Database Develop

How much ram should be free

My phone shows ive around 120 to 140 ram is that enough so that the phone functions smothly without laggings? And i wanna know what free ram u guys have while using ur phone ....
Sent from my DROID3 using XDA App

I mean total memory free***
Sent from my DROID3 using XDA App

Around 100MB +/- 50 free is nominal, I guess.
The way I understand it:
It's going to vary quite a bit, depending on what your doing, number of additional serviced installed, etc. But generally speaking, Android is a very different animal compared to -- say -- Windows. Free RAM doesn't really have an affect on performance, it's just RAM that's not being exploited. There are several parameters that tell the OS how much RAM should be free in a number of different circumstances, also when and how often to kill other services. i.e. As RAM usage increases, apps and services with increasingly higher priorities will be killed to free up RAM. So like if you run Angry Birds, you may start with 100MB free which will drop down to say 70 maybe even 50, but after a few minutes of running, the OS begins to try to free up memory to get it back to what ever the desired free RAM is set to. So after a few minutes, your RAM may go all the way back up to 100MB. Where Windows would just start to pound away at a page file on the hard drive, Android will start to kill applications then eventually kill lower priority services in order to free up the RAM it needs.
So basically every time you run a RAM heavy program, Android will start to kill the previously used programs (settings screen, browser, facebook, whatever), as they are now deemed lower priority. It's always fighting to maintain a certain about of RAM.

I have an average of about 150mb on the latest CyangenMod build (not ICS). However once I start up my phone and run the auto kill after about 10 minutes, I can have 200+ (sometimes as high as 250).
Bobbar said it well in terms of how much you need. To be honest, when I was on the stock rom, I would sometimes have less than 70mb free, yet my phone still wouldn't lag much. You can help with any launcher lag by disabling desktop animations and such.

I'm generally in the range of 60 - 90 MB free RAM at any given moment. My D3 does not lag at all. What you are reporting is absolutely fine.
My first phone regularly reported 25 - 40 MB free RAM at any given moment. Android runs fine on the D3 - it's best not to spend too much time worrying about it, IMO.

If you have a bunch of RAM free all the time it just means you're losing out on multitasking. Some people tweak their OOM values and such so that they have copious amounts of free RAM, this is not necessarily a good thing. IMO

Android aggressively pre-loads applications into memory. The most ideal situation is actually higher memory usage - as most apps don't need ridiculous amounts of memory to operate, and more apps cached in memory means faster launch times for those specific apps.

If you have a bunch of apps not closing and lagging your phone then try Auto killer.
Sent from my XT862 using XDA App

I've got 240MB free at any given moment with stock ROM and doesn't lag at all.

So, not to get off topic, what exactly do all these newer phones need 1GB of RAM for? Just to load up more apps into memory? I get it, it should make them load up faster...but is it necessary on Android?
It just blows me away how much these manufacturers charge for phones these days. Seems like we're just getting into the same kind of specs 'arms race' that people have been going through on their PCs for a while now, just so they can try to make more money. That's pretty sad, considering I have a fine experience with the D3 and G2x.

BenSWoodruff said:
So, not to get off topic, what exactly do all these newer phones need 1GB of RAM for? Just to load up more apps into memory? I get it, it should make them load up faster...but is it necessary on Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1 gig of RAM would be a great thing, for instance for running GNU/Linux in chroot, which I do...
The prob is the Droid 3 doesn't have anywhere near enough total RAM, not to speak of free RAM.

BenSWoodruff said:
So, not to get off topic, what exactly do all these newer phones need 1GB of RAM for? Just to load up more apps into memory? I get it, it should make them load up faster...but is it necessary on Android?
It just blows me away how much these manufacturers charge for phones these days. Seems like we're just getting into the same kind of specs 'arms race' that people have been going through on their PCs for a while now, just so they can try to make more money. That's pretty sad, considering I have a fine experience with the D3 and G2x.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some.of.the Phones with 1gig ram have the lapdock, it docks with a keyboard/screen to be a pseudo laptop. When docked half the ram is set aside for the lapdock
Sent from my XT860 using xda premium

