The second breath of a budget Android-smartphone

Owners of new smartphones with a modest amount of RAM (160 in my case) very soon begin to feel the brakes at work. I put literally several programs, and switching between them is already accompanied by noticeable delays, and the call to Quick Settings is no longer “quick”.

After the reboot, everything flies, and after 15 minutes of work, it seems that the set of active programs is the same, and the feeling is as if the piece of iron is dying:
- delayed reaction to the team;
- not smooth scrolling;
- long start even small applications;
- long pause after connecting to the Internet before it appears;
- and in the most loaded moments, when you need the greatest productivity and fast switching between tasks, the smartphone simply stops responding to you, goes into itself and pretends that he is thinking very seriously about something personal.

Under the cut, a small personal experience, like using the rights of the root and two small programs, you can breathe new life into your smartphone.

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My goal:

- so that 3-4 small programs (categories: contacts, notes, to-do, settings, calendar), which I use very often, are always in RAM. That their call and switching between them was done instantly;
- so that the change in the state of the phone is not accompanied by strange brakes and hang-ups (on / off mobile Internet, unlock, call time, arrival of SMS);
- so that the minimum number of processes that I need is started (to save the battery life);
- so that the transition between desktops and scrolling lists is always smooth, even after a long system operation;
- so that there is always enough RAM (or the ability to quickly release it) to run one or two large applications.

That's exactly what helped me.

(for Samsung GT-i5700 Galaxy Spica, 160MB RAM, Android 2.1):

1) Root rights. I understand that with this each device has its own story. Look for your case (model + os).

2) Auto Memory Manager (root, free, 1.1M) / review in Russian - set all thresholds to a minimum (something like 2, 3, 4, 5, 3, 12).
This allows:
- to avoid unloading the software I need, if there is still enough free RAM;
- more fully utilize available RAM for work;
- to achieve faster launch of new applications, as the system now does not waste time and resources on preloading other applications.

3) Autostarts (root, $ 0.99, 190k) / review in Russian is the most important tool. It was thanks to this small program that we were able to wean various applications when various events occurred in the system. That she was able to 100% give control over what set of programs will be launched at the start of the system (I tried many Autorun-managers).
I untied almost all the reactions of all programs to different events, leaving only what I clearly found useful, or in what I did not see any harm. It seems that a reboot was required for the settings to take effect, but I'm not sure.
It was after this hack that the launch of the system became faster, the Internet after connection appears without delay, and the most unexpected fat applications (like Evernote, Android Market) stopped randomly in the background, unloading everything useful that was launched.
With a large amount of RAM, the default behavior of the system is most likely quite justified and useful (to run in the background what the user most likely needs), but in our budget case this behavior simply kills the system performance. That's what we just fixed.

Important

One feature of the Back button : if there are no previous screens left in the navigation chain when working with an application, or it is the first screen - when you click Back, the application closes (in fact, it gets the status Empty and becomes the first candidate for deletion from memory, and the thresholds mentioned above in the system are very often the application is immediately unloaded.
If you want the programs you need to always remain in memory and switching to them is always as fast as possible - always return to the desktop only by pressing the Home button, and between running applications always switch to the task switch (long press Home), or special launchers / switches for example SwipePad .

Additionally

For flight control, a good task-manager is useful, which can show the volume of free memory, running processes, and allows you to complete an unnecessary process to free up memory.
I was approached by the ES Task Manager which additionally has the ability to form a white list and then tap on the widget to kill everything that is not included in this list. And you can also check the box in the settings so that such cleaning will be done automatically when you lock the smartphone (when screen is off).

UPD 08/21/11
I also found a useful utility FMR Memory Cleaner (free, 223k) - it helps to get rid of the garbage accumulated in the memory and the corresponding brakes during long-term operation of the device. It does something similar to a reboot, but software: all applications are overloaded, some sometimes have to be started manually after that, but everything starts to work much faster.
Before, I was only helped so much by turning off / on the smartphone.

Bonus

As a result, the smartphone lives longer from the battery as fewer processes are constantly running and there is no extra spending on background uploads / downloads of unnecessary applications. And there is also a pleasant feeling of control over the device, when he starts doing only what you want from him and nothing more.

That's all I wanted to say. I would be happy with comments and additions. Thanks for attention.