Once upon a time I thought that my Bold could handle installing additional programs as long I had the memory to store it. Ok, I got a device that has a storage capacity of 1G and I can go out and buy a card that can increase the available storage capacity. When making the decision should it be 4, 8 or 16G, I thought about the music, pictures and videos that are going to very quickly eat up memory. I’ll relegate the 1G on board memory for applications and the operating system while the purchased memory card will take care of media and whatever else in data that I can transfer over to it.
I go to the blackberry site and start downloading additional free programs and trials. I’m experiencing different programs that may seem to overlap in what they do and keeping them around to see which one I am most comfortable with. For example, I notice individual GPS programs have a nice feature or features that the other one doesn't. I got 1G of memory, no problem. I have the luxury of comparing while learning how to organize the icons and ...
Time marches on and after about a month then it started without me being aware of what was actually happening. I’d open up the browser and after a few pages or sooner the browser would stall or crash. I thought nothing serious of it. In short, Blackberry has a browser and they haven’t perfected it yet. And little more time goes by and then other applications start stalling or crashing, which leads next to the frequency. So then I’m thinking maybe I installed something that is causing harm, I’m running too many programs, maybe I dropped it and something internal is broken or I’m getting close to using up my 1G or memory. I got to a point of resetting 4 to 5 times a day, Crack Head meet Crackberry user.
Naturally, I got to figure out why it is crashing so much and I go into options to see how much overall memory has been consumed and I notice a 0.0 for Application Memory. Zero for application memory, this has to be the problem. And then I immediately reboot and a low single digit number appears. I continue to use the Bold as usual and went back to check the application memory with number back at 0.0.
Yep, I searched Google for application memory and found other users that were having the same problem on the Bold. I started to realize that my freewheeling days of exploring applications where over, done with, finito. I was living and breathing with this device for over a month and now this realization. It wasn't buyer’s remorse; I was irritated by the fact that it can do all these things and because of application memory I’ll now have to pick and chose applications. All I did was mostly download freebies and a handful of trials that came from the Blackberry site. I only bought one program, just one program and who knows what else I want to buy. The tradeoff now is kind of interesting, not only do I have to think of the price of a possible new application, but also removing one or more of the free programs. Certainly hiding an application icon will become less of an issue.
So I posted a Message on this forum entitled Application Memory, I’m sure you can still find it or maybe have already read it. I basically wanted to share the situation and accurately describe the opinion of this user. I got responses that had a tone like I had done something wrong. I was expecting too much from the Bold, it is not a laptop and another basically saying that I should focus on maintaining my device better. Now, I respect those opinions and thank them for responding. All the responses lead me to understand my little Bold that much better.
Still, I’m not the one to describe what exactly happens. All I can deduct, cause no one has elaborated, all programs installed take up space in Application Memory whether they are running or not. For those that are not running, is it all of the program or some portion of the program residing in Application Memory, I don’t know. I shouldn't have to know, I want to install a fair amount of applications without having to decide which ones stay and which should go. Sure, some of them might be similar so I can compare. Maybe if you increase the amount of Application Memory the OS runs slower, I doubt that very much. Trust me, Blackberry already knows that this is a problem; I’m sharing this with you.
Presently, I have 46 applications of which 20 of those are ones that I have installed myself. So far I’m not experiencing any slowness, stalling and crashing at this level. Basically, I deleted seven applications to go from rebooting all the time to being booty free. You might want to be aware that if you venture over 20 apps without deleting any of the installed applications out of the box, you will have a greater probability in having the same problems that I have experienced. Who knows, depending on what you install, it could be less or you might be luckier than me with amount of applications and still be in the safe zone without having any problems.
The Bottom line is you only have 128 MB of application memory and you can’t increase it. Buying a memory card will do you no good; it is a limitation of sorts that you can only get around by mainly limiting your overall applications. Do yourself a favor and go ahead and check how much application memory you do have after a reboot and then come back and check it again after you have done a few things. It seems the safe zone, at least for me is the upper teens and after I run the bold awhile upper single digits. The closer you are around or above 20 MG Application Memory, the better. Some people might argue you should have more and you will have to decide what is best for you.
After saying all of this something else might be contributing to eating up the application memory. For example, it could be from email and the more you understand different facets to manipulate your bold, the easier it will be to track down or prevent a problem of slowness, stalling and crashing. The main culprit for me was due to the applications and tomorrow it might be something else. At this point I think I know enough to ward off any problem.
If you are a casual user of your bold, you might not ever experience any of this. But I bet over time a lot of you will be getting caught up in trying to deal with what I went through. Take some time to understand where you are with your application memory and how it changes each time you add or delete a program. The average user shouldn't have to deal with this and the next generations will more than likely solve this. I have mixed feelings when I say that it was worth getting cause of this limitation. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the Bold the best that I can.
