If you've owned a Nokia E70, N95 or N93, or a Sony Ericsson P990i, the chances are that, at some point, you've had a 'Memory' error, usually in the context of 'Low memory' or 'Out of memory'. In this How to, I explain the cause of 'Memory' errors, discuss ways to avoid them and point out a silver lining.
Read on in the full article.
Yes I was suffering the dreaded 'no memory' error on my N95 simply trying to play a video in gallery with nothing else open at all, had to reboot the phone which is now a pain because the phone has taken to losing the time/date even after simply switching on/off after a fall to the carpet.
It really is crap and a double slap in the face from Nokia when they announced the US spec model..I'll wait next time nokia.
Great article Steve. Fortunately, been a regular user of Symbian, I have been following most of these tips. 😊
I would, however, like to stress on avoiding java applications. Personally, these have given me grief on a couple of occassions and once even ended up corrupting my 2GB memory card. Had loads of images on it that had not yet been backed up and had to lose them.
Some symbian applications are also RAM hungry. For instance, I am never able to simutaneously use fring and any other app on my phone (contacts perhaps).
Apart from the web browser, the biggest RAM maniac I find on my n93 is the camera. Everything else shuts down once you start that. Fortunately it does not give memory errors while operating the camera.
malerocks- if there are java applications out there which corrupt memry cards, you should tell us what they are so we can avoid them! Personally I have only seen problems with 'cracked' java software which has been downloaded using P2P - I think a lot of these are deliberate fake copies posted by software companies to shaft people who try to cheat the system.
There is no single java application as such. Just that there was a time when I had number of Java apps on my phone (yahoo go, google mail, amaze, a couple of games to name a few) and all were installed on the memory card. Somehow, these would always slow up the phone, and made it hang. Once the pressure of a few of them running together somehow made the memory card go bad. It was a good card (transcend) and when I got a new one, I have been avoiding installing java apps on my phone. I do not remember any major problems with my phone ever since I have been doing this.
Following MIDP specifications, Java runs in a sandbox "filesystem" (actually, a subdirectory of the real filesystem) and only uses high-level system functions to access it. Thus, Java cannot "corrupt" a memory card. That is not to say that Java is good for anything useful, other than providing the source of livelihood to myriads of mediocre "Java programmers".
I'm based out of the US and even with the understanding that I wouldn't have the bands for US 3G/3.5G, I still went ahead and bought the original N95. I never regretted the purchase but I remember thinking to myself why on earth did they build such a powerful smartphone and cripple it by giving so little RAM? It completely boggles my mind. I can understand equipping the lower spec phones with less RAM but with a phone as feature rich as the N95, it was a really big oversight on Nokia's part. In any case, with the release of the N95-3 (US 3G support), Nokia has really rectified all the major issues such as RAM, battery and build issues. Frankly, the N95-3 is what the original N95 should've been.
I would've actually stuck to the original N95 if only it had come with more RAM.
I just hope that in the future, Nokia doesn't overlook equipping their flagship handsets with faster RAM and or processors.
If there are memory issues with the original N95, with 64 MB of RAM, you can imnagine the experience of using Nokia E50, with only 32 Mb, its practically imposible to run the web browser and any serious application at the same time.
Anyway, could not a windows-like virtual memory be implemented in Symbian, using internal flash or memory card instead of hard disk? This would probably improve a lot the memory performance and low memory issues.
BTW, does anyone know the amount of memory and processor speed of Samsung i550? I am considering it as a replacement of my E50 but I can�t find these specs anywhere.