Help ICS Anticipation/Discussion Thread

The evo 3d is superior to the sensation as we have 1gb of ram

Technically we have 4gb of RAM but we are only able to access so to speak 1gb of ram!

We have 1 GB ram, the Sensation has 768 MB.

Internal storage is 4 GB, of which 1 GB is available strictly for user-loaded apps.

And HTC has removed the Easter Egg before, we don't have the Gingerbread one.

Required reading, in my opinion.

HTC Sensation XE Ice Cream Sandwich pictures and hands-on - Pocket-lint

In depth review of the actual Sensation update and interesting comparison of Sense 3.6 and 4.

From that article, I don't want Sense 4. I don't like the new lock screen change in 3.6 but can adapt well enough.

After looking into the new Sense...I'm starting to become a fan of Sense again. I think I would still like AOSP, but a lot of what I disliked about Sense has been removed with this new version.

Thanks for that link! The new sense is looking pretty good. I'm glad we have the same lock screen. I wish you could quick access more applications though. I need Mail, Phone, People, Gmail, and my messaging app.

Well, it has some kind of folder thing so one icon accesses several apps plus, you can use the notification bar on the lockscreen if I read that right. Hmmmm.

EarlyMon said:

Well, it has some kind of folder thing so one icon accesses several apps plus, you can use the notification bar on the lockscreen if I read that right. Hmmmm.

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Widget locker allows you to pull down the notification bar currently, but I have found that the security/privacy conscious part of me does not like that ability. Others may feel differently, but it's definitely a thing that everyone needs to see for themselves. Although, I'd be all for the stock lockscreen if I could put some widgets on it. But looks like I'll be rocking widget locker, still. Hopefully someone makes a translucent theme for the ring locker on widget locker so it matches the rest of the Sense 3.6+ theme.

jerofld said:

Widget locker allows you to pull down the notification bar currently, but I have found that the security/privacy conscious part of me does not like that ability. Others may feel differently, but it's definitely a thing that everyone needs to see for themselves. Although, I'd be all for the stock lockscreen if I could put some widgets on it. But looks like I'll be rocking widget locker, still. Hopefully someone makes a translucent theme for the ring locker on widget locker so it matches the rest of the Sense 3.6+ theme.

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I like the idea of being able to slide it down but I agree with the security/privacy concern part. I don't like when people want to look at my phone and just grab it out of my hand. I like having my security code popping up to stop them quick.

I've liked everything about the Sense 3 lockscreen except the phone to ring drag to answer. Maybe it's just me but that is the only one I fat finger and I've been late on an incoming call when that happens.
And I have to see this whole notification bar on lockscreen thing. With folder-icons and that, I wonder why I wouldn't just run No Lock and call it a day.

But maybe it's all configurable enough. We'll just have to see.

I really hope that Google widget isn't locked in place like it is on the stock Nexus. We do have a search key and don't really need that at all. OK if some prefer it, but we don't need it.

EarlyMon said:

We have 1 GB ram, the Sensation has 768 MB.

Internal storage is 4 GB, of which 1 GB is available strictly for user-loaded apps.

And HTC has removed the Easter Egg before, we don't have the Gingerbread one.

Click to expand...

Exactly but what I'm trying to say is maybe they're slimming the sensations upgrade for exactly that reason.

EarlyMon said:

I really hope that Google widget isn't locked in place like it is on the stock Nexus. We do have a search key and don't really need that at all. OK if some prefer it, but we don't need it.

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^^^ this... and if some folks prefer it, they can just add that widget where they need it.

I just want to know when we will be able to get it!

Eaglesfan9106 said:

Exactly but what I'm trying to say is maybe they're slimming the sensations upgrade for exactly that reason.

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Maybe so, you could be right, but either way, that's to our advantage. So far as we guessed, they gave us the extra quarter GB of ram for our 3D use and I think that we all know it's been a boon for us for normal, everyday use.

I've read that the Sense 4 stuff includes specific apps for their new camera firmware. I don't know what could be involved in resources besides storage, ram and that camera, really. Blogs (Phandroid for example) are taking the info that PyroSporker posted on the 2nd and posting today that it's probably about processor resources - and frankly, I'm convinced that that's malarkey.

