Available Memory / RAM Question

[mr_brady]

I'm fairly new to the whole Droid scene (from a Blackberry Storm). Please let me know if this is 'normal' for a Droid X using Liberty 1.5...

Upon bootup, I have 140-160mb of free RAM according to my Widgetsoid battery toggle. Within an hour or so it goes down to 35-60mb and the phone starts running more sluggish. This is without really running any strenuous apps. If I use Pandora, it drops a bit further.

Is this normal?

 

[Mustang02]

No, not normal at all. I usually have 120 to 130mb free at all times of the day. I've never seen it go down like that.

 

[droid fetish]

80 TO 100MB lost in an hour? not normal. list the apps you have installed. Im usually down to 75 or 80 after about 16hrs of use, I reboot each morning to start afresh, What have you tweaked in Liberty? Maybe reflash to set everything back to stock and see what it does.

 

[mr_brady]

80 TO 100MB lost in an hour? not normal. list the apps you have installed. Im usually down to 75 or 80 after about 16hrs of use, I reboot each morning to start afresh, What have you tweaked in Liberty? Maybe reflash to set everything back to stock and see what it does.

I reboot multiple times each day as well. I previously had tried the Liberty Battery Tweak Framework, as well as the Sysctl changes listed on other threads. Since then I have SBF'ed the latest .340 fresh ROM and re-installed Liberty 1.5 with the Revolution Remix Theme. No other theme tweaks, except animation changes and ad blocking.

Just rebooted, RAM showed 182MB free. The phone has been in standby for the last 10 minutes and it's down to 150MB free. Loaded the Applications Screen to show installed Applications and it's down to 130MB.

Apps listed in the 'Downloaded' section of Manage Applications:
aCar
Adobe Flash Player 10.1
Adobe Reader
Airport Mania
AirSync
Alarm Clock Plus
Amazon
Androidify
Angry Birds
Angry Birds Seasons
AppBrain
Asian Health
Barcode Scanner
Books
Boot Logo Changer
Brainwave Tuner
CalWidget
Camera360 Ultimate
Camera 3D
Car Dock Settings
Chrome to Phone
CopyCat
Cover Art Downloader
Dev Tools
Dialer One
doubleTwist
Drift Mania
drocap2
DroidForums
Dropbox
Earth
eBay
Edwin
eSpeak TTS
EveryTrail
Fireflies
Game Dev Story
GasBuddy
Goby
Goggles
Google Reader
Google Search
Google Sky Map
Google Translate
GT Racing
gTabSiMiClock
Instant Heart Rate
iTriage
Jewels
Kitchen Timer
Labyrinth
LauncherPro
Lookout
Maps
Mens Health
MetaMorph
Milo
Modern Combat 2
Moron Test
MSNBC.com
MyTracks
MyBackup Pro
NFS Shift
Nintaii
Our Groceries
Pandora
Parkdroid
Photoshop Express
Picasa Tool
PowerAmp
Quadrant Standard
QuickClock Advanced
QuickPic
RealCalc
RealPlayer
Roadside
Rocket Bunnies
ROM Manager
Root Explorer
RunKeeper
SMB
Setting Profiles
Shopper
SiMi Folder
Skype
Springpad
Street View
Super Tumble
Survival Manual
TalkBack
Target
Team Black Hat
TED Mobile
Terminal Emulator
Titanium Backup / Pro
Touch Racing Nitro
TuneIn Radio
TweetDeck
Ulysse Gizmos
Viingo
Voice Search
Weather forcase
White Noise
WidgetLocker (Installed but not turned on)
Widgetsoid
Wikinvest
Wolfram Alpha
WordPress
World Clock
X Construct
X-Plane
Yelp
YouTube
z4root
Zillow

**NOTE: Ram is down to 108MB after viewing my list of installed Apps and writing this post.

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

Don't worry about free ram. Here's the best description I read of how Android manages memory:

How Android Manages Processes

In Android, processes and Applications are two different things. An app can stay "running" in the background without any processes eating up your phone's resources. Android keeps the app in its memory so it launches more quickly and returns to its prior state. When your phone runs out of memory, Android will automatically start killing tasks on its own, starting with ones that you haven't used in awhile.
The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck.

 

[droid fetish]

Don't worry about free ram. Here's the best description I read of how Android manages memory:

How Android Manages Processes

In Android, processes and Applications are two different things. An app can stay "running" in the background without any processes eating up your phone's resources. Android keeps the app in its memory so it launches more quickly and returns to its prior state. When your phone runs out of memory, Android will automatically start killing tasks on its own, starting with ones that you haven't used in awhile.
The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck.

I agree you have a lot of apps that could be trying to update at the same time(news, information and weather). I see you have titanium backup, I would go into settings/applications/running services and see whats running, then I would try freezing those apps you dont absolutely need for a while and see what happens. I know its not an exact answer but you will get to the bottom of this with a little patience.

