Database Develop

[Q] Full RAM after using a some apps... with a little analysis

After fixing some lags with I/O system by using filesystem LagFix I still have a Lag problem in my system and I think it's not related to Samsung.
I think this could be an Android problem.
After a fresh reboot I get 124MB of free RAM.
BUT... every day I need to reboot the phone because after 3 hours it became laggy.
Now I analysed this and read a bit about the memory management on several forums and was able to reproduce the lag 2minutes after reboot.
I just need to use much applications one after another to raise the RAM usage for every application.
When the free RAM reaches 40MB I think the system clears some pieces for using it for the app I now want to use and there is the LAG.
Is there any fix for Android not caching every activity of an application in the RAM?
Now for me Android feels like: Usage -> Full RAM -> Lag
Sorry for the new thread but after 2 hours of research I didn't find anything useful over search function.

Yea, every program should have as much ram available as their size. 2gig for program storage on sgs, so there should be the same amount of ram ;D Anyway, theres still less memory for programs on the sgs than for example in the N1. I'd say there is about 384MB of ram total on the sgs and not the 512 claimed.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Not just the RAM for the apps... there's much more...all mails from internet, all google talk conversations, the wather I checked out from internet with any widget, feels like every interaction is cached into the RAM until it reaches the 40mb mark and after that every interaction on my system is laggy... for example: opening the notification bar needs 2-3 seconds.
I already talked to N1 users with the same problem

DasLeo said:
I already talked to N1 users with the same problem
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heading out the door in a minute so can't comment on the rest, but I strongly disagree with that part of your statement.
As an N1 owner I've NEVER seen lag like I suffer on the SGS. Never seen the absolute FREEZE in the GUI like the SGS gets.
I'm running FroYo on the N1 now, so can't compare side-by-side to the SGS things like memory usage, but I don't think that's the issue here if you're going to use the N1 as a comparison, despite other users complaining of lag.
You might try Autokiller or the free memory manager app from the Market and see if that improves thing, they'll keep more or less memory free depending on settings. You could test how soon lag comes with default, minimal, and aggressive settings.

I never testet Froyo because everyone said, it's unstable but for me it seems like froyo has other RAM management than Eclair when you said you can't reproduce this problem.
I'm already using a task killer... I have my main apps ignored or excluded and most time there are 2 or 3 apps which will be killed after lock or time or what else.
What's the problem here... if I would use a PC with 512MB RAM and use only 10 small applications, it won't cache everything in the ram until it's full.

Hi, didn't read all the posts, but u should look into the RFS file system, which is samsung proprietery file system. It has a very bad implementation on android (i could be wrong). As for ram, the phone has 512 mb, but 128 are reserved for Gsm/data connection. Just think if you had an incoming call and all your ram was in use, u had to wait for the system to clear up some memory before being able to receive the call physiclly. That would be a long wait.
I could be wrong and sorry for the bad english.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Have you ever tried "Minfreemanager" app?
It can change the minimum available memory level in different app usage.
The device must be rooted first.
Then select "Aggressive" preset and see the result.

rkantos said:
. I'd say there is about 384MB of ram total on the sgs and not the 512 claimed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If this turns out to be true, samsung is up for a massive lawsuit from MANY angry customers who've been mislead due to false marketing

tra33372 said:
Have you ever tried "Minfreemanager" app?
It can change the minimum available memory level in different app usage.
The device must be rooted first.
Then select "Aggressive" preset and see the result.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DAMN!!! Nice app... it does exactly what I need cleans my RAM so I'll get 120MB and after that loading of apps is much faster than starting apps with Android included RAM cleaning.
It just cleans my RAM like a reboot but without the reboot
This should be a temporary solution until someone finds a better solution or until froyo is released.
I would like to have an application like this with an autoclean option on 2 hours

Guys please,
Getting off-topic here. Here is Android Development.
Not Q&A or General.
Please post in the right section.
Here is getting too many off-topics that pose no relation to Android Development.
Too cluttered.
Thanks

DasLeo said:
DAMN!!! Nice app... it does exactly what I need cleans my RAM so I'll get 120MB and after that loading of apps is much faster than starting apps with Android included RAM cleaning.
It just cleans my RAM like a reboot but without the reboot
This should be a temporary solution until someone finds a better solution or until froyo is released.
I would like to have an application like this with an autoclean option on 2 hours
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Auto killer is better.Its exactly the same as minfreemanager but can be made to apply at boot.Minfree manager resets itself at boot.

I use Memory Booster Lite (free version) app to free up memory, must do that manually but it works very well, if you buy the app it free up memory automaticly.

