Palm Treo 700w: 32MB or 64MB RAM?

[Darius Wey]

<img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20060106-Treo700wRAM.jpg" /><br /><br />As a follow-up to the <i>high-resolution</i> <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,45395">shots of the Treo 700w</a> from earlier in the day, here's a <i>low-resolution</i> shot of the Memory page. Conflicting rumours have been circulating over the past day with regards to the amount of RAM packed in the device. Some say 32MB RAM, others say 64MB RAM, though a couple of reliable sources have confirmed that the Treo only has 32MB RAM. One way or the other, you have a little over 25MB to use with a considerable portion of that being consumed on start-up. Your thoughts?

[pocketpcadmirer]

Well Treo were never meant for power users like us. They are meant for the 'general' public :lol:

Since the treo runs WM5 and considering the palm has provided some kind of task management utility, then, even 32 ram would be fine for the 'normal' users IMHO :roll:

Sunny

[PPCMD]

I am waiting for PPCtechs to give a yes or no on a 64MB RAM upgrade. My Treo arrives tomorrow and it will be fine eitherway but more RAM will make me happier :devilboy:

[Nurhisham Hussein]

If it performs as poorly as the rx1950, which also has 32 MB RAM, then this thing is going to bomb.

[whydidnt]

TreoCentral stated in their review that they experienced some out of memory errors while using IE, but it wasn't a huge deal to them. However, if it is happening during a relatively short review cycle I can't imagine it will get better when used for any amount of time by a typcial consumer.

I don't think it's enough. As soon as you run a few programs sync a decent sized PIM database, download some mail, and surf a few web pages, you're going to be out of RAM. Power user or not, it's going to be frustrating to soft reset the device to try and regain RAM. We all know that simply closing open programs does not guarantee that all the RAM occupied will be freed up.

I'll be interested to hear reports from a few users on this issue, as it could seriously damage the reputation of WM5 since this very well could be the first WM5 device many will own.

[pocketpcadmirer]

If it performs as poorly as the rx1950, which also has 32 MB RAM, then this thing is going to bomb.

Well I dont think so. Palm is clever enough. Actually what I have heard is that treo first loads all 'neccessary' stuff into ram. As a result of which everything seems zippy to the user.
axiomatically it enhances user experience

Sunny

[MitchellO]

The 700w was doing pretty well up till this point. The screens smaller res is forgivable because of the thumboard (no SIP needed), but 32mb RAM could make this device less popular. My KJAM does great with 64Mb RAM but would likely struggle with much less.

[pocketpcadmirer]

TreoCentral stated in their review that they experienced some out of memory errors while using IE

This is crazy. I'd not expected this from a well reputed pda-phone. :?
This might have happened when one tries to open pages with lot of content and images thus crossing 25 mb ram

Sunny

[heov]

yeah 15mb free after startup... i think my rx1950 has 14mb. the device is usable for daily tasks, no problems. but when you load a pdf, a large webpage, things slow down pretty quickly.

if i remember correctly, i could NOT play an mp3, have a webpage open, and check my email at the same time. WMP would always close automatically when i tried to check my mail.

[Menneisyys]

yeah 15mb free after startup... i think my rx1950 has 14mb. the device is usable for daily tasks, no problems. but when you load a pdf, a large webpage, things slow down pretty quickly.

if i remember correctly, i could NOT play an mp3, have a webpage open, and check my email at the same time. WMP would always close automatically when i tried to check my mail.

There's another blog post with links to similar, rx1950-related discussions at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&amp;title=the_hp_ipaq_rx195x_is_it_any_good&amp;more=1

[Menneisyys]

BTW, if this device will indeed come with 32M RAM only, then, I won't recommend it to anyone. As soon as you need to do anything serious (even using alternative browsers or PIE plug-ins, let alone doing things like PDF reading), you'll run into the RAM shortage problem.

[alese]

if i remember correctly, i could NOT play an mp3, have a webpage open, and check my email at the same time. WMP would always close automatically when i tried to check my mail.

I guess this is what Palm wants, after all their PalmOS users can't do multitasking, so to have a comparable user experience, WinMobile users also can't multitask ... :twisted:

[pocketpcadmirer]

I guess this is what Palm wants, after all their PalmOS users can't do multitasking, so to have a comparable user experience, WinMobile users also can't multitask ... :twisted:

Ha ha ha :lol: same scenerio here !!

