Essential Phone memory leak & slowdown bug apparently fixed in the latest November security update

Essential Phone was among the first devices to receive the stable version of Android 10, the latest and greatest from Google. The search giant pushed the OS in early September and as usual, the wait is still on for major vendors to start rolling it out.

While there is always some excitement about receiving a major OS upgrade ahead of others, this isn’t always the best idea. Usually, early adopters are basically beta testers of the stable version and if nothing goes wrong, the wider rollout continues.

For early adopters, several issues have popped up since the OS arrived, but developers keep addressing these issues with regular software updates. One such issue being addressed by Essential in the latest November security update is a memory leak in Android 10.

The memory leak issue, so it seems, has been around for quite some time, dating back to pre-Android 10 days. What happens is that memory used by the kernel keeps increasing and needs rebooting the device to free up the memory. And apparently, the November patch has addressed this issue.

They’re merged. The November update shouldn’t have that memory leak anymore.
Source

In basic terms, a memory leak occurs when you hit the back button up to the very last point where another tap will essentially close the app and free up the memory that held it, but instead, the app doesn’t close and thus the memory holding it isn’t freed.

Do this multiple times and more memory keeps getting used even by apps/processes that are not in use and eventually, you end up with a very slow device.

By addressing the Essential Phone memory leak issue, the company has also taken care of the slowdown bug that has been affecting the phone since Android 10 arrived. That’s killing two birds with one stone.

If the November security update hasn’t arrived on your Essential Phone, we have both the OTA and fastboot files below, just in case you want to sideload them manually.

• Device: Essential Phone
• Codename: PH-1
• Channel: Unlocked
• Version: QP1A.191005.014
• Android: 10
  • Type: OTA
    • Download: Link
    • SHA-256: 7102ee2b1b240db39d5fdfe4b8cc46ff06ee51e7fad181b6b882e78188dcf93a

• Type: Fastboot
  • Download: Link
  • SHA-256: fb33b44d92c400348d2da3b2825d35b308e77f39c132664419d64330bc108733

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