Doubling RAM On Smartphones Is "Silly"

Megalith

Megalith

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Your thoughts? I can’t say I agree, since many seem to be obsessed with higher resolutions, not to mention the sea of poorly optimized and memory hungry apps out there.

Many people can run their new PCs with a fairly comfortable 4GB of Ram and 8GB is only required for power users. For everything that I have said about Apple, the outfit has a more pragmatic attitude to RAM. iPhones have always had less RAM than their Android competitors and managed to do rather well. Increased RAM will just look good on the spec sheet. It will, for a number of years, be pretty much useless.
 
I think this is pretty nuts. I have 3GBs (Nexus 6) and am regularly down to ~500MBs free, and I am hardly a big mobile user since I have a good PC. Now if android has some kind of memory management that unloads apps when you get low on ram, that'd be relevant not sure if it does, right now I just use some task killer app when I get low.
 
What a glorious troll article.

I would absolutely love to see handsets with minimum 4GB ram.

At least for Android, 1-3GB ram is really too close for comfort. The vast number of process killer apps, ram "optimizer" apps, and other apps meant to free up resources is the tale of the tape on this one.

I can turn my N6 on, and with stripped-down custom kernel / custom rom, minimum GApps, virtually no other apps outside of the ones i use from a service-oriented perspective on - still use up easily 2GB out of the 3GB pool. If i fire up Chrome and start browsing, after steady-state i'm easily over that 2GB marker.

More ram plx.

Also, desktop-grade IO subsystems too. Tired of slow microSD level speeds. Bring on mobile NVMe.
 
I can't speak for others, but I often end up with a dozen apps open, which I suspect eats a bit of ram (if the apps aren't paged out to the HD. I also suspect there's not a huge cost difference between 4GB and 8GB. Finally, maybe most don't need more than 8GB, but everytime I looked at Laptops, 8GB is the minimum and 16GB is pretty common. 4GB is so 2008 (on the desktop)
 
nilepez said:
I can't speak for others, but I often end up with a dozen apps open, which I suspect eats a bit of ram (if the apps aren't paged out to the HD. I also suspect there's not a huge cost difference between 2GB and 4GB. Finally, maybe most don't need more than 4GB, but everytime I looked at Laptops, 8GB is the minimum and 16GB is pretty common. 4GB is so 2008 (on the desktop)
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Corrected bolded ram values
 
Many, like Samsung, are heavily pushing for smartphones to be a hell of a lot more than just phones and a big new venue is really immersive virtual reality gaming.

To really be blown away, you need crazy high pixel density like 4K screens, and to game at that resolution takes a powerful mobile processor and plenty of memory.

These days, they really shouldn't even be called mobile phones, because the phone functionality is such a tiny portion of what they are used for. Most likely this guy is just an Apple fanboi and is trying to justify why he is paying top dollar for an archaic processor with 1GB of RAM.
 
why are you quoting Fudzilla, you know those guys don't have the brain powder to notices the differences between fud and news.
 
4gb is common in pcs? what is that writer smoking. I'd love to see someone try to run anything with W7-10 with only 4gb of ram. The OS may load and you can run notepad but a couple chrome tabs and you're out of ram.
 
Especially untrue with all the new memory hungry 64bit builds of Android that use more than their 32 bit counterparts.
 
I thought the iPhone 6 was nigh unusable due to the paltry 1GB of ram. When I got my 6S, there was a clear performance difference that I still feel to this day. Maybe 3-4 GB is overkill, but why not? The more the better, as long as it doesn't consume way too much power.
 
mysticdrew said:
4gb is common in pcs? what is that writer smoking. I'd love to see someone try to run anything with W7-10 with only 4gb of ram. The OS may load and you can run notepad but a couple chrome tabs and you're out of ram.
Click to expand...

I generally agree, but with that said, if you're only browsing the web, you can probably live with 4GB. I only have Firefox, Explorer Steam, and Amazon Cloud open in W10 (with 1 or 2 dozen tabs open..and all are in memory) and several background apps and I'm using a bit over 3GB of ram.

It's doable, but there's no reason to, given the price of ram. In 2007 I had 4GB of ram. 2008 I had 8. Last year I had 12 and now I have 32 (overkill, but I always try to double what Dell sends out in their machines), which was under 200 bucks
 
Although a phone should never need as much as a PC you can never have too much RAM unless it is needlessly adding to the cost ... no serious PC user would consider a system with less than 8 GB RAM and we are heading to 16 and 32 in the not too distant future ... video RAM on the PC is heading from 3 to 6 with 6 likely to be the standard in a few years (maybe even 8 GB) ...

there is no reason that phones can't benefit from more RAM as their processors become more powerful and they add enhanced graphics options ... tablets are already capable of running PC games from the 90s to early 2000s ... as their capabilities continue to improve they will benefit from RAM just as the PC does
 
The article is just one big strawman, as evidenced by the contrasting views in the comments section on the article as opposed to the comments being made on here.