Pika007 said:
If this turns out to be true, samsung is up for a massive lawsuit from MANY angry customers who've been mislead due to false marketing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The phone does have 512mb of ram. It just isn't used properly.
MOJO783010 said:
Hi, didn't read all the posts, but u should look into the RFS file system, which is samsung proprietery file system. It has a very bad implementation on android (i could be wrong). As for ram, the phone has 512 mb, but 128 are reserved for Gsm/data connection. Just think if you had an incoming call and all your ram was in use, u had to wait for the system to clear up some memory before being able to receive the call physiclly. That would be a long wait.
I could be wrong and sorry for the bad english.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, wrong. The reserved ram is in the form of a ram disk, which seems to be a bit oversized. Not really sure why a ram disk is needed at all, personally.
sammy555 said:
Auto killer is better.Its exactly the same as minfreemanager but can be made to apply at boot.Minfree manager resets itself at boot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the correct solution. the JF* series of firmwares have very bad default settings for killing unused apps. Use this app to set them a bit better and you shouldn't have any problems.

Pika007 said:
If this turns out to be true, samsung is up for a massive lawsuit from MANY angry customers who've been mislead due to false marketing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does have 512 of ram, but some is partitioned off for the phone, so that you can always receive phone calls. Just about every device does this, because users would be more upset if they couldn't pick up the phone until they had closed a bundle of running programs. Don't you think that people here would have noticed earlier if the SGS physically had less ram than claimed ?
As far as the OP is concerned, sounds like you are just running too many programs at once. Its not an android problem, its user error.
Any task manager, but particularly an auto-killer will set you right, although alternatively you could try not leaving every app open when you're finished with it. You think your PC would run ok if you left one game open while you opened another ?

DasLeo said:
I never testet Froyo because everyone said, it's unstable but for me it seems like froyo has other RAM management than Eclair when you said you can't reproduce this problem.
I'm already using a task killer... I have my main apps ignored or excluded and most time there are 2 or 3 apps which will be killed after lock or time or what else.
What's the problem here... if I would use a PC with 512MB RAM and use only 10 small applications, it won't cache everything in the ram until it's full.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wasn't comparing a N1 on FroYo to the SGS on Eclair. My comments were in regard to when I was on Eclair, which was several months...FroYo's only been available for a couple of months. What I said was since I'm on FroYo now, I can't compare side-by-side, but my experience with an N1 on Eclair was never any lag problem or GUI freezes.
Anyways, I also suggested you try Autokiller, and you missed that or misunderstood it by saying you already run a Task Killer (which is generally considered a bad idea, but I see you picked up on Autokiller after someone else suggested it. Enjoy.
Pika007 said:
If this turns out to be true, samsung is up for a massive lawsuit from MANY angry customers who've been mislead due to false marketing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah, all phones advertise the actual chip size in it, not the amount the system actually lets you use.

tra33372 said:
Have you ever tried "Minfreemanager" app?
It can change the minimum available memory level in different app usage.
The device must be rooted first.
Then select "Aggressive" preset and see the result.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you. This removes almost all lag I'm experiencing.

[Q] Apps kept coming back after autokill -> memory leak -> lag

Hi all,
1. I've got these applications (Smartone-Vodophone SV app, 5 days weather, google map, social hub and such) that would keep coming back, relaunching themselves even after I put them onto my task manager's autokill list. Seems like they would wait around for me to enable the wifi/3G connection and then launch themselves. I even installed other apps to disable autolaunch and they would still launch themselves in the background every now and then. I had to kill them every time I unlocked my screen and these "launching and killing" cycles eventually depleted my memory down to below 100MB, making the lag situation even worse. Does anyone know how I can stop them from launching, without having to uninstall these apps?
2. I haven't installed the lagfix and I understand that the fix has to do with reformatting the apps' partition with a faster file system to reduce the lag (probably by giving it faster I/O access to the program's binaries?) I'm still waiting for Froyo, which should be out in a couple of weeks in my country. Does anyone know if Froyo would take care of this file system problem? Even with the Froyo or one-click lag fix, it still would not solve the apps launching and memory leak problem, right?
3. I notice that after I've installed more apps, the lag situation got worse. I was playing some songs on the external SD cards and it choked once in a while. I made sure I killed all the other apps and that I still got 100+MB to run just this one song player app and yet it would still choke. This tells me that the lag has nothing to do with available memory. And the player app was stock that came with the phone so there shouldn't be any fragmentation issue (apps installed later might have?) that makes it run slow. And if its the bad file system, this app, running all by itself, should have all the I/O bandwidth to itself so the access to the app's binaries should not have any lag... and neither should the access to the songs on the external SD card. So what exactly is causing the lag then? I don't see how the lagfix would solve this problem either. I actually have read that the lags would come back after a period of usage even with the lagfix. Anyone got an insight to this problem? What exactly is causing the lag? and why installing more apps seem to make it worse? and would Froyo be able to fix all these problems?
Thanks a lot.

