It is common place for smartphone users to pull the battery out of their phone to perform a hard reset when the phone becomes unresponsive. I have practiced this on Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian, iPhone, and Android over the last 10 years. Regardless of the promise to manage memory most smartphones need a hard reboot on a regular basis to keep them functional, especially after loading new applications. Â Many smartphone users just get use to powering down the phone in order to recovery from sluggish performance or stalled programs. I want to share some of the apps I have used on iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry to help manage memory and reduce the need for hard resets.
Memory Management on the iPhone
System Activity Monitor (Cost 2.99)
I have no doubt that there are other memory manager apps for the iPhone. In fact in the past I used Free Memory. Despite the lack of multi tasking or background apps the iPhone still has issues releasing memory. I have watched performance on the iPhone virtually tank after I had used various apps and opened multiple web pages. I understand that during this activity I should see lower available memory but 45 min to an hour after the phone has been sitting idle the memory should recover, right? Well it in many cases, it has not for me so I open System Activity Monitor to free up the memory. If you believe a picture is worth a thousand words look at the free memory before and after.
Memory Management on Blackberry
Meterberry Cost $3.95 on sale until March 4th for $1.97
I started using MeterBerry about 2 months after the Blackberry Storm 1 was released. The Storm was designed with too little RAM, as well as extremely poor memory management. What I liked about MeterBerry was the option to schedule a reboot of my phone at 4AM to ensure that it at least started the day usable. This reboot option is extremely valuable on a Blackberry as a full reboot takes between 3 - 5 minutes. Additionally, when my Blackberry is idle MeterBerry can try to recovery memory. Finally, with the Blackberry Storm 1 I knew performance became rather bad when the phone fell below 12MB of free memory. With MeterBerry I will have the app notify me when memory falls below 15MB, so that I can be proactive. When I started using MeterBerry my Storm became significantly more usable. I also used Shrink-a-OS to customize my install to free up base RAM. See Get More memory to Install Blackberry Apps if you are interested in how this works.
Memory Management on Windows Mobile
Built-in Tools (Free) or MemMaid ($24.99)
Although there are a lot of apps that can help with memory management, here are a couple of ways to manage memory on a Windows Phone 6.x built-in. The first way is from the main screen you can hit the button on the top right corner of the screen. When you do a list of running programs drop down, Simple click on the program to open it or click the “X†to close 
it. The other way to manage memory is by using good old Task Manager. Under Settings|System open up Task Manager. From there you can close programs that are running and using up memory. Â There are also programs like MemMaid which do a fantastic memory management job.
I should warn that I am somewhat abnormal in how I use my phone. I almost NEVER turn my phone off unless required by law or the policy of a customer. For me turning my phone to silent is just like turning it off. On the other hand, as much as I loath the stylus required by Windows Mobile phones, they do have one excellent use: pushing the reset button for a warm boot. This is much quicker than other platforms and really helps keep the phone running all the time. This may explain my need for better memory management and why my phones rarely last me beyond 12 months. Regardless if you have challenges with memory on your Windows Mobile smartphone please consider these options:
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System Activity Monitor sounds like what I need. No background apps sucks but having to hard reset is a common on my iPhone 3GS. Good suggestion