Optimising (and rationalising) RAM on the Nokia N97

One other thing, not mentioned here, is that in my experience the N97 does seem to have somewhat of a RAM leak and does need a reboot to reclaim lost RAM every so often. I have found this issue to be more extreme in the v20 FW.

Cleaning up the cache of google maps can give you a lot of free space back as wel(25 mb's in my case) click on options>options>restore google maps

No, no, no, I'm talking about RAM!! Why do people KEEP getting RAM mixed up with internal flash memory? Gah.

Ya I agree with mbrett , roobt does clear atleast 10 to 15 mb of ram even with the new firmware 21.0.045

The AccuWeather widget is a disaster. I tested an N97, and it ruined battery life by forcing the data connection to stay on continuously, and reverted to GPS even though I set a fixed location. I couldn't find any settings to adjust the update interval either. Nokia should have told them to shove it and quickly ported the Foreca widget from Maemo. I think many new owners don't realize this and blame the phone instead.

My N900 is set to keep data active all the time, but it's designed for it, and I can live with the resulting battery life.

My tip for ram is "know your enemy"

And by that i mean, fork out for handy taskman. Brilliant for many reasons, but a big one is that every time you open it up to switch tasks it tells you how much ram you are using. That way, you can kill a few apps if and when you need to

My experience with Handy Taskman has not been good. It seemed to slow my phone down a bit.

Upon boot up my N97 has about 59MB of RAM available. Looking further clock, messaging, contacts & log is running. If I close these using Handy Taskman (which was bundled with my phone), I gain 2MB RAM. But after doing some browsing, e-mails, SMS, calls etc, the available RAM does decrease even with no application runnning. I use Taskman to check. The available RAM can go as low as 48MB at times. So what has happened to the RAM. The only way to gain it back is to re-boot and start the cycle again.
Nokia should look at this and resolve. Perhaps 128MB RAM could be sufficient if managed well.

@ajeet You're being naive about the way a complex operating system works, I'm afraid. All OS have dozens of background threads and processes and there's no practical way to manage these as a user. You just have to trust the OS to sort its own resources out. If, to the user, this then seems as if there's a loss of RAM then so be it.

Provided there really ISN'T a memory leak, of course. Bugs have been known in Web, though actual memory leaks are usually down to third party apps, in my experience.

What about Swiss Manager Pro? Do you think RAMblow woeks better then Swiss Manager Pro?

Same app, essentially. Same developer. SMP is RAMblow plus extra Task manager code and functions.

I politely disagree with your article.Keeping apps opened in the background is one thing and switching and using each of them is different.

To make my point clear 'opening' Nokia maps,Youtube,Music player and running them in the background is different from actually mapping a route, using GPS(and data connection),Playing Youtube video and simultaneously playing Music through Music player.Not that you would use youtube and music player at once,but even running maps(with GPS) with Music OR video running slows up the phone quite a bit,with quite obvious lags in the browser interface and, I can't play, say Worms World party because one of these apps will hang/will be shut down.

So, I can't, say, play my fav mp3 in the background,use Satnav(obviously with muted voice)and switch to a youtube video I had left to buffer fully in the browser.note that I have full 3G connectivity and not EDGE.

"RAMblow, for example, actively trawls your running OS for inactive applications and zaps them - potentially making a mockery of having multitasking in the first place"

Almost all RAM freeing utils do that,they are just a quick buck for the company.No RAM utility will ever work even 1% as good as extra MBs of physical RAM.

Having more 'Circles' on top of app icons does not mean a better device.

The N97 had much much more on its plate than what it could actually crunch.If S60v5 requires more amount of RAM for reasons mentioned in your article,why didn't Nokia sense this common logic (which even you & I know) while making N97s and made the same mistake with the mini.All of which is proof that Nokia are going much against the flow of customer aspirations, somewhere, there is a blockage between customer feedback & implementation of the needful.

They advertised it as a social net,'Live online' device with multiple homescreens and widgets and other whims & fancies while it takes more than my PC to boot up into a running state and it is out of juice in no time.I wonder if I can hack and stop the widget homescreens from loading and keep it simple like the 5800s screen and fire up the widget as & when I want.

Please stop making excuses for Nokia, for such an expensive phone that was sold as an always connected device owners shouldn't have to resort to these workarounds as they could have just purchased a much cheaper device or one of the competition phones.

I can only assume that it was just stubbornness on Nokia part with the attitude that Symbian is the most efficient mobile OS and that they could make it run on outdated hardware. I'm sure it wouldn't have cost much more to have at least 256 MB RAM, 512 MB NAND, and a faster processor given that when companies purchase things like memory in significant volume the cost difference between an amount like 128 MB & 256 MB is negligible and the Nexus One is a good example where the hardware has been approximated to cost roughly US $170.

