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iPhone Where did my available memory go?

phpeters87

phpeters87

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 9, 2009
91
0
I've been having problems recently with my JBreaked iPhone.

(3G / 16 GB / 3.1.2 / 05.11.07)

I have Memtool installed as well as the available memory displayed on the top of the screen.

The available memory used to run/average around 64MB, and the apps displayed in Memtool (Springboard, MobilePhone, and others) would add up to about 64MB

64+64=128

However, my available memory has been displaying as being in the high 30's, low 40's lately.

I go into "Memtool" and add up the amount of memory being used, and it's still about 64MB, yet available memory is about 40MB nowadays.

Where did 24MB of RAM go?

My phone does not appear to be running slow or suffering a loss of performance, but why are at least two different apps showing on average 40MB available when I used to see 64MB available?

As mentioned, no extraneous processes running, and the ones that are add up to about 64MB as they always did.

So, where's the 24MB RAM?
 
Reboot, respring, turned it off overnight, etc...
Reinstalled Cydia and Winterboard.

Nothing seems to work.
 
When I had my 3G, without jailbreaking it, I could hardly ever get above 50MB free. I highly, highly doubt you will come close to 64MB while its jailbroken.

Its just system applications. I know mail takes up 10-15 MB at a time.
 
Mlrollin91 said:
When I had my 3G, without jailbreaking it, I could hardly ever get above 50MB free. I highly, highly doubt you will come close to 64MB while its jailbroken.

Its just system applications. I know mail takes up 10-15 MB at a time.
Click to expand...

I can post screen shots of it as high as 82MB after running "Free Up Memory" app.

Why would I lie about this?

Mail isn't running either, Notifications is turned "Off" and "Fetch New Data" is "Off" as well.

I went into Memtool and added up how much memory each application is using and it comes out to about 64 MB, and my free memory used to display, on average, 64MB

Not to be rude, but I "highly doubt" you know what you're talking about.
 
ClutchThese said:
in anycase, i wouldn't even worry about it. doesn't seem like that big of a deal anyways. Is it causing you to crash often or something?
Click to expand...

I'm missing approx. 24MB of free memory out of 64 MB of free memory.

It's cause for concern.
 
Here's what I used to see after I ran Processes > Free Up Memory application:




Uploaded with ImageShack.us

83MB of free memory.

Now, I'm lucky to see 55 MB at most of free memory with no apps other than SpringBoard, MobilePhone and the required background system apps that use only a few MB's of free memory.

Like I said, I'm missing about 24MB of free memory.

Where did it go?

Will it get worse?
 
phpeters87 said:
Here's what I used to see after I ran Processes > Free Up Memory application:


n9getattachmentaspxoj


83MB of free memory.

Now, I'm lucky to see 55 MB at most of free memory with no apps other than SpringBoard, MobilePhone and the required background system apps that use only a few MB's of free memory.

Like I said, I'm missing about 24MB of free memory.

Where did it go?

Will it get worse?
Click to expand...


well, what have you loaded since then?

somethings changed. memory doesn't just fanish...i'd say you loaded something that youre not seeing. i honestly don't think its a big deal.

did you recently update your phone?
 
Haven't loaded anything.

Like I said, I go into MemTool and add up the amount of RAM being used by SpringBoard about 28MB RAM, MobileDevice about 11MB RAM, and the rest is various system apps and it comes out to about 64MB

My phone has 128 MB RAM, so on average, it used to display about 64MB of free memory, but now the average is about 40MB of free memory.

No extraneous apps running in the background.

24MB RAM just seemed to disappear.
 
i never have more than ~30mb free on my 3G JB and I don't have all that WB crap you have. I am surprised that you can even run your phone with 4.0 and winterboard.

I am only JB'n, have nothing installed other than SBSettings. My 3G is so painfully slow now.
 
Mlrollin91 said:
When I had my 3G, without jailbreaking it, I could hardly ever get above 50MB free. I highly, highly doubt you will come close to 64MB while its jailbroken.

Its just system applications. I know mail takes up 10-15 MB at a time.
Click to expand...

Despite what you say about your 3G, this figure (50-55) is just about the best a JB 3G will display. And it's been discussed here before by multiple 3G owners all with the same experience (except you of course)

Just spitting out the facts, as you say, why would I lie.

Perhaps you should do a Google search ?
 
I have no idea how you had that much free memory to begin with. I never had winterboard or themes installed and my phone idled around 30mb free. After a purge the max I could ever get was 50mb. Were you using a program like imemory or any program that 'increased' your available RAM by creating a page file? Otherwise I can only think sbsettings was misreporting the available RAM.
 
