Help What's eating up my Charge's ram?

[zeldaboy101]

I know the Charge could use more ram but I swear i'm running over 250mb a lot of the time when nothing is going on. I'll clear the cache and sometimes it can get into the 220s but other times when I clear the cache it still hovers around 250. I've gone into running services and what's running I either can't stop or it's one of the few apps/widgets I run.

How can you tell how much ram a widget is eating up? I only have like 4 total on the home screens.

I have a good number of shortcuts to apps on the home screens. Would it make much of a difference to put all of these shortcuts into folders so they don't need to be drawn initially?

 

[NJ Droid]

Subscribing bc i was wondering the same thing as you

 

[The Nooner]

Simple answer. ..don't worry about it. Unless it is causing alt of lag(besides homescreen lag which is fixed by another launcher) android is not windows, memory is handled different. Mine usually hovers in the 260s to 280s. Some things are kept running so they can be used right away. Unless you get a rogue app that locks up and eats memory that's when you need to kill a program... The apps you keep stopping just start right up again. That's why your memory isn't going lower. You'll actually more likely to cause more problems than you'll fix trying to stop them, again aside from a rogue app. Search the forums for task killers and why not to use them. This will explain it better than i can right now. Essentially that is what stopping the apps from running is doing task killing.

Hope this helps

 

[zeldaboy101]

Simple answer. ..don't worry about it. Unless it is causing alt of lag(besides homescreen lag which is fixed by another launcher) android is not windows, memory is handled different. Mine usually hovers in the 260s to 280s. Some things are kept running so they can be used right away. Unless you get a rogue app that locks up and eats memory that's when you need to kill a program... The apps you keep stopping just start right up again. That's why your memory isn't going lower. You'll actually more likely to cause more problems than you'll fix trying to stop them, again aside from a rogue app. Search the forums for task killers and why not to use them. This will explain it better than i can right now. Essentially that is what stopping the apps from running is doing task killing.

Hope this helps

Lag seems to be getting worse on the phone however and I remember less ram being eaten up before than it is now. I was hoping to find a program that's been installed in the last few weeks is the culprit but I can't tell. The home screen is also taking FOREVER (several minutes sometimes) when exiting resource hungry games and now it's becoming even basic things like a phone call and having to wait for the home screens to redraw.

 

[mrjwen]

My used RAM hovers around 280 MB too but I agree with you that the Home Screen Redraw issue has been getting steadily worse over time. However not "several minutes" bad, yet. I've uninstalled a bunch of unused apps and cut my home screen down to just 3 pages.

 

[WildH]

Bump.

 

[trparky]

I've never experienced that redraw issue since going to GoLauncher EX and replacing TouchWiz. I found that TouchWiz can be very clunky and slow.

 

[zeldaboy101]

I've never experienced that redraw issue since going to GoLauncher EX and replacing TouchWiz. I found that TouchWiz can be very clunky and slow.

Well my memory usage has dropped to the 230s at the moment but I can't pinpoint what's running when it spikes for a while and decides to be laggier.

 

[Ken7]

I've never experienced that redraw issue since going to GoLauncher EX and replacing TouchWiz. I found that TouchWiz can be very clunky and slow.

I think these launchers and their impact on lag is overplayed. An example is my installation of GoLauncher. At first it seemed to speed things up a bit, but after awhile I was right back to a significant lag. I then UNinstalled GoLauncher and went back to TW and guess what, things were fast again.

I just don't think the whole 'lag thing' is that simple.

 

[The Nooner]

Lag seems to be getting worse on the phone however and I remember less ram being eaten up before than it is now. I was hoping to find a program that's been installed in the last few weeks is the culprit but I can't tell. The home screen is also taking FOREVER (several minutes sometimes) when exiting resource hungry games and now it's becoming even basic things like a phone call and having to wait for the home screens to redraw.

Resource hungry games...there my friend is your culprit I bet. If you restart the phone how is it? Are you moving these games to sd card? That can hinder performance. What launcher are you getting the redraws on? I had a similar issue with a few and solved it by tweaking a few settings in the launcher preferences. Sounds more to me like a game is going rogue and not closing. Is the lag when your playing the game and get a phone call or just when phone is not in use and get a call?

 

[ts47]

Simple answer. ..don't worry about it. Unless it is causing alt of lag(besides homescreen lag which is fixed by another launcher) android is not windows, memory is handled different. Mine usually hovers in the 260s to 280s. Some things are kept running so they can be used right away. Unless you get a rogue app that locks up and eats memory that's when you need to kill a program... The apps you keep stopping just start right up again. That's why your memory isn't going lower. You'll actually more likely to cause more problems than you'll fix trying to stop them, again aside from a rogue app. Search the forums for task killers and why not to use them. This will explain it better than i can right now. Essentially that is what stopping the apps from running is doing task killing.

Hope this helps

Do not install task killers on this phone. It already has one of its own. It's the same app that tells you how much ram you're using. Adding a task killer on the Charge has caused multiple problems for multiple people. Do not install battery extender apps on this phone either - unless you want data connectivity issues.

I added Go Launcher. It dropped my ram usage by about 10-15 mb and sped my phone up permanently. I pay attention to how much ram each program uses. The only place I know to look is settings>applications>manage applications>third party (this is the easiest place to check apps you've installed. "all" will show you what all the apps including those that came on the phone are doing.) Click on each program. If that program is using ram, it will say "RAM:15.2 MB" (as an example) toward the top of the screen. By doing this, you can tell what apps are using what memory. If you have any social networking or news feed apps running/updating in the background, they will eat up quite a bit of ram. I have a fair number of apps installed. By following these steps, my phone runs between 215 and 235 mb. My phone doesn't suffer any lag either.