Unless bloggers and analysts in the tech industry start telling it like it is, Nokia will keep on making these type of short sighted mistakes.

I'm not 'making excuses for Nokia', I quite agree that there should be more RAM under the hood. I'm just trying to explain WHY they got it wrong and HOW users who have already bought the N97 can make the most of their current hardware. Is that not a good thing to do?

i dont think this is a memory leak that we are talking about. i think the OS just keeps a "footprint" of certain apps in order to make them run faster the next time you open them. for example after a day using my n97 mini, yes the RAM goes down, but also opening any app such as google maps, ovi maps, web browser, all opens much faster than the first time opening them. and i find that the OS is just holding onto that RAM, but the RAM is still available for any app to use. its just a way for the OS to speed up the phone operation. but the lower RAM doesnt seem to actually stop me from multitasking...

Yes, I agree that it's a useful thing to do but as for the N97 being able to do useful multi-tasking I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

I struggle to understand these memory problems. I use my phone intensely, multi-tasking etc and I've never seen a memory problem.

No one I know, in the REAL WORLD, actually tries to keep more than 2 or 3 apps open at any one time anyway!

Is it really too much to ask to have to wait a couple of seconds for Messaging to start up when you want to use it? (as opposed to waiting up to 10 seconds for the phone to switch tasks if many apps. are open simultaneously)

And infact ajeet was right - there are multiple memory leaks in "base" S60 v5 applications - Messaging being the worst contender. Free RAM does drop on a device during use, and closing ALL background tasks and threads (not the same as applications, please note) does not necessarily reclaim that RAM.

Is it that difficult for Nokia to give the phone a decent processor and large amount of RAM? If Nokia's next generation of phones with Symbian^3 don't start including something like a Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, and 512MB+ of available phone memory, then I'm moving to a different brand.

They obviously saw they put too little phone memory on the N97, and gave the N97 Mini more, but that's still not enough. We want 2GB like the N900 has or just map everything to the mass memory storage, and forget about this C drive for the phone memory.

I really don't think the suits at Nokia are dumb, but after seeing the X6, N97, and N97 Mini, where only the mini was slightly improved from the others, I have to wonder if they really are dumb.

Do any of us actually know what constraints the suits at Nokia are facing? Some contractual commitment to a hardware supply where the hardware has an architectural limitation perhaps? If so then once that is fulfilled then those constraints could be removed.

if the suits find contractual supply agreements as constraints for their flagships, then that is a sign of extremely poor planning, and that is unforgivable. All this after so much efforts were spent on advertising.

Unforgivable by who? The shareholders? If Nokia were (just speculation) in such a contract then they are likely to be sourcing extremely cheap hardware. This would enable them to sell millions of extremely competitive phones with maximum function into non-western markets with massive potential.

The odd geek who wants to use their phone a certain way might not forgive, but the millions for who full-featured phones have become accessible would be happier.

Those suits will be considering a global strategy, not just the odd few.

Speaking personally, because of the way I naturally operate my phone, the memory problem NEVER occurs.

gonna try this on mini...but last time I cant run opera + nimbuzz + gravity + music player.....nimbuzz closes first....then gravity..

"...Those suits will be considering a global strategy, not just the odd few..."

My understanding is that Nokia have sold several million N97s, so I hardly think we're talking about just an odd few and given these volumes (plus the N97 mini, X6, etc...) I would assume that the cost to Nokia for contracting the production of 256 MB SDRAM modules as opposed to 128 MB modules would be negligible. As for the low end device they are hardly going to have the same sort of hardware as Nokia's high-end/flagship devices so it would be foolish of Nokia to have just one contract for the production of a single component, like the RAM, for their entire range.

I still believe that it was either arrogant stubbornness (trying to prove the point that symbian can do more on less) on Nokia's part or a strategic decision to design an interim device that wouldn't allow consumers to upgrade to Symbian^3 or ^4 without purchasing another handset.

Either way it was a fail on Nokia's part as they have not only got really bad press but also flamed many of their loyal high-end, early adopters.

P.S. If you are not using all of the features on your N97, like the internet based widgets, and this helps your phone to be more stable and responsive that's good for you but when using it like this you might as well have just purchased a much cheaper device, you would have been just as happy and had several hundred dollars/quid in your pocket.

Unless that RAM was integral to the components. You don't slot a SODIMM into a phone. An SDHC card is not of the same type as the C: drive.

But that's exactly what they are. Same processor, same speed. Same limited RAM.
Only the packaging changes significantly.

But they continue to make money, because they are a business, not a service to please phone geeks.

OK, so I have to give up my physical keyboard because I don't use phone widgets? No dice.