[Galaxy 3 General] steph_tsf:
hello, I know there are some other threads on the xda forum related to potential memory leaks in Android phones, but if you check those threads you will see that they remain ignored, as some optimistic people said that the memory leak concept is irrelevent in Android because "Linux handles memory in different ways ... & blah blah blah ...". Don't know if those people actually got an Android phone in their hands more than a few days ...

If you own a Samsung i5800 Galaxy 3, you may have discovered that if your phone slows down or hangs when launching a new app, even after having killed all apps, that a quick and dirty way to get the phone healty again is to switch it off, then let it reboot !

Lets hope that lifts, cars, trucks, planes and boats are not relying on Android ! Saying to people "you may need to reboot your device" is a dangerous joke. Devices needing reboots while in use should be banned. Where are the regulating authorities ?

You may have noticed that the displayed amount of available RAM (Android Assistant) is not a good measure of the phone ability to quickly and safely launch a new app. There is a huge difference in the lauch time of a new app, say when 80MB remains free, between a phone that just got rebooted, and a phone that has been used for a few minutes, going from an app to another app, manually killing apps for getting the same 80MB (said so) RAM free, and trying to launch a new app.

My phone is :

GT-I5800

2.2

I5800XXJP4

2.6.32 root SE-S508 #1

FROYO.XWJPD

Just after booting my phone, Android Assistant is reporting a 02:10 minutes boot time (01:04 for the system) and 102MB RAM free.

Launching some newspaper read app on Internet reduces the available RAM to 98MB, then 94MB when using another newspaper reading app.

When launching GPS Status, and after closing it and closing all newspaper read apps, the available RAM drops to 90MB.

My phone is doing absolutely nothing.

When launching Android Assistant, the Froyo task manager becomes very slow and the icons of all the installed apps went replaced by the default android app icon, then gradually and very slowly getting replaced by the actual icons. This is an indication that the system is now cutting the corners for saving RAM, but why is it so as 90MB RAM are still free, and why is the reaction time becoming so slow ?

At this stage, when I try opening Navigon (my off-line navigation software), it takes ages to open, but it finally opens.

Then I close it. Android assistant is then reporting 85MB RAM free.

The phone gets less and less reactive. From this point, if I try opening one of my two newspaper reading apps, it always takes much more time, and sometimes never gets to run. The system sometimes waits indefinitely. The "return" (right key) is inoperative. I need to enter the Froyo task manager (long center key press) and manually kill the newspaper reading task. At this stage, Android assistant is reporting 81MB RAM free. And the "return" key is still inoperative, even in Android Assistant. I thus need to manually kill Android Assistant using the Froyo task manager (long center key press).

At this stage, if I again try opening Navigon, it takes much more time to open, so much time that I need to reboot my phone.

Actually, I learned to always reboot my phone before launching Navigon. And always reboot my phone after having used Navigon. That's completely ridiculous.

The system "thinks" there is enough memory, but obviously when comes the time to allocate memory to a new app, the allocation takes a huge time to complete (sometimes never completes), and while doing the allocation, and even when running the app, the "return" key gets inoperative. When entering the Froyo task manager (long center key press), the apps icons went replaced by default icons.

Please tell me what's going on. Is such misbehaviour particular to the Samsung i5800 hardware, or particular to the 2.6.32 kernel ? Are there other Android phones showing the same behaviour ?