BenSWoodruff said:
So, not to get off topic, what exactly do all these newer phones need 1GB of RAM for? Just to load up more apps into memory? I get it, it should make them load up faster...but is it necessary on Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, Android has gotten fatter, for one. Another would be Motos Webtop.
The more memory you have, the more apps you can have stored in it at any one time. Devices with small amounts of RAM (256 or so) may only be able run one major app at a time. But once you get into the 512 - 1GB+ range, users can freely switch between several heavy apps without them getting killed to free RAM. So you could switch between Angry Birds, then the browser, then YouTube or Email and Messaging without having to relaunch any of them.
So manufacturers tossing in more and more RAM does end up being a pretty good selling point.
It just blows me away how much these manufacturers charge for phones these days. Seems like we're just getting into the same kind of specs 'arms race' that people have been going through on their PCs for a while now, just so they can try to make more money. That's pretty sad, considering I have a fine experience with the D3 and G2x.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just looks at how powerful these devices are compared to just a few years ago. The innovation and power is increasing at an almost logarithmic rate. The price for a high-end smart phone has remained about the same, but the rate at which they are being cycled for newer, faster devices is crazy. So, in this sense, it may be accurate to compare it to PCs. But, it's only us enthusiasts that really feel the hit to the pocket book, because we always want to be on the bleeding edge. And most users, average users, will stay with the same device for a long time, they don't feel the same 'pain' as the enthusiasts group.
Back in 2005, before the iPhone and all that stuff, a smart would cost you almost $700 and it came with a steaming, stinking pile of Windows Mobile. We have it so good these days.

I have around 200MB at boot (CM7).
Yes, that should be enough RAM to use most apps without lagging. That's about what I had with stock, and I rarely ran out.
aman321 said:
My phone shows ive around 120 to 140 ram is that enough so that the phone functions smothly without laggings? And i wanna know what free ram u guys have while using ur phone ....
Sent from my DROID3 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

512mb it's a little down for me... because i like multitasking and for example if you download something from a web page, using opera mobile or stock browser and you open facebook's app while you listening music (poweramp or winamp) it will kill your internet browser (cancel your download) due to your less ram avaible.
A great solution for us would be if we can enable a swap on our droids but it seems to be difficult (or imposible due to our locked bootloaders)... but if somoene is interested here is a link to the current topic http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1407671
With swap enabled our device will move to virtual memory our background apps leaving free ram to our current app.

RAM

Got my Galaxy Note and am loving it! It's model N7000. When I look at RAM usage it's always at 600+/800. Is there a reason it uses so muc memory? And isn't the phone supposed to have 1024MB of RAM?

the rest of the memory is used for apps, cache, rom etc etc.
i wouldnt worry, if you have 600meg showing then youre doing well considering after installing a lot of stuff you usually end up with 300meg plus showing, either way, its not an issue, theres still more than enough there and you really dont need to worry.

TouchWiz steals 200MB of your RAM at startup, so that leaves you with 800MB of free ram for apps and widgets and whatnot..
The same happens with HTC phones, it takes a certain amount of RAM to run Sense on.
My Note also uses 600+ RAM most of the time, it's pretty normal with some apps running. Nothing to worry about though. You've got enough of it anyways.
I'd be worried if 1GB of RAM wouldn't be enough for most of us. But it's plenty.

Is it normal only 1,5 gb ram free?

When I reboot the tablet and look the free ram memory only have 1,5 ram free, is it the normal when this tab has 3 gb ram? I have thunderrom and skyhigh kernel installed.

Yep. It's for most of the android processes and important things that need to run. I also get that much too.
Sent from SMT800 using Tapatalk.
-Helper around Tab S forums√
Active Everyday√

yeiyei0891 said:
When I reboot the tablet and look the free ram memory only have 1,5 ram free, is it the normal when this tab has 3 gb ram? I have thunderrom and skyhigh kernel installed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup that's totally normal I'm running cm12 and it's using 1.5GB.

I'm on stock, non rooted and using ES Explorers task killer i can still have about 1.4GB free.

Ok, then 3gb RAM but really you can use less that half of it.

