fireheadman

Hello... I do not usually subscribe to forums, but once my HERO rebooted, I experienced all of the issues noted in this thread.

A little background on me... I am a UNIX Administrator.
To make a connection... Android is a LINUX based OS, so I am very familiar with how it works.

So to get on with it....

The 70 - 80+ application limit most of you are talking about is somewhat important... What is really happening is MEMORY Consumption. After talking with Sprint, I was told the HERO has 512Mb on board RAM/memory. Applications are only installed on this space (NOT the SD-CARD) The exception to that are applications that store data... like a NOTE APP which will install the app on the 512Mb internal memory, but store the NOTEs you create on the SD-CARD (in most cases).

So what is happening is for every application installed, Each app has a memory requirement for the app to load and operate. Somewhere around 70th - 80th app you install, you are maxing out the 512Mb of memory. So the OS (operating system) becomes unstable, sluggish, corrupt, force closing a lot of things. Once you uninstall enough apps... only then will there be FREE memory for things to start working right again. For me, the breaking point was installing Guitar Hero for Android (7.4Mb in size)... The other issue I think is related to some apps having memory leaks (due to developers not coding to the best of their ability) or applications that do not properly close when you exit them and end up running wild in the background (this can be seen from a task manager app).

When you dial someone's number... each digit is stored into memory... when you create a new calendar entry... it requires more memory to store it... so on and so on...

You can think of it like this too.... (For the window users out there....) The more programs you install, the more memory the computer requires. If you don't add memory, the computer will become sluggish, slow, no-responsive. The remedy is easy with windows... you just add more memory.

As for the HERO... it is bound to 512Mb of internal memory so you have to watch your app count and memory/process usage. If future releases of Android... hopefully we will see an update that allows for a configurable option to use some of the SD card memory for process (aka SWAP space in the LINUX/UNIX world). Usually having 1Gb of swap space would make the Android run very fast all the time.

...so hopefully that clears up some of the issue or at least lets you understand what is causing it.

BTW: I do not frequent this site... just wanted to give my opinion on the matter since I experienced the issue firsthand. So if I do not chime back in... it's because I haven't logged into the site in a while. -Ben