[Q] Samsung Galaxy S3 always at 80% RAM usage / Google Now problems - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

So, it's been bothering me for a while but my now 2-year-and-2-month old Samsung Galaxy S3 always just runs incredibly slowly. Not only that, but I tend to burn through the battery easily within 6 hours. For the past year and a half, or so, I've had to resort to carrying around two spare batteries with me as it has a tendency to run out of charge in the middle of the day, let alone if I'm out at a music festival or something. I'm not a particulaly heavy user, as in I rarely play video games on my phone, nor do I really watch videos or ever use bluetooth. Occasionally I do use GPS or WiFi, but I try to keep them turned off when I'm not using them. I tend to use my phone for music when I'm in the car, or texting / whatsapp / occasional snapchatting, or checking Pulse News or my internet banking. I don't have a particularly huge amount of apps installed, I don't think. And I regularly hold the Home button, & press the close-all-apps button to make sure that they're not running in the background.
Yet, my phone is so laggy. It's like there's a constant 3 or 5, or even sometimes 10, second delay for whatever action you've initiated to actually occur. You'll press Messages, and it'll take about 4 seconds for my text messages to show up. You'll press Home, and it takes about 3 seconds for it to close. Facebook just took about 8 seconds to load. It doesn't sound alot, but it can be quite infuriating when you're trying to get things done in a hurry. It's even worse when apps are running in the background!
So, I got to check my running processes and there's just loads of things running that both don't appear to be running when I hold the Home button but also shouldn't be running because I haven't used them in forever. It appears my phone has approximately 850MB of RAM, yet my phone tends to ALWAYS run at around 725MB used (currently it's at 751MB, as can be seen in the screenshot attached). But when I do go through the list of things running, the right hand side it tells you how much RAM is supposedly being used. Yet if I total up all of the RAM being used by all of the apps that are apparently running, it only comes to about 300MB. So where the heck is this other 450MB of RAM being used?! THIS is what is slowing down my phone, I think.
Not only that, but there are things in this list that are running that shouldn't be running, & I don't understand why they are. Facebook, sure I can understand, in case you get a notification or something. But TuneIn Radio... I'm not listening to the radio at the moment, nor have I used the app in weeks (and my phone has been restarted numerous times since then), why is it running? S Voice, too? Video Hub? Google Play Music, I've never even used it. And then there's loads of things I haven't got a clue what they are, like Exchange Services, ELM Agent, SmartcardService, etc. Now I understand it's like a computer, where there are a number of background processes that have to run to make the OS work, but why are all these other apps running that I'm not using?!
-------------------------
Furthermore, I've started trying to use Google Now because I would like to get a Moto 360 (but I'll ask questions about that in a seperate thread). So, it seemed to work fine a few weeks ago. It gave me stocks, news updates, ETA to work or home, started remembering where I was parking. But now a few days ago I go back to it, after not using it for a little while, & it's all reset; Asking me to set it up again. So I did, & it mostly works but I can only ever seem to get the first "page" of cards up. When I click "More" at the bottom I just get an endless spinning circle & then the message "No Internet Connection - Content was last updated X minutes ago" appears as the top card, when infact I know I do have an internet connection. Exiting the app, closing it down, & then re-opening does not fix the issue either. I'm at a complete loss as to what to do.
Furthermore, it always asks me to "Improve my location: For more accurate location, let google search for Wi-Fi connections, even when Wi-Fi is off." I don't understand how this works, and what it's trying to do? If I turn it on, is that not going to be effectively the same as leaving my WiFi turned on at all times? Well, except without the benefits of being connected via WiFi. It's just going to drain my battery more, as leaving WiFi on usually does.
-------------------------
So tldr:
- Why is my RAM mysteriously using 450MB that I can't vouch for? Where is it going? How I stop it?
- Why is Google Now not letting my manually update the cards?

You are missing huge amounts of very basic information, search and read for what is safe to disable on stock rom, some things are vital others are optional.
If you leave everything running as default then 6hrs battery life is about right.