Sunny

[Silver5]

The Treo 600, 650, and now the 700w all have too little memory available. In fact, the 700w will be the worst of them all in this regard. It looks like they are getting progressively worse...

[mpaque]

I picked up a 700w last evening. It certainly does appear this device only has 32MB of RAM. On the positive side, it is very quick with applications opening immediately. I spent a good while (about an hour) browsing websites over a 1x connection and was down to about 3MB of free RAM. I plan on giving this thing a hard test drive over the next few days and then decide if I'm going to keep it. So far I really like it, but I definitely thing it could have more memory.

[PPCMD]

Mine arrives today and I have been pretty good at memory mgt from my previous WM devices. But 32MB does bothe me as well. My hopes rest with PPCTechs and a 64MB upgrade which they are researching.

[DaleReeck]

In addition to what everyone has already said, let's not forget Windows Mobile's penchant for memory leaks. I have a Universal running WM5 and I start the day with 23MB of free program memory. By the end of the day, it is down to 13MB. My WM3SE based I730 does the same about. Despite all apps being closed, it loses a ton of memory. I would say I sync twice a day and run (and close) maybe half a dozen apps. Not super heavy usage, but it still leaks memory like mad. Unless Palm did some magic, 14MB will force you to reboot the 700 five times a day for even a moderate user.

[Paragon]

I don't understand the reasoning behind the design decision of only putting 32mb of RAM in this device. Usually the decision behind the amount of RAM directly relates to the standby battery time. The more RAM the shorter standby. This device has 15 days of standby. So if they used 64mb of RAM the standby time would still be a week. Add to that the fact that it is persistent storage...I just don't understand it?

......Unless Palm/HTC hired the guy Motorola fired for designing the MPX. ;)

It does look like they have done some fancy engineering though. The screen shot shows that it is only using 10mb of RAM. That is impossible on any other Phone Edition device I have ever owned. My Wizard or Apache are over 20mb after a soft reset.

Dave

[whydidnt]

:wink: So do you suppose Ed Colligan was watching the Godfather one night and took it to heart? You know, the whole, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer? :wink:

Perhaps he realized that WM5 was gaining market share at Palm's expense, his OS was growing outdated, and a replacement was still a couple of years away. The only way to stop the bleeding was "partner" with the enemy, but damage the product reputation in the process. So, he decided to build a new TREO running WM5, they'd have a big product launch with the CEO's of both MS and Verizon and announce all these great enhancements that "only Palm" could do, knowing of course they were simply today screen plugins, anyone smart enough could produce anyway. That doesn't matter, nobody else HAD done these earlier, providing a nice in.

Oh the device would be grand, it would attract all sorts of new users to WM5, his primary competitor. But then in the end he would leave one fatal flaw - let's only put 32 MB of RAM in the device. That will make it less stable and cause out of memory errors. Hasn't Palm's marketing FUD for years been PPC devices use too much memory and are unstable? Of course!! When all these new users try the WM Treo they'll see that what they've been saying is true. Users will compare the WM experience to the Treo 650 and find that it IS less stable and DOES run out of RAM. They'll forever be turned off to WM device and Palm will have bought the time needed to catch up.

I think it's all part of Palm's master plan to sabotage Windows Mobile! :wink:

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

[surur]

Does anyone realize this device has only 5 MB more ram free than the aborted MPx?

Surur

[Janak Parekh]

In addition to what everyone has already said, let's not forget Windows Mobile's penchant for memory leaks. I have a Universal running WM5 and I start the day with 23MB of free program memory. By the end of the day, it is down to 13MB.
That's not necessarily WM5's fault. My Universal, after a week of heavy use, usually has about 20MB free with 5-6 programs running. It could also be one or more specific applications or functionality that the OEM has integrated into the unit. I've heard some reports, but I have no concrete data on what the cause is. I do know I went out of my way not to install i-mate customizations, many Today screen plugins, etc.

My i700, too, used to run for a few weeks without needing a soft reset... in fact, I never had to deal with memory leaks on either - for me, soft resets are only needed when the device starts acting weird.

--janak

[Ed Hansberry]

Does anyone realize this device has only 5 MB more ram free than the aborted MPx?
Do you realize the MPx was a 2003SE device that shared the 32MB of RAM between running apps and storing data, wheras the RAM on the Treo is configured as all WM5 devices, for running apps?

