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Why 512MB of RAM means no Bionic for me

I've seen a lot of discussion on various Android/Droid forums on the web over the past month or two about the Bionic, and it having 512MB of RAM. A lot of people don't seem to mind, and some people have even said it doesn't matter because it's DDR2, which is faster than regular DDR.
Well, 512MB of RAM is not enough for a dual-core phone you plan to use for 2 years or more. Here's why, in a rather lengthy post that I also put on MyDroidWorld the other night. I've been on the XDA forums for a long time, though I don't post very frequently and I'm curious to see what people will think of my admittedly long post. So, here is why I think people should think long and hard about whether to buy the Bionic when it does come out, assuming it still ships with 512MB of RAM.
Caching.
Ok - let me explain. The single most important factor in performance of a computer is having enough RAM. When a computer runs out of RAM, it starts to use what's called a page file. It's basically a file on your hard drive that acts as additional RAM. Now, DDR3-1600 speed RAM transfers data at 12.8 gigabytes per second. Phenomenally fast. It also has a reaction time of around 5 nanoseconds, also ridiculously fast. When your operating system has to start using the page file because the physical RAM is full, the performance hit is EXTRAORDINARY. Even the best hard disk drives (not counting SSDs) like the latest Raptor from Western Digital cap out at around 155 megabytes per second for reading and writing, and it has a peak latency of 7 milliseconds for reaction time. 1 nanosecond is 1 million milliseconds, which makes the DDR3 RAM over a MILLION times faster reacting than the hard drive, and the transfer rate of the RAM over 80 times faster than the transfer rate of the hard drive.
In real-world terms, it's like you're talking about an ant versus a Porsche 911 Turbo. Most old computers that have long pauses or hang for several seconds doing even basic tasks, it's because they don't have enough RAM and it's caching stuff between the hard drive and the RAM.
Now, whenever Android runs out of RAM, (same with any operating system) it has to start using its page file, which means it starts using this monstrously slow flash memory as RAM. It's like merging onto a freeway that is gridlocked with traffic when you were going hundreds of miles per hour. The flash memory is a lot slower than the Raptor hard drive for data transfer rates, but it has a read time a lot faster; the best-performing ones are generally under 1 microsecond. 1 microsecond is a thousand times slower than 1 nanosecond. The write times are closer to hard drives, though; generally less than 1 millisecond, so like 10x faster than a hard drive but still 100,000 times slower reaction time to writing data than the RAM is.
What this means is, when your permanent storage is flash-based, it has a much faster reaction time than a hard drive but it's still dog-slow compared to RAM; so when Android runs out of RAM, it caches to the page file on the flash memory, and you'll have the same slowdown effect as you do on an old POS computer, but it's not as noticeable because flash memory reacts faster than disk-based hard drives.
The point of all of this is that, 1GB of DDR1 memory on a phone is FAR better than 512MB of DDR2 memory. The 1GB will prevent you from hitting that metaphorical brick wall of caching data to your flash memory when the 512MB won't. We already use 400MB, or more, of our 512MB of RAM on our existing phones just by turning it on and having a couple of widgets/services in the background above & beyond the stock ones. How do you expect to take advantage significantly higher-end applications and games, which also means (for games, primarily) that they take up more RAM, as well?
You can't have higher-quality graphics without needing more RAM, so when that new version of Angry Birds comes out this fall or something that requires two cores and looks amazing, but uses 250MB of RAM to run instead of the 80MB or whatever the regular one uses now, what do you think has to happen? That's right. Android has to cache that much extra data to your flash memory so it can unload it from the RAM, freeing the necessary space to load Angry Birds HD. This causes more of a delay as it's writing data, and will cause extra choppiness, etc. Another thing to keep in mind is that, as resolutions increase, so do the texture sizes for all applications and widgets that you use, assuming they support the new resolution. More size needed, which takes up more space in RAM.
Don't be fooled. When truly good and proper dual-core benchmarks come out, 1GB RAM dual-core phones will spank their 512MB RAM dual-core brethren for real-world performance in games, and other high-memory applications. Also, excessive caching greatly increases the chance of flash memory going bad. Not a common occurrence if it was fine when shipped, but still something to think about.
So, in summary, even though the performance hit from caching to flash memory isn't as bad as caching to hard disk drives, it's still a tremendous slowdown and it will matter for dual-core phones way more than for single-core ones. The average amount of RAM installed on dual-core desktop computers from Dell/HP/etc. was significantly higher than what the average was for the previous single-core generations were, and there are reasons for that. Primarily, the same reasons I just outlined. In simple terms, faster processors can do more things, which necessarily requires more RAM.
Sorry for the wall of text, I tried to be more concise but it kind of got away from me. I'm not buying a Bionic because it has 512MB of RAM. After owning it a year, it'll be having performance issues on top-end dual-core-required games that run just fine on phones like the Atrix.

