OTish Battery like on smartphone?

[Bob Martin]

That's one of the reasons I will only buy Nexus devices. Pure Android, with nothing added.

[Bill]

That's all very well, but doesn't explain why all the unused apps are sitting in volatile memory when I would have expected them to just be pulled in when wanted.

At the moment, at a quick glance, for example, Google Search seems to be sitting on 38.39 megs after clearing data, other Google Play things seem to be hogging memory. After a lot of housekeeping, I have 424 out of 512 megs used. It's very rare that all the apps that look to be updated get updated because of lack of memory.

It just seems a funny way of working.

[Reentrant]

That setting in Power Management just controls whether apps are allowed to use GPS, not whether it's on or off. So unless you're running a SatNav app of some sort it doesn't make much difference.

[Bob Eager]

But if you let Google use location information (or a host of other apps, hard to pin them all down), the GPS will still be used.

[Mathew Newton]

'Unused' apps might well be sitting in volatile memory but that doesn't mea n that the memory is not available for other apps - quite the opposite in f act.

When running multiple apps concurrently they all need a share of the availa ble memory. Many apps, when not actually running in the foreground, can sit in the background in a state of sleep and need not place any burden on pro cessor or memory resources. If such apps haven't modified their use of thei r portion of volatile memory then that memory can be safely reallocated els ewhere should a new app come along that needs it. The reason this memory is n't freed up as a matter of course is because you might want to switch to t hat background/sleeping app and hence performance would suffer if it had th e memory blanked for no reason because it'd have to read it all back in aga in before you could switch.

When resources are running low only then will the memory manager go round a nd look at what apps are in least use and kick them out of memory. Apps run ning in the foreground, or actively running in the background (e.g. a satna v app that needs to keep running even if you're not actually viewing it but still need the voiced instructions), won't by definition by considered 'le ast used' and therefore won't be kicked out unless things get really bad an d something has to give (or memory is swapped out to nvram).

Having volatile memory less than than 100% utilised is inefficient. Far bet ter to keep that memory as full as possible e.g. with shared code and other frequently used data. Clearing memory out just for the sake of showing you 've got loads of free space is wasteful if you end up having to subsequentl y read the same data back in from (slower) nvram because you've run the app again.

Mathew

[Mathew Newton]

Very rarely in my experience. Location information is available from network analysis and other sources - only if the accuracy is insufficient for the task in hand will Android switch to using GPS (and let you know of that fact with the status bar icon).

For example, a weather app will function quite happily with the approximate location provided by cell tower based location service whereas a satnav app will prefer a much higher level of accuracy and thus make a call to the GPS location service instead.

[Bill]

In message , Mathew Newton writes

Yes, I understand this, but what I find on my tablet (yes, I know the thread is about smartphones) is that when I fire it up it finds a bunch of updates and almost always at least one of these fails with "not enough memory".

Similarly, I tried to install, for example, the excellent Martin Guitar tuning app and it failed on the 512meg machine saying "insufficient memory". It installed OK on the 1GHz machine and says it is using

21.46megs, which is less than many and less than the 52megs available memory on the 512meg machine.

[matthelliwell]

I find FB in particular likes to turn on my GPS to know where I am so turning it off does help with the battery like, for me anyway.

[matthelliwell]

Does you have Samsung Knox pre-installed on your phone? That sometimes like to go mad and eat up the battery. You can try installing a wakelock detector and Better Battery Stats (or similar) which might give you a clue what's going on.

[John Rumm]

Android would let you, but much depends on what your mobile operator has decided to preload and "require" you to have...

[John Rumm]

That is usually because its trying to install them into the internal memory rather than the flash (or SD card if you have one). Many apps support being moved out of internal storage and into flash storage.

You can move installed apps from Settings->apps, then select and app and hit the "move to SD" or similar option at the bottom of the summary screen.

There are a few large apps (Chrome for example) that insist on being stored only in internal memory though.

You can also download a utility like App2SD that will let you bulk move apps to SD and hence free lots of internal storage.

[alan]

It's also down to what deal the phone manufacturer have with the various organisations. Even on a non-locked phone there are applications that cannot be removed until the phone is rooted.

There may even some settings that cannot be changed without rooting a phone, such as telling your GPS that you don't live in the USA.

[The Medway Handyman]

Thanks to all. Turned off WiFi & Bluetooth yesterday AM and battery still at 64% when I got home.

No idea how they suddenly got turned on, piggin smart phones have a mind of their own!

[Bill]

In message , John Rumm writes

I have been doing this manually, but I just ran this app. It found 2 moveable apps, one of which was itself. I now have 0 moveable, 20 on SD card, 10 unmoveable.

I've just tried the Martin tuner again, "Insufficient storage available".

Does Android have any diagnostics to log what is happening? As I say, it's not just this program, it's updates to other installed apps that can't find enough space.

[Bob Eager]

More likely to be that the dedicated program 'memory' (persistent storage) for actual apps has run out. That happened to me recently on my S2; a rather large app just wouldn't install until I had actually deinstalled some crud I didn't need any more.

That's when I bought a new phone...

[Mathew Newton]

Bill, I think we might be talking at cross purposes here - perhaps as a result of me making an incorrect assumption.

When I use the term 'memory' I am referring to the volatile RAM used to store running processes and associated data. Failing app updates are more likely to be an issue of lack of *storage* space i.e. non-volatile RAM.

Are you sure the error message really is 'not enough *memory*'?

Assuming it is a storage issue it might be worth manually going through the file system with a file manager and finding data files that could be removed to free up some space e.g. downloads, music, video etc.

Mathew

[GMM]

Sometimes it can just be a matter of how strong and consistent the signal is where you are: In my previous office at work, I would use about 50% of my iPhone battery each day even without using the phone significantly. I moved to a new location not very far away (1 floor down and on the other side of the building) and now I use about 20% a day, with no change in settings (essentially everything off except for wifi).

[Bill]

I'm really grateful for the interest in this. I'll stick with what happens with the Martin Tuner, if I may. It starts installing after downloading, but then almost immediately there is a message "Error (in blue above a blue line). Insufficient storage space available. OK"

I have installed and run App2SD, which presents itself as an icon called AppManager. That didn't change anything. In Developer Options, I've ticked "Don't Keep Activities" and "Show all ANR's". Background process limit is set to Standard Limit.

Under Storage, it says Total Space 504MB, Apps(Data and Media Content) 369MB Available 58.41MB

This doesn't seem to add up and is just moderately close to what ES Task Manager says. I assume this is the volatile ram?

Under NAND Flash it says Total space 5.78MB, then some details ending in Available 5.56GB

Under SD Card Total space 14.83GB Available 14.83GB

There is no usb storage.

There are a few more Apps I could remove, or I could do a complete reset.

I have the older tablet with 1GB ram and actually mostly use the Blackberry Playbook (shame about them).