What's the obsession with free memory? "Free" memory is wasted memory; it's not like your phone is doing anything beneficial with it...if it were it would no longer be free! The iPhone manages memory fairly well, and will free up memory by closing unused processes when it's needed. If your phone is working fine, there's nothing to worry about, whatever your "free" memory.
 
I have a Jb 3G running IOS4 with wallpaper and Multitasking. My phone would hover around 30mbs free. When I'd try to open a program like Cydia the number would drop as low as 6mbs free! With only 6mbs free most apps would just hang/ crash. Then someone listed an app in a past thread about iMemory Enhancer from Gumballtech.Repo. With this app/ hack and SBSettings I can free up to 82mbs! My phone runs better/ faster than ever. I just check'd, with no open apps running I have 75mbs free. If you don't mind waiting a few seconds for app launches, I recommend closing any/ all apps when not needed. And installing Backgrounder to "background/ dismiss" apps that you do/ do not want running in the background. For me this has been the best way to keep my "up" time and reduce crashes/ reboots.
 
MrThompsonR said:
I have a Jb 3G running IOS4 with wallpaper and Multitasking. My phone would hover around 30mbs free. When I'd try to open a program like Cydia the number would drop as low as 6mbs free! With only 6mbs free most apps would just hang/ crash. Then someone listed an app in a past thread about iMemory Enhancer from Gumballtech.Repo. With this app/ hack and SBSettings I can free up to 82mbs! My phone runs better/ faster than ever. I just check'd, with no open apps running I have 75mbs free. If you don't mind waiting a few seconds for app launches, I recommend closing any/ all apps when not needed. And installing Backgrounder to "background/ dismiss" apps that you do/ do not want running in the background. For me this has been the best way to keep my "up" time and reduce crashes/ reboots.
Click to expand...

Be careful with these 'memory enhancer' programs. They create a pagefile on the iPhone NAND memory, and gives you an illusion that you have more free RAM. The problem with this is the phone is constantly reading and writing to the RAM. The iPhone's NAND isn't designed for this kind of data trashing, and the problem is amplified because you keep writing to the same area over and over. I've heard of people's iPhone's memory being corrupted and failing. Be warned.
 
oftheheavens said:
i never have more than ~30mb free on my 3G JB and I don't have all that WB crap you have. I am surprised that you can even run your phone with 4.0 and winterboard.

I am only JB'n, have nothing installed other than SBSettings. My 3G is so painfully slow now.
Click to expand...

I'm not running 4.0, I'm running 3.1.2

dhlizard said:
Despite what you say about your 3G, this figure (50-55) is just about the best a JB 3G will display. And it's been discussed here before by multiple 3G owners all with the same experience (except you of course)

Just spitting out the facts, as you say, why would I lie.

Perhaps you should do a Google search ?
Click to expand...

I posted photographic evidence above as having as much as 83MB of free memory.

Several Utilities on my iPhone used to report the same, a high in the low 80's and an average of 64MB of free memory.

And yes, when I'm running multiple apps and web pages now, the memory counter falls into the single digits and the UI will eventually freeze up where before that wouldn't happen.

That is why I'm wondering where that extra 24 MB of free memory suddenly went as multi-tasking and running multiple apps now results in free memory dropping into the single digits and the UI locking up, requiring a hard reboot.
 
Have you tried restoring and re-JBing the phone?

I just wonder if you will ever get back up to that 80+mb free after that. I think this was a fluke personally, my 3G never went above 50mb when it was JB.
 
r3voLoL said:
Have you tried restoring and re-JBing the phone?

I just wonder if you will ever get back up to that 80+mb free after that. I think this was a fluke personally, my 3G never went above 50mb when it was JB.
Click to expand...

Not yet, as I have some concerns about being able to JB again after doing a restore.

When I JBreaked the late last year when blackra1n first became available, that was the number of free memory displayed after freeing up memory (low 80's as pictured as recently as June of this year) and it averaged in the mid to low 60's until recently where the average is now about 40MB

So either I've lost 24mb of free ram somewhere, or several different utilities all displayed the incorrect amount of free ram.

I've also noticed since this happened that my battery life is not what it used to be either - I've seen it drop from 71% to 61% within a matter of minutes while watching video.
 
thelatinist said:
What's the obsession with free memory? "Free" memory is wasted memory; it's not like your phone is doing anything beneficial with it...if it were it would no longer be free! The iPhone manages memory fairly well, and will free up memory by closing unused processes when it's needed. If your phone is working fine, there's nothing to worry about, whatever your "free" memory.
Click to expand...
You're obviously not using a 3G. When you get around 4-5 MB free (can happen easily under iOS 4 running a single app such as web browsers iCab or Atomic) things get sluggish and usually end up with the app suddenly quitting.
 
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