Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Getting Apps To Use Phones' Full Power?
First time accepted submitter MurukeshM writes "I have a 16 GB Nexus 4. I rarely manage to push the RAM usage above 1 GB (not counting cached processes). Yet I find it increasingly annoying when apps do stuff to save on RAM usage, such as having a browser reload a tab if I havent used it for a long time, instead of keeping it in memory or have an ebook reader load from storage instead of keeping the entire eBook in RAM. I know there are plenty of phones with far less memory, but when most of the RAM is unutilized, with more and more phones and tablets having 1GB+ RAM, isn't it time that apps check on available RAM and use optimizations accordingly? And it isn't only about RAM. Android by default only downloads one thing at a time, whether it be an app from Play Store or a file from a site. When connected to WiFi or 3G/LTE, there's no reason why multiple simultaneous downloads shouldn't be used. How do Slashdot readers with high-end phones get the most out of their device? Are there custom ROMs which act more sensibly?"
Also, my Nexus 7 certainly seems to download multiple files at once.
This. Certain apps (like the play store) download one at a time because they are trying to be nice on your phone (since the time saved from multiple downloads is negligible anyway, unless you have a really good 4G signal). How much time do you spend waiting on play store app downloads anyway? The OS at large has no such restriction, you can download things from the play store while you are downloading things from a web page, or things from a Torrent, or whatever; it is all up to the app. I have run a Torrent client with 32 connections across 5 file downloads and Android had no problem with it (it did make video playback skip occasionally). I agree that phones are generally more powerful than the software expects at this point, but the way the question was worded, this is a problem looking for a solution.
How about this: How can I get my phone/tablet to do compute work (folding @home, whatever) when it's plugged in and fully charged (like, most of the night)? These devices have multiple GB of ram, 2 to 4 CPU cores, and 4 to 8 GPU cores, why not put them to work if they are on-charger and full of juice (when the charger's role is done)?