I don't know about the whole less RAM thing on the Sensation. I think our 'surplus' of RAM is mostly just a selling point. The readouts in Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > Running seems to change as often as the wind. But if you add used + free, it usually ends up at around 750 MB of RAM. If we have (using standard rounding) 1 GB of RAM (which equals 1028 MB), then where is the missing 278 MB of RAM?

I think it's a system partitioned set of RAM that can expand and contract as it needs memory. Or, at least, a hidden set of apps that don't have to report their memory usage. So, using those numbers, I'm estimating that the Evo 3D's system is using anywhere from 250-300 MB of RAM. I can't imagine the Sensation's system RAM usage is much different, if different at all. And it definitely looks like the system RAM pulls priority, so for the sake of making an ICS update, I believe the RAM argument is irrelevant. 768 MB RAM - 300 MB for system purposes (I'll give a worst case estimate of that) = 468 MB of RAM for user space. Which is plenty. I'm only using 150 MB of my RAM. Granted, I'm rooted, zip aligned, and I've frozen the vast majority of Sense and have rebooted a few times, but I doubt even after a normal day with no reboots that I would ever scratch 468. Much less the ~600 MB of RAM I have free, currently.

Mine keeps reading a total of 1176. Last was 508k used 668K free.

EDIT: Not rooted

Led Zappa said:

Mine keeps reading a total of 1176. Last was 508k used 668K free.

EDIT: Not rooted

Click to expand...

I'm assuming you're on the 'Downloaded' tab and the label reads 'Internal storage'? That's the 1 GB internal ROM. I have the same amount (1176). Click on the 'Running' tab to see the numbers I was referring to. It'll be labeled as 'RAM'.

jerofld said:

I don't know about the whole less RAM thing on the Sensation. I think our 'surplus' of RAM is mostly just a selling point. The readouts in Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > Running seems to change as often as the wind. But if you add used + free, it usually ends up at around 750 MB of RAM. If we have (using standard rounding) 1 GB of RAM (which equals 1028 MB), then where is the missing 278 MB of RAM?

I think it's a system partitioned set of RAM that can expand and contract as it needs memory. Or, at least, a hidden set of apps that don't have to report their memory usage. So, using those numbers, I'm estimating that the Evo 3D's system is using anywhere from 250-300 MB of RAM. I can't imagine the Sensation's system RAM usage is much different, if different at all. And it definitely looks like the system RAM pulls priority, so for the sake of making an ICS update, I believe the RAM argument is irrelevant. 768 MB RAM - 300 MB for system purposes (I'll give a worst case estimate of that) = 468 MB of RAM for user space. Which is plenty. I'm only using 150 MB of my RAM. Granted, I'm rooted, zip aligned, and I've frozen the vast majority of Sense and have rebooted a few times, but I doubt even after a normal day with no reboots that I would ever scratch 468. Much less the ~600 MB of RAM I have free, currently.

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I don't think so. I know that the Evo 3D has 1 GB ram, I pulled the schematic and checked the chips. I remember tracing the Sensation during our release, it has 768 MB.

Depending upon the memory-reporting app, yes, the 3D will report anywhere from about 720 to 830 MB of total ram.

The missing ram is due to some effect of the dynamics of the system and all it can see is a kernel report - and each reporting app changes the execution profile, so I don't really expect them to agree.

And the main reason is a trick as old as the Apple ][+ and the Commodore - memory-mapped I/O, and - memory mapped graphics.

We'll start with graphics. In your PC, your typical graphics card has its own memory. If you're a gamer, you pay for cards with various amounts of extra video ram.

However, if you're into a home theater PC and started a few years back, you'd use a Mac mini or any of the similar Win/PC hardware, using the Intel GMA950 graphics controller. Lousy at generated-3D benchmarks, catcalled by gamers as a dog - and stellar at HDTV delivery - because there was no bus in the middle, it used motherboard memory for graphics.

S3 gpu in our phones - same concept as the GMA950. That's where the first big slice of our silicon disappears.

A smaller amount disappears as a block set aside for memory-mapped I/O. In processors, you can have hardware ports from the processor chipset to other hardware, that's port-mapped I/O aka IO-mapped I/O. Or, you can pull the same trick as the gpu and get to hardware addresses through corresponding memory addresses. That's what we have connecting to the phone radios, the whole bit, under the hood on our phones.

