Yamiya, Just wanna blog

Many claim that iPhone is unstable. Occasionally crash and reboot.

One thing you need to understand, iPhone is MacOSX based. It's more of a computer than mobile phone. Everything is pre-programmed on a mobile phone, but not on iPhone. Same goes to smartphones and PDA phones. The more apps you installed, the more program running, the more unstable it is, and the more likelihood it will crash.

Many apps continues to run even after you close them. In Windows / Windows Mobile you can kill the process by bringing up the task manager. Unfortunately, iPhone does not have one.

FreeMemory comes into help. It free up maximum 20MB memory, which is more than sufficient for most apps. I tested on my iPhone. Prior launching any app I make sure I have 20MB free memory. Bingo, my iPhone never crash again.

It priced at USD0.99 and can be downloaded from iTunes App Store. It's not a fool proof app. The least one will not always check available memory prior launching app, neither will I, hence iPhone will still crash.

From FreeMemory

Free Memory allows you to free up runtime memory on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The iPhone or iPod Touch comes only with 128MB of runtime memory. This is not to be confused with the storage memory which is usually 8GB, 16GB or 32GB of persistent memory.

The iPhone or iPod Touch OS does not implement virtual memory, so this means that the OS does not make use of the storage memory to increase the size of memory available to running applications.

Some native applications that come with the iPhone continues to run even after you have closed them, for example, the iPod player, Phone application, Mail application and the Safari web browser.

As you continue to use your iPhone or iPod Touch, these continually running applications continue to consume limited and precious runtime memory that could otherwise be available to other applications such as games and news applications causing them to quit unexpectedly.

With the Free Memory application, you can see how much runtime memory is currently available for applications.

You can also view all the currently running applications or system processes. In the above screen shot, the iPod music player, Mail and the Phone applications are still running.

FREEING MEMORY
With Free Memory, you can make up to 20 MB free available by touching the “Free Memory” button. If you already have more than 20 MB available, it will not do anything.

WHY ONLY 20 MB?
When you restart your iPhone or iPod Touch, more than 40 MB is available initially. However, as you use your iPhone or iPod Touch, system memory which cannot be freed, will be used up.

This means that even if Free Memory tried to free 40 MB of memory, none of this system memory will be released by the OS. This will cause the Free Memory app to crash.

Also, if you were playing music or on a phone call or using your Bluetooth headset while running Free Memory, freeing more than 20 MB could cause the iPod music player or your phone call to end unexpectedly.

For support, email support@recessionapps.com

LESS THAN 4 MB AVAILABLE
When your iPhone or iPod Touch has less than 4 MB available, freeing memory may take some time, about 1-2 minutes, to free up memory. Occasionally, this might cause your iPhone or iPod to restart. When this happens, it will look like the application has stopped responding. When this happens, just leave your iPhone or iPod Touch alone. It will automatically restart after 1-2 minutes.

When running OS 2.2 or later, it is more likely for the iPhone or iPod Touch to restart in this case. With OS 2.0 and 2.1, we did not notice the iPhone restarting in this case.

PROCESSES
Running processes are displayed in the table. To the left of each process name is the process id. If you are a developer, and have been using your iPhone or iPod Touch to debug your applications, you may notice multiple instances of your application at the bottom of the list. These are dead processes. You will have to restart your iPhone or iPod Touch to remove all of these dead processes. Or, you may use XCode to attach to the process using the process id, which will kill the dead process.

Unfortunately, the OS currently does not allow retrieving additional information about other processes, such as memory usage and cpu usage. If this was to change, we would include this information.

BATTERY LEVEL
The battery level indicates the percent of charge left in the iPhone or iPod Touch battery. Currently the OS does not return other information such as the time left remaining or time to when the battery will be fully charged. If this was to change, we would include this information.

DIFFERENT READINGS FROM COMPETITOR
The amount of memory available can also depend on the size of the current application. Our competitor uses lots of graphics and images which take up memory. Free Memory was designed to be minimalist, and to take up as little memory as possible to give the best memory reading.