@boarder838
I think you really need to read a lot more about just how Android works as you seem to have some strange ideas about how it works.
To start with you need to realise that having 200mb or 100mb of free Ram makes zero difference to performance only when you have no free Ram is it a problem and even then the system will sort it out for you by closing the least used program. Free Ram is just wasted Ram as it's not doing anything and will not make your device respond or work faster using a Auto Task Killer is wasting your battery and slowing down your device not speeding it up and saving battery as you seem to think. As i have pointed out above stop obsessing over your free Ram amount as unless you have none its not a problem stop using a Task Killer and you will most probably see your device responds faster as its not constantly killing things and just leaves them open doing nothing in the back ground which doesn't use Ram or Battery so just leave them be.
Yes Froyo will bring many improvements to our devices but won't fix a problem that doesn't exist re memory leaks and apps launching that you seem to think you have. I don't know but some of those apps may be system apps that need to run all the time which is why they keep relaunching. As for a lag fix well that's what we are all hoping for but if not I'm pretty sure the great people of this forum will come up with an easy to apply fix to it.
I have absolutely no problem playing Music or even streaming it over Bluetooth no lag stutters or break ups at all although my Music is on the Internal SD card. Maybe you should look at the quality that you have encoded your Music in as that may be causing problem. maybe some of the apps you have installed are also causing a problem but its impossible to know as we all install different apps and have different set ups.
I don't know how much experience you have with Android devices or flashing Roms but if you read enough and understand it you have the possibility to flash custom Rom's and various tweaks and fixes to make your device how you want it. That's part of the beauty of Android but don't rush into anything you are not sure about as you can end up with an expensive brick so read things many times and make sure you understand step by step what you are doing if you are going to attempt any of these things.
If you look at my signature you will see i am running a Custom Rom that includes a lag fix and various other tweaks it also allowed me to remove some of the programs in the official Rom that i didn't want or need. For me my device runs nice and smooth and fast of course I'm looking forward to Froyo and all the improvements that will bring but I'm quite happy with my Galaxy S the way it is now. Oh and this is my second Android device and I've never used a Task Killer never mind an Auto Task Killer and have never seen an out of Ram message either.
Marc

exactly what he said ^

Hi Marc,
Thanks for spending time to read through my long post and reply to it. I probably didn't explain my problem clearly in my post.
There were a couple of reasons I wanted to kill/stop the apps from starting:
1. Even before I installed any of those apps killer, I noticed that the available memory kept going down after a couple days of usage and it went down to below 100M. I figured some of the apps would need 10's of MB to run so I thought I should at least keep 100MB around so that it wouldn't run out of memory and start swapping when I start those apps. I don't know enough about Android but I assume its just like linux or other OS, when it runs out of physical memory, it would start swapping and slow things down. Even after I started using task killer and killed all the other tasks, the memory level would still not recover. That seems to point to a memory leak problem but using "Memory Booster" to do garbage collection seems to help. Still, it would be nice to be able to stop them from launching in the first place. <-- my first question.
2. I do not want any jobs/processes/apps that I don't need to run in the background to drain my battery. I don't think I can say for sure that those apps are all just idling and not using much CPU/battery. There are quite a few of them so if each of them use some CPU time/battery, it will add up eventually. Note that these are not system processes (or daemons as in unix's init.d). They are crappy apps from the cellular provider so I'm pretty sure they don't have to be running (they're probably just collecting my personal data or smth). I just thought there would be a way to stop them from launching without uninstalling them.
Thanks for answering my question regarding Froyo. If they would do the filesystem lagfix then I'll just wait for that update.
As for the music stuttering problem, my songs are on the external SD card but my old Nokia E85 phone has no problem playing with those songs on the same SD card. As I have pointed out in my last question, I was only running one app and with plenty of memory so it had nothing to do with available memory. I also suggested that however bad the filesystem was, the I/O bandwidth should still be enough to run this one music player app (access the program binary/libraries?) and to retrieve data from external SD card to play the music smoothly. So applying the lagfix probably won't help this problem though I still haven't tried the lagfix. Now I'm thinking that one of the task killer might be killing some system processes which were needed by the music player. I probably should uninstall all these task killers and see if it would help.
I have gotten the phone for only a couple of weeks so I haven't gotten around to try flashing different roms or rooting my phone. There's so much info scattered around on the web and I can't seem to find a source that really has the authority or complete information. I'll see if I have time later to look into all the tweaks and such but for now its just a phone to me and I just want it to run smoothly without having to spend too much effort to tune it.
Don't get me wrong. I still love the flexibility and customization opportunities provided by the Android platform and I just love to show off my "Beautiful Weather Widget", "Live Aquarium Wall Paper" and my cool 3D scrolling "Launcher Pro" to my iphone4 buddies and make them drool.
Thanks for you comment and let's hope Froyo will bring us a smooth running and stable platform.
Dogmann said:
@boarder838
I think you really need to read a lot more about just how Android works as you seem to have some strange ideas about how it works.
To start with you need to realise that having 200mb or 100mb of free Ram makes zero difference to performance only when you have no free Ram is it a problem and even then the system will sort it out for you by closing the least used program. Free Ram is just wasted Ram as it's not doing anything and will not make your device respond or work faster using a Auto Task Killer is wasting your battery and slowing down your device not speeding it up and saving battery as you seem to think. As i have pointed out above stop obsessing over your free Ram amount as unless you have none its not a problem stop using a Task Killer and you will most probably see your device responds faster as its not constantly killing things and just leaves them open doing nothing in the back ground which doesn't use Ram or Battery so just leave them be.
Yes Froyo will bring many improvements to our devices but won't fix a problem that doesn't exist re memory leaks and apps launching that you seem to think you have. I don't know but some of those apps may be system apps that need to run all the time which is why they keep relaunching. As for a lag fix well that's what we are all hoping for but if not I'm pretty sure the great people of this forum will come up with an easy to apply fix to it.
I have absolutely no problem playing Music or even streaming it over Bluetooth no lag stutters or break ups at all although my Music is on the Internal SD card. Maybe you should look at the quality that you have encoded your Music in as that may be causing problem. maybe some of the apps you have installed are also causing a problem but its impossible to know as we all install different apps and have different set ups.
I don't know how much experience you have with Android devices or flashing Roms but if you read enough and understand it you have the possibility to flash custom Rom's and various tweaks and fixes to make your device how you want it. That's part of the beauty of Android but don't rush into anything you are not sure about as you can end up with an expensive brick so read things many times and make sure you understand step by step what you are doing if you are going to attempt any of these things.
If you look at my signature you will see i am running a Custom Rom that includes a lag fix and various other tweaks it also allowed me to remove some of the programs in the official Rom that i didn't want or need. For me my device runs nice and smooth and fast of course I'm looking forward to Froyo and all the improvements that will bring but I'm quite happy with my Galaxy S the way it is now. Oh and this is my second Android device and I've never used a Task Killer never mind an Auto Task Killer and have never seen an out of Ram message either.
Marc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Oh I found the problem with stuttering music. It was the "beautiful weather widget"! I tried removing all the task killers and aquarium etc and it still wouldn't work. As soon as I removed the weather widget there was no problem with music playback anymore. Anyone has the same problem that pretty weather widget?? I've already set the refresh period to every 3 hours but it still wouldn't help?!