Benaholic said:
So, it's been bothering me for a while but my now 2-year-and-2-month old Samsung Galaxy S3 always just runs incredibly slowly. Not only that, but I tend to burn through the battery easily within 6 hours. For the past year and a half, or so, I've had to resort to carrying around two spare batteries with me as it has a tendency to run out of charge in the middle of the day, let alone if I'm out at a music festival or something. I'm not a particulaly heavy user, as in I rarely play video games on my phone, nor do I really watch videos or ever use bluetooth. Occasionally I do use GPS or WiFi, but I try to keep them turned off when I'm not using them. I tend to use my phone for music when I'm in the car, or texting / whatsapp / occasional snapchatting, or checking Pulse News or my internet banking. I don't have a particularly huge amount of apps installed, I don't think. And I regularly hold the Home button, & press the close-all-apps button to make sure that they're not running in the background.
Yet, my phone is so laggy. It's like there's a constant 3 or 5, or even sometimes 10, second delay for whatever action you've initiated to actually occur. You'll press Messages, and it'll take about 4 seconds for my text messages to show up. You'll press Home, and it takes about 3 seconds for it to close. Facebook just took about 8 seconds to load. It doesn't sound alot, but it can be quite infuriating when you're trying to get things done in a hurry. It's even worse when apps are running in the background!
So, I got to check my running processes and there's just loads of things running that both don't appear to be running when I hold the Home button but also shouldn't be running because I haven't used them in forever. It appears my phone has approximately 850MB of RAM, yet my phone tends to ALWAYS run at around 725MB used (currently it's at 751MB, as can be seen in the screenshot attached). But when I do go through the list of things running, the right hand side it tells you how much RAM is supposedly being used. Yet if I total up all of the RAM being used by all of the apps that are apparently running, it only comes to about 300MB. So where the heck is this other 450MB of RAM being used?! THIS is what is slowing down my phone, I think.
Not only that, but there are things in this list that are running that shouldn't be running, & I don't understand why they are. Facebook, sure I can understand, in case you get a notification or something. But TuneIn Radio... I'm not listening to the radio at the moment, nor have I used the app in weeks (and my phone has been restarted numerous times since then), why is it running? S Voice, too? Video Hub? Google Play Music, I've never even used it. And then there's loads of things I haven't got a clue what they are, like Exchange Services, ELM Agent, SmartcardService, etc. Now I understand it's like a computer, where there are a number of background processes that have to run to make the OS work, but why are all these other apps running that I'm not using?!
-------------------------
Furthermore, I've started trying to use Google Now because I would like to get a Moto 360 (but I'll ask questions about that in a seperate thread). So, it seemed to work fine a few weeks ago. It gave me stocks, news updates, ETA to work or home, started remembering where I was parking. But now a few days ago I go back to it, after not using it for a little while, & it's all reset; Asking me to set it up again. So I did, & it mostly works but I can only ever seem to get the first "page" of cards up. When I click "More" at the bottom I just get an endless spinning circle & then the message "No Internet Connection - Content was last updated X minutes ago" appears as the top card, when infact I know I do have an internet connection. Exiting the app, closing it down, & then re-opening does not fix the issue either. I'm at a complete loss as to what to do.
Furthermore, it always asks me to "Improve my location: For more accurate location, let google search for Wi-Fi connections, even when Wi-Fi is off." I don't understand how this works, and what it's trying to do? If I turn it on, is that not going to be effectively the same as leaving my WiFi turned on at all times? Well, except without the benefits of being connected via WiFi. It's just going to drain my battery more, as leaving WiFi on usually does.
-------------------------
So tldr:
- Why is my RAM mysteriously using 450MB that I can't vouch for? Where is it going? How I stop it?
- Why is Google Now not letting my manually update the cards?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Debloat the Rom and use Root Cleaner from Google Play Store
*Requires Root*
Good luck

