Nook HD+ RAM consstantly around 80% used

[pontifex]

How the hell do I free up my RAM? I have tried app killers/memory boosters and it usually kills about 200+ mb, but it seems like as soon as I do anything, the memory usage goes back up to 80%.

When it gets like this, it becomes really slow.

How do I free up more memory?

 

[Ravynmagi]

You don't, Android is suppose to make use of the available memory. It keeps the recent apps in memory so you can multitask quicker and if something needs more memory it boots out an old app.

So this is by design, I don't think memory usage is your performance issue. Have you looked at CPU utilization (I use SystemPanel Lite for that)? Maybe you have a badly behaving app installed? Or it just might be the TI OMAP 4470 is a slow processor.

 

[wilds]

My 2013 Nexus 7 is using 696MB out of its 2GB. It does reserve a little giving me about 1.8GB of RAM to work with.

I never kill apps and the tablet has been on for 214 hours.
Android is not supposed to gobble up all available memory like that. Since you don't have plain Android, I would postulate that Barnes & Noble has changed the way memory is handled.

Having all your memory being used up isn't necessarily bad. My 1.1GB of free memory doesn't inherently add any performance advantages unless I was going to need additional resources. If you open an app that requires more than is available, Android should allocate resources to give you what you need.

If this really is an anomaly, doing a system restore/wipe will most likely fix this issue.

Tracking down what is gobbling up all your memory is a good troubleshooting step.

 

[Ravynmagi]

My 2013 Nexus 7 is using 696MB out of its 2GB. It does reserve a little giving me about 1.8GB of RAM to work with.

I never kill apps and the tablet has been on for 214 hours.
Android is not supposed to gobble up all available memory like that. Since you don't have plain Android, I would postulate that Barnes & Noble has changed the way memory is handled.

Having all your memory being used up isn't necessarily bad. My 1.1GB of free memory doesn't inherently add any performance advantages unless I was going to need additional resources. If you open an app that requires more than is available, Android should allocate resources to give you what you need.

If this really is an anomaly, doing a system restore/wipe will most likely fix this issue.

Tracking down what is gobbling up all your memory is a good troubleshooting step.

Android Central has a nice article on Android memory usage. Linux operating systems run on the philosophy that "Unused RAM is wasted RAM" and you can read more on that in this article under the section with that same title.
http://www.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care

You want your frequently used apps to gobble up memory. That enables them to load faster the next time you try to access them.

You mention your Nexus is showing only 696MB of RAM in use. That would probably be correct if you had just rebooted, but it sounds like yours has been running a couple weeks now, so I'm guessing maybe the app you are using to see memory details is not showing the inactive apps also running in memory. For my Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and Nexus 7 2013, I find they usually use about three-quarters of the available memory. My Nexus 5 has 432MB free for example (I'm using SystemPanel Lite to view this).

 

[wilds]

Interesting. I had a Galaxy Nexus for a year and it never used too much memory either. I had an Asus TF101 and TF201 with 1GB of RAM and it never used a lot of memory either unless I loaded a bunch of apps that were demanding.

My Nexus 7 '13 is using 642mb right now and says 1.1gb free right now. Keep in mind this is 4.4...

I never turn the tablet off except for updates.
The heaviest applications running right now are Adblock with 84mb used and BaconReader with 64mb used.

I think you are over-exaggerating used memory usage for android though. Of all my Android devices, never have I seen memory usage high unless I am really taxing the system. Overall, I would say Android is quite frugal with memory usage.

 

[Ravynmagi]

No, I didn't lie or exaggerate about my Nexus 5 only have 432MB of free space (I assume that is what you are referring to).

Not sure why you'd still think that after hopefully reading the link I presented. It's quite normal memory usage.

This isn't Windows. High memory usage is a good thing, it's suppose to use the available memory, not let it sit there going to waste. It simply removes older apps from memory when new apps are loaded.

Here is what my memory usage looks like now, down to 388MB today.

 

[gorcorps]

You're confusing ram usage with inherit problems with a low powered tablet. Any device will have that usage. My galaxy s4 sits at 1.5 out of ~1.8 available. Unless you plan on soldering a new cpu in the thing I think you're stuck.

 

[wilds]

I was viewing the amount of memory I have available in Settings. I downloaded the app you used called SystemPanel Lite and it says 67% used and 33% free, giving me 590M free. The settings app must only show used and not committed RAM. I guess I see no concern in having only 33% free RAM, but a large portion of it can be easily reassigned. If I really only had 33% free RAM not including cached services that can be killed at a moments notice, then I would be quite concerned!