Why apps need 1GB RAM in WP when it can run on 512MB on other OS?

[Binoya Mathews]

Not you called it a glitch, but a poster a bit above you. I was just being lazy and included references to others in my reply to you. Sorry.

If you'd also explain why you feel Apple's indeterminate approach is superior, which requires all kinds of mechanisms be in place to ensure stability in low memory situations, I'd be happy to hear them.

Well, in low memory situations if the OS ,in most cases can handle what needs to be done without causing problems to the end user, y is there a problem? I wasn`t exactly referring to memory restrictions there, but about memory management of iOS as a whole .
Y do I say that? we all know unused RAM is wasted RAM. Why do the apps need to stick to these limits if it does not give that much of a benefit to the user/the developer?. If the device goes low on memory, mechanisms are in place in case of iOS which will handle the issues, such as the low memory warnings which is send to the app. The recent iOS release makes things better by prioritising the apps based on usage and time. If u open an app at a time on one day, the next day the app is there is already preloaded, waiting for you to open it up. Similarly, the most used apps are given top priority and allowed to run in the background and thus can launch at once when opened. These things help not only in performance but also help increasing battery life by terminating the apps which are rarely used. Again if necessary, the OS can free up memory while running or performing certain tasks, killing them off ,again UNIX advantage. These things even adapt to network conditions.

On the other hand, you have windows phone which is still having the background processes , yet to be sorted out, even joebelfiore admits they are a mess. That`s what I meant and it wasn`t exactly about this restriction in particular. WP8 developers have a lot of work to be done.

 

[Dantekai14]

na android is a resource hungry os, it requires quad core chipsets,1/2gb ram. even if the phone have 1gigabyte of ram it consumes 50-60% of it rest is remained for the games.there are many background task running by google(framework,syn,backup,playstore services. same applies to ios gamecentre,icloud,backup,dynamic wallpapers,etc).

may be but still games available on 512MB RAM on Android need 1GB RAM in WP. So, what the point of that.
and these apps/games(Temple Run, Subway Surfer) never need 1GB RAM in Android.

May be this problem will be solved in coming future but till then I an not going to pay the price this.

I don't like MS neither Google nor Apple. I'll move where my need is best serve.

 

[Dantekai14]

a5cent you know more about this.

but no matter how good WP you claim but it doesn't stand on my expectation. I am not talking about heavy games here these are simple games. No matter how good WP is but playing even a simple game is in hands of developers and for now WP isn't their best choice until WP get some decent market share. and we all know it will take few years to gain that much market share.

Yeah! next I'll buy a phone with more RAM but this it will not be WP phone(don't wanna do single mistake twice here and who know in coming future apps might need 2GB RAM atleast on WP). My budget is around $450 and I am thinking of Nexus 5(for now) but I'll purchase this phone in April 2014. Apple phones are not in my budget.

One last question -
Why Temple Run 1 crashes very often in WP(512MB RAM devices)?

 

[a5cent]

Well, in low memory situations if the OS ,in most cases can handle what needs to be done without causing problems to the end user, y is there a problem?

No. Then there is no problem. Although the solution should not just solve the problem, but also not degrade the user's experience while doing so.

If the device goes low on memory, mechanisms are in place in case of iOS which will handle the issues, such as the low memory warnings which is send to the app.

You view this as a solution, while this is actually nothing of the sort! This is actually just Apple giving up, and pushing the entire responsibility for dealing with low memory situations onto the app developer's shoulders! What do you expect an app developer to do at that point, when such a 'low memory warning' is received from the OS? If you're not a developer, it's probably hard to imagine just how ridiculously time consuming and error prone it is to deal with such a situation. For app developers there exist only bad choices at that point...

The usual solution on iOS is for every app to reserve a couple MB extra, that it never intends to use. Should it ever encounter such a warning, the app would then release that extra memory back to the OS, which it hopes isn't immediately gobbled up by some other app, so the OS can give it back to the app, bit by bit, whenever necessary, while running through its own shutdown process. App developers can only hope that their app can get through the shutdown process without crashing or corrupting user data.

Many apps don't do even that, and just hope for the best. That is not a solution! The warnings themselves aren't even the beginning of a solution. It's basically just the OS telling the app: "Scotty, we have a problem!"

This is just one of many reasons why I find iOS has the far inferior non-solution.

Again if necessary, the OS can free up memory while running or performing certain tasks, killing them off ,again UNIX advantage.

