[Q] RAM Usage increases when Force Closing?

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greatnoob

New member
Mar 29, 2014
3
0
New owner of a Nexus 7 2013 here. Had it for a month or so now.

So the device came shipped with 4.3, I updated the device to 4.4.2 OTA. Weird thing is, everytime I "Force Close" an app from Settings, the RAM usage decreases, then it INCREASES!

Google Play Store (44mb), current RAM usage: 444mb

Force close Play Store, current RAM Usage: 400mb
*a couple of seconds later after display refresh*

current RAM Usage:480mb

This keeps going. No matter how many apps I force close, the RAM usage keeps increasing until the point where it reaches ~660-~700mb!
Is this normal? Does this happen to anybody else? Is there something wrong with the garbage collector? Also my RAM usage is in the 400mb range on startup and a LOT of apps run on startup which I need to force close manually (is it normal they run on startup?).

Thanks!
 
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greatnoob

New member
Mar 29, 2014
3
0
So memory usage is supposed to increase when you force close apps, so I take it this is usual for Android? But is there any explanation as to why ram usage increases instead of decreasing like on iOS? Is the garbage collection on this thing significantly different to conventional Linux kernels or for that matter Windows' variant too?

Sounds like a very stupid idea tbh
 

Captain Sweatpants

Senior Member
Feb 18, 2014
329
85
Edinburgh
So memory usage is supposed to increase when you force close apps, so I take it this is usual for Android? But is there any explanation as to why ram usage increases instead of decreasing like on iOS? Is the garbage collection on this thing significantly different to conventional Linux kernels or for that matter Windows' variant too?

Sounds like a very stupid idea tbh

OK wrong forum this one is for the n7 2012 but your question is more to do with how android runs rather than specifically the nexus.
First of all forget everything you think you know about ram. In android the more ram being used the better the device will run. This is not always true but largely the more apps being held in ram the smoother android will run them. When an app closes it moves from running services to cached and the system will then call on that if you reopen the app or clear space if it needs it thus saving itself valuable power. The other reason for not force closing apps it they no longer run in the background as they were designed to. This is one reason task killers are bad for your system. If you close the mail app you won't get emails, if you close the clock your alarm won't go off, if you close the play store your apps won't update ect. Android is as far removed from windows as iOS is although windows 7 does use a similar idea towards ram. It doest need you to clear ram its perfectly capable of doing it itself. The exception to this is when you get badly designed apps that don't clear up after themselves and stay in the running services.
Try looking in your cached services you will probably find that's where your ram increase is. By force closing apps you make more work for the system reopening them.
Look here for more information about this
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=904023
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