Benaholic said:
So, it's been bothering me for a while but my now 2-year-and-2-month old Samsung Galaxy S3 always just runs incredibly slowly. Not only that, but I tend to burn through the battery easily within 6 hours. For the past year and a half, or so, I've had to resort to carrying around two spare batteries with me as it has a tendency to run out of charge in the middle of the day, let alone if I'm out at a music festival or something. I'm not a particulaly heavy user, as in I rarely play video games on my phone, nor do I really watch videos or ever use bluetooth. Occasionally I do use GPS or WiFi, but I try to keep them turned off when I'm not using them. I tend to use my phone for music when I'm in the car, or texting / whatsapp / occasional snapchatting, or checking Pulse News or my internet banking. I don't have a particularly huge amount of apps installed, I don't think. And I regularly hold the Home button, & press the close-all-apps button to make sure that they're not running in the background.
Yet, my phone is so laggy. It's like there's a constant 3 or 5, or even sometimes 10, second delay for whatever action you've initiated to actually occur. You'll press Messages, and it'll take about 4 seconds for my text messages to show up. You'll press Home, and it takes about 3 seconds for it to close. Facebook just took about 8 seconds to load. It doesn't sound alot, but it can be quite infuriating when you're trying to get things done in a hurry. It's even worse when apps are running in the background!
So, I got to check my running processes and there's just loads of things running that both don't appear to be running when I hold the Home button but also shouldn't be running because I haven't used them in forever. It appears my phone has approximately 850MB of RAM, yet my phone tends to ALWAYS run at around 725MB used (currently it's at 751MB, as can be seen in the screenshot attached). But when I do go through the list of things running, the right hand side it tells you how much RAM is supposedly being used. Yet if I total up all of the RAM being used by all of the apps that are apparently running, it only comes to about 300MB. So where the heck is this other 450MB of RAM being used?! THIS is what is slowing down my phone, I think.
Not only that, but there are things in this list that are running that shouldn't be running, & I don't understand why they are. Facebook, sure I can understand, in case you get a notification or something. But TuneIn Radio... I'm not listening to the radio at the moment, nor have I used the app in weeks (and my phone has been restarted numerous times since then), why is it running? S Voice, too? Video Hub? Google Play Music, I've never even used it. And then there's loads of things I haven't got a clue what they are, like Exchange Services, ELM Agent, SmartcardService, etc. Now I understand it's like a computer, where there are a number of background processes that have to run to make the OS work, but why are all these other apps running that I'm not using?!
-------------------------
Furthermore, I've started trying to use Google Now because I would like to get a Moto 360 (but I'll ask questions about that in a seperate thread). So, it seemed to work fine a few weeks ago. It gave me stocks, news updates, ETA to work or home, started remembering where I was parking. But now a few days ago I go back to it, after not using it for a little while, & it's all reset; Asking me to set it up again. So I did, & it mostly works but I can only ever seem to get the first "page" of cards up. When I click "More" at the bottom I just get an endless spinning circle & then the message "No Internet Connection - Content was last updated X minutes ago" appears as the top card, when infact I know I do have an internet connection. Exiting the app, closing it down, & then re-opening does not fix the issue either. I'm at a complete loss as to what to do.
Furthermore, it always asks me to "Improve my location: For more accurate location, let google search for Wi-Fi connections, even when Wi-Fi is off." I don't understand how this works, and what it's trying to do? If I turn it on, is that not going to be effectively the same as leaving my WiFi turned on at all times? Well, except without the benefits of being connected via WiFi. It's just going to drain my battery more, as leaving WiFi on usually does.
-------------------------
So tldr:
- Why is my RAM mysteriously using 450MB that I can't vouch for? Where is it going? How I stop it?
- Why is Google Now not letting my manually update the cards?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Root Your Phone
Install Xposed
Install Greenify
And hibernation your apps

Related

MAJOR SLOWDOWN. anyone else?

