[Q] What takes up so much RAM?

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Hi,
i just bought an Ideos x5 and it's great.

I've loaded most of the usuall stuff including task manager.

Now i found that on average my free memory when i'm not using so much apps is around 180(that's how much free RAM i have).

Is this normal..i mean...the thing says it has 512 mb of RAM.

Sorry for beeing a noob..

Van

its said 128MB go to the GPU, 32MB are used by android system, which leaves about 352MB (353MB as shown in Elixir) for application use..

and then those google apps (Maps, Search, Market, etc.) all take up RAM in the background, plus other background apps you have installed and widgets you have enabled..

on average i usually have around 80-120MB free RAM left.. and since android 2.2 is said to have a good task manager which frees up the RAM when needed, i dont think its a place to worry about..

As iamelton said, Android's in-built task managing system does a good job of managing what apps are using the processor, memory and battery. Task manager apps don't really do all that much useful, and can sometimes be counterproductive if you're trying to use them to save battery. Lifehacker has a really great article on this called Android Task Killers Explained: What They Do and Why You Shouldn’t Use Them (I can't link because I don't have enough posts, but the article's a search away and is really worth reading). It runs through why it's generally best to avoid task manager/killer apps, plus it also explains how Android uses RAM - in a similar way to Windows Vista/7 (basically to speed up launching or re-opening apps).

It's probably worth noting that Android already has a function to force stop apps. If you go to Settings > About phone > Battery use, you'll get a list of what's been using the battery since it was last unplugged. Some widgets like Switch Pro have shortcuts to Battery use. It's useful if you've got Maps or a launcher or a rogue app sucking up battery in the background. As a rough idea, you may have an issue if anything not a system process is using more than 10%.

If you do need to force close an app, Battery use is generally the best way to go about it.

thx to cyvros for ur mentioning of the good article..
http://lifehacker.com/5650894/androi...uldnt-use-them

its a good read indeed, and for this topics discussion, i think the following paragraph gives a very good view on androids ram usage:

The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck.