flawless. Many of us have tweaked MinFree. what if 40 MB works better? Or 50 MB? 60MB? Obviously you don't want some high number like 200MB because the DROID only has 256MB to start with and you wuold be wasting 200MB for system responsiveness. Not only that your home screen would probably never stay cachced and you would have to redraw and a lot of critical apps such as push email would get killed all the time.

So what I'm saying is there's a balance that needs to be found, but to say that Android is perfect and you don't need to tweak a thing with its memory management is utter BS.

If you're unwilling to tweak, that's fine, but to say tweaking is dumb is like saying you accept Apple's judgement and what it imposes on consumers (such as no pron, etc). If so many of us laugh at when Apple makes sweeping judging statements like that as to what it feels is right for the industry and consumers, how come we're so accommodating when Google says one thing about its OS being fine and you don't need to touch it.

If you know what you're doing, that's fine. Use your task killer. If you set it on auto kill every 5 minutes, you're obviously doing it wrong. IF you're killing constantly because you want to see 100MB free then you're doing it wrong. Just make sure you educate yourself about whatever the hell you're doing.

 

[Tanknspank]

I think Android does a near perfect job of it. I NEVER tweak the minfree settings, or use a task killer. I only use compcache (which uses the cache partition and makes a small swap partition in it) and nothing else. Few if none redraws, and Phone runs just fine. Never overclock above 1Ghz, and the phone never seems slow. Never gets unresponsive. Never have any problems. Quote me on it, I don't care. I still say that there is no need for a Task Killer or to mess with the min free settings.

 

[jrummy16]

Great write up cvpcs.

 

[Mule65]

I always make sure to completely close apps by using the back button.

Huh? How so? Please point me to a link that confirms this statement because I don't think it's true. Thank you.

 

[pdroid]

If you know what you're doing, that's fine. Use your task killer. If you set it on auto kill every 5 minutes, you're obviously doing it wrong. IF you're killing constantly because you want to see 100MB free then you're doing it wrong. Just make sure you educate yourself about whatever the hell you're doing.

I think this is sort of the point - I don't think anyone here is a complete zealot or some sort of slave to Android default settings, though I do think they probably work well for the majority of users. This is not targeted at the advanced user that wants to make a small tweak to minfree, it's at the less technically inclined user that is killing all their apps every 5 minutes.

It's not like anyone's forcing you NOT to install anything you want (task killer, minfree, etc.); but nor do I think it would be accurate to say that one's Droid will run like absolute garbage unless ATK is installed on it or you keep some magic amount of memory free. Using the default Android settings without task killers should be the norm; right now I think it's still the exception.

 

[mkraffert]

Using the default Android settings without task killers should be the norm; right now I think it's still the exception.

I agree about not running task killers. I've noticed since installing Sapphire 1.0.0 that my battery life is the best I've ever seen, the phone has virtually no lag for how I use it. I have no task killer running, or even installed. Occasionally, I notice the phone gets a little sluggish. Since I don't have a task killer, I reboot. I do that maybe once every 2-3 days.

 

[wingdo]

Using the default Android settings without task killers should be the norm; right now I think it's still the exception.

I agree about not running task killers. I've noticed since installing Sapphire 1.0.0 that my battery life is the best I've ever seen, the phone has virtually no lag for how I use it. I have no task killer running, or even installed. Occasionally, I notice the phone gets a little sluggish. Since I don't have a task killer, I reboot. I do that maybe once every 2-3 days.

Do you have compcache enabled? I notice the lag after 2-3 days with compcache enabled, but not if I keep it disabled which I do.

 

[nygrik]

im very new to the forums obviously if there is a post count this will say 1...either way where i may not understand the whole linux vs windows based memory performance you guys do..i feel people overlook the value of ATK for battery life, i have tried multiple roms and kernals and own three batteries without the task killer i would barely get through a baseball game or a half shift at work with pandora or something, for me i use my phone as a computer replacement lol...im a little gungho with killing tasks and after reading this i will fix that on some level...thank you for all the hard work

 

[Armyof2]

im very new to the forums obviously if there is a post count this will say 1...either way where i may not understand the whole linux vs windows based memory performance you guys do..i feel people overlook the value of ATK for battery life, i have tried multiple roms and kernals and own three batteries without the task killer i would barely get through a baseball game or a half shift at work with pandora or something, for me i use my phone as a computer replacement lol...im a little gungho with killing tasks and after reading this i will fix that on some level...thank you for all the hard work

Killing tasks is fine. I think what people are referring too is autokilling more than manually killing apps that you want shut off.

Most people seem to still operate under that WinXP and earlier mentality that the more ram free the better. But really now it's shifted toward "what's the use of all those gigs of memory if they're not being used for anything."

OS are way more efficient at handling the opening and closing of programs than the old days...I remember when win98 needed to be rebooted to clean up the memory/filessytem when it started to just naturally slow down after being left to it's own devices too much.