[Q] Why does many installed apps increase lag?

Can't see why this is the case (but it obviously is) as long as I have lots of free disk space and not many apps running at the same time. Any logic in this?

I've been experiencing the same issue and wondering the same thing...
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 using Tapatalk Pro

There seems to be several things causing this, but the two key issues are:
The moviNAND (the internal flash drive/"SSD") firmware seems to have an issue with fsync() taking extremely long. E.g., it slows down whenever a file is written/updated on the internal storage.
RFS, the file system used by Samsung is buggy as hell and corrupts data after a while.
There are several topics on these issues in the Android Development forum. There are also several "lag fixes" trying their best to overcome these issues. Go check them out

Einride said:
There seems to be several things causing this, but the two key issues are:
RFS, the file system used by Samsung is buggy as hell and corrupts data after a while.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We have no idea if that is ACTUALLY true.. Just because fsck picked some things up on 1 phone, doesn't mean it happens everywhere.. Furthermore, it doesn't mean the problems detected affect operations

that has no truth at all about more apps slowing down the phone, my phone is the prove

Before jpk i didn't noticed slowdowns with aprox 100 apps, now i do on jpk =/
Prolly that all pictures/links/info stays in his workmemory?

probably cause some of them run in the system memory or run at startup

KaliKot said:
probably cause some of them run in the system memory or run at startup
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bingo!
and that is what most people does not realize
they need to Optimize the phone, most people take it for granted
the phone is not a phone, the phone is a mini computer that fits in your hands
just like your big desktop PC it can go crazy if you don't take care of it

AllGamer said:
Bingo!
and that is what most people does not realize
they need to Optimize the phone, most people take it for granted
the phone is not a phone, the phone is a mini computer that fits in your hands
just like your big desktop PC it can go crazy if you don't take care of it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you tell me why with the same apps installed on the Nexus it doesn't lag like the SGS?
Can you stop blaming users when is the phone which doesn't work as expected?

Oletros said:
Can you tell me why with the same apps installed on the Nexus it doesn't lag like the SGS?
Can you stop blaming users when is the phone which doesn't work as expected?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
utter ****e -i have well over 100 apps on my sgs and experience NO lag whatsoever!

bonehooch said:
utter ****e -i have well over 100 apps on my sgs and experience NO lag whatsoever!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Utter ****e? Why?

it was mentioned many many times
just install autorunkiller and a good task manager then all the problems will be gone
stock ROM is very fast when you maintain the phone

AllGamer said:
it was mentioned many many times
just install autorunkiller and a good task manager then all the problems will be gone
stock ROM is very fast when you maintain the phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With autokiller the phone is still laggy.
And please, stop thinking I'm stupid or I don't know a **** about smartphones, ROM's changing, firmware or knowing how a phone must run.

