Facinate's 384MB Ram- Starting to worry me

[Lupismaximus]

Well, the reason I hesitated on getting this phone was ONLY because of the amount of RAM on the phone. I come from using a BB STORM1 and the 128K of RAM would crash the phone when filled up. NOW, I worry because I am presently at 273MB, which is not too far from the 384 MB of Ram in the device. I use Task Manager to view running processes and close down all the ones that I don't use, although dam Bing Maps keeps popping up, but that still doesn't save that much. I noticed that all LIVE wall Paper takes up around 17MB of RAM, but I will not go to a static one until I have to.

Bottom line, I want to know if anyone has hit the max and what are you experiencing with your phone. I know Froyo will extend this to 2GB on the Facinate and 8 GB on the Droid X, but we aren't there yet.

Tanks for your Input.

 

[namebrandon]

Froyo is not going to extend the RAM. Android as an OS can manage memory pretty well, and it will close down application when it needs the memory. You don't need to babysit the operating system.

You're worrying way to much about this. If it makes you feel better, by all means, get a Droid X or another phone, but if there were real memory related problems, we'd all be talking about it.

 

[F34R]

What kind of apps are you using that you think will be affected by the available ram?

 

[shanky]

If you're really worried about RAM and open applications, you can use Advanced Task Manager. It's free and allows you to close more than the regular Task Manager would.

I switched to the Fascinate from the Storm2 and have been nothing but impressed with the phone. Got it rooted and un-Binged and couldn't be happier.

 

[thebizz]

If you worry about ram that much root and download autokiller or auto memory manager from the market and set the memory management to a higher threshold so out kills of un needed apps faster leaving ram free. But android is really good at memory management

 

[dsignori]

Well, the reason I hesitated on getting this phone was ONLY because of the amount of RAM on the phone. I come from using a BB STORM1 and the 128K of RAM would crash the phone when filled up. NOW, I worry because I am presently at 273MB, which is not too far from the 384 MB of Ram in the device. I use Task Manager to view running processes and close down all the ones that I don't use, although dam Bing Maps keeps popping up, but that still doesn't save that much. I noticed that all LIVE wall Paper takes up around 17MB of RAM, but I will not go to a static one until I have to.

Bottom line, I want to know if anyone has hit the max and what are you experiencing with your phone. I know Froyo will extend this to 2GB on the Facinate and 8 GB on the Droid X, but we aren't there yet.

Tanks for your Input.

Has your phone actually slowed down at all or crashed? If not, I wouldn't worry about it. Android does a great job managing RAM ...

 

[Lupismaximus]

No major slow downs like I experienced in my previous phone, beyond the known LAG bug. I also noticed a more tendancy to LAG when I had Launcher Pro installed. I wasn't a huge fan of the bland buttons, so I have since removed the program. Now only an occasional LAG.

I plan to Root, but I want to see how it does without Rooting for another few days. How I have set up my phone, I have not restrictions on using Google Voice, Maps, or text search within a browser. The main thing the root will do for me is remove Bing Maps form running in the background, allow me to romove all the Verizon programs, allow me to use the Google Search Widget, and also load any program I want. Oh, and be able to fix the dam LAG bug.

Thank you all for your responses.

Oh, and nameBrandon, your statement and my statement earlier aren't exactly accurate. The new Linux Kernal that comes with Froyo 2.2 doesn't use as much RAM as the current one does, so you technically have more RAM for your system processes to access. It is not as I stated, which it extends the memory space to the total amount on ROM on the phone, but it does give you a bit more RAM for your phone to play with. Thanks!!

 

[rsmiff]

Where do you see only 348 MB of RAM? My internal storage says I have 1.44 GB free. So with all of my apps installed and the extra bloat removed I'm only using half a gig of memory.

 

[Lupismaximus]

Each Android phone has 512MB of RAM. For the Facinate, 128MB is used for the GPU and 384MB is used for the phone's processes. The 1.44GB you have free is the internal ROM, which is a total of 2GB on the Facinate, and 8GB on the DroidX. The ROM is designed to hold programs and media only. I hope this clears some things up. You can find this data under the Task Manager Summary section.

 

[prakash99]

Where do you see only 348 MB of RAM? My internal storage says I have 1.44 GB free. So with all of my apps installed and the extra bloat removed I'm only using half a gig of memory.

You are apparently confusing RAM with internal storage. The phone comes with 2gb of internal storage that will be used to store so all the apps, etc just like we store our media on the removable sd card. Ram is the memory space that th e operating system and the running processes occupy.

I was listening to the AC podcast this week and what I came to understand was that the phone does have 512mb RAM but 128 is pre occupied by the gpu and 384 is the memory free for other processes. So this device only shows the free memory while in total it does have 512mb of RAM.

 

[Lodingi]

Each Android phone has 512MB of RAM. For the Facinate, 128MB is used for the GPU and 384MB is used for the phone's processes. The 1.44GB you have free is the internal ROM, which is a total of 2GB on the Facinate, and 8GB on the DroidX. The ROM is designed to hold programs and media only. I hope this clears some things up. You can find this data under the Task Manager Summary section.

Hmm. I was listening to the Android Central podcast a couple nights ago. They mention Verizon/Samsung allocated the ram to deal with the lag issue that Vibrant & Captivate users were experiencing.

 

[Sabban]

right, generally most lag would be graphicly attributed such as scrolling between home pages, thru the app drawer. even loading apps. having the dedicated memory for the gpu helps that.

 

[rsmiff]

Yes...I missed the RAM/ROM reference. I wonder if froyo enhancements may negate the need for the GPU allocation?

 

[Cory Streater]

Where do you see only 348 MB of RAM? My internal storage says I have 1.44 GB free. So with all of my apps installed and the extra bloat removed I'm only using half a gig of memory.

Download the free app from the Market called Quick System Info. It will show you all kinds of stuff the stock About screen doesn't tell you - including RAM info. It's a really cool app.