So I have the Verizon TP, and despite it being so "horribly crippled" memory-wise I've somehow managed to have quite a pleasant experience using it these past few months. I've tried it in many different configurations and figured I'd run some stats so that others can benefit from it. This post is catered more towards newer users than veteran flashers.
To set the stage let me make a few points. Verizon's stock ROM has a pagepool of 6 and comes without TF3D enabled. Most custom ROMs recommend a pagepool of 8 for Verizon users who use one of the newer interfaces (TF3D/Titanium), as well as recommending they disable the newer HTC dialer to free up an additional 10mb or so. After trying various pagepool settings I'm using a 12 right now with the disabled dialer, and so far it seems to be a good balance between free memory and giving the OS enough room to breathe well. Would more RAM like the other TPs have be nice? Sure. Is it absolutely necessary to have as much RAM as them to have a normally functioning TP? From my personal experience, definitely not. Now here are the stats all with a pagepool of 12:
*All readings taken individually after a fresh soft reset
*I let it sit for a few minutes to "stabilize" (the memory creeps a bit)
*This is a freshly flashed ROM with a second hard-reset and nothing else installed
*I'm using MightyROM 6.5 in this test, I use it the most due to it being an excellent overall package of stability and features. (shameless plug) MR6.5 has a default pagepool of 16mb which you can modify if you so desire.
Titanium + HTC dialer
In use: 65.12
Free: 42.10
Titanium + Old dialer
In use: 56.00
Free: 51.22
TF3D + HTC dialer
In use: 74.29
Free: 32.93
TF3D + Old dialer
In use: 65.04
Free: 42.18
Old interface + Old dialer (for kicks)
In use: 54.14
Free: 53.08
Now as a test to see roughly how much free memory you need for a decent amount of multitasking I went ahead and launched several applications that I could see being regularly used.
MS Word (81k)
Opera 9.5 (2809k)
Windows Media Player (1777k)
Google Maps (2164k)
YouTube (5692k)
Camera (5479k)
Total: 18mb
Now it's perspective time. As you can see that's not a horrendous amount of memory necessary to flip back and forth between those apps. But some of those listed above just don't need to stay open all day long. I can understand listening to a media player while surfing the web while flipping back to google maps to make sure you're going the right way (hopefully you aren't driving
), but you don't generally need to be using all of those or other programs all at once. I feel a large amount of multitasking is pointless because you're more likely to bog down the CPU sooner than run out of RAM I'd think (I could be wrong).
I always personally set my task manager to close apps on hitting ok because I usually dont need to leave everything running. When I do want to leave something open I just hit the home button. But even then I only ever have 2-3 things running simultaneously. The default however is to just leave everything open until WinMo decides it needs to randomly close something to free up RAM. But what if it closes something you wanted to stay open instead of something you didn't care about? The point to take home here is to have
you manage the memory and make the choices, not WinMo.
I've rambled enough, I just figured seeing the in use/free stats might help some Verizon user decide what pagepool to choose or what interface to use. You can always opt for a lower pagepool to free up even more memory, but you sacrifice overall ROM performance I believe in doing so. I've also included pics of the two different dialers below for reference. To be honest I don't see any reason to keep the HTC one, I actually prefer call/end buttons on the app and I don't really see anything worth 10mb.
HTC and older dialer
IMPORTANT - Please don't clutter up this thread with Verizon bashing. The phone works fine, Verizon has great service, go "hate" somewhere else. This thread is for the people that just want to figure out how to best use their memory on the TP. Not everyone considers the phone more important than the service. I welcome any criticism on the validity of the above stats as well as any insight into balancing the RAM even better.