I'm sorry because I know this is probably going to come across the wrong way, but WOW, you spent a lot of time writing that up, and too much time for me to read it alll, especially considering Motorola has pulled back on the Bionic and it's receiving "enhancements". I guess what I'm saying is why all the speculation/conjecture until we know the revised specs? Maybe it'll land with 8GB of DDR 6 RAM.

I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
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I disagree that ram is the single most important factor of performance of a computer.
hard drives are the biggest bottleneck in a computer. this is why I use a vertex 3 ssd.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App

gemro311 said:
I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
Sent from my ERIS using XDA Premium App
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I concur, really hope VZW pushes for a premier device

I disagree. Android isn't expanding as an OS at some breakneck pace and 512MB is definitely suitable for the near future. 1GB is absolutely not necessary for great performance in a phone. RAM is a bottleneck, but it is not something that magically allows for better performance if the device isn't hitting the pagefile anyway.
The way that Android manages applications will allow 512MB phones to be relevant for some time. The Bionic will be a solid phone for the next year, but there will always be something bigger and better next year. Phones aren't future-proof.

I was just checking out this thread and wanted to say maybe the reason that the atrix comes with 1gb of ram is because of the extra contraption that you can buy along with. It looks like a netbook but is not very well performing and who would even care to rely on it for anything I don't know.

gemro311 said:
I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
Sent from my ERIS using XDA Premium App
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I certainly hope Motorola makes the required improvements, but you also need to keep in mind Verizon approves and in many if not all cases specs the phones they want. They chose the specs, they had to live with the specs. I think once they saw what was coming they figured it was no longer premiere and wanted changes made.
Regardless of why its been pulled back the fact that it was is good, but if its going to take 4-5 months to get it out the door they should have just scrapped it altogether.

E30kid said:
I disagree. Android isn't expanding as an OS at some breakneck pace and 512MB is definitely suitable for the near future. 1GB is absolutely not necessary for great performance in a phone. RAM is a bottleneck, but it is not something that magically allows for better performance if the device isn't hitting the pagefile anyway.
The way that Android manages applications will allow 512MB phones to be relevant for some time. The Bionic will be a solid phone for the next year, but there will always be something bigger and better next year. Phones aren't future-proof.
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Well, wait for Ice Cream and we'll see. Since the future Android version will also run in tablets, it is likely that it will have huge memory requirements.
By the way, my Acer Liquid A1 can't be officially upgraded to Froyo because it only has 256Mb. Later Liquid models with 512Mb are upgradeable. At the time I bought it, 512Mb seemed unnecessary because the Nexus One operating system only supported 256Mb, having the other 256Mb wasted. This was only 12 months ago...

galaxyjeff said:
I was just checking out this thread and wanted to say maybe the reason that the atrix comes with 1gb of ram is because of the extra contraption that you can buy along with. It looks like a netbook but is not very well performing and who would even care to rely on it for anything I don't know.
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I think you are on to something here. I think I read somewhere that the atrix only uses 512 mb when not connected to the dock. I have the inspire which has 768 mb, and I came from the captivate which was 512 mb, and I done know if is the ram or what but this phone performs way better than the captivate. Even when I bought the inspire, right out the box stock, preformed much better than a captivate overclocked with an ext4 filesystem kernel. Not that this is empirical evidence, but hey.
Sent from my HTC Desire HD using XDA Premium App

