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] Froyo's new way of managing apps

I'm using Cyanogenmod 6 (stable) on my HTC Dream.
Now, I know that there's been a change in Froyo (Android 2.2) whereby task manager apps can no longer kill running apps. That's fine. I can kill tasks in Running Services if I want. (Although I wish I had a faster way of accessing the Running Services...)
Anyways, I'm noticing that I'm having a problem with apps being closed by the system when I definitely never want them closing unless I close them myself. I was able to do this just fine in pre-Froyo ... but there are really some apps, like AndChat, that I don't want closing at any odd random time (I'm guessing this happens when the system decides it needs to free up some RAM or something). Is there a way to keep certain apps ALWAYS running unless I close them?
Please tell me there's a way to do this. I'm loving Froyo otherwise, but there are some apps that I don't want the system closing on its own.

Please tell me there's a way around this. I never had this problem pre-Froyo.
Can I maybe prioritize non-essential processes or something (So that maybe it'd close some other app instead of the one or two I want to keep running)?
Please help

If you do, then whatever you are trying to do that causes those processes to be killed will NOT WORK. You will get the magical disappearing application problem where a newly launched program will randomly die. It could get really messy if there isn't enough free memory to load the launcher -- you'll end up in battery munching loops at seemingly random times.

*sighs*
That's just ... sad. I understand what you're saying. I do hope there's still another way though. I really try not to have much running. But sometimes even if all I have running is AndChat and a browser, AndChat would close. It's really annoying.
Thanks for your reply.

The most annoying thing to me about the way FroYo manages apps is that my browser will often close when not being used, and upon returning to it only the last page displayed will reload but any other windows that were open do not.
This never happened in 2.1
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

[Q] Why does Browser data sometimes become huge?

I usually keep my N1 at around 30-50 MB free of internal storage, which is enough to have everything I want loaded on, but it's tough to free up much more space than that without uninstalling apps or moving to SD the apps that shouldn't be moved.
So anyway, today my phone suddenly dropped down to 13 MB left and the culprit appeared to be Browser data - suddenly over 46 MB! The cache was already cleared. I went through with Root Explorer and found that the largest file was located in:
/data/data/com.android.browser/app_thumbnails
For some reason a 31.5 MB file had made it into this directory, and Android clearly is not smart enough to clean it up. Anyway I deleted the offending file via Root Explorer and now it's happy.
Any thoughts on how to keep the browser from ballooning like this? I didn't want to delete all browser data because of bookmarks, cookies etc.

because in 2.2 froyo google updated the browser to temporarily store the entire contents of the page you are browsing into memory such that if you lost data connection, the page could be reloaded without the data connection. so when you have a few tabs open in the browser, or a very large site open, all contents are temporarily being stored for just in case.
if you were to close out all the tabs, kill the browser, all would return to normal. often times my browser hits up over 80MB because i have tons of pages open. i just kill all my tabs and the low space warnings go right away.
its a trade off, i dont mind it cause its better than the old way, but the trade off is we suffer with low storage.

I'll try closing tabs next time, but I swear I'd already closed all the tabs and still the bloat persisted across reboots...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

also delete the browser cache if you want to clear the pron vid, that stuff can take up quite a bit of space

cmstlist said:
I'll try closing tabs next time, but I swear I'd already closed all the tabs and still the bloat persisted across reboots...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
when this happens to me, occasionally i kill all the tabs and it takes a small bit of time for it to appear back to normal, but never more than a minute or so. but if i close the tabs, then force close the browser, it for sure instantly clears the used space back.
if its happening to you across reboots, then might be something completely different.
FYI i havent cleared my browser cache since July last year hehh, and i use the browser like a madman. i wonder how much space i'd get back if i did?

I find that when space is low, it automatically empties the browser cache to zero. In the scenario I described above, the cache was already empty.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

Browser Reset/Refresh when not active

Hello everyone.
My Bionic is my first android device and I'm having an issue with the web browser automatically refreshing the page when I leave the browser and then come back.
It will still be open to the page I was one but refreshed and back at the top.
I'm assuming this is a memory savings item so it doesn't have to hold the entire page in memory while the browser isn't active but it's very annoying when I'm partly through a page and having scroll back down and figure out where I was.
Is there a way to stop this behavior? I've seen the ability to add tasks to an "autokill" list that drops them within a few seconds of going inactive but nothing to make something permanent.
Thanks.

This is something I've had to deal with since Android, but it doesn't really bug me, because I can understand why. With my Bionic, this definitely doesn't happen as much as when I had my Droid X, since it has more RAM, but there very well could be some sort of way to get this to work. I know there are some task killer apps (but that makes it completely useless if our on an OS past 2.2+) that will allow you to keep apps in memory at all times, but other than that, I believe it does it just so your phone doesn't get bogged down with trying to keep a whole web page in memory.

That's what I figured.
I was reading a game walk through and then switching back to the game and I had to keep scrolling back down through the massive page to find where I left off.
I wonder if an alternative browser would be any better? I'll have to search the market.

Memory management

First off, I know that there is a similarly named thread, but that one is regarding the eMMC. I'm talking about RAM here.
I have some questions about memory management of this phone. I list FB quite a lot and the thing that I notice is that every time I open an external link, the app reloads upon closing the internal web browser and just sends me back to the first post like the app reloaded. The same thing happens in Youtube very often. I would play a video, and after closing it, I would end up back at the top of my subscription feed. It's like these apps aren't kept in memory at all.
Now these aren't the only examples of such behavior, but they are the most obvious.
I'm not a heavy multitasker. I jump between 2-3 apps usually so I don't know what could be (if anything) hogging my system memory and if this is maybe a kernel "bug". If so, can I tweak it somehow to keep the apps in memory?
Also, has anyone else noticed such behavior?
I have a 64GB/4GB version and I've experienced this in both the August and September update...

Found what was causing such a behavior.
Under the developer options "Don't keep activities" was turned on. Disabled it and now everything is working as expected.
Just to note, I haven't fiddled with this option so it was out of the box like that and that might (and surely is one of) the reason we are seeing such low multitasking performance even compared to the 6X

It's not ticked here

It's not ticked on stock default, I have stock from last night.