So up until today, I've had not one single issue with my flyer. It's been super speedy and very responsive. I left it last night on the charger uploading a video to YouTube. (WiFi only BTW.) When I woke up the upload was done and the battery was charged. But everything seemed super slugish. Just flipping between home screens was painfully slow. I restarted the tablet and was shocked to see the device hang on both shutdown and reboot. For much longer than normal. I've never seen it this slow. I went in and killed some un necessary services and processes ... No change. I restarted the tablet again and if seemed slightly faster. But not like before still. I haven't tried rooting I'm still 100% stock. Could it be a virus? If so does a factory reset take care of that. Is rather not have to do that but I'm willing If its sure to solve my issues. Any other ideas from anyone? My recent installs include Google+, VidTrim, xda, and soundcloud.
I'll post back here if things change or I find the culprit. In the meantime has anyone else run into similar slowdowns?
P.s. I was wondering if it was an HTC sense issue. It crashed on me once before rebooting the first time and seemed to take forever to load after powering on ... All the animations were laggy and the clock was off by about an hr..... Frustrating. I really like this device.
Hi,
I get a major slowdown on my Flyer when connecting to 'free' public wifi sites. These are sites that provide free wifi after you have signed in via a web page where you enter a username/password or checked a box to accept some terms and conditions etc.
The wifi at my home or via my HTC Desire hotspot is fine as are all other wifi hotspots where I connect directly using the name and credentials stored in my Flyer. It's only these ones that require the additional login that give me trouble.
When it hits, the Flyer becomes unusable for anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes. Hitting the home button generally shows a blank screen that gradually (and I mean g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y) redraws. A message stating that HTC Sense has stopped appears and you have the option to restart sense, wait or tell HTC. None of these help as the message box just disappears and then reappears about 30s later. In all cases I've noticed that the sync icon is showing in the notification bar.
It's a real annoyance, but I can mitigate it if I login to the sites before the sync starts. Unfortunately if I accidentally wander into range of one of these sites, and the Flyer finds it and decides it's time to sync then it stops again and I have to very patiently wait for the screen to respond, pull down the notifications, switch to the config settings and switch off wifi. There is still a delay until the sync realises that the wifi is no longer available.
As I said above I also have a HTC Desire that connects to these networks with no problem. This is not running sense however as I needed more application space so instead it's running gingervillain 2.7 (android 2.3.4) and has no problems with the connection.
So I suspect Sense and some synching operation its running. Will do some more investigation tomorrow as more users come online at work.
Cheers.
Haven't heard of any Android viruses that slow down the system like you are talking about, only malware that is disguised as an app. So if you haven't installed anything recently, I would say not any type of malware.
Factory reset may help. But of course, that means starting from scratch re-installing all your apps, setting up your home screens, etc.
I'm attributing it to the fact that the thing had been up and running for like a week. After a restart it seemed to have cleared up. Note to self .. power down and reboot every few days.
I had something very similar...
I installed "a bunch of stuff", then went traveling (across Europe), and tried to use the gps as I went. The flyer slowed to a crawl and became very temperamental. It felt like something was hogging the processor. Several reboots did not fix the problem.
Even sometimes the unlock screen could not get enough processor cycles to complete the unlock.
I started uninstalling the various apps I had installed, and eventually normal service was restored (and has continued fine).
Unfortunately, I was not rigorous about the uninstalling sequence, so I can't be sure what caused it.
My suspicion is that it was an Engine I installed for Text-to-speech settings. But it is only a suspicion. Like I said I installed a bunch of stuff (stupid really).
If someone can point me to an installation history howto, I'll try to be more precise.

Minor problems, but super annoying! Help?

What is the best folder to put your music in? Mines in the "download" folder directly off of Root/base I guess.
I have SGS II AT&T. Everythings working, no major crashes or anything right now. (I had MIUI-1.11.9 which was awesome, Many features, everything worked great and worked together etc. etc., but started crashing and FC's and ended up getting rid of it like a beater car in the end. (was probably kernel I changed, maybe i'll try it again)
I'm using Entropy's 12082011_exp driver, and Lite'ning rom 6.1 from a "full wipe"
baseband is I777UCKH7
My friend has the same phone, and he told me how it has awesome speeds, e.g.
When he goes to download an app, it is downloaded instantly. No joke, the download bar "Flashes" and its done.
When I got my phone (we're both AT&T same baseband etc) and downloaded stock (no roms no nothing), it would take 10-30 seconds to download the same app.
He says its cause I got "stuff" on my phone and messed with it, but I told him my phone was slower from the get go. - I read that your data uses "APN" to download/access data? maybe mines different, but I have no idea what it is or how to edit it yet.
Minor annoyances: Screen stays lit for 4 seconds unnatended (no finger presses). It never stays lit for the 15-30 seconds I have it set for in options! SUPER ANNOYING, guess not minor... have to press power button, move lockscreen.. etc. etc.
Also: Whenever I have music playing (streaming or flash) It will often stop when the screen powers off (within a few seconds) Which is really bothersome when your trying to listen to music, and don't "need/want" to see the screen.
Pro: Youtube videos play w/ screen on until video ends, then powers off in 3-4 seconds.
Con: Playing a song on winamp or other streaming radio can "kill" the connection when screen powers off.
Also w/ current ROM, I got no bluetooth connection, people can barely hear me even on speakerphone, and they are not very audible on speakerphone either. Battery life for me I think is like 20 hours from 100-0. But I read of many people getting good battery life (using apps or freezing programs etc.)
I have Juice defender ultimate (which I disable when listening to audio then SOMETIMES the songs keep playing when screen powers off, and sometimes they don't) I have battery monitor, and better battery stats, also have setCPU (with profiles set up), and AutoKiller memory optimizer.
How do I screenshot my phone? Does anyone else deal with these issues?