cryptiq said:
I'm sorry because I know this is probably going to come across the wrong way, but WOW, you spent a lot of time writing that up, and too much time for me to read it alll, especially considering Motorola has pulled back on the Bionic and it's receiving "enhancements". I guess what I'm saying is why all the speculation/conjecture until we know the revised specs? Maybe it'll land with 8GB of DDR 6 RAM.
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I lol'd. But seriously 512 MB of RAM is more than enough... It's a PHONE not a high end desktop system. I play tons of games on my x2 and with alot of crap in the backround open, and I notice zero performance hits. If you are spending all day monitoring your RAM on your phone and trying to measure FPS loss, load time differences, etc. I suggest that you try to pick up a new hobby ASAP, OCDing will be the end of you. Best of luck!
Edit: I wouldn't worry about it either! Bionic probably won't come out anyways, and if it does, another phone with 1GB to satisfy your OCD probably will be out by then.

As of now, I feel ALL future top tier smart phones need to come equipped with at least 1GB of DDR2. The G2x, for example, will most likely have issues running a custom ice cream rom. And people will be upset.. especially after putting up with all of the other various problems that particular phone has.

OP, I don't agree entirely with your explanation of the use of caching by the OS - for all 3 major computer OSes, no matter how much excess RAM you have, they will start caching data to the hard drive, whether you like it or not. Obviously if you run out of RAM, it has to do so, but it'll even do it long before you've hit that cap - just because it determines an application has gone "inactive". Now I haven't read up on Android enough to know whether this is 100% true for it, too, but considering it's running a linux kernel, I would imagine so. So just like the 8GB of RAM in my desktop doesn't necessarily help for everyday computing needs, 1GB vs 512mb on the Bionic may not make a huge difference.

raptordrew said:
OP, I don't agree entirely with your explanation of the use of caching by the OS - for all 3 major computer OSes, no matter how much excess RAM you have, they will start caching data to the hard drive, whether you like it or not. Obviously if you run out of RAM, it has to do so, but it'll even do it long before you've hit that cap - just because it determines an application has gone "inactive". Now I haven't read up on Android enough to know whether this is 100% true for it, too, but considering it's running a linux kernel, I would imagine so. So just like the 8GB of RAM in my desktop doesn't necessarily help for everyday computing needs, 1GB vs 512mb on the Bionic may not make a huge difference.
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i beg to differ
my captivate; even though its a single core...is still quite capable at most everyday tasks...only thing lacking is the RAM
my phone will slow to a crawl after entering twitter, switching to pulse and then going back to my homescreen....
not to mention my launcher keeps getting killed by android as it keeps running out of RAM

droid_does said:
i beg to differ
my captivate; even though its a single core...is still quite capable at most everyday tasks...only thing lacking is the RAM
my phone will slow to a crawl after entering twitter, switching to pulse and then going back to my homescreen....
not to mention my launcher keeps getting killed by android as it keeps running out of RAM
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I have to lol at this one. Absolutely none of those issues have to do with amount of RAM. In fact the launcher problem has nothing to do with RAM at all.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

While I appreciate other people who have the same amount of passion for phones as I do, I just have two words to say about anyone saying phones with 512 mb ram will not get Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus S.
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mb02 said:
I have to lol at this one. Absolutely none of those issues have to do with amount of RAM. In fact the launcher problem has nothing to do with RAM at all.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
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it does as android keeps killing it to free up more RAM to use......

droid_does said:
it does as android keeps killing it to free up more RAM to use......
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Yea the task manager is killing the apps to keep ram freed up, as in stopping unused processes etc. That's just the aggressive working of the management software that would run just the same if you even had 8GB of ram.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

timothymilla said:
While I appreciate other people who have the same amount of passion for phones as I do, I just have two words to say about anyone saying phones with 512 mb ram will not get Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus S.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
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Remember when everyone thought Gingerbread would require a 1GHz processor as a system requirement, which was later debunked?
http://www.talkandroid.com/23041-so...ngerbread-update-due-to-1ghz-cpu-requirement/
Nobody can say what will and will not get updated for sure, although I will venture to say that it's HIGHLY likely the Nexus S will be getting 2.4, you're right.

