Free memory: The Achilles heel of BlackBerry App World
Hip hip huzzah! BlackBerry App World has been with us for over three weeks and no doubt a lot of the World’s 25 million BlackBerry users have jumped on the wagon and taken it for a spin or two around the block. But after playing with it for a while, we’re quite sure that there are plenty of people whose puppy-love infatuation quickly turned to irritation. Why? Errors, bugs and high costs aside, it’s likely that App World users discovered the reality that BlackBerrys have a bit of an issue when it comes to dedicated application memory. This, coupled with the infamous memory leaks that sadly seem to be oh so prevalent on every BlackBerry model since the Pearl 8100, make for a device that isn’t anywhere near capable of handing as many apps as competing smartphones. Put simply, the more contacts, phone logs, saved messages and of course installed applications a user has on his or her BlackBerry, the less free memory the device has to dedicate to new apps.
It really doesn’t take much of effort at all to eat away at the 128MB of app memory on both the Bold or the Storm. In fact, we took a peek at one of the Bold’s at BGR HQ that was running OS 4.6.0.247 and found that it had a paltry 4MB of application memory left. After a battery pull it jumped up to 20MB but then quickly started its descent. The saddest thing is that this Bold only had a Twitter app (more on this some other day), Google Maps, Viigo and a few IM clients installed.
So what can be done about this? Well, for starters, RIM could not only bring its devices into the modern age by giving them 512+ MB of application memory, but it could also do something that we’ve been clamoring for for the longest time and allow users to install applications to their memory cards. And no, we don’t buy it for a second when RIM says it can’t do this securely (surely they can encrypt a microSD card). Other than that, RIM could put some serious work into its aging OS because for the life of us we cannot think of any other platform that has so many updates to fix major bugs and niggles (it seems like for each new device there is a new update, be it a leaked private beta or an official update from a partner carrier, each and every week like clockwork).
Truth be told, we think RIM can be pretty ass-backwards at times, especially considering that it spends a meagre 7-8% on R&D while its competitors spend the 11% industry standard, but it does make a damn fine product nonetheless, one that we couldn’t live without. All in all, it’s just such a shame to think that it can’t do apps right.
Ok, first of all… completely uncalled for. Nice to see that you can conduct yourself in a professional manner. My degree says that DJV is correct, and your bathroom-scrawlings are complete and utter bullshit.
First – BOTH the iPhone AND the Blackberry support multi-tasking. The difference being that Apple is being specific to which apps they will allow to run in the background. Try it… Play a song, and hit the home button, the song continues to play. Try that with a 3rd party app, and it closes, not goes to the background.
The blackberry lets the developer decide whether or not the application will go to the
background or not. BeeJiveIM is just one example.
I don’t know you from a hole in the wall, but I can easily see that you are only looking for a fight, and all you care about is justifying your ridiculous, and incorrect point. The fact that you resort to childish insults only further proves my point. The degree on my wall says that I likely know considerably more on this subject than you… Yup… Masters – Computer Science, specialty Computer and Information Security.
@Jake: There is no difference between your statement: “Play a song, and hit the home button, the song continues to play. Try that with a 3rd party app, and it closes, not goes to the background. The blackberry lets the developer decide whether or not the application will go to the
background or not. BeeJiveIM is just one example.” … and mine: “To varying degrees mobile smartphone OSs are capable of the same process, limited by available memory and processing power”.
If you fail to follow the logic, you can ask a proper question without the snide, disrespectful attempt to address me. Clear?
Me?? Disrespectful???????????????
Quote [asshat] “No, Jake, you ignorant slut…”
It’s humor. Look into it.
Yes, disrespectful, given that this was your first post wading into this blog post:
“Ok… First of, I agree with DVT, and backseat is an uninformed user who has no need to discuss this topic further. What DVT has stated is a TRUE definition, available in ANY comp sci text. What backseat is mislabeling and mis-defining is “multi-user” computing.”
-No- degreed IS professional would have made such an errant statement. Care to disclose who you work for so I can insure we never employ them?
