Ram management question?

[Keith Molloy]

Hi guys. Very happy s6 edge owner here especially with regards to battery life as i expected less. However, since day one i have had a minor issue. It isn't that bothersome to be honest but i just feel as though the phone isn't quite as snappy/fast as my z3 was. There's also a little lag /sluggishness with scrolling when Web browsing particular when using these forums.

I have since read that Samsung were having issues with ram management and iam wondering if that's the issue? I closed all apps/tabs and went into settings - applications - running, and i only ever seem to have around 600mb free?

Is that likely what is causing the sluggishness? Also, does poor ram management have an affect on battery life?

 

[Golfdriver97]

One thing to keep in mind is Android likes having RAM full. But a poor memory management may be the issue. Did this start recently or have you always had it? It may be app related as well.

 

[Keith Molloy]

Yeah i presume so. What's the difference between ram and memory management? I was hoping it's related to the sluggishness because there's an update coming soon and hopefully that helps. The phone just isn't as snappy as the z3 was. Other then that it's excellent.

 

[atishc]

There are a couple different issues here:
1. RAM management - as Golfdriver97 said, Android likes having RAM full, so the 600 mb free is not itself a problem. The 5.0.2 build of Lollipop does have a memory leak issue that causes multi-tasking to be slow and not work well (apps refresh when switching back to them instead of staying in memory). I restart my phone daily to clear RAM. In addition, (and there are people in this forum who are going to yell at me for saying this), even apps you don't use frequently can staying running in the background using up RAM, battery and data - an app like ShutApp can help close the unwanted ones which helps memory management and battery life. I understand that Android is designed for this NOT to be the case, but there is clearly something wrong with that assertion if I and many people on this forum have experienced benefits from this.
2. Lag comes from different sources - the RAM management as above, Chrome not being optimized for the S6, and animations being somewhat slow. I use the stock browser instead of Chrome, which works well. An old thread discussed disabling java scripts in Chrome as a solution to the lag issues: http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...owser-chrome-facebook-twitter-play-store.html but I don't know if that is still the case. The animations can be sped up through the developer settings. Changing it to 0.5x can make the phone feel much faster without changing any functionality. Tip: How to speed up your Samsung Galaxy S5

Hi guys. Very happy s6 edge owner here especially with regards to battery life as i expected less. However, since day one i have had a minor issue. It isn't that bothersome to be honest but i just feel as though the phone isn't quite as snappy/fast as my z3 was. There's also a little lag /sluggishness with scrolling when Web browsing particular when using these forums.

I have since read that Samsung were having issues with ram management and iam wondering if that's the issue? I closed all apps/tabs and went into settings - applications - running, and i only ever seem to have around 600mb free?

Is that likely what is causing the sluggishness? Also, does poor ram management have an affect on battery life?

 

[Keith Molloy]

The lag generally or at least is most noticeable when Web browsing. It doesn't matter wether i have other apps open or not. Outside of Web browsing everything is acceptable. Just doesn't seem as fast n snappy as i expected is all but iam not sure if it's a fault or if it's just the way Samsung is. For example, when scrolling through contacts or photos etc a quick swipe of the finger and everything would fly by but on the s6, scrolling in general just feels a tad slow in comparison.

 

[Rukbat]

What's the difference between ram and memory management?

RAM is Random Access Memory. ROM is Read Only Memory (which can be written to - it's actually EAROM - Electrically Alterable Read Only Memory). You can't really "manage" ROM. That's where your apps and data are stored, and about the only "management" you can do is uninstall apps.

RAM management is removing references to apps that are in RAM but aren't currently running. It doesn't save more than nanosecconds - if Android doesn't need that app to be in RAM and be called on regularly. If it does, you remove the app (you're actually removing the reference to it, so th space it's in is considered unused), Android reloads it, your "mamagement app" removes it, Android reloads it, etc., slowing the phone down and killing the battery.

The lag generally or at least is most noticeable when Web browsing.

When you "connect" to a web page (you don't really - the web is a disconnected model), you get the page, then anything further on that page happens in the browser.

If the "lag" happens when you do things on that page (tap something to enter information and it takes a second or two for the text box to come up) that's a slow Javascript interpreter in the browser. (Internet Explorer 5.5 was notorious for that - what took 20 seconds in Firefox wasn't near completion in 30 minutes in IE, and I killed it.) Use a different browser. Atlas Web Browser is about the fastest one I've found. Not much fancy stuff, but fast when you want speed.

If the lag happens in opening a new page (clicking a link), that could be the internet. A web page should load in 1 second or less - that's what it says in the book. The book was written in the early 90s, when a flashing arrow was considered the ultimate in animation. These days, there are pages that take 10 seconds to load over a good connection on a fast browser. Blame everyone's desire to monetize websites and put up sites with 50% graphic advertising or more, tons of Javascript that really add very little to the user experience, and people who just don't know how to write websites. (Looking at the source of a page, I still see new sites that have code that was brand new - in 1998. Tons of stuff that could be done in a few lines of CSS. It tales a long time for the browser to read all that stuff and figure out hat to do with it, and there's no need for it. [And I'm not talking about this site - we have a bug here - and I'm glad I'm not on the team that has to find it. It's one of those, "now you see it, now you don't" things, and that's why the life expectancy of a web developer is less than that of a sky diver who doesn't use a parachute. Almost no one is affected by it, but it's annoying when it happens. But the site is written well.])