Yes, and WP can do something very similar, except better. It's called tombstoning. The difference is that the behaviour on WP is deterministic. Because the OS can make assumptions about how much memory it will have to provide, it instantly knows if an old app should be unloaded from RAM to make room for the new. This happens during app startup, when that extra work isn't all that noticeable. On Android, that can happen anywhere and at anytime. If an app reserves 2 MB of memory to load and display an image, that is what might prompt Android to look for a way to free up space to accommodate that image. Android will likely signal an idle app to shut itself down. The important point is that Android has no idea how processor intensive that shutdown process will be, as that varies drastically from one app to the next, and also depends on the state each app is in when it receives that shutdown message. The result is often stuttering, because the CPU resources that should be going towards the foreground app are being "wasted" on shovelling apps out of RAM in the background. This is a solution, but it affects the user experience.

We can go on and on like this. Again, the point is that the choices made by MS are good ones, but the consequences of those choices are very much 'under the hood' and only make themselves noticeable through what you don't see, which for many is hard to appreciate.

 

[a5cent]

but no matter how good WP you claim but it doesn't stand on my expectation.

I'm not claiming anything. I'm telling you how the system works. I'm also not claiming that your experience has been great, or that WP works perfectly the way it is (quite the opposite actually). I'm just telling you why it is the way it is.

What I am trying to get across, is this:

I think you are looking for someone to blame for having a poor computing experience. You are looking for a technical explanation for your problems, and expecting/hoping to ultimately place blame WP's engineering team. That is easy to do if you don't understand WP's memory management , but it's not that easy if you do. That is where you are going wrong.

Some might think you are the only one that deserves blame, as you didn't put enough research into determining if a 512 MB device is right for you. It is obvious that you play games, and games like Temple Run are obviously not simple tic-tac-toe like games, so why on earth did you settle for a 512 MB device in the first place? I wouldn't agree with that though. It's unrealistic to expect that from consumers, which is why I think the 512 MB configuration should be exclusive to the Lumia 520. MS could also mandate that a big warning sticker is slapped onto every box containing a 512 MB device, but that is probably even less realistic.

Why Temple Run 1 crashes very often in WP(512MB RAM devices)?

I have no idea. Sometimes we as users can get lucky, and the more technically inclined can actually determine what the root cause of such a problem is, but often the best we can do is to determine what steps must be taken to reproduce the problem. Without access to the source code, it's often very hard or impossible to tell.

 

[Dantekai14]

a5cent.. I settle with this phone because that time Nokia launched only three 3 phones Lumia 920, 820 and 620. And that time I only have $400 and even Lumia 820 costing me around $500, which is out of my pocket. So, I settle with not so good Lumia 620.

But as I told you I like small games like Angry birds, Rayman Jungle Run, cut the rope, Temple run etc.
Which easily runs even on 512 MB RAM on other OS. I thought same will be applied with WP here.


Well I am seeing now, developers aren't interested in WP and this OS needs time. And that is why you can't expect these small games on WP budget phone on time. If you want to be happy WP user then do not have any expectation from WP only then only it will make you happy.

 

[WNxAshik]

@Dante , because WP is a new platform for devs and they need to fine tune theirs apps for it, which takes time.

 

[Dantekai14]

@Dante , because WP is a new platform for devs and they need to fine tune theirs apps for it, which takes time.

WP is already 3 year old and you are still calling it new. The main reason is WP market share. No matter how old WP get it will not be attractive for devs until it get some good market share. So, when WP will get enough market share for that?
Well it will take few years.

 

[colinkiama]

They only advertise their expensive products. They don't advertise the features in os that make it unique from other OSes and how a cheap windows phone is wayy faster than any other cheap phone.

 

[a5cent]

The main reason is WP market share. No matter how old WP get it will not be attractive for devs until it get some good market share. So, when WP will get enough market share for that?
Well it will take few years.

Now you get it... :wink:

Of course you shouldn't completely discount the option of purchasing a more capable device with 1GB of RAM, but I understand that isn't always an option, as it was in your situation. That you were stuck with a 512 MB device due to WP's market segmentation strategy (Apple does something similar with NAND storage) is a real shame, particularly considering that 1GB of SDRAM costs no more than $4. The actual difference in cost between a 1GB and a 512MB device is $2.

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

WP is already 3 year old and you are still calling it new. The main reason is WP market share. No matter how old WP get it will not be attractive for devs until it get some good market share. So, when WP will get enough market share for that?
Well it will take few years.

