[Moto G 4G Android Development] USCanthony:
Low signal and RAM indications

Are the lower signal and low RAM issues actual lower signal strength and lower RAM available or are these problems with the meters not showing the correct amount? I ask this because I have also noticed that my signal strength indicator shows a much weaker signal available when using this ROM but my ability to use my phone normally does not support what the signal indicator is displaying. I don't get a really good signal when inside my house and with the stock ROM it was two bars at best. With Carbon ROM it generally doesn't even light up a single bar when in my house yet I can still access the Internet and even place and receive voice calls without any noticeable difference from when the stock ROM was on the phone. Carbon ROM is currently indicating my signal strength is -122 dBm 16 asu yet I can place voice calls without them dropping or breaking up. If my signal strength were really -122 dBm 16 asu, I shouldn't be able to place clear and unhindered voice calls so easily.

This brings me to the low RAM issue. I had a very different experience than most people are having. When on the stock ROM my available RAM was often at critical levels and the phone was often stalling and taking it's sweet time to do things because there simply was not enough RAM available. There is a whole laundry list of Motorola related files with the stock ROM that make a mockery of any close to pure Android claim and they are chewing up some RAM. I switched to Carbon ROM for that reason. Normally I would not think that a custom ROM would be more memory efficient than a ROM that is claimed to be close to pure Android but with the long list of files that start with Motorola and then the other additions such as "Alert", "Assist", "Spotlight", etc...., I figured that the stock ROM wasn't quite as close to Android as claimed so I gave it a try. I figured that I might get a little bit more available RAM with Carbon but I am getting a lot more RAM. With the same apps installed as I had installed when the phone was running the stock ROM, I am generally not dipping below 170mb available and around 220mb to 230mb is about what I see as an average amount of available memory. On the high side I have seen over 300Mb available but that is usually after a reboot without having run any apps since the reboot. There is one thing I have noticed though, the amount of available RAM that is being reported on the "Settings/Apps/Running" screen is always much lower than what is being reported by the RAM bar in the "Recents Panel". If I go into an app such as Android Tuner Pro and check my RAM via their Task Manager, what is being reported there generally agrees (or is very close) to what is displayed by the RAM bar in the recents panel. What is listed at the bottom of the "Settings/Apps/Running" screen never even comes close to agreeing with those other two and is always much much lower that what they report. So is this a case of an indicator not properly reporting the available RAM or is it a real low RAM issue?

Update: I was triple checking my findings and both Android Tuner Pro and the recents panel were reporting 187mb's free and 184 mb's free. I then went to the "Settings/Apps/Running" screen and it was reporting only 110 mb free but here is the very weird thing....10 seconds later that dropped to 100 mb free. A few seconds after that it dropped to 97 mb free and then down to 94 mb free a few seconds later. From there it dropped to 88 mb free and then to 82 mb free and it kept on dropping and dropping and dropping every few seconds. I don't know where it would have stopped because I let curiosity get the best of me when it dropped into the low 70's and I went back into Android Tuner Pro and the recents panel to see what was going on there. They were about the same as when I had last looked at them but had actually risen a few mb each and were reporting 189 mb's free and 185 mb's free respectively.