Database Develop

[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] My phone runs slow - so many apps open - why ?

I think there are flaws to the way android operates. Let's take Windows operating system for example. I have hundreds and hundreds of programs, software and applications -- but is it running all the time? Nope.
When I reboot my Android phone, I hit the "advanced task manager" widget to close all running apps (sometimes I get 45-50). About 2 mins later I do it again (and now 30 close)
The question begs to be asked. Why, if they are being closed, are they opening up again by themselves ? How do I make it so they don't open up by themselves ?
The "auto-killer" in the task manager is set at the highest level (insane) and yet it STILL has 20-30 apps "open" every time I hit task manager.
This phone is incredibly laggy.
(2.1 eclair, stock, no root, no OCLF)

Those apps aren't actually running and eating cpu cycles, they are stored in ram so when you do open one of them or another app requests them it doesn't take so long or lag. If your phone is slow I would do a factor reset because these phone are not slow. Hope that works!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I've only had my phone less than a month (after doing a reset because of what I perceived to be a faulty SD issue)
Maybe it's time I should start messing around with the flashing etc.

spectre85 said:
Those apps aren't actually running and eating cpu cycles, they are stored in ram so when you do open one of them or another app requests them it doesn't take so long or lag. If your phone is slow I would do a factor reset because these phone are not slow. Hope that works!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Says the guy running a speed mod kernal lol

I'd suggest factory reset, plugging into PC and upgrading to v2.2 via Kies, then get v2.2.1 from Kies if you want or samfirmware.com
You can use titanium to backup all your user apps and data, works a treat.
Contacts can be synced with your google account (if they aren't already).
SMS can be backuped if you wish using one of the free apps in the market.

Funkadelick said:
I've only had my phone less than a month (after doing a reset because of what I perceived to be a faulty SD issue)
Maybe it's time I should start messing around with the flashing etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Until I started flashing custom ROMs my SGS was quite laggy...flashing is the way to go, just make sure you do your research. Check the link in my signature for a load of guides.

Stock vs custom - multitasking

So, i've tried many different roms out there on my SGS. Never got any major issue with flashing or setting them up. Supposedly a custom rom has something improved but there was one think i kept thinking they all fail and i was wondering if anyone else feels the same.
I see random posts all the time telling how great multitasking in android is. But all these roms i keep using try their very best to close just about everything i have running. As far as i can tell, a few seconds after i switch to anything else, my first app gets closed. For example, everytime i'd leave browsing to manage what im listening to or sort out files on some file manager i'd find i needed to open my browser again instead of being there opened and waiting for me to return.
After searching for a while, the best explanation i could find out is to prevent battery drain from opened apps and to keep things smooth by having free ram, which kind of makes sense. Goes against what i read in a paper from google about android multitasking but fair enough.
Except the other day i happened to returned to a froyo stock rom (JS8 with darkcore 1.4) on my SGS and found out this does not happen. Apps stay open for the most part, except when i run something really heavy (like a game). And i dont really notice any performance decrease or extra battery drain from my usual usage.
Granted, i could be just told something along the lines "well dude, just use whatever works for you" and i totally plan on doing so, hence me experimenting, but thats not really my point. What i'm going for is, are custom roms being overzealous? because this really spoils any attempt at multitasking...
Again, this is not a rant of any sort, i was just wondering what are other people's thoughts about it

I'm suffering same problem
i want to have the browser and messenger at the same time
it close one after swetching to the other
i have 80mb free ram

I had the same problems, although lack of multitasking appeared on my stock rom, not a custom... sgs couldn't handle faceboom messager, viber, and a browser at the same time, everytime I switch from my browser to something else - it gets killed, which is frustrating
at the same time I saw how nexus s work, and how much free memory it has, compared to mine, the difference was huge!
I tried cyanogen at first, which was very close to stock nexus s, but it doesn't work good with sgs's camera and crashes once in a while
so eventually I installed JVT with voodoo and uninstalled different samsung stock apps, which gave me about 50mb of additional RAM compared to stock, and there doesn't seem to be any aggressive memory cleaners working, so I can now finally switch between all the apps I need

If you want the best roms for multitasking, go for the final builds of Froyo 2.2.1. They have plenty of free ram and are very smooth. I'd recommend Froyo ZSJPK. You can download it from XDA.