So, compare our 720~830 MB total ram (depending on what app you believe) against what Sensation owners face, 558 MB ram in this report:

Actual Available RAM for HTC Sensation - Android @ MoDaCo

Therefore losing approximately the same ~200 MB we are.

Also, Two Glaring Issues that are Killing the HTC Sensation; Unresponsive Touchscreens & Sense Lag - BriefMobile

Android Central recently posted a video showcasing a major difference between the EVO 3D and Sensation. They have found that the EVO 3D, which has 99% identical hardware and software to the Sensation, actually runs Sense 3.0 much smoother. Why is that? Well, the only notable difference between the two phones is the amount of RAM; the EVO 3D has 1GB while the Sensation has 768MB. At first I didn’t think much of this difference in RAM, Android does a fantastic job at managing background applications. However, Sense 3.0 eats up nearly all the RAM on the Sensation leaving the user with only ~120MB left to use. There have been times where playing high end games like Dungeon Defender would cause my entire phone to crash due to the RAM being depleted.

Click to expand...

I've seen similar complaints on our forums.

So while many of us have been delighted with overall performance on the 3D (some of us more so by either dropping Sense or overclocking a bit or both), the Sensation crowd does have the issue - Android is far busier on that phone performing memory management by sleeping and swapping apps than we face.

(From what I've seen) Everyone is writing that Sense 4 (on the new phones) feels lighter and snappier, and that the same is true for Sense 3.6 on the Sensation with ICS.

Android used to be a fair sized software stack, but Android + Sense was a large stack. ICS alone is certainly a large stack (it does more, it takes more to do it).

So, any Sense + ICS needed Sense pared down to not duplicate functions and not go from a large stack to a ridiculously large stack.

So, Sense 3.6 and 4 may well be a smaller than what we have, and they certainly benefit from the new Linux rev 3 kernel in ICS (better task management for dual cores than what we have now).

Is Sense 3.6 smaller, bigger, same as Sense 4? Don't know, expect to get the real answer from the root developers community in the coming weeks.

Could there be an issue with overall payload size of ICS+new-whatever-Sense on the Sensation that the 3D might not suffer?

Absolutely reasonable, too soon to tell.

We do know that condition exists with Gingerbread + Sense 3 though.

Is the choice to go with Sense 3.6 for the older phones:

a) ram
b) other hardware like the camera
c) strictly marketing

That's the $64 question!

Is it a done deal that just because the Sensation is getting 3.6, we will too?

Another $64, even though I'm ready to agree with the blogs.

Whatever happens, they know they're building for the 3D.

PS - Running Sense with only a little bloat removed, my task manager says I have just over 800 MB, with a usual of 200 down to 100 free, although on rare occasions, I drop below 100.

PPS to rooters - There's also the Android system ramdisk. I never did get curious enough to look that one up in detail. Those that temp rooted, deleted apps, but suddenly, there they were back again after a reboot and temp root lost - the deletions were from the ramdisk only. Also the reason that some system files can't simply be replaced by pushing the file, flashing a rom is required - you can't see past the ramdisk there, either.

jerofld said:

I'm assuming you're on the 'Downloaded' tab and the label reads 'Internal storage'? That's the 1 GB internal ROM. I have the same amount (1176). Click on the 'Running' tab to see the numbers I was referring to. It'll be labeled as 'RAM'.

Click to expand...

Led Zappa, Jer is correct and that doesn't disagree with my 4GB number earlier.

We have 4 GB storage, but it's carved up for the bootloader, radio firmware, other low-level stuff, the operating system - and then basically 1 GB (1176 MB) for a separate space just for your apps+data.

Nice write-up, EM! Very helpful, and good insight (as usual).

Slightly off topic, but since we're discussing memory... I found and have been using an app called Speed Boost (lite).. It clears (and "optimizes") cache.. It seems to be clearing and freeing quite a bit of memory. However, I'm concerned that this could cause problems. What do you guys think?? I definitely do not want an "app killer" app, or anything of the sorts, as I think I'd rather just let Android monitor the system. Any input on this App would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

No idea what Speed Boost is doing with cache, but this is something that I'm generally against -

What does Speed Boost do?
Traditional task killers only kill the running apps, which cause them to leave behind garbage data in RAM memory which then has to be cleared by the system, causing stutters and lag.
Speed Boost kills the running apps and then clears the garbage data left behind by the killed apps, which is what you see in the Toast message after the operation is performed.

