Low memory on Asus Transformer Infinity, even right after startup

[joshnl]

This is my first post in these forums. I'm actually new to whole Android world, but have been getting some intensive experience with it over the last week or so with my new Asus Transfomer Infinity

Anyways, I'm currently noticing something that may or may not be an issue: Even right after startup, I've only got about 1/3 free memory (this is after updating to Jelly Bean, which I just did this morning - before that, on ICS, it was more like 50%, which I still think seems kind of low). When I add up the memory that each running app is taking, the total is nowhere near 2/3 of the device memory (i.e. about 650MB). When I use Memory Booster to clear the memory, it only improves it a few percent, and then the free memory starts to quickly drop again.

So my question is, is this normal, or is there something weird going on? Could this be some sort of strange hardware issue, for example?

I'd really appreciate any input!

Thanks very much!

BTW, apologies for having posted this in the wrong area ("Introductions" before. Couldn't figure out if it was possible to change the section of an already existing post.

 

[chanchan05]

1st, stop using task killers like memory boosters, it causes trouble in the long run.

2nd, its normal. Android is designed to use up as much RAM as possible because it preloads the most often used apps so that they will startup faster. These are just sitting on memory and not using any CPU cycles so no battery is used up. Basically on Android, the more RAM is used up, the faster apps open.

 

[joshnl]

1st, stop using task killers like memory boosters, it causes trouble in the long run.

2nd, its normal. Android is designed to use up as much RAM as possible because it preloads the most often used apps so that they will startup faster. These are just sitting on memory and not using any CPU cycles so no battery is used up. Basically on Android, the more RAM is used up, the faster apps open.

Thanks very much, Chanchan... much appreciated and good to know.

For my own education, would you mind elaborating a bit on why it's bad to use task killers? Does it not improve system performance?

 

[chanchan05]

It doesn't. In fact it goes against the Android algorithm and ruins the Android battery saving and optimizing system. As you use your phone, Android polls how much you use each app, making note of which apps are most used often, and which ones aren't. As you go along, it will know which apps it would need to preload on RAM, and which not to. It will also learn which background processes labeled "essential" are actually needed. So basically, it will learn not to preload certain apps and just load the ones you do need so the system will be fast.

Each time you use task killers to kill apps or forcefully remove apps from RAM, Android counts this as a "usage" and polls it against that app. So you basically have a ton of apps which have a high usage count, and will be preloaded a lot of times on RAM. Some of these may actually be apps you rarely use, making the apps you do actually use a lot load up slower.

An ever bigger problem comes when you kill running services/processes. Android thinks this is a crash, and basically restarts the process. Not only will this mean the action to kill the process to free up memory is futile, this will also count as a "usage". Thus the process will be labeled as a high usage process the more you kill it, thus taking up memory that otherwise would have been given to processes you actually do use, and making the experience faster. Plus every process that gets killed uses up CPU cycles to restart, effectively wasting battery.

I remember there was a post here pre-ICS where in this guy's phone was in a vicious cycle of kill and restart due to excessive usage of task killer. The phone drained battery in a couple of hours and was extremely laggy despite being of decent specs. Turned out he was excessively using a task killer and that Android got confused due to high usage rates per apps. The OS was trying to load more apps than the memory could handle, and what was happening was that as soon as Android killed an app to make room for another high usage app, it was trying to make room again to start another one. So there was a continuous kill and restart going on.

 

[joshnl]

Wow... thanks, Chanchan, for the awesome (very thorough and clear) explanation. I really appreciate it.

And I guess that ends my brief foray into the world of task killers