Question Is it possible to reduce the Android OS RAM/Cache usage?

[grant841]

I have the OnePlus 11 and it's great, however the OS seems to almost always be using half of my total RAM with no applications running in the background. Is there any way to reduce this? My windows PC uses about half of that amount with around 100 applications running in the background. Also do you guys know of any apps similar to task manager in windows? TIA

 

[fuzzylumpkin]

Android isn't windows. On Android, unused RAM is wasted RAM.

 

[grant841]

Android isn't windows. On Android, unused RAM is wasted RAM.

Can you explain a bit more on why that is? I was under the assumption that the more RAM that is used, the more power that is used, which is what I am trying to reduce to improve battery life. Is that not the case? And I understand android isn't windows I just like to think of them as at least being somewhat similar. Does the x86 platform just utilize RAM better than arm?

 

[fuzzylumpkin]

Can you explain a bit more on why that is? I was under the assumption that the more RAM that is used, the more power that is used, which is what I am trying to reduce to improve battery life. Is that not the case? And I understand android isn't windows I just like to think of them as at least being somewhat similar. Does the x86 platform just utilize RAM better than arm?

It doesn't use it better, it uses it differently. It actually takes more power to clear something out of RAM than to keep it suspended there, this is to do with how electron gates function and is as much about physics as computing.

Here's a scientific paper about the differences between RAM on windows and Android

Differences Between Android and Windows Memory Management

emerging-researchers.org

 

[Daniel Detkowski]

Fuzzylumpkin is correct on this.
This is not Windows, my friend.

 

[Mooncatt]

In laymen terms, it takes just as much energy for a bit to be a 1 or 0 in memory, so there is no power savings by killing background processes. What Android does is suspend them so they remain dormant in memory until called upon again. When that happens, less processing power is needed to recall that data than to initialize it from scratch.

There are so-called memory cleaner/booster apps that will kill background processes, but they work counter to how Android is designed. When they kill a process, the OS will replace it to keep memory full. The cleaner app kills those and the cycle repeats. All that killing and restarting apps and processes result in increased power usage, not power savings.

Android generally does well enough on its own to not need meddling with memory.

As for your OS taking up so much, that does seem high. So my guess is you either have some corrupted data, the OS is poorly optimized, or it's reporting total usage and not just the core OS. I've never used OnePlus, but my LG V60 is currently only using 4.8 GB total, and just under 2 GB for the OS.

 

[joeldf]

Samsung has its own memory cleaning option.

Currently on my S24 Plus with 12 GB of ram, it says 1.2 GB is reserved - I assume that's for system use. 5 GB is used by apps, and the rest, another 5.5 GB is available.

I do tend to close out all apps on a regular basis. Just by closing all apps in the Task list once or twice a day. I'll also occasionally "optimize" the phone in "Device Care". It does some of the same things.

Like I care that it may pull an extra 0.001% of the battery power to re-open an app. There's so much headroom in power use these days that it's all negligible. Certainly not something you would notice.