Hey guys,

I have had my iPad for about 3 weeks now and I have noticed something that is a bit disconcerting. The available memory of the iPad tops out at around 160MB but it dips quite a bit ... sometimes as low as 20MB or so ... that's when everything becomes unstable. Applications crash, iPad is slow to respond, etc.

I have noticed that this happens on the iPhone as well (owner of 2G and 3GS iPhone).

Both the iPhone and iPad are jailbroken and SB Settings was used to determine available memory.

I have written programs before and when writing programs for computers, it almost doesn't matter how you allocate your memory usage or whether or not you flush the RAM when you exit the program because most computers nowadays have TONS of available RAM and/or virtual memory. From my experience with the iPhone and iPad, this is not true.

1. We are limited in the amount of actual physical RAM available
2. There is no virtual RAM (from reading other people's comments ... not proven)

I guess my question/rant is:

Are app programmers just not making an effort to reallocate the RAM after a program exits because they don't know to do so or is there something else in the jailbreak that is sucking up RAM resources?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I do not have a JB iPad, but in the 3 1/2 months I have had the iPad I simple turn it OFF and then ON (reset or reboot) once a weeks or so... okay I forget most of the time but try to..... anyway, that keeps the memory clear. Overtime if you used your PC/Mac and ran many different programs on it, but did not turn it off the same things happens.... Just reboot every once in a while and no problem....

I do have a JB iPhone 3G, but since I got the iPad it is just used as a phone (and iPad tether) .... I should probably reboot it, since I don't think I have in over 3 months.....

Don't know if JB is part of the problem you are having or not, but I guess it is possible, and the hacked app you are using to tell you memory usage could be off as well....

I think there's a good chance that the memory issues have nothing to do with jailbreaking. I have observed the same memory leakage issues with my non-jailbroken iPhone 3G and iPad.

I use the app "Free Memory Lite" to free up some of that clogged memory without having to reboot. There used to be a great memory dump feature in the app "System Activity Monitor" but the feature was incompatible with iOS4 and so that feature has, at least for the time being, apparently been nixed.

Note that running the Free Memory app will cause the iPod app to shut down. Not a biggie, but when the app shuts down all non-critical apps, it really does so, including the iPod app.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by Bremen

....

I do have a JB iPhone 3G, but since I got the iPad it is just used as a phone (and iPad tether) .... I should probably reboot it, since I don't think I have in over 3 months.....
.

what do you use to tether the iPad to your iPhone ?

I dunno. Maybe Apple isn't wholly full of it when cautioning against jailbreak.

Anyone else experiencing these issues with the iPad?

I have only seen it with a couple of apps. The weather channel app used to get to a point where it wouldnt open anymore until I rebooted the ipad. I uninstalled that app and havent had such issues until today. TwitRocker started doing the same thing. It wouldnt open. I cant say twit rocker is the problem yet though. I've installed a lot of stuff lately.

I have a non-jailbroken iPad and yeah, there are some apps that have memory leaks X-Plane is one example. I get memory errors later in other apps even when this app has been closed for hours.

It has do do with how iphone and ipad apps are made.

each thing that an app does behind the scenes, it must release the info from memory. If you have a beginner creating the app there is a pretty good chance of the apps having memory leaks. Even if the app developer is great one line of code can be forgotten and memory starts to leak.

Nothing to do with the device being jailbroken but jailbroken apps can suffer memory leaks just like official app store apps. Apple doesn't check for memory leaks during the review process.

I notice the iPad getting sluggish if left on in sleep mode for a long length of time. (meaning weeks) Doing a complete reboot once in awhile is a good habit regardless of any computer or operating systems. Our I.T. guys even reboot our cloud servers on a monthly basis just to clear memory. No surprises here