Where Oh Where Did My Memory Go?

From my dealings with the Hero, the apps are installed locally and not to the SD card.  flip260z, a friend of mine reported crashes on his Hero after having roughly 70 apps installed see this link for details.

http://www.csouthforums.com/2009/12/03/very-important-if-having-multiple-processes-close-/#post0

Just got this HTC Hero for my Honey. She loves it and I have installed many apps for her on it. One of these is Task Killer. I seem to remember it having around 70Megs free when I opened TaskKiller. Now it only has around 29 Megs free memory. Do installed, not running, apps take up space in the phone memory? This would mean you can only have so many apps installed no matter how big your SD card is? Anybody here can help me out. BTW I love this phone. I will be getting one for myself and saying bye bye to VZW as soon as CS offers the "buy back" option again.

-zuko

The most accurate place to check phone memory left is on bottom of sd card page in settings menu. I believe there is an app somewhere that allows you to install apps to the sd.  Not tried it myself but it might be worth looking into too.

It's a real problem with this phone, one I am not happy about, I have things like facebook, footprint and others  open up by themselves and run in the background, for no reason. i never use them, all they do is take up memory for other things i do want running. It is quite a flaw to not be able to remove unwanted crapware thats put on not only by the phone manufacturer but the carrier too. Im not as impressed with android as I thought i would be. There is not the control over the important things. Sure it's nice to change wallpapers, even themes, but to have junk apps, taking up memory is stupid. even with taskkillers, of which there are a few, there are memory leaks, and programs try to reopen themselves later on anyway, and it aggravates me to no end to have to constantly manage this crap when i need to use the phone for work or enjoy it for pleasure on my downtime. 

nothing wrong with coming with stock apps to get one started, but at least let people remove them if they are unwanted/unneeded or you find a better app to do the job.  Just my 2 cents. 

another thought, seems to me there should be a startup menu to pin certain apps to always start when the phone turns on or boots up, ie email or other fave apps and all the rest should stay off until called up. 

Hey guys. I wanted to try and clear a couple things up about the memory on the Hero. Kyle is right. All apps are stored in the device memory and not the SD card. There is an app in the market called App2sd that enables you to save them to the memory card. The only issue with that is that your device MUST be rooted, and have a custom ROM put on it. Problem with rooting your device is that it VOIDS the warranty. I repeat... Do not install the app unless you have rooted your device.

I currently have 76 apps loaded on my Hero. I have not.experienced any crashes or issues with performance. According to my Quick Settings app (which I highly recommend) I have 38% (61 Mb) of free space left on my device. I guess it comes down to how big the apps are that are installed.

This is not the RAM that is detected and kept up with by task killers. The two are totally different. I have read the pros and cons about using a task killer. Do I have one installed on my device? Yes. Do I use it? Hardly ever. When talking to a Linux programmer, he told me that the reason that some of these apps open on their own because the CPU is trying to keep itself busy. Totally different thinking if you have used a blackberry in the past. The device needs to stay busy and reallocates memory to the processes that you use. In a way it "learns" your habits and closes the programs that you do not need when more RAM is needed. I was told to quit worrying about the device, and just enjoy it. I keep up with my RAM and open processes using Estrongs Task Manager. Another great app. It also serves as my task killer when I want to use it for that.

Hope this helps.

good to see you around dm... thanks for all that info.. hope you didnt type it on your hero! lol

i can understand what you say but the device is not learning anything and unwanted and unneeded programs running is hurting my ability to use apps i want without causing freezes, stutter, lags, etc etc. 
I wouldn't care if 300 apps were running in the background as long as i could do what i want when i needed, without rebooting and constantly managing the apps, because the phone, or os actually is not doing it well enough or fast enough. I just found out I cannot stop twitter from updating completly. 

Not everyone has unlimited data, and it just isn't right to have it accessing data if you do not want it too. I went into menu-settings-social network-menu-accounts-there will be facebook, flickr,twitter

click each heading, then modify auto update to different times, or even off. You cannot do it with twitter tho for some reason. anyone know of a way around it? sometimes my gps symbol stays on and flashes even tho it has been turned off in settings, and it wil not stop until i reboot the phone, if i leave it my battery drains like no tomorrow. 