zetsumeikuro said:
I lol'd. But seriously 512 MB of RAM is more than enough... It's a PHONE not a high end desktop system. I play tons of games on my x2 and with alot of crap in the backround open, and I notice zero performance hits. If you are spending all day monitoring your RAM on your phone and trying to measure FPS loss, load time differences, etc. I suggest that you try to pick up a new hobby ASAP, OCDing will be the end of you. Best of luck!
Edit: I wouldn't worry about it either! Bionic probably won't come out anyways, and if it does, another phone with 1GB to satisfy your OCD probably will be out by then.
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512 mb is not enough for a dual core 4G phone it just isnt. the thunderbolt has 768 mb and its only single core and 4G and let me tell you it would be way faster with the 1024 mb of ram i cant imagine how laggy the bionic would be if you start doing anything with it! the 512 ram will be ate up in no time! i sure hope verizon reconsiders and adds more ram or i probably wont use this device as my daily phone either keep the thunderbolt with more ram which is sad cause it has been out for awhile now and the droid x also has 512 ram and it has been out for a year and they cant make improvements?? and they are going to want $299+++ for this phone ON CONTRACT! it better have more than 512 ram or it aint worth a lick! rip this phone open and put my own ram in it!

how much ram do we really have?

i thought the cappy had 512 mb of ram... why do all the roms have like 341? im confused >.< either i looked at 3 faulty spec sheets for the captivate or we arent utilizing the full ram potential for the captivate. would someone explain the truth on this matter to a captivate noob like me?

i could be wrong but i believe the 341 is available to use ram, while the rest is being used by the phone to function.

nehal51086 said:
i could be wrong but i believe the 341 is available to use ram, while the rest is being used by the phone to function.
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that would make sense, but that makes the specs misleading... i traded my HD2 for a cappy because the spec sheet said 512mb of ram and the HD2 only has 411 available to the OS when running android from nand because the rest is dedicated to winmo only (which sucks massively), and i wanted more ram lol, guess i should have looked harder into things, but regardless the captivate is "better" in very many areas, but RAM is literally my deciding factor for so many things lately (like t-mobile with the sensation or sprint with the evo 3d, i would say evo 3d because it has 256mb or so more ram)

This question has been asked and answered several times....
the phone does have 512mb of ram. Like the person above me said the phones os and graphics take up a portion of the ram. All computers and smart phones work the same way.
As a side note android handles ram very well. You don't need to manage it at all by freeing it up. free ram is wasted ram as the os will have to load it back up anyways
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

crystalhand said:
This question has been asked and answered several times....
the phone does have 512mb of ram. Like the person above me said the phones os and graphics take up a portion of the ram. All computers and smart phones work the same way.
As a side note android handles ram very well. You don't need to manage it at all by freeing it up. free ram is wasted ram as the os will have to load it back up anyways
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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i know this very well, free ram can be considered wasted ram, unless you need 200mb or so free for a tegra class game, but i think android handles ram awesomely to an extent but can be improved by implementing autokiller memory optimizer in a knowledgable and appropriate way that doesnt hurt optimizations android already has in place, zipaligning, increasing the dalvik heap size, etc... can all be done, im not asking about how android handles ram or anything, and im sorry i didnt know the question had been asked several times i am brand new to the captivate today, literally, and was doing not but seeking information i didnt understand or know, thank you for the explaination though i appreciate it, and im glad to know that my new captivate will utilize the left over 171mb of ram for something unlike my HD2 that couldnt access the last 100mb because it was designated to winmo only. i had an idea that was the case and i was just clarifying to myself because i kept reading rom changelogs stating "enabled more ram now 341mb available" or something along the lines of that and thought to myself "there should be more available already" lol

I honestly think 341MB is enough.

341 MB is alot. But something is taking all that up too. On a fresh boot, half of it is used, and I have 140~170 MB. Its even worse on GB. Most ive gotten is 100 MB free.
So if the half of the 341 plus the mysterious 171 MB that is nowhere to be found, I dont get whats using the other 171 that is not part of the 341. Lol confusing

Same happens to me. Who knows, lol
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA Premium App

