Secret to increasing iPhone stability?

[mobilehavoc]

This may or may not work for anyone except me but over the last week I've been conducting some personal tests of my iPhones stability when doing certain things. All of these tests were done after a power cycle so they should be valid.

Basically I noticed sometimes my iPhone would be rock solid for days if not over a week and sometimes Safari/iPod would start crashing immediately along with the other usual problems.

I realized a lot of the problems I have such as apps crashing and most common (Safari pages being blank and having to reload) are most likely related somehow to memory.

I figure the most memory intensive app on the iPhone is most likely Coverflow in iPod. On my PC iTunes usually takes up 60-70MB of memory but when using coverflow that can sometimes balloon to about 300-400MB!

So in my tests I used Coverflow in some and not at all in others and for me when not using Coverflow I had in some cases NO CRASHES at all or any issues!

When I used Coverflow things deteriorated really fast.

So for those having these common issues, power cycle your iPhone and try using EVERYTHING you normally use except Coverflow. Please report back with your findings.

 

[Lips2000]

Just to add to the discussion...

Because the iPhone uses OS X (albeit a stripped down version of it) there is a need for memory in order to cache applications, web pages and other assorted OS stuff (trying to not get too technical here on purpose). Having said that, the most noticeable improvement to stability, I have seen, comes from leaving 500M to 1 gig of the memory "free" for the OS to do it's thang.

For those who say, "But we only have 4 or 8 gigs to start with!" I would remark, "Can you really listen to *all* 40+ hours of songs before you sync again?" (Basically, I am saying that a Smart playlist gives you a good variety of your music every time you sync and saves some space.

Mark

 

[mobilehavoc]

Just to add to the discussion...

Because the iPhone uses OS X (albeit a stripped down version of it) there is a need for memory in order to cache applications, web pages and other assorted OS stuff (trying to not get too technical here on purpose). Having said that, the most noticeable improvement to stability, I have seen, comes from leaving 500M to 1 gig of the memory "free" for the OS to do it's thang.

For those who say, "But we only have 4 or 8 gigs to start with!" I would remark, "Can you really listen to *all* 40+ hours of songs before you sync again?" (Basically, I am saying that a Smart playlist gives you a good variety of your music every time you sync and saves some space.

Mark

This is total BS...I've had 10MB free on my 8GB iPhone and 600MB free with the identical results in stability. Flash used for storage is not used for RAM, that's a separate unit.

 

[ATT*Mark]

whats coverflow and how do i know im using it?

 

[Alexander]

whats coverflow and how do i know im using it?

It's turning the iPhone sideways during iPod and browsing by the album art.

 

[ATT*Mark]

oh ok , well i never use my ipod and my safari crashes so i doubt they are related.

 

[Lips2000]

This is total BS...I've had 10MB free on my 8GB iPhone and 600MB free with the identical results in stability. Flash used for storage is not used for RAM, that's a separate unit.

Gosh, I'm sorry. Because it doesn't work for *you* I must full of it. Also, I forgot that you know for a fact that the storage area is not used for a swap area. Mind telling me how you know that?

Mark

 

[RyanFavre]

Just as a general rule, if my iPhone crashes i turn it off and on. Seems to help a lot and my iPhone crashes maybe once every two weeks, which i hear is good for a smart phone.

 

[ciaran00]

Gosh, I'm sorry. Because it doesn't work for *you* I must full of it. Also, I forgot that you know for a fact that the storage area is not used for a swap area. Mind telling me how you know that?

Mark

This guy notes that the CPU has associated RAM:
http://microblog.routed.net/2007/07/06/ic-friday-apple-iphones-cpu/

About 1 Gbit to be exact (128 MB) of RAM:
http://www.eebeat.com/?p=665

Not sure how memory use translates into pagefiling, though. If someone's really curious they could load up the thing with 8 GB and see if it boots at all

I am 99% it will boot, which may negate the idea that iPhone NEEDS the flash memory, although it will still leave the possibility of pagefiling of some kind.

ciaran