unaccounted for Ram?

Tyler Lietz

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I was very curious today when i went into settings - apps - running apps and saw that my device only says i have about 1,700 mb of ram on the whole device between used and available. Says im using about 850 mb of ram but can only account for 203mbs of ram used when i add up all the running apps. So i downloaded a top known ram app on my device and that can only account for 550 mb of ram including the operating system and ui. So something invisible is using 300mb of ram and device is missing another 300mb overall.
 

Jerry Hildenbrand

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RAMDisk for the kernel
RAM for the GPU
RAM for the RIL

These are allocated as soon as power is applied to the board and startup begins. It's normal not to see it "available".
 

Tyler Lietz

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Thanks. I called google and the lady didn't even know what Ram was. She kept talking about the hard drive gigs and i flipped out at her cause i kept asking her to transfer me to someone else. So she randomly looked of what ram was while i was on hold and tried to impress me by saying Random Access Memory and then she started talking about catch and how she has a shiny app on her phone that you can download to clear catch and omg i never been so angry at tech support. If i didn't have a shiny Nexus 10 in my hand cheering me up, i would have yelled at her until she cried.
 

anon(847090)

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Thanks. I called google and the lady didn't even know what Ram was. She kept talking about the hard drive gigs and i flipped out at her cause i kept asking her to transfer me to someone else. So she randomly looked of what ram was while i was on hold and tried to impress me by saying Random Access Memory and then she started talking about catch and how she has a shiny app on her phone that you can download to clear catch and omg i never been so angry at tech support. If i didn't have a shiny Nexus 10 in my hand cheering me up, i would have yelled at her until she cried.
hehe leave those poor support guys alone :)
like mentioned above. OS and other uses it but dont forget even if its 2 Gb RAM its less than 2048 MB . just like when you buy a 250 Gb Hard disk and you get less capacity
 

Tyler Lietz

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I know but 300 missing from my total Ram plus another 300 was towards some unknown task other than the operating system is a $hit ton of Ram gone. Plus add in operating system, background activities and miscellaneous. That leaves 800mb max out of 2048mb
 

anon(847090)

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I know but 300 missing from my total Ram plus another 300 was towards some unknown task other than the operating system is a $hit ton of Ram gone. Plus add in operating system, background activities and miscellaneous. That leaves 800mb max out of 2048mb
unused RAM is wasted RAM. again, try this! if you have a 2 Gb usb drive plug it in your computer and see what it says. it will say "x.xx free of 1.86 Gb available"
its the same with RAM only 1.86 is available so the system is using only about 150 MB RAM and not 300 Mb like you mentioned.
150 Mb for a more matured OS like Android 4.2. I would say its very acceptable.
 

Tyler Lietz

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unused RAM is wasted RAM. again, try this! if you have a 2 Gb usb drive plug it in your computer and see what it says. it will say "x.xx free of 1.86 Gb available"
its the same with RAM only 1.86 is available so the system is using only about 150 MB RAM and not 300 Mb like you mentioned.
150 Mb for a more matured OS like Android 4.2. I would say its very acceptable.

Go do the math on yours and add up the used and unused and see what you get