Yep. But hey at least we got 3 GB of ram instead of 2 GB!
Sent from SMT800 using Tapatalk.
-Helper around Tab S forums√
Active Everyday√

DUHAsianSKILLZ said:
Yep. But hey at least we got 3 GB of ram instead of 2 GB!
Sent from SMT800 using Tapatalk.
-Helper around Tab S forums√
Active Everyday√
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah i get 2GB to use because my system uses 1GB

yeiyei0891 said:
Ok, then 3gb RAM but really you can use less that half of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do wish people would actually learn about RAM and why free RAM is actually wasted RAM.
A good summary can be found here: http://m.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care

foxmeister said:
I do wish people would actually learn about RAM and why free RAM is actually wasted RAM.
A good summary can be found here: http://m.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah but otoh caching boat load of stuff into ram that won't be used is a waste of battery.
I look at the list of running processes with a system monitor and I have to say WTF does it just load every thing or what. It's running apps I don't even use any more but haven't uninstalled just in case. So if I don't want them running I have to freeze them. And that does not include all the system processes whose purpose I can't even tell. It's kind of nuts.

foxmeister said:
I do wish people would actually learn about RAM and why free RAM is actually wasted RAM.
A good summary can be found here: http://m.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry but you should start to learn yourself. The RAM displayed as free is actually used as a file cache. Besides, Android killing apps in the background means that it takes longer to start a new app in a low RAM situation (because the new app needs to wait until the LMK cleared enough space) and of course you lose the context of the closed app (it needs to reload data from the internal storage or even worse from the web when you restart it).

TheGoD said:
Sorry but you should start to learn yourself. The RAM displayed as free is actually used as a file cache. Besides, Android killing apps in the background means that it takes longer to start a new app in a low RAM situation (because the new app needs to wait until the LMK cleared enough space) and of course you lose the context of the closed app (it needs to reload data from the internal storage or even worse from the web when you restart it).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you in a low RAM situation when you have 1GB free out of 3GB? NO! 0.5GB out of 3GB? NO!
Does it take a significant amount if time to reclaim resources when android does require additional RAM, because it genuinely is in a low RAM situation? No, because it unceremoniously terminates unused processes, releasing resources to the kernel almost immediately. This is very different from garbage collection to release unused memory from active processes.
Don't just believe me though - take it from the people who actually wrote the OS - http://android-developers.blogspot.de/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html?m=1
It's also worth saying that you've also validated my statement "Free RAM is wasted RAM" by saying that the OS "uses" free RAM as a file cache.
All that being said, the context of this entire thread is why the OS is "using" 1.5GB out of 3GB pretty much at boot. All I've said is why this is perfectly normal, and in the general usage case, actually not undesirable.
Of couse there will be specific usage cases, where this is not going to be the optimum approach, but this is only going to affect a very small minority of users, with extremely memory demanding applications.

barth2 said:
Yeah but otoh caching boat load of stuff into ram that won't be used is a waste of battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No. RAM impact on battery life is, for all practical purposes, insensitive to the amount of RAM being used. When sections of RAM are clear, the locations are not zeroed out or anything. Instead the space is just added to a free space table. Stuff in RAM not being used does not waste battery. The exception to this is if that RAM is being occupied by a misbehaving program that is driving CPU usage.
foxmeister said:
Are you in a low RAM situation when you have 1GB free out of 3GB? NO! 0.5GB out of 3GB? NO!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Foxmeister is exactly right. In nearly all real world cases, higher RAM usage leads to faster performance and better battery life.

GeorgeP said:
No. RAM impact on battery life is, for all practical purposes, insensitive to the amount of RAM being used. When sections of RAM are clear, the locations are not zeroed out or anything. Instead the space is just added to a free space table. Stuff in RAM not being used does not waste battery. The exception to this is if that RAM is being occupied by a misbehaving program that is driving CPU usage.
Foxmeister is exactly right. In nearly all real world cases, higher RAM usage leads to faster performance and better battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, but you still have to get the data into RAM. That takes power, which it is wasted if the data is never used.

barth2 said:
No, but you still have to get the data into RAM. That takes power, which it is wasted if the data is never used.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a trade off - preload the processes and data so that they can be accessed far more quickly (less lag) if and when required. Once in memory, if they are not being used the battery drain is negligible.
The reduction in perceived lag is *far* greater than any battery drain.
Regards,
Dave

barth2 said:
No, but you still have to get the data into RAM. That takes power, which it is wasted if the data is never used.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL! Now are in angels dancing on a the head of a pin territory:laugh:

GeorgeP said:
LOL! Now are in angels dancing on a the head of a pin territory:laugh:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lag is mostly a function of user expectation.
When you open a new app that is not running, you expect a delay. So as long as it's not excessively long, you don't feel lag. unnecessary preloading then just increases bootup time and long boot up time DOES bother people.
Now it makes sense to preload frequently used apps and some system apps that have high probability of being needed. But what I was talking about is seeing apps I used once once weeks ago still get loaded, while some apps I use every session, like my browser, not loaded on start up. The algorithm needs tweaking.
(Large apps like games have long load time, but you are not going to cache those so they are not in the conversation.)
Most lags people experience is in app lag. It's mostly due to loading graphics onto the screen, screen painting, and garbage collection.
What baffles me is I have an iPad 3 (there have been 4 generations of iPads since then) , which on paper is like a Toyota Camry compared to the Tab S BMW 300. And yet on many same apps the iPad feels smoother, scrolling around is less jerky. The only place where the Tab S is superior is 3d games like asphalt with high details and because it has 3x memory, apps need reloading less.

barth2 said:
Lag is mostly a function of user expectation.
When you open a new app that is not running, you expect a delay. So as long as it's not excessively long, you don't feel lag. unnecessary preloading then just increases bootup time and long boot up time DOES bother people.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The vast majority of users (i.e. the sort of user who doesn't frequent sites like XDA) probably don't reboot their tablets/phones very often at all, so most people probably aren't that bothered.
I rather suspect that the engineers at Google have experimented with an awful lot of different strategies, before settling on what we have now.
Is it perfect? No. Like everything software related, it could do with improvement but this is always a continuous, on going process
Regards,
Dave

How much average free RAM do you have left on your Note 4 during Usage?

Though I continue be impressed by the Battery Life and ability to move Apps to SD on the T-Mobile Note 4, I've noticed the free RAM availability is pretty slim when using the device on a day-to-day basis. The T-Mobile Note 4 is probably one of those carrier devices that I've experience containing little or not bloat. Not sure if the 3GB RAM specification lives up to its value. Makes room for Samsung to add more to the background process. In reality, a stock Vanilla Android device uses about 1/3 of its RAM whereas anything overlaying it like Touchwiz or HTC Sense uses more.

arjun90 said:
Though I continue be impressed by the Battery Life and ability to move Apps to SD on the T-Mobile Note 4, I've noticed the free RAM availability is pretty slim when using the device on a day-to-day basis. The T-Mobile Note 4 is probably one of those carrier devices that I've experience containing little or not bloat. Not sure if the 3GB RAM specification lives up to its value. Makes room for Samsung to add more to the background process. In reality, a stock Vanilla Android device uses about 1/3 of its RAM whereas anything overlaying it like Touchwiz or HTC Sense uses more.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After an heavy debloat and greenify a lot, I have about 1.2 gig free after reboot and then drop and stay around 400-500mb after some use. I use next launcher, though, which is heavy on ram and I currently(temporarily) use Pimp my Screen which is ridiculiously heavy. I use a Wave live wallpaper, which I never used a live wallpaper on my S2, 3, or 4, but I had ram to spare and I like it. So, thats rpobably 200mb used up in looking pretty. After fresh Rom, I was losing 2% overnight. So I'm pleased but I agree that more RAM in phone is more RAM used by phone and you kinda end up with the same numbers in the end.

This has been long discussed and resolved years ago. Android is designed to utilize as much RAM as possible to function smoothly. If you're phone is running poorly or not quickly enough, chances are it's a rogue app that was made poorly causing your issue.
RAM usage should not be likened to an OS like Windows.