I think its the user interface graphics, like scrolling quality is good because that ram is dedicated to things
like that
Sent from cyanogen mod 7

no 1GB ram, no talk

no 1GB ram, no talk. moto, how do you expect me to use a flagship phone without 1 gb ram

thomaslau said:
no 1GB ram, no talk. moto, how do you expect me to use a flagship phone without 1 gb ram
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Where you need 1GB RAM? They are Just Numbers. Cyanogenmod requires under 100MB RAM. I bet you will never fulfill your RAM, even, if you install hundreds of apps.
I have Sense on my phone, and it is damn RAM hog. Buy still I have 157 MB in use and 358 MB free.
It Is Not Just A RAM. Almost all of your RAM could be free, and still your phone is lagging like hell.
Stop watching numbers. For example, if you use AMD's processor, with six cores. GHz are higher than Intel. And still Intel's processor wins and washes AMD with lesser cores and lower GHz.
I bet Droid 3's software is much more lighter and uses less RAM, CPU etc. than hTC's Sense.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA Premium App

Not to mention ddr2. The ram in the d3 is far better than any other phone.
From what I can gather about how android works, faster ram >>> more ram.

Compared to my rooted/rommed Incredible, the Droid 3 blows it out of the water speed wise. Even faster than my Xoom, which is to be expected I guess

It's not their flagship phone, Droid Bionic will be which will have 1gb ram.
512mb is enough anyway like someone else said.

if you dont like it, and especially if you never use it, dont post your bull**** here

theclueless said:
if you dont like it, and especially if you never use it, dont post your bull**** here
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because i like droid 3, i post here!!!!!! i want to buy one

1gb ram is for webtop!!!!! why dont they give us webtop and how do you guys know android 4.0 wont have webtop function?

Would anyone actually use webtop?? The last I had looked, it hadn't really taken off with the Attrix. It's a unique idea, but at somewhere around $500 last I had looked for the laptop dock (its been awhile, so I may be wrong), you can buy one of several android tablets (Asus Transformer, Acer Iconia) and have a serperate fully functional device.
Plus the fact that the Droid 3 already has a physical keyboard.
That said, I would have been happier with 1 GB of RAM (not a deal killer though). I'm more worried about future possibilites. In 2 years, this will probably be like the original Droid is now, able to run the most current version of android, but not at its best. 1 GB would have made it more future proof, but in the end its personal choice that decides.
I'm loving mine so far, just waiting to get root going so I can start doing some cleaning.

woundtrauma said:
Where you need 1GB RAM? They are Just Numbers. Cyanogenmod requires under 100MB RAM. I bet you will never fulfill your RAM, even, if you install hundreds of apps.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA Premium App
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512MB means not even 200MB free RAM after boot. No problem to fill that out which means the system kicks not recently used apps out of ram.

Mine has Google Talk... Though I don't know if it does video right now. It's got a camera, so if it doesn't now, I assume it will later.

thomaslau said:
no 1GB ram, no talk. moto, how do you expect me to use a flagship phone without 1 gb ram
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its not verizons flagship phone...have you seen any commericials for it? didnt think so. if they really wanted to sell this phone, they would invest in advertisements for it...just saying

KingKuba13 said:
It's not their flagship phone, Droid Bionic will be which will have 1gb ram.
512mb is enough anyway like someone else said.
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The D3 appears to be allocated better, out of box, compared to the DX2. gTablet proves 512mb works fine with a dual core and so apparently does the D3.
I wonder if some of the ram in the Bionic will be allocated to web top?

i dont think bionic will have webtop~ 'cause the ad on bestbuy only mentioned mirror mode

Mirrored mode refers to 1080p HDMI mirroring. Plug your phone into your HDTV and watch the video you recorded in all its glory.
The Motorola phones with 1GB of RAM like the Atrix and (allegedly) the Bionic are webtop machines. Half the RAM is dedicated to the phone, half to the webtop. For that reason, we can assume there will never be a webtop option for the D3. But frankly, the D3 would be the last Moto phone you'd put on a webtop. It has a great keyboard built in, so the synergy really isn't there. I hope I'm wrong and everyone gets all the tech porn that they're wishing for.

