One “feature” with Windows Mobile devices is that they are designed to rarely actually close programs, instead the idea is that programs are hibernated or minimized, meaning that when you want to re-start the program it is almost instantly available. This approach does unfortunately have some drawbacks though, as despite recent specification increases you will often find yourself low on memory if you use more than a couple of resource hungry applications. Another issue is that WM will attempt to automatically close programs that it deems are not needed, and take a lot of RAM (device memory, as opposed to storage memory) up. This can leave you with programs you don’t need staying in memory, and programs you’d actually prefer to keep open in the background being automatically closed down.
If you have an app that displays RSS feeds, and another than plays music or streams live video, you may find the wrong program is automatically closed whilst the one(s) that could be closed aren’t. Another issue is that, as with desktop PCs, some programs leak memory. If you’re not familiar with the term, it is a bit like someone sticking a reserved sign on a table at a restaurant, and not removing it either after the meal or if the customer fails to turn up. There are in reality spare tables left in the room, but due to the reserved sign, new customers (applications) are denied the use of these tables (RAM).
One solution comes in the form of CleanRAM – it clears out unused applications and processes from your phone’s memory to ensure more RAM is available for the next app you load. You can create exceptions so that certain programs are never closed. A bit like Windows own memory management algorithms, but more aggressive and highly configurable. Memory is recovered both from programs that are hiding in the background, despite not being in the official WM applications running list (I’m looking at you Ms. PacMan!), from leaks that need fixing, and also re-loading some drivers and processes to ensure the maximum amount of free RAM is now available for your next program.
Nov 19 2010
I Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
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