Help What's using all my RAM (and should I worry)?

[Adara]

OK, so, relatively recently, I've noticed my RAZR MAXX just running slow. When I checked "apps" and looked at what was "running," that little indicator at the bottom of the screen which indicates RAM "used" and "free" was hovering dangerously close to the not-very-much left free line. Out of a total of 840 MB, I had less than 100 free.

I was running slow again this morning, so I checked it. It had about 100 MB free. I turned the phone off and on again (first line of defense for any issue) and, on reboot, I was back up to about 300 MB free, and the phone is much less laggy in its current state.

My question: What the heck was using all that RAM? Sure, there were a few more apps open before the reboot, but not enough to account for 200 MB.

My other question: Does this mean I should use a Task Killer? I used to use one in the olden days (back on my OG Droid), but everyone convinced me that Android was designed to run with apps just doing their thing in the background, and Task Killers were unnecessary.

(My third question: Am I right to assume that the laggy behavior is related to the not-much-RAM available situation in the first place? Or is there something else going on here?)

Thanks for any advice you can give.

 

[euph_22]

OK, so, relatively recently, I've noticed my RAZR MAXX just running slow. When I checked "apps" and looked at what was "running," that little indicator at the bottom of the screen which indicates RAM "used" and "free" was hovering dangerously close to the not-very-much left free line. Out of a total of 840 MB, I had less than 100 free.

I was running slow again this morning, so I checked it. It had about 100 MB free. I turned the phone off and on again (first line of defense for any issue) and, on reboot, I was back up to about 300 MB free, and the phone is much less laggy in its current state.

My question: What the heck was using all that RAM? Sure, there were a few more apps open before the reboot, but not enough to account for 200 MB.

My other question: Does this mean I should use a Task Killer? I used to use one in the olden days (back on my OG Droid), but everyone convinced me that Android was designed to run with apps just doing their thing in the background, and Task Killers were unnecessary.

(My third question: Am I right to assume that the laggy behavior is related to the not-much-RAM available situation in the first place? Or is there something else going on here?)

Thanks for any advice you can give.

That's normal. Android (and Linux, on which android is based) uses RAM differently than windows does. The mantra here is "Free RAM is Wasted RAM", the OS keeps recently used apps cached in otherwise unused RAM to improve performance with no power cost, and little performance penalty.

Something else is probably going on. Check to see if anything is using alot of CPU. System Panel is a great app for monitoring what different programs are using.

 

[ardchoille]

euph_22 is correct.. don't worry about RAM or running apps. Android does a great job of housekeeping for you so you can focus on enjoying the device.

* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when more memory is needed.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when it’s done doing what it needs to do.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when you haven’t returned to it in a long time.
* Most services (while possibly running in the background) use very little memory when not actively doing something.
* A content provider is only doing something when there is a notification for it to give. Otherwise it uses very little memory.
* Killing a process when it isn’t ready only causes it to have to reload itself and start from scratch when it’s needed again.
* Because a task is likely running in the background for a reason, killing it will only cause it to re-spawn as soon as the activity that was using it looks for it again. And it will just have to start over again.
* Killing certain processes can have undesirable side effects. Not receiving text messages, alarms not going off, and force closes just to name a few.
* The only true way to prevent something from running at all on your phone would be to uninstall the .apk.
* Most applications will exit themselves if you get out of it by hitting “back” until it closes rather than hitting the “home” button. But even with hitting home, Android will eventually kill it once it’s been in the background for a while.

Regarding taks killer, you don't want one. See my article that explains why task killers are bad for android.

 

[Adara]

Got it. Using all RAM - no problem. Task Killer - bad.

Still wonder why the damn thing was achingly slow this morning, but it looks like I'll have to get System Panel or something to see what's keeping my CPU busy.

 

[ardchoille]

Got it. Using all RAM - no problem. Task Killer - bad.

Still wonder why the damn thing was achingly slow this morning, but it looks like I'll have to get System Panel or something to see what's keeping my CPU busy.

If you list the apps you're using, someone might be able to chime in with some advice from their past experiences.

 

[Bodycount]

I never had a phone which didn't have a memory leak somewhere.

I tend to reboot my phone once a week to keep it up to speed. Android apps are not coded as well as Windows programs are. Some of them will just leak memory.

Just learn to reboot your phone every week or so and you'll be fine.

 

[Adara]

If you list the apps you're using, someone might be able to chime in with some advice from their past experiences.

Truth be told, I think I first noticed issues when I started using Tasker. Could that be doing it? Otherwise, I'm just using a standard collection of apps everyone uses -- Kindle, Color Note, Angry Birds... I think, besides Tasker, the last thing I put on here was "Word Game 2"

Just learn to reboot your phone every week or so and you'll be fine.

Bodycount's solution might be the best one. Or, at least, the easiest.

 

[MasterGadgets]

Truth be told, I think I first noticed issues when I started using Tasker. Could that be doing it? Otherwise, I'm just using a standard collection of apps everyone uses -- Kindle, Color Note, Angry Birds... I think, besides Tasker, the last thing I put on here was "Word Game 2"

Bodycount's solution might be the best one. Or, at least, the easiest.

Takser is your culpret, especially if you are using GPS for location. I have tasker but stopped using it because of the slugishness of the phone and also [the biggest for me] was that it causes the phone to eat up battery. I could not get through one day without having to have a charger handy.

Tasker is nice, but to me not worth the problems it causes.

 

[Adara]

Thanks! I'll get rid of the location based stuff and see if it improves.

 

[330D]

Tasker is brutal in that respect. I've only ever gotten the low memory warning with tasker installed. I love that it reads my texts to me though...

 

[JemmyDucks]

Tasker itself is easy on the battery. However, if you use it in such a way that it has to constantly use the GPS receiver or some other battery hungry hardware, then, of course, you will use more battery. Over the past 7 days on my phone Tasker has used less than 13 minutes of cpu time. By comparison, Beautiful Widgets has used 66 minutes.

 

[Adara]

I followed the instructions in the Tasker tutorial and have it determine location from cell towers rather than GPS, but -- after reading everyone's input and messing around with it a bit -- I'm pretty sure Tasker is, in fact, what's making the phone run laggy.

Damn shame that the phone isn't quite up to perfectly handling everything we want to make it do.

(Still, I only bought Tasker to solve one little problem with Jelly Bean -- the phone going to the call log when a call ends. I can easily resolve THAT with Tasker without making things lag. Everything else Tasker-related is gravy, as far as I'm concerned.)