KingKuba13 said:
It's not their flagship phone, Droid Bionic will be which will have 1gb ram.
512mb is enough anyway like someone else said.
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Sorry to correct you, but the Droid Bionic will only have 512MB of RAM.
Besides, I was skeptical about the D3 having only 512mb of ram, until I threw everything I could at it and it just kept on hauling a$$. The memory management of android 2.3.4 combined with the D3 hardware is very good.

thomaslau said:
i dont think bionic will have webtop~ 'cause the ad on bestbuy only mentioned mirror mode
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Screenshots of the about phone screen show a webtop version.
droid-life.com/2011/06/06/more-droid-bionic-pictures-surface-4-5-qhd-screen-new-3d-blur-and-android-2-3-4/

KingKuba13 said:
It's not their flagship phone, Droid Bionic will be which will have 1gb ram.
512mb is enough anyway like someone else said.
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Click to collapse
bionic will have 512mb for phone.... it's a larger screen, no keyboard, and webtop support.... other than that, same damn phone.
(another 512mb for webtop, not accessible by the phone)
it's HYPE.
i'd take 384mb of DDR3 over 1gb ddr, or 512 ddr2

xxspark89xx said:
Sorry to correct you, but the Droid Bionic will only have 512MB of RAM.
Besides, I was skeptical about the D3 having only 512mb of ram, until I threw everything I could at it and it just kept on hauling a$$. The memory management of android 2.3.4 combined with the D3 hardware is very good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When it comes out you'll be proven wrong. It will have 1gb ram.

I agree on the D3, since I have tried everything to choke it. Heavy Flash sites, hi-def video, multi-tasking, 150 apps installed, N64 and PSX games, etc. Nothing (so far) has tripped the D3 up. My DX2 was a blithering mess after an hours use and MP3 audio pops happened regardless of multi-tasking or not.
Game emulators including the Quake games are far better with the keyboard, which appears to be the best ever made for a phone (FWIW, since a phone). N64 and PSX game performance is faster than the A500, gTablet, DX2, and Thrive. All Tegra 2, but different OS versions.
1GB of ram certainly would not hurt, but I am not seeing anything so far that had an issue. No lag is what seem the oddest.
It is like the DX2 and D3 were firmware developed by two different companies. People that ignoring the D3 due to 512 ram alone, are missing out.

ICS on 512MB a problem?

Just wondering... is 512MB going to be a problem with ICS?
(It's a simple question I know)

Scougar said:
Just wondering... is 512MB going to be a problem with ICS?
(It's a simple question I know)
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I'm writing this from CM9 ICS alpha and runs perfect, don't worry for that
Enviado desde mi LG-P990 usando Tapatalk

No, it shouldn't be a problem.
But please post such things in the ICS discussion thread!

Flix123 said:
No, it shouldn't be a problem.
But please post such things in the ICS discussion thread!
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Thanks and apologies. I had wondered if getting a 1GB model phone would have been a significant advantage.
(Mod feel free to move the question to a post in the discussion thread).

Scougar said:
Thanks and apologies. I had wondered if getting a 1GB model phone would have been a significant advantage.
(Mod feel free to move the question to a post in the discussion thread).
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Click to collapse
You can almost guarantee that a 1GB model will be better. The Optimus 2X does struggle with it's 512 mb, because 128mb is attributed to the GPU. Lukily, some kernels, like IronKrnl free some of that memory up and give it back to the CPU, but it's still losing 80mb.
Also, it's worth noting that, if you want to run ICS, if you look at the phones out that have 1gb of ram, you'll see they're all actually better phones- especially what Samsung make.
So, while the O2X is a cheap dual-core device. The best experience will come with something with 1gb of RAM, as it's much more likely to also get ICS. (Due in part because most 1gb phones have already had an announcement, and for it to be soon)

ICS is very hungry in memory. On my Asus Tablet running official, my 1GB RAM is fully used, as usual in Linux but at a higher level than in GB.
To run ICS correctly on O2X, you must use IronKrnl, the 48mb ramhack version is correct (means it steals 48MB to GPU, leaving only 80MB to it), and modifying memory killer values to a sort of aggressive profile.

Yea right, so this is why I had less free memory on GB. And now I have CM kernel on ICS. I doubt you actually tried CM9 alpha on O2X if you are talking crap like this about performance.
Sent from my LG-P990 using Tapatalk

The browser in ICS works better even though we have 512MB. It always returned to where I had left. 512 and less is enough for full desktop environments on PC even.

Ph4nt0m_ said:
Yea right, so this is why I had less free memory on GB. And now I have CM kernel on ICS. I doubt you actually tried CM9 alpha on O2X if you are talking crap like this about performance.
Sent from my LG-P990 using Tapatalk
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See my sig and stop arguing. I run CM9 since first day Ricardo published SK0, and now running SK2 with latest Ironkrnl. Setiron himself admitted on Google+that ICS is a memory eater.

