I'm using an 8900 that's a year or so old. The OS is 5.0.0.681. I'm noticing a gradual loss of File Free memory, according to Options>Status, after a reset or battery pull. That is, a few months ago, I'd have about 123 MB free after a reset/pull. Now it's about 93 MB. It's not because of a bunch of emails or texts sitting in memory, because I've cleaned them out. And it's not because of new apps installed, because I haven't installed any. In fact, I uninstalled one that I wasn't using. The device seems to run fine, so maybe the question is academic, but I'd still like to know why I have 30 MB less free memory after a reset than I used to.
The OS, incidentally, has been "optimized" as per the John Clark instructions on the subject, which I've followed each time I've upgraded the OS. I'm seeing this loss of memory even without any OS change.
This just sounds like standard memory usage after restart. If it continued to dip and got below 80MB or so, I'd say you were still experiencing memory leak. It's not dangerous (loss of messages, etc.) until you get down near only 15MB free, but it's still worth keeping an eye on.
This memory leak plagued older models like the 8300 Curve with OS 4.5, but was greatly reduced with OS 4.6. I wouldn't expect serious memory leak problems with an 8900/OS 5.0.
I think I didn't express myself well enough. The issue is that the amount of free file memory *immediately after reset* has gone down by 30 MB, for no apparent reason. It's as if something is holding onto memory in a manner that even battery pull/reset doesn't shake loose.
I suggest you go to BlackBerry Technical Solution Center
and do a search for memory leak. There are many causes and some may be related to something your doing or using.
Gradual loss of file free memory