Also, having to hard reset sooooo many times to try to fix these issues, i have repurchased multiple apps, and so far have not been able to get a refund or even get an answer to my request for a refund from anyone. There needs to be a way to back this stuff up. There really should be an android desktop program for this, to facilitate backups easier, cleaner faster more efficient syncing of music, movies and apps.

another issue is with almost all apps killed via app killer, i still get memory draining away for no reason at all. i will start with 100-105 mb then 1 to 1.5 hrs later its 21-22 mbs. what happened? 
no one knows. 

Thanks Kyle. I'm hardcore. I type all my posts from my Hero!

bbrosen, It kinda sounds like you have an app that is playing havoc with your device. Which Twitter app are you using? I personally don't use Twitter, but I have read in multiple threads where the stock app Peep was causing various issues including some of the ones you have listed. Without knowing which apps you are using, it would be difficult narrow it down. I had similar issues when I had the weather bug app installed. My device didn't like it at all. Got rid of it and problem solved.

I would be more than happy to help you try to figure this out.

I do not use twittter, thats my whole point, these things run on their own for no reason, and in particular, twitter is permantly set up to use data services and i cannot get it to stop. see the settings i spoke of and see if you can turn yours off. even tho i do not have an account, it will try to log on and retrieve data, which bothers me because it uses memeory i want and need and some people just do not have unlimited data..not cool in my book. 

If anyone has an answer i'll listen but apparently android is supposed to run apps randomly. This stuff happens even with the stock apps and nothing more. I have hard reset and replaced my phone to no avail. Its kind of like a schizzo os to me. not sure why my gps symbol is flashing so much even when it is not supposed to be on and shows off in the settings, and it drains the heck outta my battery if i igmnore it. this happens randomly. I have to reboot to fix. seems like a lot of management is needed with this OS. which if one is a geek, might not care, but i am busy at my job and need a good smartphone to do the job.

Im willing to wait until the 2.1 update but i am loseing patience with android, cs, and htc. seems like a lot of issues and we are waiting until maybe late spring early summer for fixes? crazy .

As a technically inclined person, I experienced headaches when I first got my Hero, worrying about running apps, memory, etc, etc, with a few unpleasant experiences.

After doing a little reading and research, I decided to ignore these things and just use the device and try to enjoy it.  I am very pleased with the outcome.  I experience very few lags, and on a normal day my battery lasts from about 5:30am to 10 or 11pm.  I have about 40 apps installed, use peep for twitter frequently, use facebook occassionally, use the HTC messages app for SMS heavily, GPS always on, WiFi usually  on, and so on.  I don't remember the last time I even opened a task killer.

I hate to see people get so frustrated when I'm absolutely loving this phone.  The extremely different experiences don't make sense to me.

Check out this thread over at androidforums.com...
Task Managers and your Hero

I have to echo those remarks made by asmith. I too stressed the device when I first got it because I was so used to having to do the "upkeep" on my blackberry for.memory. I had open apps that I didnt open to show up all the time. It drove me nuts until I talked to my friend Scott who is very much on the top of his game. He assured me that it was somewhat "normal" and to ignore it. I did, and have not looked back.

I read that post from Andriod Forums, and that is almost exactly what my buddy told me. I too experience very little lag, and my gps and Bluetooth stay on about 75% of the time.

I hope we can help fix your issues, because this is a great device. I don't think I will ever use anything but Android again. I love it that much.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-general-discussions/1480-please-read-do-not-worry-about-apps-running-background.html

http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid/18334-task-killer-apps-truth.html

Here is another couple threads from other forums that basically validate the theory on apps running in the background. I hope that you find it helpful.

I am all ears. Open to any help. Again it does not matter what runs really but when the phone is slow and laggy freezes shutters etc etc and I have only 23 mbs of memory left to open pdt files or whatever else I need it is frustrating. I went with Android os because I thought I would have more control .

I do not particularly like apps accessing data or RAM on their own unless I authorize it too but if the phone wasn't so busy maybe it would not have issues. I will have to live with it I guess untill Android grows up and improves. Any reason gps stays active even after it is closed? Any way to backup apps and settings? Anyway to get a refund of apps I had to pay for more than once due to hardresets? Anyway to get rid of keyboard lag and scrolling lag and page and app freezes?

Right now those are my biggest problems. The phone is great I think most my issues are Android related . I am used to apple, if I had a hardware software or app issue they were the only ones I had to go too and updates were not filtered thru ATT, the carrier. It kind of the wild west with android. Google HTC and cs all have their hands in it as well as the independent app developers.