Dont know how much free memory we're talking about here but I'm on SK2 with original CM9 kernel. Using Adv.Task Killer from time to time and I always have around 200-240 Mb free memory. Just sharing my experience

Running CM9 aswell and its sooooo smooth, faster than any rom ive tried

OK, so what happens when you want to run Tegra games? (like Dungeon Defenders for example). A shame you cannot dynamically set the ram hack :-(

Scougar said:
OK, so what happens when you want to run Tegra games? (like Dungeon Defenders for example). A shame you cannot dynamically set the ram hack :-(
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That's the real question... Free memory when phone is idle means nothing. Plus you have to consider the lowmemkiller values you have set, I personnally use aggressive values: 16 24 32 90 100 110 to free the most possible memory.
Many users report freezes with games that run perfectly on GB. The problem or ramhack is choosing the right value for gaming, it seems 48mb version is the best compromise. A 'on the fly' feature was not planned for the moment by Setiron in one of his G+ posts.

Mjuksel said:
Running CM9 aswell and its sooooo smooth, faster than any rom ive tried
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That has no direct link with OP. But it's true it's smooth lol.

Striatum_bdr said:
That has no direct link with OP. But it's true it's smooth lol.
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It does. In low memory situations ICS seems to keep running better and smoother compared to GB. If you get under 40mb free on GB everythings gets very slow, with ICS it seems to handle it a bit more elegantly from a user experience.

Please don't think I'm pesimistic here, I'm just going off the comments: Given that OEM releases tend to be bloated and memory wasteful, it's not looking great for an LG ICS release that is 'fully' working. If they pull it off and allow tegra games to run, then I'll be impressed

the official release from LG should be more efficient, and once you remove bloatwares, it should be quite a charm

Hi,
The Google Nexus S also has only 512Mb, and a certain amount of those allocated to GPU (though I don't remember how many), and ICS works like a charm on it... So I think it shouldn't be a problem on our O2X! :-D

hearoy said:
Hi,
The Google Nexus S also has only 512Mb, and a certain amount of those allocated to GPU (though I don't remember how many), and ICS works like a charm on it... So I think it shouldn't be a problem on our O2X! :-D
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It has the same config (128 for the GPU, 384 of available RAM) and works really fine.
Obviously a full gigabyte would be awesome.
Cheers!

Im typing using my optimus one running icss.
NOTE: my phone can only be over clocked till 729mhz.
So for our 2x it will be no prob.
Just need propriety files.
Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk

wtf i'm offered a s3

my contract is due and I'm still using the s1/cm9. (happily) Thing is here in Holland only the s3 1gb version is currently available... I wonder what the life expectancy will be, considering the demand for ram future android upgrades might need ...
any thoughts?

Dude, 1GB is PLENTY. High intensive games take up 100 mb at most, so you'll need to be running 7 different games to the standard of Shadow gun before the S3 will crash (hypathetically) and even then ICS is designed for better memory management, so it will automatically kill apps when they're not needed. Having more Ram than 1gb is like all these companies jumping to Quad-core (Although QUad-core Exynos is just jaw-dropping :O) but its not needed. And it all comes down to optimisation, and nobody does that better than Samsung. I reckon the S3 will blow that new LG with 2GB of Ram without even looking at it, simply because LG's software is atrocious, Sammy know what they're doing

GalaxySN00B:0 said:
Dude, 1GB is PLENTY. High intensive games take up 100 mb at most, so you'll need to be running 7 different games to the standard of Shadow gun before the S3 will crash (hypathetically) and even then ICS is designed for better memory management, so it will automatically kill apps when they're not needed. Having more Ram than 1gb is like all these companies jumping to Quad-core (Although QUad-core Exynos is just jaw-dropping :O) but its not needed. And it all comes down to optimisation, and nobody does that better than Samsung. I reckon the S3 will blow that new LG with 2GB of Ram without even looking at it, simply because LG's software is atrocious, Sammy know what they're doing
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lol and Sammy TW is good? Never ran a browser test with Sammy browser and compared to Opera? Hopefully it's better in JW6...