Free Memory Android TP2 ??

[arrrghhh]

lol, I guess someone else should respond with RAM number to make you happy then.

Hopefully someone does. I know I don't care that much (er, at all) about the actual numbers. All I care about is how it feels. If it's snappy, then I'm fine with it. I guess I don't really feel like over-analyzing it that much.

[rpierce99]

What arrrghhh is trying to say here is that the amount of free RAM available to the system is not what makes a system fast or slow. When you see "sluggishness" at a certain amount of free ram, that is because something didn't have enough free RAM to do what it needed to do, so it either sent some RAM to swap so that it could have free RAM, used some swap space for itself which is slower, or killed an app that was taking some RAM. All of those activities take processor/IO time. Getting more FREE RAM is like buying a bigger mailbox because the amount of mail you get is taking more than 75% of the available mail box space. Who cares if you only have 25% of your total mailbox space free? Until you exceed 100% you don't notice issues with your mail delivery service. Free RAM is wasted money, linux uses as much RAM as you tell it that it can have to store things for faster opening the next time. That's why that app lets you pick that threshold for how much free RAM you want to keep, if you are always opening a new app (maybe you like the free app of the day) or opening large photos, you'd want to have enough free ram to do those activities without swapping. Someone who opens the same 3 apps every day, never opens pictures or downloads anything new doesn't need to have as much free RAM, so they can adjust it up the other way to keep their 3 apps in memory at all times.

TL;DR: Linux will be greedy, if you tell it that it can have all but 20MB, it will take all but 20MB to give you better performance, try to ignore your free RAM count except to get it to match the way you use your phone.

[nerys]

that was my point. what amount of free ram is "good" versus "bad"

I have no idea. hence why I asked. when I closed those programs the system got faster. apps did not load faster but the system "felt" faster in navigation. now when I overclocked it THEN the apps loaded faster.

so it "appeared" to behave like winmo does. more ram equals smoother OS while more CPU equals faster apps.

this is why I asked. I figured android was a lot "leaner" than winmo so I expected to have more ram and was surprised when it had the same 80-81 (actually even with cookie I get 85mb on boot in windows)

alas winmo is sloppy with ram and eats it up bit by bit till none if left and you have to reboot.

so far android is lightyears ahead in this regard. I think they call it memory leaks? it appears to have none or very few and or it "handles" them well.

Free ram is "money available" to spend when you call on it to me. Linux can't use as much ram as I tell it. only as much ram as is "available"

if I tell it I want 90mb it won't give me 90mb because there is not 90mb available (that I can see)

see what I mean? the more I can give it to "work with" the more I can "do" with it.

For example right now to keep 75mb free it has to pretty much keep ALL processes closed (background processes)

if I could free up another 50mb (I assume thats not possible) I would have 125mb to play with meaning I could LET it keep all those apps running in the background and "not" slow the system to a crawl.

at least thats how I thought it worked.

right now I am always opening new apps (its new) but I imagine like winmo I will get my "core" apps going and that will be what I do for the most part once I find all the apps I desire.

I don't see ram as the mail box. I see ram as the DELIVERY GUY. the mail box is "storage space"

if my delivery guy can only deliver 25% of what I desire that equals a lackluster experience ie lots of waiting.

either way I am so far quite impressed with how stable it is. it only crashed one time (old market I think did it too many new installs going or something if I had to guess)

once I stopped all those background apps from going its a lot "snappier" now too. much much smoother. not as smooth as winmo but close.

I wonder if a faster SD card would help at all??