The
free command show the free amount of memory in megabytes. Changing the "
m" to "k" or "
g" gives the output in kilobytes or gigabytes respectively. Just "
free" gives the output in bytes I think.
The free amount looks surprisingly small. Because it includes the amount used as cache and buffers. But it's not serious. For reasons we've beaten to death in every "My phone ate my RAM HELP!!!" thread.
I think there's a glitch that doesn't list the cache amount in Android. But you can run it on your Linux machine to see how it's suppose to look.
Mine looks something like this for my computer:
Code:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 7371 5243 2128 0 223 2160
-/+ buffers/cache: 2859 4512
Swap: 4124 0 4124
For my phone:
Code:
free -m
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 793 742 51 0 17
-/+ buffers: 725 68
Swap: 499 92 407
So out of my 1Gb of RAM, I can use 793MB. I've used 742MB and only have 51MB completely free. However, my task manager reports 444MB used and 348MB free. I must assume that it doesn't count the amount used by cache and buffers. Other than Android Terminal Emulator, no apps are reported by my task manager either.
Because task killers only kill applications, the amount cleared could be potentially small. You could clear all your apps, but RAM could still remain almost full due to cache and buffers. So a phone may become responsive after killing apps, but not necessarily because you freed a few megabytes.
The
top command gives a similar output. It also shows application information too. Give these commands a try.