AFAIK this topic and its responses are for the OP

I have about 190 Apps installed and do not experience any diferene in overall speed of the phone. But only because i know that a lot of the programms start on boot and stay in background.
I have more than 15 apps turned off with the full version of autorun killer to prevent the auto restart of the apps. Otherwise the phone would definetaly slow down.
It´s really incredible what apps start on the boot!

TMReuffurth said:
I have about 190 Apps installed and do not experience any diferene in overall speed of the phone. But only because i know that a lot of the programms start on boot and stay in background.
I have more than 15 apps turned off with the full version of autorun killer to prevent the auto restart of the apps. Otherwise the phone would definetaly slow down.
It´s really incredible what apps start on the boot!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you need to be rooted ti use all of the functions in autorun killer? I am not rooted.
Can you compile a breif list of the "biggest culprits" to stop with this utility to gain back the most speed and efficiency? I am a bit nervous that I will stop the wrong items and somehow damage my phone...

Autokiller and task killers are not the solution here! Quick lesson on Android, and why having even A SINGLE BAD APP is going to ruin your whole phone!
Android has something called an 'Intent'. In order to start an app, an intent is made by your launcher or a button you press, and the Android system reads this intent and works out what app it needs to start up.
There is a second type of intent though, called a 'Broadcast Intent'. This is an intent that is sent out to anything that is registered to listen to it. This means that an app can register to listen to all sorts of events, such as battery level changed, application start, or a tons of other things. Even if the application is closed, if it is registered as a listener, Android will start it right back up so it can deal with the intent. If the intent comes every 5 seconds, Android will run this app every 5 seconds even if you have a taskkiller killing the app.
The only real solution is to not install apps which are bad! Finding bad apps is a real mission, too. Hopefully in the future, utilities will be available to let us track down these terrible apps, but till then, you'll have to work it out yourself.

yiannisthegreek said:
Do you need to be rooted ti use all of the functions in autorun killer? I am not rooted.
Can you compile a breif list of the "biggest culprits" to stop with this utility to gain back the most speed and efficiency? I am a bit nervous that I will stop the wrong items and somehow damage my phone...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No need for Root to use all features of Autorun Killer. I would disable only the apps you know and which you do not need at startup and running in background, such as (in my case) Paypal, App Center from Androidpit, Daily Briefing, Photoshop Express, Word Press, TweetCaster, etc.
Every of these apps works normal, even when deactivatet on startup.
So unless you do not disable system apps (must be previously set enabled in settings) you are safe.

RyanZA said:
(...)There is a second type of intent though, called a 'Broadcast Intent'. This is an intent that is sent out to anything that is registered to listen to it.(...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there any possibility/app to show what is registered for which app?

watching the apps
Samga said:
Is there any possibility/app to show what is registered for which app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is an app called Autostarts at 0.95$.
It shows what is launched au startup, when you enable/disable wifi etc.
It think it gives insight on how apps seems launching out of nowhere.
I also reccomend Watchdog Task Manager Lite, the free version.
It does not kill anything, but notifies and logs the bad apps that consumes over a certain CPU percentage.

[Q] Disable auto-closing apps

Well i searched around XDA a bit and found many threads related to this bt all for WM and not android.
Multi-tasking is getting a bit tough. Apps get auto-closed after sometime.
Samsung Galaxy SL i9003
Stock firmware and everything stock, nothing chngd much. Only apps installed from the Market.
Say m surfing the opera, and even if a small app like messaging is open and aftr some roaming around when i return of opera, it has closed.
PS - Above is jus an example so dnt claim Opera is a power-hogger so it wil b to open up ram for other apps and all......
So any way of disabling the auto-closure of apps?
Love XDA

@ mod who moved it...
Its related to i9003 nt i9000.
Anyways tnx for moving. Wil get more views here....

Any dev der? Help!
Sent from my GT-I9003 using XDA App

Personally, I cannot believe that this doesn't get complained about a lot more vocally and a lot more often, especially as it is common across ALL Android devices running 2.2 or beyond, not just the Galaxy S. It is a MAJOR usability issue in the operating system and one that is a complete dealbreaker for me.
Since 2.2 any application left running in the background is automatically closed by the system after a few minutes of inactivity, regardless of memory availability/needs or power consumption. This approach is far from acceptable for things such as EBuddy or any other msn-style instant messaging client which the user may want to leave open in order to stay logged in, so as to remain constantly available and reachable by other parties using the same service. This is just one example of a type of application I might want to leabe open and running in the background, but there are plenty of others.
The fact that the entire Android platform has essentially removed multi-tasking as a feature of the OS as of version 2.2 is astounding and appalling to me, and it's very surprising not to find more people just as offended by this on a more regular basis. What's worse, no matter how rooted or custom-ROM'd your device might be, there seems to be absolutely no way to override or disable this behavior as it is hard-coded into the OS kernel at a fundamental level. We basically have a first generation iPhone on our hands now, thanks to this latest innovation.
Closing apps when memory and system resources are low is one thing, but closing them just because the user hasn't attended to them in the last five minutes or so? Ridicullous. If you wouldn't want your desktop computer shutting down all your open/background applications every time you go for a coffee break or take a 10-minute phone call, what makes the Android developers think users want this done on their smartphones???

