3GS is sluggish - 12 MB free memory

[venuslight]

Hi,

I have been having trouble recently with my 3GS running low on memory and getting sluggish. It got so bad yesterday, that I was playing music in the iPod app and trying to switch to check Twitter that the music started skipping. Lasted like 15 seconds until I finally got the Twitter app closed.

According to SBSettings, when I reboot, I have ~135MB free. As I use apps, the memory gets lower and lower until it stays pretty consistent in the 10-15MB area. Occasionally it actually drops below 10. When that happens, I can tell the phone gets really slow and unresponsive. It's like the OS is not closing unused apps soon enough or freeing up memory. I had been using biteSMS and thought maybe that was a culprit since it was running in the background, so I went into Cydia and removed it. It seemed to work a little better, but eventually it got down to the 12MB area and stayed there.

Anyone have any ideas to what might be causing this?

 

[jav6454]

Remember, under iPhone OS 4, you don't close the application, it's state gets saved into memory. So if you have applications you don't really use alot, close them manually and you save space.

 

[brendu]

In SBSettings under Processes, I use the "Free Up Memory" option all the time. It doesn't seem to close out any apps but always gets me a good deal of memory freed up. Not sure what it might be clearing out of memory but I never seem to notice anything different in my backgrounded apps when I return to them.

 

[Applejuiced]

Try a restart once in a while.
Like a computer the longest you have it on the lower the system resources will get.
I doubt Bitesms had anything to do with it.

 

[-aggie-]

Get RemoveBG and have it in SBSettings to clear all your apps running in the background.

 

[wordoflife]

My iPhone isn't jailbroken, and I haven't had that issue. Its probably something you installed via Jailbreak.

 

[tempusfugit]

low ram free isn't what is making your phone sluggish.

The OS will re-allocate memory when needed, and can manage memory a lot better than the end user. Its time for a reboot or there is a process causing the lag.

Free memory = wasted memory a lot of the time in computing.

 

[lucifiel]

As the post above me indicates, it's not the low ram, it's more likely that something is memory leaking.

 

[justinwebb]

my 3gs has been doing this too for some reason, post up your packages and we can see what matches up.

 

[lucifiel]

I just thought of this, but you don't have that VM mod installed do you?

 

[Carlanga]

leave less apps open...

 

[lucifiel]

leave less apps open...

Apple's implementation of multitasking leaves ALL apps open (or frozen in RAM) till you run out of RAM. So how would one do this without constantly using Remove BG, or opening the task switcher? I suppose one could configure Backgrounder to do this, I think someone did do this and posted information concerning this.

But, I think the culprit is a bad memory leak from a shoddy cydia package or poorly written app rather than "leave less apps open"

 

[justinwebb]

i have multitasking disabled on mine so that theory is out

 

[Carlanga]

...But, I think the culprit is a bad memory leak from a shoddy cydia package or poorly written app rather than "leave less apps open"

Yes, leaks could be the reason... but remember also, that cydia apps/packages don't usually implement the multitasking of and most are running all the time, which leaves less memory to haggle w/ other apps like exchange mail, safari, ipod, all personal apps, etc... When I refer to apps, I meant official ones and cydia apps & packages...

TS, I will recommend to update to new fw or restore as NEW w/out backups to start fresh, if you have been using the same fw w/ lots of cydia apps and removing them and so on, stuff like this sometimes happens and usually a restore as NEW usually fixes things...