… You ignorant slut.
RIM? waiting for a proactive plan on this issue. always love blackberry nonetheless
I feel like your cheating on me now Beatoff…in fact I think you like Jake. Maybe even want “Him” to sit on your face instead of me…:oh well….I’m far too independent for ya beatoff….
@DavidThande: You bore the shit outa me. Eat it, bitch.
This shit is all free somewhere else. Why pay?
@backbeat
Watch your language and stop with the anti-social behaviour.
bottom line:
every phone multi-tasks… but some expose more of it to developers… RIM and WinMob expose a lot, while iPhone uses multi-tasking for it’s proprietary apps.
Even some feature phones will now support some level of multi-tasking (dropping apps into background).
Maybe Apple will get it right in 4.0
@MBettiol: ShuuuuutUp!
Maybe it’s me but besides running the iPod function in the background, what other iPhone native apps will run in the background. It seems to me that the only example iPhone users can come up with serves as the execption as opposed to the rule…ie iPhones, cannot multitask. I don’t understand why iPhone users get upset when we make that statement, it is what it is. That just happens to be one of the iPhones weaker areas. And can somebody who still has an iPhone check to see if you can go to a web page, switch to the homescreen and do something else, and return to the browser with the web page now being fully loaded…or does it just pick up where it left off?
The internal memory on these things suck. I installed twitterberry on my 8320 and removed other apps like docs2go just to get some extra memory. After that helped for a few days I installed the beta (.95 or something like that)version of twitterberry which gives you the option of caching the icons on your bb or sd card and it seems to be paying off. Just my 2 cents RIM slap somemore ram in theses things or let us use at least some of the SD card for ram. Is it that d*mn hard?
An imperfect, but perfectly viable management solution.
http://aerize.com/blackberry/software/loader/
No matter how functional these BB’s are there is always some new bug or outages at least 3 times a year for both the latter and former
BIS is the only segment which has had outages and these have always been at the carrier-level for a matter of only several hours. How many times has GMail been down over the past 3 years? BES has yet to go down.
Truth’s a bitch you -still- cannot handle, BitchBoy.
So because it was only one segment, of two and who cares how long, makes it not an outage? It wasn’t carrier specific either.
^Show me a single incidence where BIS went down outside of the network-level. Just one, BitchBoy. Go for it …
As if you have any clue how many times EAS goes down, you insignificant-Troll …
I’ve been working with mobile devices since the apple newton. Doesn’t matter what platform your on there will always be something better tomorrow. The major players have all hit a special niche in their market. Get the device that fits your needs. I carry a 3g Iphone and an 8900 Blackberry. Why? Because I support both. Which do I use the most? My Blackberry, for me it does more of what I need it to do. The Blackberry is changing with each new model. The 8300/8310/8320 has 64 MB, 8330 has 96 MB, Bold and Storm 128 MB and the 8900 has 256 MB. As new models come out you will see them with more memory. In the mean time what can you do? Like some folks have recommended there is an app that will let you load your applications in the SD memory or just keep an eye on what you have loaded. The more high tech our handhelds get the more issues we will see with stability. I can remember the days of the rock solid 850, but then again it didn’t do everything for me.
I downloaded yesterday a software called Quickpull off the App World thingy. Seems to help with the free memory, although I’d like to find a workaround that doesn’t require any kind of real or simulated battery pull.
4/13 BGR reported BIS dead everywhere, all carriers U.S. and Canada is one
^Thanks for confirming my point that BIS only goes down at the carrier-level. Got evidence that the outage went further up the chain? No? Didn’t think so, BitchBoy …
That it happens, often, at all is my point. I don’t care that BES doesn’t have that problem, it cost more for that anyway. If carrier level means only one carrier looser BIS then this site is wrong or buddy needs to get facts straight
^Thanks for clarifying perfectly that the term ‘carrier-level’ is simply beyond your comprehension.
Like to take a stab at how frequently EAS goes down, SirTrollAlot?