[ale] OT: Android RAM

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

I'm running Android 4 on my tablet.  Not sure how this applies to other versions.  If you go into settings, apps, running, you can see which apps are running.  At the bottom, there is a graph which shows used and free ram.  The visual appearance links the list of apps to the used ram.  In the upper right, is a button you can tap to show cached processes.  When you do that, the visual appearance changes to link the list of apps to the free ram.  So, it would appear that if you reactivate one of those apps, it will then be using ram again.  But, it appears that the system can kill off any cached apps whenever it wants and use the ram, as Allan mentioned.  I think most of the task killer apps are obsolete in Android 4.  However, there are some apps that always start up in my process list, which I never use, like NOOK, that I wish I could just kill off immediately whenever it runs.  Audible and Pandora seem to start up for no reason too, but I do use them periodically, so I can't just kill them in mass.  I have uninstalled a couple of apps just because they always seemed to be starting up stuff when I wasn't using them.

Sincerely,

Ron


Justin Goldberg <justgold79 at gmail.com> wrote:

>Allan,
>
>That explains all of the memory freeing/cached process killers for
>android.
>On Mar 22, 2013 12:18 PM, "Allan Davis" <cajun.code at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Inactive most likely refers to ram which has recently been used by an
>> application (but no longer needed), and is still being tracked. It is
>> basically free ram, and will get freed up as it is needed, but the
>benefits
>> of doing it this way, is that Applications can be restarted quicker
>> sometimes (think of it maybe as a cache). It's cheap for the OS to
>free the
>> memory, so prematurely releasing it does very little except give the
>shiny
>> satisfaction that your free memory is better. Inactive RAM may also
>contain
>> cache (but not sure what exactly it's referring to).
>>
>> RAM is poorly understood on computers too actually. There was a
>report
>> recently which claimed that windows
>7<http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Premium-64bit-System-Builder/dp/B004Q0PT3I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1353684038&sr=8-2&keywords=windows+7>
>was
>> using up all available ram and there was swapping. What the guy at
>the
>> company didn't understand was that a lot of it was cache which was
>freed as
>> needed.
>>
>> More info is at:
>http://reviews.cnet....006694-263.html<http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20006694-263.html>
>>
>> In a nutshell though, free RAM is wasted ram. The important statistic
>is
>> active RAM/Total RAM available.. Too many wars have been fought over
>> misunderstanding of RAM usage...
>>
>> From Post:
>> http://www.modaco.com/topic/315527-inactive-ram/
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Allan
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Boris Borisov <bugyatl at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>>
>>> I was running on both of mine cheapo tablets quadrant benchmark. On
>>> system info - memory section the program shows inactive RAM of
>certain
>>> amount. Anybody with an idea what the inactive RAM means? I would
>like
>>> my memory back :)
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>>
>>
>> --
>> _______________________
>> Allan Davis
>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/cajuncode
>>
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>>
>
>
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Ron Frazier
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