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Android only sees 256MB of RAM?

Just to clarify: I follow your logic and completely agree with the train of thought here - I'm just looking for proof or hard evidence of any number, whether it be 288, 497, or 321.

Googling or searching for this thing on this forum gives a lot of hits of people noting 2.6.29 as the issue, but not providing a link or any firm evidence.

I am familiar with the 1:1 physical memory to swap memory ratio for UNIX/Linux-based operating systems, but I was not aware that Android even had swap space.

Personally I think 404MB is an odd number, but it has to come from somewhere.
 
Haelous said:
+1.... I'm kind of confused about where this thread is supposed to be going now.

There's no hard proof that it only sees 256MB. I can't find a single app that will display used / max ram both and say 256MB max. They all say 404MB. I can't find anything on Google Code or formal specifications for the Android 2.6.29 kernel.

Then it goes on to arbitrary fill rate performance...?
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404MB is from /proc/meminfo. you can use a file explorer and open the file as text. The first line reports MemTotal as 413908kB which is 404MB. This is what the OS sees...yeah i confused why it's not 512MB either..
 
y2kirk1028 said:
404MB is from /proc/meminfo. you can use a file explorer and open the file as text. The first line reports MemTotal as 413908kB which is 404MB. This is what the OS sees...yeah i confused why it's not 512MB either..
Click to expand...

Indeed it is, good find and thanks.
 
So we won't see a fix for this until maybe possibly 2.2 and we won't see 2.2 until months after it's released because HTC/Verizon usually take a few months to update. Great.
 
we currently have 404MB which really is plenty. i pretty much never see my phone with less than 100MB free. from what i hear android 2.2 will address this issue (or non issue) and give us our full 512.
 
Its a kernel problem. As in, the kernel version we're using in the Incredible can't address more than 256mb of memory, period.

2.2 will finally let us use all the memory that shipped with the phone as that has the newer kernel version.
 
there is no way in hell that's true. my droid had 226MB of ram. this phone definitely has way more. i am able to have a lot more things running and have quite a bit more free ram than i ever did on the droid. there is just no way this is true. the Incredible definitely has 404 free.
 
You're free to believe what you want to believe but this is a known limitation of kernel 2.6.29. Anything .33 and higher fixes this issue.
 
I agree that the Inc uses more than 256. If you disagree, you're wrong and while I normally dislike when people make a claim like that and don't back it up, if you have used this phone at all, you know it uses more than 256, and don't need further proof. And the claim that linux kernel 2.6.29 can't utilize more than 256 is too idiotic to even warrant a response. Yes the the release version of android that came with the N1 was limited to 256, but that hardly is to blame on the kernel, and does not preclude being patched. I believe the 404mb claim and am amazed we may actually be gaining even more RAM in the future.
 
aesirx said:
I agree that the Inc uses more than 256. If you disagree, you're wrong and while I normally dislike when people make a claim like that and don't back it up, if you have used this phone at all, you know it uses more than 256, and don't need further proof. And the claim that linux kernel 2.6.29 can't utilize more than 256 is too idiotic to even warrant a response. Yes the the release version of android that came with the N1 was limited to 256, but that hardly is to blame on the kernel, and does not preclude being patched. I believe the 404mb claim and am amazed we may actually be gaining even more RAM in the future.
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yup. and coming from a droid that only has 226, just from using the phone and seeing how much can run at once or even show up in the list of apps in memory i can tell it has much more. why would multiple apps all displaying 404 be wrong? what evidence do you have that multiple apps would be wrong and why or how would they be wrong? the phone has the hardware for 512 but right now 404 is open to be used.

if 2.2 unlocks even more then that's great, but the phone definitely has 404 right now and it definitely shows when using it.
 
aesirx said:
I agree that the Inc uses more than 256. If you disagree, you're wrong and while I normally dislike when people make a claim like that and don't back it up, if you have used this phone at all, you know it uses more than 256, and don't need further proof. And the claim that linux kernel 2.6.29 can't utilize more than 256 is too idiotic to even warrant a response. Yes the the release version of android that came with the N1 was limited to 256, but that hardly is to blame on the kernel, and does not preclude being patched. I believe the 404mb claim and am amazed we may actually be gaining even more RAM in the future.
Click to expand...

I guess you know a lot more than the people writing the mods at xda.
 
I'm not gonna get involved in the debate but FlyPenFly is correct. Android might be seeing 404MB of RAM but it's not able to utilize it because of the kernel. Android could see 5,000MB of RAM but it still can't utilize it unless the kernel allows it, that's just how it works.

Hardware communicates to software VIA the kernel.
 
CRPercodani said:
I'm not gonna get involved in the debate but FlyPenFly is correct. Android might be seeing 404MB of RAM but it's not able to utilize it because of the kernel. Android could see 5,000MB of RAM but it still can't utilize it unless the kernel allows it, that's just how it works.

Hardware communicates to software VIA the kernel.
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not trying to flame here or start a fight but flypenfly is right this is a known issue or non issue of the kernel that we are using now. its limted to allocating only 256mb of ram just think when 2.2 comes out and it will be able to allocate the full 512ram the speeds are going to be crazy... and also the people that were saying the incredible runs alot faster then the droid of course it does we have about 400 or so mhz on them in cpu clock speed.
Android 2.1 limited to 256MB SDRAM? - xda-developers
 
Emoney53 said:
not trying to flame here or start a fight but flypenfly is right this is a known issue or non issue of the kernel that we are using now. its limted to allocating only 256mb of ram just think when 2.2 comes out and it will be able to allocate the full 512ram the speeds are going to be crazy... and also the people that were saying the incredible runs alot faster then the droid of course it does we have about 400 or so mhz on them in cpu clock speed.
Android 2.1 limited to 256MB SDRAM? - xda-developers
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The speeds are going to be "crazy fast"??? lolz, the speed of the phone will not change on bit with all that extra RAM. The only time you will see a speed benefit is when you are low on memory which does not happen very often since we already have 260 free MBs once the phone boots.
 
Crow said:
The speeds are going to be "crazy fast"??? lolz, the speed of the phone will not change on bit with all that extra RAM. The only time you will see a speed benefit is when you are low on memory which does not happen very often since we already have 260 free MBs once the phone boots.
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thank you for making my point more clear
 
Crow said:
The speeds are going to be "crazy fast"??? lolz, the speed of the phone will not change on bit with all that extra RAM. The only time you will see a speed benefit is when you are low on memory which does not happen very often since we already have 260 free MBs once the phone boots.
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It's not going to be faster right off the bat, but this will allow for more background programs running without slowing down the phone at all... So overall it will stay fast for longer. Good enough for me.
 
jayno20 said:
It's not going to be faster right off the bat, but this will allow for more background programs running without slowing down the phone at all... So overall it will stay fast for longer. Good enough for me.
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I don't know about you guys but I was pretty excited after reading this thread! I mean everyone will probably agree that the Inc is a pure BEAST right now. This will just be one more thing we get! I personally think gifts are a good thing even if you don't need them :)
 
The only way that the inc is limited to 256mb of ram is if it has a cache partition. It can run more apps simultaneously than the droid, and runs a heavier version of android. If I still had my droid i could prove this. Nothing that anyone is saying is precluding the possibility of htc having written a patch for the kernel to allow it to address more ram.
If the xda developers knew all there is to know about the inc, it would be rooted.
 
So you're saying you think HTC, despite what Phone Information says, made a super secret patch to let the Incredible access more memory?
 
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