I think it depends on the ram settings in your ROM. The way android works is there are a bunch of system settings on how much ram to keep clear, and if it drops beneath certain values they start killing apps.
It's highly possible these values were tweaked in the custom roms, to improve the perceived smoothness and so on, but at the same time reducing multitasking. There's a trade off between performance and multitasking (guess why apple was so reluctant to add multitasking?)
I'm not really an expert on it, but I'm sure some quick searches around will find out where those values are and how to change them.. some rom/app probably even allows you to tweak them to your liking.

All Gingerbread roms do the same, closing apps after moving away from this, don't know why, but froyo didn't do this and ginger does.

I used to be like TS, clearing RAM because it might let the phone run smoother. After getting more exposed to Android, I realised that it could be logical to keep your apps in RAM instead of doing a cold boot again, meaning to close an app, open, close and open again, making it taxing on the phone.
So I tried to use up as much RAM as possible and it works just fine, it feels good. I believe the problem you have stated is that in your ROM, the task manager has instructions to clear the RAM once it hits a certain threshold. When it does, it starts to clear apps in different category, starting from what is known as empty apps, which are generally just apps you use and are not important to the android OS or rather independent from the OS.
In the new Samsung ROM, the threshold is set to 40MB, and it is working great for me. You can go to the android market and download "Galaxy Tuner" to set the threshold to a value you feel comfortable with. To multitask better, set the threshold as low as possible.

MaoJie said:
I used to be like TS, clearing RAM because it might let the phone run smoother. After getting more exposed to Android, I realised that it could be logical to keep your apps in RAM instead of doing a cold boot again, meaning to close an app, open, close and open again, making it taxing on the phone.
So I tried to use up as much RAM as possible and it works just fine, it feels good. I believe the problem you have stated is that in your ROM, the task manager has instructions to clear the RAM once it hits a certain threshold. When it does, it starts to clear apps in different category, starting from what is known as empty apps, which are generally just apps you use and are not important to the android OS or rather independent from the OS.
In the new Samsung ROM, the threshold is set to 40MB, and it is working great for me. You can go to the android market and download "Galaxy Tuner" to set the threshold to a value you feel comfortable with. To multitask better, set the threshold as low as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok i downloaded galaxy tuner but idk how to change threshold

Apps Performance issue

Hello evry one. I have problem in my captivate and other models of android. I installed almost every custom rom but problem of loading apps fast still exist. What i mean is.. that when i on my mobile, so first time apps like calender, messenging etc take a little time to load. than when i close the app and open again, it loads very quickly. When mobile goes to standby for more than 10 mins, and when i on it, it again take little time to load apps, and widget menu etc.
Why it is like that ??? and whats the solution to always load the apps quickly

majidshahab091 said:
Hello evry one. I have problem in my captivate and other models of android. I installed almost every custom rom but problem of loading apps fast still exist. What i mean is.. that when i on my mobile, so first time apps like calender, messenging etc take a little time to load. than when i close the app and open again, it loads very quickly. When mobile goes to standby for more than 10 mins, and when i on it, it again take little time to load apps, and widget menu etc.
Why it is like that ??? and whats the solution to always load the apps quickly
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's how Android manages memory. It keeps your apps in memory until it needs to free some, at which point it starts to close apps to free some up. If they're already in memory they open fast because they're already open. If they aren't, they open more slowly.
There's not a ton you can do, really. Some 3rd party sms apps let you lock the app in memory, but I honestly never checked to see if it really works or not.
Personally, I restart my phone every morning when I wake up. This frees up the most memory and allows your phone to leave more apps open before closing them.

make sure you arent running any ****ty task killers.

You could flash an I9000 ROM/kernel that let's you tweak the lmk. (low memory killer)
Talon and semaphore both offer that option.
The trick is to make it weak enough to not kill the apps you want, but aggressive enough to not allow to run out of ram completely.
both of those kernels also have a "bigmem" version that gives the user a bit more ram at the cost of being able to record video in 720p.

studacris said:
You could flash an I9000 ROM/kernel that let's you tweak the lmk. (low memory killer)
Talon and semaphore both offer that option.
The trick is to make it weak enough to not kill the apps you want, but aggressive enough to not allow to run out of ram completely.
both of those kernels also have a "bigmem" version that gives the user a bit more ram at the cost of being able to record video in 720p.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like ur answrr. But can u pls guide me abt lmk. I like this idea but never use such tweaks. I m using talon kernel right now and rom is much fast. But have same prb of apps loading

In the app memory freak, that installed with the kernel, there is a slider for you to adjust,
lower number the more aggressive the lmk but the better the overall performance.
Higher number is less aggressive and is better for multitasking, but can be a bit slower.

studacris said:
In the app memory freak, that installed with the kernel, there is a slider for you to adjust,
lower number the more aggressive the lmk but the better the overall performance.
Higher number is less aggressive and is better for multitasking, but can be a bit slower.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where to find app memory freak ? i haven't seen any option in CWM

Should have been installed when you flashed talon. If not, it should be linked in the talon op.

Samsung Galaxy S mysterious ram usage cm10.1

Hey there, this problem might have been discussed before but I wasn't able to find it, so the problem is with ram usasage, I once went to the apps in settings and on the running apps I always see 250mb+ ram used by something, then I killed all the apps, but that just made a dliference of 50mb ram, It's real anoying because when I want to switch between apps it's slow and when I turn a browser back on after using aother app the page realoads which I guess wpuldn't happen with 300 mb ram, does anyone know the reason for this, I am currently running cm10.1.
Thanks!

ltkipras said:
Hey there, this problem might have been discussed before but I wasn't able to find it, so the problem is with ram usasage, I once went to the apps in settings and on the running apps I always see 250mb+ ram used by something, then I killed all the apps, but that just made a dliference of 50mb ram, It's real anoying because when I want to switch between apps it's slow and when I turn a browser back on after using aother app the page realoads which I guess wpuldn't happen with 300 mb ram, does anyone know the reason for this, I am currently running cm10.1.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What ROM and Kernel are you using?

Mango Polo said:
What ROM and Kernel are you using?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ROM; cm10.1 nigtly 20130330 galaxysmtd Kernel: 3.0.70-g7b668b [email protected] #1

Free RAM is useless. It just sits there sucking up power and being available in case you need it. It's pretty much a waste to have 300 MB of RAM and then only use 100 MB. Instead you should try to keep your RAM full at all times with the things you are likely to need in the near future. For example, if your phone is currently only using 20% of your RAM but already caches the browser in case you'll use it soon it will be faster to load the browser. If you decide to use the music player on the other hand the cached browser can be overwritten with the music player without requiring any additional time, so no harm is done.
Modern systems don't have "free" and "in use" RAM, they have "free" (wasted space), "in use" and "cached". You shouldn't look at the amount of free RAM but rather the amount of actually used RAM is a better indicator.
The reason you only gain 50 MB when you kill all apps is because only 50 MB will be actually in use by apps and all remaining unused space is used for caching things. If your phone is slow, this is not the cause of it. You may just have a slow phone or the ROM might be slow for some (other) reason.

