N95 'Out of free memory' error

This was discussed here recently. There was no consensus as to whether it was possible to use a swap file or other kind of disk-caching. Nokia have since announced improved memory handling giving more free RAM, but it's not clear whether this can be done retrospectively to the N95 via a firmware update. Or if it's possible, whether Nokia would bother.

Unfortunately Web is a very memory-hungry program and can run out of memory quite easily. You could try Opera Mini, which can be more tolerant because Opera's servers strip out parts of the code, although there are correspondingly less features (such as no JavaScript or Flash).

Using swap memory is unlikely to make the phone faster, because any other form of storage is slower than RAM, but it would of course let the phone run more programs. It would require a significant change to memory handling in Symbian OS though, and it won't happen.. our only hope really is that Demand Paging gets released on the N95-1.

This thread made me realise that I haven't had an out of mem message for a long time! In fact I can't remember the last time. I use the nokia browser many times a day all with full web access without a hitch. Is something going on? This is posted by way of the N95 and I checked and I have 7.3Mb left! Enough with plenty to spare.

pa49 wrote:This thread made me realise that I haven't had an out of mem message for a long time! In fact I can't remember the last time. I use the nokia browser many times a day all with full web access without a hitch. Is something going on? This is posted by way of the N95 and I checked and I have 7.3Mb left! Enough with plenty to spare.

Maybe you/we are just getting more familiar with our phones and don't try to do things they can't handle.

What network are is your N95 running on as if its Orange they add loads of stuff that would eat up memory.

I'm with o2 so don't know how they compare to service providers like Orange though at the time of getting the memory error I was using wi-fi. The webiste I was trying to browse was Facebook so there may have been too much information for the phone to handle.

Facebook is indeed too demanding for the N95-1.. I think there's a mobile version though (is it http://m.facebook.com/ ?).

The built-in browser sucks when it comes to memory-handling, yes. There have been memory timeouts all over the place equally in v 10, 11 and 12 of the OS. And there are no problems whatsoever with java-Opera 4. OTOH, Opera can't cope with all the pages that the built-in browser can. So you effectively have to use two browsers on the N95 unfortunately. And you need to plan ahead: one browser for small and medium sized complicated pages and one browser for big uncomplicated pages. Nokia probably won't do anything about this. So my hope is with Opera that can be developed into a really good browser one day.

What I don't understand is with RAM being so cheap why Nokia put in so little. Would it have been so difficult to put in another 100Mb or more?

Not really, no.. it's not a budget device, after all. They learned from this mistake and put twice the RAM in the N95 8GB and the US N95-3, which gives about 4-5 times more free RAM on boot.

Mithent wrote:Not really, no.. it's not a budget device, after all. They learned from this mistake and put twice the RAM in the N95 8GB and the US N95-3, which gives about 4-5 times more free RAM on boot.