[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] digre:
Hi there,

I have a Motorola Razr Maxx (Droid XT912) and I have serious problems with my RAM becoming full and slowing down my phone to death.

Playing around with the phone I have seen that when the phone starts being slow, several apps are running although I did not launch them. I have been looking quite a bit for explanations and solutions but I'm not able to solve, maybe there's a genius out there who is...

I'll try to explain what really bugs me since quite a lot of time now:

1) I understand that some apps are programmed to be launched at startup for whichever reason, but why does an app then start unless invoked for a specific purpose by another app?

2) Here the apps which are now running on my phone although I did not launch them since last startup:

- Facebook (I understand, although I think I should be given the freedom to choose wether to have it running in background or not)

- Google search (why?!?)

- Google + (why?!? ...never used, never created an account)

- MapFactor Navigator (why?!? ...I am sitting at home)

- Shell Motorist (why?!? sitting at home I might be looking for a beer, not for a gas station)

- Rocket Player (why?!? not in the mood of listening to music)

- Shazam (see above)

- Chrome (again, ...why?!?)

- ES File Explorer (why?!? I probably used it the last time 3 months ago)

- Telegram (why?!? used one time the day after Zuckie bought WhatsApp)

- eBay (why?!? may be never used)

- Picasa uploader (why?!? never used Picasa)

- AndroZip File Manager (why?!? used one time to compress a file)

- Android Video Player (why?!? I'm watching TV on my 46" TV set)

- Dropbox (why?!? last used two months ago)

- Hangouts (why?!? never used at all)

- GMail (why?!? never used at all, no account configured)

- MotoCast (why?!?!?!?!?!?)

3) In order to understand a bit more, since a couple of months I use Startup Cleaner to kill the unnecessary apps after startup, but several of them just restart a bit later. (why?!?)

4) I also installed Clean Master to check exactly which apps are running, how much memory they use, how much memory is currently free and to kill the unnecessary apps and see what happens. The result was that when RAM is filled around 80%, the phone starts to get dramatically slow. If I kill the unnecessary apps, the phone comes back to life but after some time some of those unwanted and unnecessary apps are again running.

5) I have been reading quite a lot of times that Android has a smart memory management. Apps are kept open when you don't use them anymore, in order to quickly get back to the last status, and that you don't need a task killer because as soon as needed, the system will close the unnecessary apps to have free RAM for the one you just launched. From my experience this is absolutely not true, ...my Android gets turtle slow (something like really freezing for 30 secs) quite often. I really love a lot Android, but why do I have all these problems which I never experience on my iPad, on my old WinMobile and on my very old Psion Series 5?

6) I do not want to root the phone.

7) I would like to keep those apps, I might need an FTP client twice a year, but those two times I do need it.

8) Thanks for reading and for your ...HELP!!!!!!!!!!