Trying to get info and answers is a chore sometimes dealing with several participants.

Android has the potential to outdo the iPhone and symbian and the others. It is more affordable and more accesable to the masses.

Cs HTC hero has been rooted and I may go that route. I am a network admin , installer and repairman as well as a programmer so its not like I couldn't do it. I am not so sure I want to bother yet.
Ok lunch is over and this is my first big post done on my hero. Thank god the spell check works.

Look forward to hearing on any ideas anyone has.

All I can say right now is to stop using taskiller and give it some time to see if that resolves any issues.

My only gripes with the Hero are hardware related.  I'm now on my 3rd one, and it's broken.

1st Hero - metal flaked off the end button
2nd Hero - busted speaker... or something similar
3rd Hero - cracked chrome around charging port
All in 2 months!!  None of them were ever dropped!!

A Cellular South employee told me I could not exchange any more of them.  I would have to go through the warranty process.  I doubt they will warranty that chrome piece, assuming it was dropped.

The chrome charging port is a known htc issue. It cracks all on its own with normal use.
I found this site and for now the software is free to sync music, videos and pics, but not apps. looks somewhat promising. Here is a link for those that want to try it. I want to not use my ipod touch and a phone, but have it all in one, this may help replace itunes. http://www.doubletwist.com/dt/Home/Index.dt  

I have stopped useing task killer completely, I even uninstalled it to keep from being tempted to fiddle. 

Here is some more information on the memory issues as well as apps...This issue alone can be the Android Killer if it does not change...i encourage everyone to comment via the link to google about this issue, i have.

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ardoreal  Member   Join Date: Nov 2009 Posts: 83

Want better apps? Here's the thing... Everywhere I look, from the developers of Diner Dash to the developers over at Groundspeak and Gameloft...the sentiment is always the same...the app space limitation is really the core of our issues.Google has been trying to pass this off onto the handset makers, but really we need to thumb Google to allow Android Market to install app data to the SD card.Right now the reason we have such limited Java-esque apps is because the devs are trying to cram everything into as small a space as possible. On the iPhone devs have a virtually limitless amount of space to work with. On Android developers have to work with 1-5MB. This prohibits us from getting apps and games rich with detailed art and audio. If our developers could tap into the SD card we would have some fantastic stuff. Even Google could improve things like their Navigation app, and some of their other Labs software.We need to keep this matter first and foremost on Google's attention until this gets fixed.Firstly, go here and put a star on this issue at this URL Issue 1151 - android - RFE: Support install of apps on SD cards - Project Hosting on Google CodeThen place a comment to voice your opinion and that you demand we get high quality apps that can define Android. With a Droid class phone, we have the horsepower to chew through richly detailed apps.Then, signup at this group and ask for an update on where Google is with this issue. Google engineers frequent this discussion group. It is moderated, but if enough of us try to start a new topic addressing the issue they will likely answer.Discussions - android-platform | Google GroupsThe developers have tried, we the end users need to voice our feedback and influence them to change their stance on this. When this gets fixed, we will see some more apps that we can love. __________________Posted from my Droooid.

All I can say right now is to stop using taskiller and give it some time to see if that resolves any issues.
My only gripes with the Hero are hardware related.  I'm now on my 3rd one, and it's broken.
1st Hero - metal flaked off the end button
2nd Hero - busted speaker... or something similar
3rd Hero - cracked chrome around charging port
All in 2 months!!  None of them were ever dropped!!
A Cellular South employee told me I could not exchange any more of them.  I would have to go through the warranty process.  I doubt they will warranty that chrome piece, assuming it was dropped.

-asmith001

Wow, talk about poor luck with devices. Sorry you had so many problems with what appear to be quality issues.

As far as your memory recommendations above, I wholeheartedly second and am happy to see that i'm not the only one with your way of thinking.  I don't use taskkiller anymore AT ALL.  It's only installed for that errant app i try from the market that doesn't want to close correctly. Taskkiller really paints a poor picture of whats going on with your memory.  Just because an app is listed does not mean it is "running".  From what i've seen it's more like it's "cached" in a way. Linux (android) will dynamically refresh the cache to allow you to open pdf's and other files that you want that take up more ram than what appears to be available.

it's actually pretty efficient.