 

[mr_brady]

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense.

 

[sonicfreak360]

ohhhhh

Even though I'm not a droid X user, I've looked at the sysctl thing, and I'm pretty sure thats whats causing your ram lossage. Try setting it back to normal for a little while, and see how things work out.

 

[Shadows9909]

Go to imoseyon.com and download the .zip from there abf apply it.. it will increase your speed and battery life substantially. Should fix your memory problem as well... it sets systcl to the most optimal settings too. let me know if it helps

Sent from my DROIDX

 

[jjj751]

80 TO 100MB lost in an hour? not normal. list the apps you have installed. Im usually down to 75 or 80 after about 16hrs of use, I reboot each morning to start afresh, What have you tweaked in Liberty? Maybe reflash to set everything back to stock and see what it does.

I reboot multiple times each day as well. I previously had tried the Liberty Battery Tweak Framework, as well as the Sysctl changes listed on other threads. Since then I have SBF'ed the latest .340 fresh ROM and re-installed Liberty 1.5 with the Revolution Remix Theme. No other theme tweaks, except animation changes and ad blocking.

Just rebooted, RAM showed 182MB free. The phone has been in standby for the last 10 minutes and it's down to 150MB free. Loaded the Applications Screen to show installed Applications and it's down to 130MB.

Apps listed in the 'Downloaded' section of Manage Applications:
aCar
Adobe Flash Player 10.1
Adobe Reader
Airport Mania
AirSync
Alarm Clock Plus
Amazon
Androidify
Angry Birds
Angry Birds Seasons
AppBrain
Asian Health
Barcode Scanner
Books
Boot Logo Changer
Brainwave Tuner
CalWidget
Camera360 Ultimate
Camera 3D
Car Dock Settings
Chrome to Phone
CopyCat
Cover Art Downloader
Dev Tools
Dialer One
doubleTwist
Drift Mania
drocap2
DroidForums
Dropbox
Earth
eBay
Edwin
eSpeak TTS
EveryTrail
Fireflies
Game Dev Story
GasBuddy
Goby
Goggles
Google Reader
Google Search
Google Sky Map
Google Translate
GT Racing
gTabSiMiClock
Instant Heart Rate
iTriage
Jewels
Kitchen Timer
Labyrinth
LauncherPro
Lookout
Maps
Mens Health
MetaMorph
Milo
Modern Combat 2
Moron Test
MSNBC.com
MyTracks
MyBackup Pro
NFS Shift
Nintaii
Our Groceries
Pandora
Parkdroid
Photoshop Express
Picasa Tool
PowerAmp
Quadrant Standard
QuickClock Advanced
QuickPic
RealCalc
RealPlayer
Roadside
Rocket Bunnies
ROM Manager
Root Explorer
RunKeeper
SMB
Setting Profiles
Shopper
SiMi Folder
Skype
Springpad
Street View
Super Tumble
Survival Manual
TalkBack
Target
Team Black Hat
TED Mobile
Terminal Emulator
Titanium Backup / Pro
Touch Racing Nitro
TuneIn Radio
TweetDeck
Ulysse Gizmos
Viingo
Voice Search
Weather forcase
White Noise
WidgetLocker (Installed but not turned on)
Widgetsoid
Wikinvest
Wolfram Alpha
WordPress
World Clock
X Construct
X-Plane
Yelp
YouTube
z4root
Zillow

**NOTE: Ram is down to 108MB after viewing my list of installed Apps and writing this post.

what weather widget are you using? It looks awesome

 

[mr_brady]

Weather Widgets for the multi-day
SiMi Clock for the clock/weather

 

[wolfpack2192]

My Droid X seems to want to stay around 50 MB of free ram, but when I go into running services in settings and force stop a bunch of things it really increases the RAM. If Android is supposed to keep my phone running smoothly why does it use up all the RAM for apps I'm not even using?

 

[Wildrat]

Mine stays around 60 or there abouts, till the app killer kills apps, then it's around 130 or so.

 

[sonicfreak360]

My Droid X seems to want to stay around 50 MB of free ram, but when I go into running services in settings and force stop a bunch of things it really increases the RAM. If Android is supposed to keep my phone running smoothly why does it use up all the RAM for apps I'm not even using?

Because I'm pretty sure that there is a minimum amount of ram you can be at until the internal task killer kicks in to save memory. Trust the OS, don't use task killers! :icon_evil:

 

[jeffly777]

The system actually maintains enough free ram to start a new app while keeping commonly used apps in memory. This actually speeds up the device over keeping as much ram as possible free. Don't bother with the task killers; it may seem nice to have more free ram, but it doesn't actually speed anything up after the initial bloatware is cleared out.

Fortunately I don't have to deal with it since the thunderbolt usually has about 400 megs free.

Thunderstruck