Dell Venue 8 3840 Applications Keep crashing

I will never purchase a Dell product again - first, tech support has indicated that there is not that much memory (RAM) left after the OS is loaded, meaning that if you have multiple tabs open in a browser it will run out of memory. I didn't find this out until after using the tablet for more than 30 days (49 to be exact) and when I tried to return it, they told me thanks for your efforts to try to resolve this, but now that you're beyond the 30 day return window, tough luck - we can send you back to tech support. I tried to escalate and they said the same thing - they don't care about my or your business, nor about what is right.

I/we will never purchase Dell products again - our eng and sales organization will go with someone else who is more concerned about customer satisfaction.

send it back to Dell before your 30 day return has expired - this is a poor implementation

The main (almost only) reason why I ordered the 8-3840 was for the 8" FHD screen - definitely not disappointed there - but I did not expect it to handle light multi-tasking so much worse than my 2.5 years old N7 which also only has only 1GB RAM.

I have done some more poking around since last night and it appears the problems are caused by Chrome eating what little RAM the 3840 can spare for user apps after the OS bloat. On my N7-2012/5.0.2, I have about 750MB of RAM available (out of 1GB) for user applications while on the 3840, I only have about 350MB. Chrome's memory leaking (?) appears to be much more severe on the 3840: it takes a few dozen flicks through large pages to make Chrome balloon from 100MB to 300MB where memory management hell breaks loose while on the N7, it takes a hundred flicks through the same pages to make it rise from 100MB to 200MB - Chrome appears to be leaking memory on the N7 too, but much more slowly and with twice as much usable RAM, it will take considerably longer to reach the point of becoming unusable.

I am going to take a few more days to try some more stuff on it to see if I can find any reason to keep it but at this point, it is starting to smell like a return - a tablet with only 300-ish MB of user-usable RAM is nearly unusable. I just tried x86-64 Android in AVD and "System" only uses 130MB; makes one wonder what sort of stuff Dell put in there aside from maybe 100MB worth of device-specific drivers.

I imagine the 3840 would be quite nice rooted with stock 4.4.4 or 5.0.2 firmware.

1. Factory reset.

2. Uninstall / disable all bloatware.

3. Recognize resource hogs will cause crashes and avoid them. (Use a lighter browser instead of Chrome. I use Puffin.)

4. Understand that if you do use resource hogs, then background apps may close or crash.

I've had moderate success with this tablet and I'm moderately happy with it. For $119 on sale at Best Buy it was a steal. And yes, I have the Dell Venue 8 3840. It's major limitation is a lack of memory (RAM), but that can be mitigated by following these steps.

DETAILS:

I'll elaborate.

***Item #1.

While it may not be necessary, I would recommend doing a factory reset. And being paranoid I would do it from RECOVERY. Actually, I did both and here is how.

With your tablet on and booted into Android go to:

Settings | Backup & reset | Factory data reset

enter your PIN (or other active security measure) and erase everything.

After it has completed it will reboot into Android, but do not continue past the initial prompt. Instead power off the tablet and enter recovery mode like this:

While powered off...

press and hold the power + volume down buttons (release when you see the DELL logo)
select RECOVERY (volume up & down move through options; power selects highlighted option)
when paused at dead android (power + volume up to continue)
wipe cache partition
wipe data/factory reset
reboot system now

When finished it will reboot into Android. When you log into your Google account do not restore your settings and data (yet) and be sure to uncheck the boxes. [You don't need nor want the 500 apps you have loaded on your flagship smartphone auto-restoring to your tablet. Remember limited memory is the problem.]

***Item #2.

Go to:

Settings | Apps

and slide over to the All tab. Go throught he list of apps and select the ones you don't need and Force Stop and Uninstall or Disable as the options permit. (You must do this for each individual app that you wish to remove.) Be careful not to disable essential system apps. If you don't know, then don't do it.

After you have done this you can slide all the way over to the right to the Disabled tab to see all the apps you have disabled. My list shows the following disabled apps.

Andoid Live Wallpapers
Black Hole
Browser
Bubbles
CamCard
Chrome (I use Puffin.)
Email (I use Gmail and Yahoo Mail.)
Exchange Services
Magic Smoke Wallpapers
Music Virtualization Wallpapers
Phase Beam
PocketCloud
POLARIS Office 5
Skitch
TalkBack

I also tried to disable Dell Cast, Intel Smart Video, and Live Wallpaper Picker, but apparently those preinstalled system apps cannot be disabled.

***Items #3 & 4.

The major malfunction with this tablet is that it does not have enough random access memory (RAM), which is where the Android operating system and all your apps run. I recommend disabling Chrome and using a lighter browser. (I use Puffin. I also use SwiftKey for my keyboard; not that it is lighter, but it does not have the disappearing act like the Google keyboard.)

Keep in mind that all your apps run in the same limited RAM. If you have too many running or if you have just one really big one (like Chrome), then your are going to have problems.

Oh, and that reminds me... When you do log into your Google account for the first time after doing the factory reset, DO NOT restore all your apps. You want to individually install only those apps that you want on the tablet. And if the apps start intalling automatically, then immediately open Google Play Store, go to My Apps, and Stop the installations. Only install the apps you really need on your tablet.

This situation is not ideal, but it is manageable. I'm comfortable with it, especially since I only paid $119 at Best Buy (online) during their Presidents day sale.

I hope this helps.