No it's not. Windows Phone 7 is 3 years old.

Windows Phone 8 is not Windows Phone 7...in fact it's only very loosely related in many ways. Windows Phone 8 is a fairly new beast and while they put in work to make sure that Windows Phone 7 apps works...calling Windows Phone 3 years old is slightly inaccurate for that reason.

It would be like saying Playstation is x number of years old when you have issues with a Playstation 2 when they first came out. They are very different beasts.

So developing for 8 is not the same as developing for 7, and it takes time.


I don't think that you understand that they changed the entire base OS from 7.x to 8.x...

7.x is based on the same core as the older Windows Mobile devices with WinCE at its heart. 8.x is based on the same core as the PC's your currently buy with Windows NT at its heart.

CE and NT are nowhere near being the same OS.

 

[iamtim]

No it's not. Windows Phone 7 is 3 years old.Windows Phone 8 is not Windows Phone 7

This, this, and more this. Windows Phone 8 is just over a year old.

 

[colinkiama]

I think the biggest problem that people don't understand that wp7 and wp8 are completely different. Wp8 is similar to windows on your computer and wp7 is like windows mobile but upgraded. They may look similar but they run very differently. It has been a year since wp has releases so just be patient 512mb support will come.

 

[Dantekai14]

I don't understand why WP users keep bringing WP version here.

Android user never said that their OS is 2 years old(Android 4.0) . and It was a biggest update moving from 2.3 to 4.0 and they have also many apps which only works 4.0 or latest version.
neither iOS users say that their OS is new despite change in version.

then why WP users bringing version here? WP market share is consist both WP 8 and WP7 share.
If the rumor are true about WP9 then WP9 is also different from WP8 and it will became again a new OS for WP users? With change in major version why it become always new? why this isn't applied with other OS ?

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

I don't understand why WP users keep bringing WP version here.

Android user never said that their OS is 2 years old(Android 4.0) . and It was a biggest update moving from 2.3 to 4.0 and they have also many apps which only works 4.0 or latest version.
neither iOS users say that their OS is new despite change in version.

then why WP users bringing version here? WP market share is consist both WP 8 and WP7 share.
If the rumor are true about WP9 then WP9 is also different from WP8 and it will became again a new OS for WP users? With change in major version why it become always new? why this isn't applied with other OS ?

Because at its core all Android versions are based on a standard Linux core.

Imagine if Android had moved from Linux base to a true Unix base. These are not the same thing.

If you have trouble understanding the difference between things like WinCE and WinNT it will basically be impossible to explain to you why the WP7 to WP8 change is very different from the Android 2.x to Android 4.x change.

The best I can do to try to explain is that Android 2.x to 4.x is like OS X version changes from something like 10.7 to 10.8.
The Windows Phone change is more like the change from OS X 10.5 to OS X 10.6 where the entire codebase was changed from supporting the older hardware and code, but was able to still support the older apps via Rosetta.

While OS X 10.5 and 10.6 look very similar and the end user doesn't really see much of a difference in reality they are entirely different operating systems under the hood and required developers to start over in their coding of apps, and it is still taking time for developers to catch up to those changes several years later.

 

[Mohamed Ashid]

Animal Park Tycoon is now in store!!!
Its a free game but does not have Xbox live integration. Thats sad. The game clocks in at 20 mb and is from advanced mobile applications ltd. (ama)
And it is available for 512 mb ram.
Happy??

 

[iamtim]

I don't understand why WP users keep bringing WP version here.

Then perhaps you should take a time out, do some reading, and figure out why the version keeps coming up.

If the rumor are true about WP9 then WP9 is also different from WP8 and it will became again a new OS for WP users?

No, because WP9 will have the same "core" as WP8. WP7 has a completely different "core".

 

[Dantekai14]

Well I feeling little bad about WP7 users.

So, as far as I know WP7 was inferior then why on earth MS choose WinCE, why they didn't start with WinNT ?
I mean wouldn't it better if they started with WinNT? Why MS implement was shortsighted plan?

 

[unnatixlr8]

See man.. Transition had to happen.. I know this could be a bumpy ride for some users..
Just leave it and move on..

Now mods please close this thread

 

[colinkiama]

So the reason why 512mb devices don't have some apps is because the WP8 is only 1 year old. Other OS's like iOS and android have been around for a while so it is easier for devs to code for them. Am i right?