Exactly.
There's an app on the market, Spare Parts, in it ders a option on hw android handles suc apps.
There r two options. Normal and aggressive. Keep it normal and try and c if it helps.
paleozord said:
Personally, I cannot believe that this doesn't get complained about a lot more vocally and a lot more often, especially as it is common across ALL Android devices running 2.2 or beyond, not just the Galaxy S. It is a MAJOR usability issue in the operating system and one that is a complete dealbreaker for me.
Since 2.2 any application left running in the background is automatically closed by the system after a few minutes of inactivity, regardless of memory availability/needs or power consumption. This approach is far from acceptable for things such as EBuddy or any other msn-style instant messaging client which the user may want to leave open in order to stay logged in, so as to remain constantly available and reachable by other parties using the same service. This is just one example of a type of application I might want to leabe open and running in the background, but there are plenty of others.
The fact that the entire Android platform has essentially removed multi-tasking as a feature of the OS as of version 2.2 is astounding and appalling to me, and it's very surprising not to find more people just as offended by this on a more regular basis. What's worse, no matter how rooted or custom-ROM'd your device might be, there seems to be absolutely no way to override or disable this behavior as it is hard-coded into the OS kernel at a fundamental level. We basically have a first generation iPhone on our hands now, thanks to this latest innovation.
Closing apps when memory and system resources are low is one thing, but closing them just because the user hasn't attended to them in the last five minutes or so? Ridicullous. If you wouldn't want your desktop computer shutting down all your open/background applications every time you go for a coffee break or take a 10-minute phone call, what makes the Android developers think users want this done on their smartphones???
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Exactly.
I hv migrated frm Symbian, and m a hard multi-tasker, and disappointd with Android jus cos of tis...
paleozord said:
Personally, I cannot believe that this doesn't get complained about a lot more vocally and a lot more often, especially as it is common across ALL Android devices running 2.2 or beyond, not just the Galaxy S. It is a MAJOR usability issue in the operating system and one that is a complete dealbreaker for me.
Since 2.2 any application left running in the background is automatically closed by the system after a few minutes of inactivity, regardless of memory availability/needs or power consumption. This approach is far from acceptable for things such as EBuddy or any other msn-style instant messaging client which the user may want to leave open in order to stay logged in, so as to remain constantly available and reachable by other parties using the same service. This is just one example of a type of application I might want to leabe open and running in the background, but there are plenty of others.
The fact that the entire Android platform has essentially removed multi-tasking as a feature of the OS as of version 2.2 is astounding and appalling to me, and it's very surprising not to find more people just as offended by this on a more regular basis. What's worse, no matter how rooted or custom-ROM'd your device might be, there seems to be absolutely no way to override or disable this behavior as it is hard-coded into the OS kernel at a fundamental level. We basically have a first generation iPhone on our hands now, thanks to this latest innovation.
Closing apps when memory and system resources are low is one thing, but closing them just because the user hasn't attended to them in the last five minutes or so? Ridicullous. If you wouldn't want your desktop computer shutting down all your open/background applications every time you go for a coffee break or take a 10-minute phone call, what makes the Android developers think users want this done on their smartphones???
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Is this the reason why I have to constantly log back into Evernote, and Tweetdeck every time i wanna have a look at them?
The whole concept of syncing periodically doesn't work anymore because they are constantly logging out on me.

Unfortunately neither Spare Parts nor any such custom tweaking app seems have any effect on this berhaviour under Froyo or Gingerbread. And yes, the system auto-close is the reason that re-logging into connectivity apps every time you open them is necessary. Since they have been shut down and are no longer running, you are essentially re-launcing them anew each and every time. Hardly ideal.
Previous "old school" smartphone platforms like Symbian and Windows Mobile 5/6 had multi-tasking incorporated into their basic functionality. It's really a shame that shiny new operating systems like Android/iPhone make it such a struggle. Up until and including Eclair (2.1) leaving apps open in the background was completely possible, but as of the present moment WebOS is the only "new age" smartphone OS that still allows it, and unfortunately it hasn't moved along in other development areas very quickly at all.

