Wadda ya wanna make those eyes at me for?

Tuesday 4 September 2007

HOUSEKEEPING, HOUSEKEEPING, HOUSEKEEPING!!!

If this causes some raised eyebrows then so be it!

I have 'played' with three brand new N95s. I have debranded them all, undated them all, installed apps and conducted battery tests (see below).

I believe I know how this little sucker operates and why it sometimes fails. I have spent countless hours on it and the following is my own opinion as a result of my findings and observations.

HOUSEKEEPING, HOUSEKEEPING, HOUSEKEEPING!!!

Clutter causes problems in all walks of life and non more so than with the modern mobile phone.
They accumulate stuff all over the place and mostly where and when you know nothing about it! On the phone memory and the card memory!
It's to be avoided if at all possible.

You get clutter from installed applications, which write files (sometimes hidden) in both locations, from the applications when they run and from the very operating system itself.
These processes can't be avoided (unless you don't install anything at all) but they can be rstricted to the point where they don't cause problems (we all know about crashes, freezes and resets).

Keep it clean!

The main aim of the housekeeping process is to keep as 'clean' a phone as possible! In the process you get great benefits.

So how do we do it and what are the benefits?

Firstly understand that, on your phone,you have two sets of what is called a 'File Allocation Table'. One resides on the memory card and the other in the phone memory itself. These FATs, as they are known, keep the info about applications, where they are installed, what data they need to access and where that can be found. All this needs multiple access requests from the Operating system and as a result there's alot of stuff flying around all the time. These FATs are written and rewritten many times in an attempt to keep up with all the changes you may make to your phones settings and to keep tabs on installation and deletion of applications and data! (there is also the phones registry that keeps an eye on everything you do on the phone and holds your basic settings, but we can't do much about that!)

Get out your tool boxes?

No, you don't need any special tools to 'scrub up' your phone!
You just need to apply a common sense approach!

So let's get started! It's oh so simple!

Begin with a 'vanilla phone' (one where the OS has just been installed and any mem card is newly formatted).
This should all be done without using backup and restore and only syncronised with Nokia PC Suite. In this way you are not going to 'carry over' any settings, data or information from a previous installation. You just re-sync your 'vanilla phone' with PC Suite and that's all.

Now install any applications that you need TO YOUR PHONE MEMORY.

Don't worry there's plenty of memory!
And that's it. I said it was simple!

The Benefits.

You now have a phone that needs fewer access requests.

The phone will be more stable. Your applications will run faster. You will avoid crashes, freezes and resets. Your battery will last longer because you won't be accessing the mem card as much(Memory cards are power hungry little beasts!).

If you are not at the 'vanilla phone' stage, you can copy your needed data (maps, mp3s, vids, photos etc) from your mem card to your PC (unhide files first with an application like x-plore), reformat the card and reinstall any applications that were installed to the mem card, to the phone. The applications will find there required data once you have copied the folders back from you PC to your mem card.
Now only install new applications to your phone!

Give it a try! What have you got to loose.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

This really works.

I'd read a few posts about this and when my N73 crashes a month or so ago I tried installing all my apps to the internal memory and it vastly improved the phones speed and reliability.

I've since upgraded my firmware to v4 and my phone behaves the way its supposed to. I've not reset my phone since I upgraded and I've not noticed much memory drain, as the new firmware seems to recover it very well.

Unknown said...

Im sorry im all for helping people but I have noticed several factual errors in your post.
The advice given is correct. Putting apps on the internal memory will make your apps operate faster. This is because the internal flash memory is extremely fast. External memory like MicroSD is, in contrast quite slow. All this information about FAT and file tracking is a complete mish mash of miss information.
Yes the SD card and internal memory have a FAT. But its simply a pointer to the location of data in the memory. On mechanical disks, the more they are used the more the file chunks begin to fragment. So in order to read a complete file the disk heads have to go to many different places on the disk and this decreases read performance.(Defragmenting your Drive re allocates the file chunks in a sequential order to improve read performance)
Flash memory dose not suffer from this as there are no mechanical parts.
“These FATs, as they are known, keep the info about applications, where they are installed, what data they need to access and where that can be found.”
The FAT dose not keep track of the dependent files for a particular application. The FAT has nothing to do with the OS. It knows nothing about the files stored on it. With the correct driver the OS could run on any type of file system. It is simply a list of the memory addresses that corresponding to the files. Hence File Allocation Table. The clue is in the name.
“You now have a phone that needs fewer access requests.”
Sorry that’s wrong to. Whether its on the phone memory or the memory card it requires the same amount of requests. Its simply faster as the internal memory is faster.

Hope this has clarified your understanding

Dox

Groucho said...

Hi Andrew,
You may have a point as my comments could be over simplified.
I well understand what FAT does in a 'machanical' system, however, in a system where space, access speeds and to a certain extent where and how the file 'data' is stored there are few constraints on the performance of the system as a whole.
You have hard drive speeds and access times that these days cause little or no operating problems. However, I clearly remember the days when you did get problems with dll clashes and crashes because of poorly written code. Calls from the OS to memory locations caused many violations and it is my contention that is exactly what happens with the modern smart phone. If the OS doesn't have to call/access a mem card you save an unnecessary request.
My experience tells me that things run smoother and the feedback that I have received confirms this.
You can't honestly be suggesting that an old version FAT restored to a new version firmware is a good idea or that it would have no effect?

Anonymous said...

Great post matey - iguanapunk.

Wazza said...

I have always installed to phone memory for the simple reason that I plan to upgrade my memory card from time to time and I certainly don't want to have to go re-installing apps or trying to copy the secret little folders from one to the other.

Good blog and keep it up - we can always use "another N95 blog".

rushabhchoksi said...

hey thx 4 da cool tips, btw win N95 for free

Anonymous said...

one thing is sure that you are highly obsessed with installing applications on phone memory.
i think we should install only frequently used applications to phone memory and rest to the memory card.

Anonymous said...

why the hell you always talk of installing applications to phone memory,,,,,,,, and specially when you got only 50-70 mb of it.

fuck u

Panic Attack Treatment said...

Wow! Its really very interesting.... Nice Snap..... Thanks very much for sharing such an amazing blog post. keep it up

Unknown said...

As a way to residence that major aged display screen, the body has to be both of those vast and profound. Exact measurements weren't Apple macbook a1181 Battery obtainable, but the preceding era 17R was 418mm vast, so I assume the new design to generally be extremely equivalent. Which means you can expect to likely struggle to Apple macbook A1185 Battery cram it into a bag and at approximately three.3kg, you happen to be not planning to would like to carry it considerably both.

Unknown said...

hp compaq 6510b charger
acer aspire 5517 adapter
dell charger inspiron n5110
apple macbook a1278 battery
macbook a1185 apple battery
dell charger vostro 1310
macbook a1181 apple battery
dell charger inspiron n4010
hp compaq nx6330 charger
acer adapter aspire 5920
dell battery inspiron 1545