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I think they are describing a "balloon" - you allocate enough memory to trigger a low-memory condition. Android then tries to kill off any large apps. You can then allocate large amounts of RAM in your own app after giving Android some time to shut down background apps, etc.

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This reminds me of those "memory freer" apps they used to distribute for Windows XP. Did they actually do anything useful? Or just force Windows to write everything to the pagefile?

That could perhaps be a useful if you had just enough memory to run a game, if not for other processes using it too. In that case background services should be written to swap while running the game which will probably cause stutters. Doing it before starting the game instead would be better, if it has to be done. So such a utility might then be useful in some cases when someone couldn't afford enough RAM.

is this thre term, baloon? like baloon drive? some vm stuff, i suddenly thought it may serve similar purpose before starting a VM, those can have big memory to load in. makes sense but this is a total guess from your use of baloon. any idea by chance? :D

That's literally it. Inflate the balloon, squeeze ram, you're good to go.

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