What Happened to 1gb of RAM

[superlawyer15]

Try this out:

Go to settings>applications>storage use>running

Now look at the bottom and add up your used and free RAM...

...not anywhere near 1gb right?

 

[buurin]

Yeah I see a total of 482MB. 167MB running, 316MB free.

Not really sure how that works.

Maybe its like 500mb for running apps 500mb for the OS (that seems like a lot for the OS)

 

[superlawyer15]

...I don't think that even a desktop OS (Mac/windows) uses that much

I have this feeling that Motorola made a big mistake

 

[XzombieX66]

WTF??? Thats crazy....

 

[Newton1221]

This is normal, my Droid 2 has 512MB of ram but when I check it it only shows around 250MB, the android operating system is probably designed to use half of the devices ram

 

[superlawyer15]

Why would the system be designed to only use half a device's RAM???

They advertised it as 1gb, you paid for 1gb, you should get to use all of it.

 

[Newton1221]

Why would the system be designed to only use half a device's RAM???

They advertised it as 1gb, you paid for 1gb, you should get to use all of it.

The operating system is using half to run itself and the other half to run your apps, I think everyone needs to take a chill pill and stop being so irrational

 

[Newton1221]

In case that wasn't clear enough ill go a step further

512MB is allocated to running the operating system

512MB is allocated to your apps, widgets, etc.

 

[Newton1221]

After doing some quick Googling I discovered that ROM is a type of RAM so the ROM on your device is probably also counting towards the 1GB of RAM. Trust me, no matter what the explination might be, I can gaurantee its not that Motorola happened to only put half the RAM specified for my Droid 1, Droid 2, and XOOM.

 

[superlawyer15]

I think this is a real issue

I read this thread at another forum about the nexus

Nexus One ram status? - Android Forums

it seems like the OS can only recognize a certain amount of RAM

maybe honeycomb can only see 512mb?

either way I think that it should be displayed correctly, with the OS taking up space in the "used" category...

something just doesn't seem right ...

 

[eyesparky]

The operating system is using half to run itself and the other half to run your apps, I think everyone needs to take a chill pill and stop being so irrational

Agree.

 

[Auzo]

The RAM you see listed inside that setting is only showing 1 of 3 parts that the ram is broken up into. As has been stated before there is a certain amount being dedicated to the OS itself so that it can run. The other less obvious allocation is for the gpu. I would speculate that at a very minimum 256 MB is being reserved for the GPU. The high resolution of the screen adds to the amount that is needed by the GPU.

So the breakdown is:

1) Android OS
2) Apps and Services
3) GPU RAM

Edit: I can't see the OS using over 512MB by itself seeing as win xp doesn't even need that much.

 

[radsaq]

It may not be counting memory used as disk cache; the usage of memory on android should look something like:

| active apps, OS, services | "closed" but still active apps | cache |

... quite possibly with the GPU sharing some RAM. It may only be counting the first two categories. (I thought from my brief looks that the numbers don't always add up to the same thing.. am I mistaken?)

 

[2CupsWithString]

I was under the impression ram & storage are different.

 

[wagedomain]

Why would the system be designed to only use half a device's RAM???

They advertised it as 1gb, you paid for 1gb, you should get to use all of it.

If the OS uses it you are using it...

 

[radsaq]

Here's /proc/meminfo on my xoom:

MemTotal: 736512 kB
MemFree: 16472 kB
Buffers: 20192 kB
Cached: 83560 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 278348 kB
Inactive: 291952 kB
Active(anon): 234560 kB
Inactive(anon): 232912 kB
Active(file): 43788 kB
Inactive(file): 59040 kB
Unevictable: 296 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 736512 kB
LowFree: 16472 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 16 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 466868 kB
Mapped: 43552 kB
Shmem: 520 kB
Slab: 17144 kB
SReclaimable: 5736 kB
SUnreclaim: 11408 kB
KernelStack: 5720 kB
PageTables: 12560 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 368256 kB
Committed_AS: 5507464 kB
VmallocTotal: 122880 kB
VmallocUsed: 58556 kB
VmallocChunk: 12164 kB

So presumably the GPU is using 256mb. I'm not sure how to read most of the rest. Sadly, you can't run a simple command like 'free' on an unrooted device.

 

[Chris Kerrigan]

Both the GPU and the OS itself are going to need an allocated amount of RAM. The only way around this is if Motorola were to have essentially put 1.5GB of RAM in the Xoom, allocated the 512 MB for the OS and the GPU, and then the remaining 1GB could have been used for running apps. Many GPU's on PC's/MAC's have their own dedicated memory, but on Android this isn't really the case (yet). It pulls from the onboard RAM.

 

[Newton1221]

It may not be counting memory used as disk cache; the usage of memory on android should look something like:

| active apps, OS, services | "closed" but still active apps | cache |

... quite possibly with the GPU sharing some RAM. It may only be counting the first two categories. (I thought from my brief looks that the numbers don't always add up to the same thing.. am I mistaken?)

You are right about the numbers varying, my Ram was 480ish last night and is 560ish this morning, its definitely fluctuating and when the OS, GPU, etc aren't using it then it gives it to your apps to use. Android is doing what it does and its doing it well, have some faith guys, lol.

 

[KoukiFC3S]

My Atrix has 800 MB available. Sad that the Xoom has less.

 

[radsaq]

My Atrix has 800 MB available. Sad that the Xoom has less.

As far as I am aware, the Atrix has 192MB reserved for the GPU, so that makes sense given the ~718MB number from my /proc/meminfo output above. I wouldn't say it's "sad;" 700-800MB is more than enough for the current Android OS and apps. Now, the 200MB or so in my Droid 1... that's sad.