[surur]

Does anyone realize this device has only 5 MB more ram free than the aborted MPx?
Do you realize the MPx was a 2003SE device that shared the 32MB of RAM between running apps and storing data, wheras the RAM on the Treo is configured as all WM5 devices, for running apps?

I'm talking about free ram. I'm sure most MPx users, like many Dell x50v users, did as much as they could to use as little of their ram as possible for storage (by moving most software to SD card). They still suffered from too little execution ram.

Surur

[whydidnt]

My i700, too, used to run for a few weeks without needing a soft reset... in fact, I never had to deal with memory leaks on either - for me, soft resets are only needed when the device starts acting weird.
--janak

Maybe it's just me, but I find my device starts acting weird when it's low on memory. :lol:

I have found "memory" leaks or whatever you want to call them on every version of PPC or WM I've ever used. It could be third party programs I run, but I rarely, if ever use today screen plugins, and aside from a few simple games, most of the programs I use are standard fare. I find that WebIS mail is a big culprit, but it's uses so much memory I doubt you would or could comfortably run it on the Treo anyway. I really need some of it's features though. I also find PIE and NetFront to also be fairly unfriendly about releasing resources.

I think the bottom line regarding this device is we'll have to wait a few more days to see what really ends up happening in regards to memory for those that already have one. I still think that WM5's insatiable thirst for memory is going to cause some heartburn, but would love to be proved wrong.

[Darius Wey]

I have found "memory" leaks or whatever you want to call them on every version of PPC or WM I've ever used. It could be third party programs I run, but I rarely, if ever use today screen plugins, and aside from a few simple games, most of the programs I use are standard fare.

More often than not, they're third-party program related (including whatever bloatware the OEM chooses to embed in the image). The OS itself is clean and kind on memory usage.

I think the bottom line regarding this device is we'll have to wait a few more days to see what really ends up happening in regards to memory for those that already have one. I still think that WM5's insatiable thirst for memory is going to cause some heartburn, but would love to be proved wrong.

For most business professionals who end up purchasing the device, they'll more than likely run the device as-is; that is, no third-party programs whatsoever. With that in mind, I doubt they'll run into RAM shortages too often, if at all.

[q-live]

well i went to the verizon store and played with it a little today and it was ok. I started surfing for a while and wanted to see if orb.com worked on it so i went there and got into my account fine. Wanted to see how it would stream my movies but instead of opening up the player it say memory to low and just closed out :evil: I hope this is a fixable problem because even my garbage azz hp pda phone can stream from orb so treo should be able to :cry: :evil: :twisted:

[globaloffice]

I've had mine two full days now, and I'm coming from a hx4700/Motorola V710 combo. I've seen 4 out of memory errors so far, eWallet is having sync problems with it, and a time tracking program (TimeTrackerMX) just plain won't work, albeit that may be a WM5 compatibility problem. I'll give this a day or two more, I'm trying to get past the screen real estate differences from what I'm used to, but right now I'm not overly impressed. Interesting gadget but not sure it's the right choice for a person that uses the PDA portion of it heavily.

-Roger

[Len Egan]

I am writing this post with the thumboard of my 700W.Not only is there only about 12 mb of user RAM (setting up wireless sync uses up a couple of mb), but the is a memory leak it seems. I went to memory with nothing opened and just watched...it dropped from 11.38 mb to 9.69 when the wireless sync started and, then, every once in a while it would just lose about .25 mb until I was down to about 5.5 mb.

Games are a problem. I couldn't open Arvale 2 because I need 6 mb of user Ram.

The 700W is a great phone but a less than marginal Pocket PC. I think I'll keep it for phone and basic PIM and use my tablet for everything else.

[mesposito2]

I've had mine two full days now, and I'm coming from a hx4700/Motorola V710 combo. I've seen 4 out of memory errors so far, eWallet is having sync problems with it .....

-Roger

I've had mine for a few days. Illiumsoft has a fix for eWallet. They just emailed me today after I reported the problem.

I think the review was a bit negative considering how good a converged device it is. It doesn't matter that it's a Palm. It's a piece of hardware. The phone quality is excellent. The external speaker is fantastic. I played some MP3's on it and they sounded great.

I have Aleph stock quotes working. It adds a scrollbar but it's usable. Laridian's PocketBible works fine. Pocket Informant is working. I have not had a memory error yet, and the device is plenty fast.