I wonder y others @xda & @google dnt feel tis....
paleozord said:
Unfortunately neither Spare Parts nor any such custom tweaking app seems have any effect on this berhaviour under Froyo or Gingerbread. And yes, the system auto-close is the reason that re-logging into connectivity apps every time you open them is necessary. Since they have been shut down and are no longer running, you are essentially re-launcing them anew each and every time. Hardly ideal.
Previous "old school" smartphone platforms like Symbian and Windows Mobile 5/6 had multi-tasking incorporated into their basic functionality. It's really a shame that shiny new operating systems like Android/iPhone make it such a struggle. Up until and including Eclair (2.1) leaving apps open in the background was completely possible, but as of the present moment WebOS is the only "new age" smartphone OS that still allows it, and unfortunately it hasn't moved along in other development areas very quickly at all.
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Erm....why do you think people flash custom roms?!
GTi9000 insanitycm010/insaneglitch

slaphead20 said:
Erm....why do you think people flash custom roms?!GTi9000 insanitycm010/insaneglitch
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Click to collapse
Custom ROMs do not change or affect this system auto-close functionality in any way. At least I've never seen any that did so successfully. It seems to be coded too deeply into the OS to be changed, from what I can tell. That is, I'm sure theoretically it *could* be changed, but most custom roms I've seen tackle far more surface-level interface issues and not the way the kernel manages processes in the background.

I didn't realise this happened after 2.1... I already was thinking why all apps were getting closed so fast after I updated my i9000 to froyo and then to 2.3. I just bought i9100 mainly because of the 1gb ram and still, with 400mb free ram, apps getting closed after couple of hours. (Not minutes, or even seconds like i9000, thankgod).
Autokiller lets you manually change some value of a running app, so it won't get killed... unfortunately this isn't automated so it's no use.

The time before auto-closure can sometimes vary from device to device.. I've tested on two Froyo devices other than the Galaxy S, each from different manufacturers as well, and apps rarely make it past ten minutes before being shut down on any of them. I've never seen anything make it a couple of hours so that's a new one.
I've actually gone back to my Motorola Defy running 2.1 for now, specifically to be able to multi-task again. Sadly there is a 2.2 update available over-the-air for it, but I keep declining because I just don't want to lose the ability to multi-task. Unless some future version like Ice Cream Sandwich restores control to the user, Eclair may very well be the last edition of Android I ever use.
Or should I say AndroIPhone, since that is what it has become.

Eclair actually allows u to multi-task normally?
No issues lik froyo?
Working lik "old-school" OSes's multi tasking?
paleozord said:
The time before auto-closure can sometimes vary from device to device.. I've tested on two Froyo devices other than the Galaxy S, each from different manufacturers as well, and apps rarely make it past ten minutes before being shut down on any of them. I've never seen anything make it a couple of hours so that's a new one.
I've actually gone back to my Motorola Defy running 2.1 for now, specifically to be able to multi-task again. Sadly there is a 2.2 update available over-the-air for it, but I keep declining because I just don't want to lose the ability to multi-task. Unless some future version like Ice Cream Sandwich restores control to the user, Eclair may very well be the last edition of Android I ever use.
Or should I say AndroIPhone, since that is what it has become.
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ggclanlord said:
Eclair actually allows u to multi-task normally?
No issues lik froyo?
Working lik "old-school" OSes's multi tasking?
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Click to collapse
Correct, applications are left open and running in the background indefinitely until the user chooses to close them. Using a good multitasking app like TaskSwitcher or Smart Taskbar you can switch back and forth between open apps as much and as often as you like, or go away for hours without anything ever closing on you. I'm doing it presently on my Defy with no issues at all, just like older operating systems allow(ed).

Tats really Awesome!
paleozord said:
Correct, applications are left open and running in the background indefinitely until the user chooses to close them. Using a good multitasking app like TaskSwitcher or Smart Taskbar you can switch back and forth between open apps as much and as often as you like, or go away for hours without anything ever closing on you. I'm doing it presently on my Defy with no issues at all, just like older operating systems allow(ed).
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ggclanlord said:
Tats really Awesome!
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It's certainly a saving grace for Android that Eclair devices still provide multi-tasking functionality for those who insist upon it, though at the same time it sucks to see all these super powerful, souped up Froyo and Gingerbread devices being released monthly and having to snub them because of the deficiency in the newer OS.
Please, please fix this in Ice Cream Sandwich or Chocolate Souffle or Lemon Tart or whatever desserty moniker the 2.4 flavour of Android takes on. Or at the very least give the user the option to select an operational mode (auto-close or manual manage) just like many devices offer for battery management, with performance mode versus smart-saver mode etc..
It's hardly a smart phone without multi-tasking!!

I guess so it'd b more effective if tis is wrttn to Google...
paleozord said:
It's certainly a saving grace for Android that Eclair devices still provide multi-tasking functionality for those who insist upon it, though at the same time it sucks to see all these super powerful, souped up Froyo and Gingerbread devices being released monthly and having to snub them because of the deficiency in the newer OS.
Please, please fix this in Ice Cream Sandwich or Chocolate Souffle or Lemon Tart or whatever desserty moniker the 2.4 flavour of Android takes on. Or at the very least give the user the option to select an operational mode (auto-close or manual manage) just like many devices offer for battery management, with performance mode versus smart-saver mode etc..
It's hardly a smart phone without multi-tasking!!
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Cn any1 tel me whthr tis issue is der @GB o nt?
M on Froyo cos GB nt yet released for my device (only a Dev update yet)

I can't say with 100% certainty but I'm reasonably confident it's the same under Gingerbread (2.3). Google considers this "feature" of the Android operating system to be a significant improvement and benefit, so they're not likely to remove it on their own anytime soon unless they get a massive influx of complaints about it.
The best we can hope for is probably a user-controllable setting of some sort that determines the degree of system aggressiveness in auto-closing background applications. There are already plenty of third party root-based utilities available in the market with similar settings, but they only affect their OWN auto-closing tendencies and do not override the system itself's default auto-close behaviour. I know this because I have tried them all at the lowest possible setting levels, and everything still gets closed in the background just the same.