Marshian said:
Free RAM is useless. It just sits there sucking up power and being available in case you need it. It's pretty much a waste to have 300 MB of RAM and then only use 100 MB. Instead you should try to keep your RAM full at all times with the things you are likely to need in the near future. For example, if your phone is currently only using 20% of your RAM but already caches the browser in case you'll use it soon it will be faster to load the browser. If you decide to use the music player on the other hand the cached browser can be overwritten with the music player without requiring any additional time, so no harm is done.
Modern systems don't have "free" and "in use" RAM, they have "free" (wasted space), "in use" and "cached". You shouldn't look at the amount of free RAM but rather the amount of actually used RAM is a better indicator.
The reason you only gain 50 MB when you kill all apps is because only 50 MB will be actually in use by apps and all remaining unused space is used for caching things. If your phone is slow, this is not the cause of it. You may just have a slow phone or the ROM might be slow for some (other) reason.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah only 50mb is used to keep the apps running, but it probably takes up a whole lot more when using the apps, and this is a problem for me that it is slow to change between apps, and when I do change between the for example if I wanna text some one back while using a browser, once i turn the browser back on it restarts the page, and that didn't happen in my zte blade, unless I had some more apps running.
I wanna know what is using those 250+mb of ram!

ltkipras said:
yeah only 50mb is used to keep the apps running, but it probably takes up a whole lot more when using the apps, and this is a problem for me that it is slow to change between apps, and when I do change between the for example if I wanna text some one back while using a browser, once i turn the browser back on it restarts the page, and that didn't happen in my zte blade, unless I had some more apps running.
I wanna know what is using those 250+mb of ram!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
see exchange service,any svn services n keep track of system usage. normally 100mb+ will be taken for ui, framework...etc.
but. eventhough u keep track of it,then slaughter it, it will come back to life n running, so i wouldnt recommend slaughtering system usage.
switching between app normally slow for full or stock rom. try find some debloated rom. it will be suitable for u if u wanna more free ram rather than liquidity.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda app-developers app

I also observed some sluggishness after some time of usage. Sometimes the phone got totally unresponsive, not catching any push events (from buttons or screen), so that I couldn't even wake it after the screen timeout. I had to wait even few minutes before it was alive again.
Google Chrome was the most ram-eating app as far as I know.
Sometimes the best method is just restart your phone from time to time or even make a wipe - this is normal for all low-end android phones as they get sluggish after some time.
Long story short: I ended up buying a new phone with 2gb of RAM

pawci0 said:
I also observed some sluggishness after some time of usage. Sometimes the phone got totally unresponsive, not catching any push events (from buttons or screen), so that I couldn't even wake it after the screen timeout. I had to wait even few minutes before it was alive again.
Google Chrome was the most ram-eating app as far as I know.
Sometimes the best method is just restart your phone from time to time or even make a wipe - this is normal for all low-end android phones as they get sluggish after some time.
Long story short: I ended up buying a new phone with 2gb of RAM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well...good luck on ur new fone
wish i had extra money to buy one......
but, bigger ram doesnt solve anything as far as i know.stock gapps n app from firmware will be da 'pacman' here. unless ur obtain 'god mode' for ur fone.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda app-developers app

I have the same issue
I'm using CM10.1 RC5, kernel 3.0.76-gc0a8d45 [email protected] #1
I have same symptoms pawci0 and ltkipras mentioned.
But I don't want to buy a new phone...
The lack of memory is noticeable when I run Waze or maps . It just opens for a couple of minutes and closes by itself or rather hangs the entire device.
What should I do? Go for the CM10.1 stable, try a different ROM (i.e. Slim). Change kernels?

nope, waze doesnt use that much ram, try to fix permission first n clear cache in recovery
n try to use other kernel, mine ok with multitask, rather heavy with online games n hearing mp3 n receiving whatsapp, line n we chat at da same time
n try greenify app to control app thats always running.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium

Just try a other rom or kernel you would be amazed how lets say a change of kernel can speed things up. The point is everyone uses their phone differently different apps and things so you need to find the rom that suits you mostly.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda app-developers app