Not being an Apple fanboy, it seems Apple was able to optimize their apps just right to go hand-in-hand with the available RAM.
mzrdisi said:
This has been long discussed and resolved years ago. Android is designed to utilize as much RAM as possible to function smoothly. If you're phone is running poorly or not quickly enough, chances are it's a rogue app that was made poorly causing your issue.
RAM usage should not be likened to an OS like Windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Exactly my thought, "So I'm pleased but I agree that more RAM in phone is more RAM used by phone and you kinda end up with the same numbers in the end."
I'll need to monitor which apps causes my device to occupy over 90% of the RAM at all times. Ironically, my device has not once froze up or restarted. I'm stunned if the device can keep up in this environment.
Bubba Fett said:
After an heavy debloat and greenify a lot, I have about 1.2 gig free after reboot and then drop and stay around 400-500mb after some use. I use next launcher, though, which is heavy on ram and I currently(temporarily) use Pimp my Screen which is ridiculiously heavy. I use a Wave live wallpaper, which I never used a live wallpaper on my S2, 3, or 4, but I had ram to spare and I like it. So, thats rpobably 200mb used up in looking pretty. After fresh Rom, I was losing 2% overnight. So I'm pleased but I agree that more RAM in phone is more RAM used by phone and you kinda end up with the same numbers in the end.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I'm not sure why but I like to see free ram. Iknow what people say about killing apps and then they restart…… but I'm a bit of a battery dork and spend decent time on tweaks for power. I feel like I get as good or better than I've seen posted and I try to have as much ram as possible free. It has always worked for me, but my phone habits may be different from others. I don't even have a facebook account.
Oh yea, Apple has to pre-optimized because their user can't do it for themselves!)

I'm just saying, I'm sure the Software engineers know quite a bit more about the subject than hobbyists like many of us on here.
People obsess about battery life all the time and all of these tweaks and apps people use I find don't do any real good. I'm not saying they don't help at all, because it would seem based on some people's claims it does. But I feel there are so many other factors that really are the problem. Primarily how you just simply use your phone. And 2nd, which is the issue I find most often on Android is someone downloading a terrible app that is running in the BG allll day without them really knowing it. (GPS being used frequently or the kernel is kept awake for long periods of time)
But my point above was that you will and really shouldn't see your device with 50% or more RAM on an Android device. It's just not designed to be that way. If the apps you are using are basically "made" properly. You don't need to worry about having to close apps or block them from running.

One of the culprits using a lot of RAM is Lookout Mobile Security. I have T-Mobile Jump. Never knew Lookout was one of the culprits.

RAM management

My only criticism with the N8 is RAM management. I moved from the Xperia XZ with 3GB of RAM and purposefully went for a device with 6GB because of reloads. Yet my N8 reloads the sites and apps in question every bit as much. I read that he N8 had much better RAM management with Nougat, is this so?*

My N950F 128 GB model almost never reloads, it only reloads when I execute device maintainance, which clears ram and all cached non essential stuff

I'm on Nougat and mine reloads after opening just two other apps briefly, or one app when using it extensively. Having 6 GB of RAM has had no improvement in this regard over the phones I've had with 2 gb of RAM.
I wish we could dedicate a certain amount of RAM to a few of our most used apps.

I never understood how the phone could use nearly 3.5 gigs of ram for background processes.

It would appear that there is no benefit when using a phone with 6GB versus a phone with 3 or 4GB. What a shame. A massive waste of multitasking possibilities.

You guys do realize free ram is wasted ram on android....
Since android 5.0 Ram management has gotten so much better..So what if you only have say 1 gb free Thats a good thing you are utilizing what you got...Nothing beats a good reboot once every couple days clear it out.Ram managers are a waste of battery...

https://www.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care
Good article on RAM and what's stored and used in it.

TheMadScientist said:
You guys do realize free ram is wasted ram on android....
Since android 5.0 Ram management has gotten so much better..So what if you only have say 1 gb free Thats a good thing you are utilizing what you got...Nothing beats a good reboot once every couple days clear it out.Ram managers are a waste of battery...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That doesn't explain why my 6GB N8 reloads just as badly as my 3GB Xperia XZ. It holds hardly anything in memory before reloading/refreshing. I love the phone but specifically got it for the RAM which in my experience is kinda for show. It doesn't improve anything.

Well, I agree with you being so upset about YOUR particular note 8 behaving as a 3 gb ram device or worse, but my device reloads only sometimes, not all the time, I usually have some 800-1000 mb of free ram, in device maintainance I have some 60 apps unmonitored and 194 to always sleeping untill I run them

Use eternal process lock.. Its an xposed module.. It will lock the app and it will not be killed.

winol said:
Well, I agree with you being so upset about YOUR particular note 8 behaving as a 3 gb ram device or worse, but my device reloads only sometimes, not all the time, I usually have some 800-1000 mb of free ram, in device maintainance I have some 60 apps unmonitored and 194 to always sleeping untill I run them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't reload all the time, it just reloads the same apps with the same frequency that my Xperia XZ did. It must be down to Android ram management rather than the amount of RAM itself.