Click to expand...

Task killing in Android should be sufficient.

Again, for cache - I'll let others comment.

Got it guys. Thanks for the write up. I was just looking at the wrong info.

Interesting. I didn't know that about the HD graphics delivery. Is it typical for it to use a fluctuating amount of RAM? Something like that seems like it should be a fixed amount, and something that is divisible by 4. And there are a number of unreported Android services, which is where I drew my conclusion. I could have sworn I read something about that years ago when I first picked up my first Android device and was reading up on why I didn't need a task killer once I got Froyo.

Also, I didn't mean to imply that the sales point was that the 1GB of RAM was a false claim, but that the extra 256 MB was just largely unnecessary. But it appears I was wrong on the unnecessary point. Maybe more Sensation owners should root and zipalign .

EarlyMon said:

Apple ][+

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The sign of a true geek. When you write Apple ][ instead of Apple 2 or Apple II. And yes, I know what an Apple ][ is. I remember learning to type and playing Oregon Trail on an Apple ][c.

And if the only real difference between Sense 3.6 and 4.0 is widgets...I wouldn't be surprised if ports are made that are both root and non-root compatible, kinda like the Amaze Camera mod. Assuming the framework doesn't change much (or at all) between the versions. If it does change, then it'll probably be a root-only thing.

I think maybe the issue is in a few parts - first, I don't know that all utilities are using the same kernel probe or /dev readout to decide memory. So, my built-in task manager in the toolbar is consistent in what it reports, Elixer is consistent in what it reports, but they don't always agree with each other. (Naturally, now that I just checked to give real numbers - I have four monitors agreeing with how much ram I have, all saying 808.3 MB - that's a first.)

Also, the actual amount of that taken may be statically or dynamically allocated, I can't really venture guesses on that one. For HDTV/desktop/shared memory GPUs, yes, the actual graphics memory in use will fluctuate quite a bit but center around a known range. Modern graphics processing isn't like the old days were you simply set aside so many bits per pixel, do the math, and get a constant. Here, the allocated memory by the generic case of the GPU includes its space for math, for example.

Again - can only discuss in general terms, too many trade secrets there for us to know all of it unless someone reverses the really low-level stuff.

And for custom rommers, I can't say if the ramdisk size changes or not, so that might be a part of it all as well.

~~~~~

Dead correct on task killers confusing memory allocations, let's review what's Android for those unfamiliar and curious:

Android = Linux + Dalvik Virtual Machine + apps that run in Dalvik and use Linux services

So, the big evil we always talk about is how task killing hoses up the Dalvik VM, but any of the services used (for media playback as one example) will dynamically allocate (take from the free pool available) memory as needed, then deallocate it (give it back) when the app is done. So, the other side of task killing evil is that when you simply kill a task, you leave a service pretty confused and likely to be eating memory because nothing told it to stop. The task killer part of the app Ben posted claims to get around that, but it's still going to wreak havoc on the Dalvik.

~~~~~

You hit a certain point and having free ram does you no good - now you have motherboard silicon that you paid for sitting there unused. If the Dalvik is getting pretty busy doing memory management as it hits its low-check-points, then that's processor power taken from you and you start to notice. That really varies for each user because it's all about what apps are used, how often, is it Friday, is the moon out, etc etc.

And because of your customizations, you're seeing so much extra memory that you'd expect that's normal and the Sensation would be ok - but in truth, you've gotten your setup tuned to be mean, lean and way fast. Those of us with Sense, not so much, and those with the Sensation, much bigger problem.

Been a while since I checked, and this was the subject of several threads at launch, but I think a stock 3vo boots and uses around 5~600 MB, so, about +200 MB free.

So, with the new HTCs all running 1 GB ram, I think HTC is finally getting it, and I think I agree - if we do get Sense 3.6, it's probably likely that the Sense 4 roms will update pretty quickly for us, for those that want to give that a shot.

Anyway - where is it?!?!? What's the freaking date, HTC/Sprint?!?!?!?!?

earlymon said:

anyway - where is it?!?!? What's the freaking date, htc/sprint?!?!?!?!?

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^^^^^^^^^^^ this!!!

When ICS gets pushed to our phones do we lose everything on them?

Does it work like a factory restore? I only ask because I am wondering if I should backup my phone data just in case.