I admit that lately I haven't been as much a power-user as I was, so maybe this is why it's working great for me.

Of course there is a size trade-off here, and this is what people need to remember. It feels more like a smartphone than a PDA phone.

Keyboard - like all keyboards, you have to get used to them. I'm getting comfortable with it after a few days.

EVDO - very fast. There is an acceptible trade-off here too, at least for me. Graphic intensive web pages are fast, very little lag at all. Email very usable. I'm willing to put up with a few negative side issues to have a device like this that works as well as it does.

Bottom line: For users that want a great phone with a fast network, and compatibility with PocketPC apps, it's not a bad choice.

Verizon has a 21 day trial period. (money back)

I think I'll be keeping mine.

Mark

[globaloffice]

Verizon has a 21 day trial period. (money back)



15 days...

-Roger

[Cybrid]

Considering how much RAM OS shadowing takes up in WM5 X50V's. I'd have to say it is a pretty good estimate that it'll be 64Mb.
Alex Kac had a post about how the WM5 emulator in a development kit showed 19Mb being used up and there was the blog by Mike Calligaro.

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/11/17/494177.aspx
But you said 32M was enough!
You obviously can't have a 32M device if 14M are gone before you start loading applications. What's important to understand is that all of the big ticket items above are dependent on the hardware used. If a device was NOR based and XIPed, it would use a smaller Page Pool (or none at all). It would likely XIP the XIPKernel region. It might be able to XIP the Radio Stack as well. If it was tuned for taking pictures instead of video conferencing, it could use a smaller DMA buffer. If the device was 240x240 instead of 640x480, its frame buffer would be 1/6th the size. Etc.

So assuming a rough 14-20 mb MS suckage, another 20Mb of Verizon's BT crippling and other magnificent optimization "goodness".
25mb is a reasonable left over, besides those palmer's couldn't handle multi tasking all at once....baby steps....:devilboy:
:devilboy: :devilboy: :devilboy:


# re: Where's my RAM?
Saturday, November 19, 2005 12:04 AM by Alex K
I have to agree that MS has just as much to explain as say Dell or HP on why an identical device with two OSs provides so much less usable RAM under WM5.

At the very least MS has that relationship with HP and Dell to find out and explain exactly what it is.

The truth is though that most of the memory IS Microsoft code. How do I know? Look at the WM5 emulators. No OEM stuff there. Here are numbers from a straight soft reset: 36.62 MB Total. In Use 19.93 MB. That's 20MB in use on a soft reset - phone edition/QVGA.

Now QVGA no phone: 36.99 MB Total. In use: 17.70.

That's still a LOT more than WM 2003SE emulators which show 29.70 MB Total main memory and only 6.35MB in Use on a soft reset. Even looking at my own Samsung i730 which is a PPC 2003SE Phone Edition device it takes 11MB at startup including OEM apps that start up.

Mike, you can look at the emulator your self. You can look at a Dell x50v yourself. Yes, WM5 definitely takes up 3x the amount of memory than WM2003 did.
Darius, I think you might be a little too focused on your studies to be forgetting such recent events as last November. Take it easy but keep up the good work. :lol:

[Darius Wey]

Considering how much RAM OS shadowing takes up in WM5 X50V's. I'd have to say it is a pretty good estimate that it'll be 64Mb.
Alex Kac had a post about how the WM5 emulator in a development kit showed 19Mb being used up and there was the blog by Mike Calligaro.

Darius, I think you might be a little too focused on your studies to be forgetting such recent events as last November. Take it easy but keep up the good work. :lol:

Oh, I still remember Mike's post at the WMTB. If you read my original post again, I was never denying the possibility that it might have 64MB RAM. I was only reporting on what I had read and heard from sources who had apparently received confirmation from Palm that the device was fitted with 32MB RAM.

With regards to studies consuming me, well, you may be half right on that point. Either way, I assure you my mind is still in a good enough state to remember past events. :lol:

[burtcom]

CNN-Money is reporting that this thing comes with 60MB RAM

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/12/technology/palmtreo_fortune/index.htm?cnn=yes

[Darius Wey]

CNN-Money is reporting that this thing comes with 60MB RAM

They're actually referring to the user-accessible memory for storage, which in Windows Mobile 5.0, is different to RAM.