Some select devices might be still facing this issue

Feb 21, 2015 08:31 GMT  ·  By

Back in December we told you that a lot of users that that had updated their devices to Android 5.0 Lollipop were reporting being faced with a memory leak bug that killed open apps and prompted perpetual home screen reloads on their mobile devices.

While the future Android 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 updates tried their best to solve the problem, some residual issues are still left hanging on some devices. One good example would be the boot animation memory leak.

With some gadgets, the bootanimation binary (responsible for initial boot animations during bootup) causes a serious memory lea, so extensive that some core system services or processes might end up being killed during boot.

That’s because the bootanimation fails to release the resources (RAM and such) used to play previous frames.

There is a solution to fixing the leakage

Luckily, developer arter97 of the xda-developers has come up with a fix for the problem, which is pretty straight forward to apply.

More than that, the process has an unexpected side effect for some mobile devices: it improves boot times. One user claimed that, after the fix, his Lollipop-updated Moto G was capable of booting in just 29 seconds (from 38 seconds).

Interesting enough, the fix is said to benefit only devices taking advantage of less than 2GB of RAM. Also, it’s very important to keep in mind that results will vary depending on the device you’re sporting.

Let’s dig in and see what you need to do to fix the boot animation memory leak.

1. Download the bootnimation_v2.zip file from the xda-developers community page. You can either choose to download the file on your mobile device or computer, but once unzipped, the resulting files will need to be in your phone’s internal storage compartment.

In case you are on CyanogenMod 12 or something similar, you need to use cm12/bootnanimation.

If your device has a 32-it CPU and runs stock Android AOSP-based ROM or a stock Lollipop-based firmware (like in the case of Samsung, HTC, LG), use aosp/32bit/bootanimation.

In the 64-bit scenario, use aosp/64-bit/bootanimation. The file doesn’t need to have an extension. Just place this folder in internal storage.

2. Now you will have to open a file explorer tool (a good example is Root Browser). Go to the directory where the bootanimation file lives and Copy it to the system/bin directory on top of the old one.

3. Next stop and give the bootanimation file proper access and owner permission. You’ll be able to do this from Root Browser, where you have to continuously press the bootanimaton file. In the pop-up menu, go to Permissions. You need to arrange everything for 755 (rwxr-xr-x). Check the gallery to see exactly how to achieve this.

4. Moving on to owner permission, you need to hold your finger over the bootanimation again, but choose Owner from the pop-up menu. Owner and Group need to be set to root. The tap OK. And you’re pretty much done.

5. Reboot the device and reap the benefits.

Fixing bootanimation memory leak in Android 5.0 Lollipop (5 Images)

Even Android gets sick sometimes
Setting up directory for bootanimation (step 1)Moving the boot animation (step 2)
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