[Q] Captivate Refresh and Speaker Problems

Hello XDA,
Ever since I updated my rooted Captivate to 2.3 last month, I have been having a few weird problems.
The first problem is that my phone has a weird refresh issue. Basically, sometimes, when switching apps, the homescreen (launcher pro) and other running apps don't retain their display, icons, status, or information. For example, sometimes when pressing the home key, the app minimizes and the home icons all have to reappear and refresh, taking up to 5 seconds. Another example is when using task switcher to switch to and from Reddit is Fun, the program must reload whatever page it was on instead of just jumping back to it.
This gets very frustrating when dealing with anything that needs to stay idle such as web browsers and certain games. It's as if 2.3 is closing the programs and then relaunching instead of retaining them in memory, but it's not consistent.
The other perhaps more frustrating problem is that the speaker does not work all the time. The phone switches to headphone mode and cuts out all the sound. Smacking the top of the phone sometimes makes it come back. Headphones always work, but this is problematic for me since I use my phone as an alarm. I've tried plugging in phones repeatedly, battery pulls, and made sure all volume is up, to no avail.
Thank you,
Brian
RE: speaker failed
BrianZephyr said:
Hello XDA,
Ever since I updated my rooted Captivate to 2.3 last month, I have been having a few weird problems.
The first problem is that my phone has a weird refresh issue. Basically, sometimes, when switching apps, the homescreen (launcher pro) and other running apps don't retain their display, icons, status, or information. For example, sometimes when pressing the home key, the app minimizes and the home icons all have to reappear and refresh, taking up to 5 seconds. Another example is when using task switcher to switch to and from Reddit is Fun, the program must reload whatever page it was on instead of just jumping back to it.
This gets very frustrating when dealing with anything that needs to stay idle such as web browsers and certain games. It's as if 2.3 is closing the programs and then relaunching instead of retaining them in memory, but it's not consistent.
The other perhaps more frustrating problem is that the speaker does not work all the time. The phone switches to headphone mode and cuts out all the sound. Smacking the top of the phone sometimes makes it come back. Headphones always work, but this is problematic for me since I use my phone as an alarm. I've tried plugging in phones repeatedly, battery pulls, and made sure all volume is up, to no avail.
Thank you,
Brian
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Brian, I'm actually in the same boat as you.
To fix the speaker issue (in order to get my alarms back) I've had to remove the back cover and apply a good press down on the simcard, and speaker itself. this has brought back the audio for me.
I've had the phone for 2 years though, so not sure if this is the issue/fix you need. But worth a try.

Erratic behaving Z3v (screen won't turn on sometimes, receive texts hours later)