 

[Zohar127]

I agree with ^this guy.

I installed GoLauncherEX and my phone is way more responsive than it was on TW. I have not experienced any slowdown whatsoever since I've switched, yet if I go back to TW I end up getting the exact same lag again.

Tip: clear out your TW home screens if you switch to Go Launcher. I've read that they can actually still use resources even if you're on a different launcher.

I'm not an expert on Linux/Android, but my understanding is that everything you're using is already loaded into RAM. As long as you have RAM leftover your phone doesn't need to do any swapping from storage to RAM and vice versa. What I'm trying to say is that clearing more RAM won't make your phone faster because you're not hitting the RAM limit and therefore aren't having to wait for the phone to clear old programs and pull whatever you're trying to access into RAM.

Bad analogy: Your RAM is a swimming pool and your data is a group of swimmers. If your pool can fit 15 people comfortably, and there are 9 people of a set skill level swimming, everything's hunky dory. Making the pool bigger won't magically make those 9 people better swimmers. Their skill level is static and their use of the pool will never change. Kicking out 5 of those 9 people also won't make the 4 left over any faster. They can still only swim so fast and they were already provided with more than enough space to swim around happily.

Now if you have a 15 person pool and you have 20 people that want to swim, you end up having a queue where some people have to wait for current swimmers to get out so new people can get in.

The Android OS, from what I understand, is designed so that situation never happens. There is always enough room for everyone because it's very good at kicking people out when their time is up or when they are just sitting around idle, taking up space.

Now I could be completely wrong about that, so if anyone knows for sure, feel free to let me know!

 

[ts47]

I agree with ^this guy.

I installed GoLauncherEX and my phone is way more responsive than it was on TW. I have not experienced any slowdown whatsoever since I've switched, yet if I go back to TW I end up getting the exact same lag again.

Tip: clear out your TW home screens if you switch to Go Launcher. I've read that they can actually still use resources even if you're on a different launcher.

I'm not an expert on Linux/Android, but my understanding is that everything you're using is already loaded into RAM. As long as you have RAM leftover your phone doesn't need to do any swapping from storage to RAM and vice versa. What I'm trying to say is that clearing more RAM won't make your phone faster because you're not hitting the RAM limit and therefore aren't having to wait for the phone to clear old programs and pull whatever you're trying to access into RAM.

Bad analogy: Your RAM is a swimming pool and your data is a group of swimmers. If your pool can fit 15 people comfortably, and there are 9 people of a set skill level swimming, everything's hunky dory. Making the pool bigger won't magically make those 9 people better swimmers. Their skill level is static and their use of the pool will never change. Kicking out 5 of those 9 people also won't make the 4 left over any faster. They can still only swim so fast and they were already provided with more than enough space to swim around happily.

Now if you have a 15 person pool and you have 20 people that want to swim, you end up having a queue where some people have to wait for current swimmers to get out so new people can get in.

The Android OS, from what I understand, is designed so that situation never happens. There is always enough room for everyone because it's very good at kicking people out when their time is up or when they are just sitting around idle, taking up space.

Now I could be completely wrong about that, so if anyone knows for sure, feel free to let me know!

Actually, I think it was a great analogy!

Two questions regarding the amount of available ram:
1. If you have fewer swimmers in that pool for the processor to manage, won't the phone be more responsive?
2. If you have fewer swimmers, won't your battery life last longer?

 

[ts47]

YES, If you install Go Launcher, remove all the old apps and widgets from your TouchWiz homescreen. If you don't, they will keep running in the background eating up your battery. You can also delete all but one of the old 7 home screens. There are a few programs you can use to switch between TouchWiz and Go Launcher. I use Home Switcher for Froyo. If you don't like Go Launcher (not likely), you can just as esily switch back to TouchWiz. Note: you will not be able to use some of your TouchWiz widgets. You can find replacements in the Android Market.

Zohar, it was the thread you started that gave me the idea to switch to Go Launcher EX!

 

[Zohar127]

Actually, I think it was a great analogy!

Two questions regarding the amount of available ram:
1. If you have fewer swimmers in that pool for the processor to manage, won't the phone be more responsive?
2. If you have fewer swimmers, won't your battery life last longer?

I'm no expert but I think both questions can be answered at once. The Android OS keeps background operations very sequestered. Things that are idle in the background consume very little power and almost no CPU time. So I've read. Of course that also depends on how well the app itself is programmed.

 

[zeldaboy101]

Well I had resisted switching to go launcher ex because it took a while to get my home screens set up on touch wiz but the lag was just unbearable recently. I would exit out of very simple programs and just turn the screen off and check back in a minute because it would take so long to redraw everything.

I downloaded go launcher ex and got rid of the old home screens. It's much more responsive and while there's a few seconds of waiting after exiting resource hungry games, it's nothing like it used to be.

I generally like the launcher except when I add app icons into a folder that has a lot in it, it lags really badly again to the point where I turn the screen off and come back in a minute for the app's shortcut to have been put into the folder.

Ram usage is generally still closer to 250mb so it doesnt seem like ram is the problem like you guys suggested. The launcher's app drawer also shows what apps are running and I hate how slacker radio and IM are ALWAYS on no matter what I do. Stupid bloatware.