Task switching without reloading? What memory is required?

Am running PA 3.60 which is great. I've now run some additional script that culls out and slims down the ROM and gapps. Again, everything runs great. I probably have a lot more memory free now than before. But I'm not sure what good that is.
Traditionally, we want to free up memory so we can install more apps - a2d and other methods help to keep things clear.
I don't want to do that - I want to be able to run more than one or two apps at the same time. But I don't know which memory types to clear up to do that.
The ROM is in, well, ROM, so making it smaller may not help free up memory if there's fixed 512MB used for it.
I know Android is actually running a lot of processes at once. What I mean is that if I load an app, say Candy Crush, then run another app, say Grindr, I can switch back and forth pretty much ok and each app resumes where it left off without any noticable reloading/refreshing. But if I then run another app, say Scruff, then as soon as I try to switch back to one of the others, it has to reload/refresh/restart. So clearly, there wasn't enough memory available to keep all 3 resident and it swapped some out or simply released it.
Logically, if I have more of a certain type of memory free, this will not happen as often. I know it depends on how much memory and other resources an app requires, but I don't need to get into that level of analysis yet. First and foremost, what sort of memory should I try to make as much of as possible to let me swtich between apps without so much reloading?

douginoz said:
Am running PA 3.60 which is great. I've now run some additional script that culls out and slims down the ROM and gapps. Again, everything runs great. I probably have a lot more memory free now than before. But I'm not sure what good that is.
Traditionally, we want to free up memory so we can install more apps - a2d and other methods help to keep things clear.
I don't want to do that - I want to be able to run more than one or two apps at the same time. But I don't know which memory types to clear up to do that.
The ROM is in, well, ROM, so making it smaller may not help free up memory if there's fixed 512MB used for it.
I know Android is actually running a lot of processes at once. What I mean is that if I load an app, say Candy Crush, then run another app, say Grindr, I can switch back and forth pretty much ok and each app resumes where it left off without any noticable reloading/refreshing. But if I then run another app, say Scruff, then as soon as I try to switch back to one of the others, it has to reload/refresh/restart. So clearly, there wasn't enough memory available to keep all 3 resident and it swapped some out or simply released it.
Logically, if I have more of a certain type of memory free, this will not happen as often. I know it depends on how much memory and other resources an app requires, but I don't need to get into that level of analysis yet. First and foremost, what sort of memory should I try to make as much of as possible to let me swtich between apps without so much reloading?
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Try enabling zram, I haven't tried it personally but its supposed to allow for more multitasking.
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Moved To Q&A​
You may of considered it dev based, but its a question so belongs in the Q&A section.​

I've tried ZRAM now for a couple of days but makes no difference. I also have the problem on another Android device. I'm convinced its some sort of design limitation of the opsys or something. When I start up Grindr, it takes a long time to load all the images, make connections, etc. Then I start of Gruff, and it does the same. As long as I don't try to go to another app, I can flip between the two of them without them restarting/reloading/reinitialising themselves. That is clearly because their pages didn't get swapped out of memory or flagged for deletion and deleted.
But if I do something else, or even try to use additional functions within either app, its too much and the next time I try to flip to the other app, it has to reload and reestablish connections etc.
Its not just those apps either. The same with a game like Candy Crush. Or many many apps.
So either my devices don't have enough memory of some form to allow many concurrent apps to run without being swapped out, or Android can't handle it and unnecessarily swaps out or deletes a process's memory pages to make room for the next process, >>> even if the device has plenty of memory<<<.
I don't know which type of memory the opsys needs if this is the case. I'd like to know so that i can make sure there's ample available so that this constant restarting doesn't keep happening. It seems stupid to me that Android does this if the device has got "heaps" of available memory (no pun intended). Newer devices will continually have more and more built in memory, so if Android is doing this arbitrarily and not because of space issues then its, well, stupid.
I have to assume its my devices that are the problem. They're both old (Nook Color, Nexus One). But with the NC, I'd assume we can partition some of that 5GB for use as main memory to run lots of processes concurrently, without this annoying swapping/page deletion/forcing re-inits all the time.
I'm also having problems figuring out where in XDA to post this question - its not NC specific, or dev specific, but I need answers from people that know the Android architecture so I can work out if its possible to stop this from happening.