The problems started today.
-When I push the power button sometimes the screen will not turn on. When I hold the power button I can hear the sound of the power menu pop up so I know the device is receiving the signal from the power button.
-I am receiving texts very late or not at all. I just got a message my friend sent like 8 hours ago.
-The device is also a little laggy sometimes, and certain things, like the play store will not load.
-I can't turn on airplane mode
I re-flashed it with the original firmware (while keeping my data intact) and this made no change. I have installed some new apps recently, but this was several days before the issues started. I have since installed those apps and no change
Tomorrow I plan to get a new sim card, but does anyone have any other ideas?
I recently had a similar problem with my z3v. I had a wakelock from Google services that was making my processor use almost 70% constantly and would drain battery in like 3 hours. Mine turned out to be Google calendar sync. My phone would lag so hard it couldn't run widgets or anything. Check your battery in settings and see if something has a high percentage. The screen should be the highest usage by a large margin.
krenogin said:
I recently had a similar problem with my z3v. I had a wakelock from Google services that was making my processor use almost 70% constantly and would drain battery in like 3 hours. Mine turned out to be Google calendar sync. My phone would lag so hard it couldn't run widgets or anything. Check your battery in settings and see if something has a high percentage. The screen should be the highest usage by a large margin.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I turned off auto-sync and no change. The screen was the largest use followed by the playstore which had be trying to start since I tried to open it.
My playstore was messed up and would not open while this was going on. It just stayed white and if I locked the screen it took 5 mins to unlock. I also have root and used wakelock detector. I used cpu z to see if I had high processor usage.
You can try ur phone in ultra stamina and see how it acts as well for troubleshooting.
krenogin said:
My playstore was messed up and would not open while this was going on. It just stayed white and if I locked the screen it took 5 mins to unlock. I also have root and used wakelock detector. I used cpu z to see if I had high processor usage.
You can try ur phone in ultra stamina and see how it acts as well for troubleshooting.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turns out the verizon cloud backs up text messages as well so that's what I needed. I ended up just doing a factory reset of the phone, seems like all is good now. I didn't think it was going to work since I put new firmware on it and nothing changed. It seems we had the same type of problem though. I did run the phone in safe mode with no improvement, but not ultra stamina. How did you end up fixing the problem?
My husband's phone started having basically the same issues out of the blue yesterday as well. It's not rooted or anything and he hasn't downloaded any apps or anything in weeks. Folks at Verizon store have no idea what's going on. We're about to try a factory reset. We also noticed the play store was burning a lot of battery even though he hadn't tried to open it or use it for several days at least, and can't get it to open now.
Try clearing play store "data" and "cache" through app manager.
This is a disaster, I've been trying forever to restore my text messages from the verizon cloud. Keeps failing after transferring less than 20 percent (different amount each time)

Any glitches with 5.0.2 post um

I use Textra for my messaging app and when I open a message from the lock screen alert the keyboard will not Swype, I have to tap the keys unless I close the message and open it in the app. Only thing I can find wrong so far, what about you??
Bobby Buggs said:
I use Textra for my messaging app and when I open a message from the lock screen alert the keyboard will not Swype, I have to tap the keys unless I close the message and open it in the app. Only thing I can find wrong so far, what about you??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you have to click the close button twice to close all. If goggle play services doesn't take right you can get a battery drain. The blue logo with your phone number doesn't work right unless you add multiple accounts to the build prop. My calls have some sort of noise I'm told -once and a while I have advanced calling active and a sound mod installed so that could be the reason for that.
I was told advanced calling can have some noise issues
How's everyone's battery doing? Mine has been significantly worse since LP. I used to get 6-8 hours SOT, and now I'm at 4-5. Haven't done a full wipe, could that be why? No obvious culprits show up on the battery usage list though.
On my own .509 PRF:
WiFi will randomly disconnect, and then it will say that the AP is disabled. This also happens when say leaving my apt to go to work. Disconnecting from my home router when out of range (obviously) then arriving at my office I can see the office's AP listed, but it says disabled as well.
Another bug has been losing bluetooth after ~15 minutes of connectivity. It will then drop the connection, cycle BT on/off a couple of times, and finally reconnect after about 1min.
I've started fresh many times, so I'm going to try another PRF on here, make another new one, and if those both fail I shall return to 4.4.4
I haven't really experienced issues on 5.0.2, but battery life has been about the same for me getting up to 5 hours of SOT, 6 hours even depending on what I did that day. I'll say though, in general our Lollipop variant for Verizon still separates us from the general Xperia community since twice already I flashed scripts that's supposedly for all Xperias and it does not work as planned for the Z3v.
Mine is working great, have had some wakelock issues but I'm using non root greenify, basically force close on some runaway apps. I have noticed battery charging takes a bit longer and on wireless it doesn't kick off and will continue to maintain 100% which I'm indifferent about. Battery life has skyrocketed, getting 6-7 hrs screen on. Was getting roughly 1 hr per 25%, now 1 hr per 15%.
battery has been as good as before

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