[Giant Cashew]

So what kind of observations would be needed to establish whether something is a true memory "leak"? Free memory drops when idle and never fluctuates upward? Or does it have to drop by a certain amount in a given period of idleness? Or is there never really any way to truly gauge whether there is a memory leak, since what the UI reports as the free memory level is not really an accurate measure of the available memory, as ryank says?

In an environment with a garbage collector, like RIM's Java-based OS, a memory leak can occur when an application allocates memory objects but then doesn't mark them when they're no longer needed so they can be recovered.

Memory "leak" usually implies a consistent reduction of free memory. This could occur, for example, if an application repeatedly and indefinitely adds elements to a buffer but never frees them. If you startup your phone and your free memory dwindles down to nothing and never recovers, some application is probably leaking memory.

And what the OS reports as "free" memory is technically not exactly what is available, but is generally pretty close. The garbage collector does run when the phone is idle, and recovers memory throughout the day.

[godson_2k]

If u have apps running in the background ie. Poynt, weatherbug and even vibe n'ring you will lose app memory. Even if you have no apps at all running, you will lose app memory.

I uninstalled all apps and shrunk my OS. I was booting up at over 60MB's and would automatically lose 2MB's withing the hour. Throughout the day I would hover around 52MB's stable.

Now I have 5 or so aps and 1 theme and i boot up and hover around 56MB's. After a day I hover around 48MB's. After two, I am at 38MB's. Have never gone past 2 days without a soft reset.

I think the only thing you can do is avoid unnecessary memory leaks is not install apps that run 24/7. Google maps is another offender.

apps that I recommend: buzzme as opposed to vibe and ring / logmaid so you don't have to keep cleaning logs/ weather eye touch instead of the memory eater weatherbug ...

[ryank311]

So what kind of observations would be needed to establish whether something is a true memory "leak"? Free memory drops when idle and never fluctuates upward? Or does it have to drop by a certain amount in a given period of idleness? Or is there never really any way to truly gauge whether there is a memory leak, since what the UI reports as the free memory level is not really an accurate measure of the available memory, as ryank says?

That's the problem, because RIM doesn't give us access to the per-program memory stats, there is no real way to diagnose a problem with a specific program. Yes, its very possible for a program to have a "leak" but with java, you would almost have to try to do it as a developer by doing something like what Giant Cashew suggested. Because java flags objects as soon as they go out of scope, you never really need to worry about leaks because programs on your phone usually do not handle data large enough to make an impact on your phone (sans video or music streaming apps), and even still, I would hope that the coders on those projects understand this inherent issue with java. Considering that you have roughly 128 Mb of Flash and 32Mb of Ram, you really shouldn't worry about running out unless you have been running a leaking app for a week or 2 straight... Even then, just closing it out and re-opening it would solve all of the problems.

In my honest opinion, I don't think that the garbage collector runs nearly as often as suggested in order to conserve battery and maintain snappy performance on demand. This explains the low flash that is reported, and also explains why we don't have 500 topics on this forum about how people's phones run out of memory and crash. I mean for the record, my mom has a Storm also and uses it for phone, browsing, email and google maps, and she has never had her phone crash from running out of memory. Heck, she never pulls the battery or anything like that, and runs for weeks and even months at a time. I think if you are having such dire problems from running out of memory and your phone is crashing left and right, you should go to an official OS version. If I had to guess, I would say that its a buggy beta OS that would cause that type of problem, not a specific program.

I would also like to note that if RIM coders have any brains at all (which I'm sure they do), the OS would kill a program that attempts to run the system out of ram. This prevents malicious programs from doing their thing. And considering that programs run in a java sandbox, this seems like a no-brainer.

All in all, you are better off not worrying about it and just letting the OS do its thing.

[JRay02]

Mine is starting at around 12-15mb. During the day, without running apps, it's dropping to 1 or lower. Does BBMessanger or MemoryCleaner cause a leak? I am running .75.

You need to upgrade your OS ASAP

[yapkuen]

Mine is starting at around 12-15mb. During the day, without running apps, it's dropping to 1 or lower. Does BBMessanger or MemoryCleaner cause a leak? I am running .75.

How many other apps do you have installed? If you're only starting at 12-15MB, that suggests to me that you've got way too many apps installed in your app memory space, and need to get rid of some ASAP. It's not unusual for my phone to drop about 8-10MB just idling in the first half hour after bootup, so if you're only starting at 12-15, that's just asking for trouble.

[JRay02]

Ha, I start up at 58.2 and never get below 50. Running a .131, .122, 5.0 hybrid.

[MikeSuede]

I'm around 26 for most of the morning, then afternoon to evening between 14 and 21. So far even when its low I haven't notice any differences, so I don't worry about it. In the process of seeing which apps I can lose anyway, might help.

[CaesarOnidalaS]

once i got rid of AppWorld and Viigo mine jumped up a few megs, not nearly as much as i'd hoped tho...

[nightfishing]

I'm using meterberry....I went from 40 startup to 34 mb available in 16 minutes. 11:14 I was at 40, 11:30 I was at 34. I did nothing during time, maybe 1 or 2 BB messages, I checked saved messages, then put down phone...what do you guys think really caused me to lose that much in that time? I have nothing running but the 5 apps, i have weatherbug updating every hour or 2, meterberry is logging my memory every 15 minutes, but I dont think meterberry would make me drop 6 MB just to put a small log in the application. what are your thoughts?

Running 132.

perfectly normal.

if you open an app that "needs" that memory, the OS will recover it.