The issue is more about a lack of choice. RAM usage varies by individuals, and that rarely seems to be accounted for. Especially for Android, where there are more "power users" or so to speak. There is sometimes the illusion of choice, ie the 5X vs the 6P, but you're talking about wholesale differences between the two phones. There might be some specs you want on the 5X that aren't on the 6P, and even on rare occasions, vice versa. This was also highlighted by the lack of NFC on the new 1+2 phone. It might seem like a picky issue to non-NFC users, but there were tons of people who decided they'd pass on the phone due to a lack of NFC.
 
The biggest issue with having less than 3gb or so RAM with today's high resolution screens and heavy applications is how much they enter into the swap territory when the amount of free RAM is reduced to less than 200mb. Couple that with the horrible or barely acceptable flash card speeds we see on most devices, you immediately see the os trying to refresh from the slow swap area when multiple apps are open (android, being based on Linux handles swap prey well and most memory optimization software only exacerbate the situation). Not to mention essential apps like chrome take several hundred megabytes of memory at any given time. The only way other than increasing the RAM would be to spruce up the flash storage. I can only hope we see 3D Xpoint based storage on mobile phones soon, that would have a radical effect on the responsiveness of every single device.
 
Some of you guys sound too [H] for your own good.

On an iPhone specifically, the only issue I have noticed with less RAM is that it can only cache 2-3 tabs at any given time. So if you go to another tab, it has to re-load that tab (which means a network call). And I actually only noticed it after someone told me what was going on....it never occurred to me that this was a deficiency before.

More RAM means more transistors that have to be powered at all times. It also means more silicon. This does not imply a larger package size, but it could be. Not all phones can afford an additional package or a larger die package size

This is not a Desktop. There are power envelopes and physical size constraints...and they are very high on priority. The phones mentioned in this thread as having several gigs of memory (Note 5, Nexus 6) are large format phones. Which only serves to point out the market fragmentation in the Android market. Apple is much more keen on keeping minimal hardware configurations, and there are benefits to that. Sure the iPhone Plus could fit more hardware, but it would fragment from the other 2 (more common) phones on the market (regular 6 and 5S). Now the 6S does have 2GB of memory, but both models have it, which means going forward every device should have at least 2GB.

Now going back to general memory usage. You guys do know that there is an entire market segment of Windows 8 & 10 tablets, laptops & desktops that have 1-2GB or RAM right? Yes, they are affected by the lack of memory, but Windows can absolutely run on it. So if a full blown x86 operating system can do it, you should ask why your phone can "barely" run on 3-4GB or memory.


16GB of storage is more of a concern in my opinion. 16GB on a top tier phone or an entry level Windows tablet is not good enough.
 
I wouldn't say it's necessarily silly, but article mostly speculates and doesn't present any benchmark facts. Android memory managing model is different than desktop windows so just because an app says usage is at 90% doesn't mean it's the cause of slow downs, it could be just poor coding and or memory handling on the apps part.

In comparison, look a low end graphics cards ($0 - $100 range) that have DOUBLE the DDR3 than could possibly add to any performance. It's obvious that the manufacture tacked on the extra ram just to sell their under performing card over a competitor that has less DDR3.

I think his point is best summarized:
..a worry is that the existence of high ram machines might encourage developers to be lazy and rely on it. At the moment, with most machines running 1GB, they have to be damn careful.
Click to expand...

Would you rather have to spend $$$ to constantly upgrade your hardware because the trend is to write sloppy unoptimized software?
 
I absolutely hate my iPhone 6 plus. Maybe it was when iOS9 really started to suck??? Regardless, the thing is slow and laggy as hell now.
 
Article is non-sense unless you're running iOS with limited foreground and background multitasking. Otherwise, it's important to balance CPU performance and DRAM. Android devices have gotten so powerful and capable approaching that of a PC that they're running out of DRAM before CPU cycles. With the upcoming ARM A72 core performance boost it makes more sense to increase DRAM to 6GB if not 8GB.

Here's Exynos 7420 ARM A57 running Sky Force game, playing a movie, streaming Twitch.tv in highest source quality and acting as a file and media server in the background. It probably has CPU cycles left over to do more but is constrained by DRAM.

Screenshot_2015-08-25-16-07-52a_zps33cxsglv.png
 
At a certain point, sure. Just like doubling the resolutions on small screens becomes silly. There is thing great little word called balance that seems to be forgotten once the marketing department is involved. If you double the processing power, you might need 2x the ram to take advantage of it. If you double the screen resolution, you might need 2x the graphics power and 2x the gpu memory to accommodate.

My dual core 1.5ghz cpu in my last phone had 1GB of memory. So an 8 core CPU should obviously operate with less than 2x the memory right?
 
It's not very hard, but my main desktop at home is a chromebox with only 2gb running windows; it runs just fine for what I do with it (Firefox and putty mostly, can't mutitask when I play civ v though), but it doesn't have seven or twenty Java vms doing who knows what all the time, like an android phone.
 
mysticdrew said:
4gb is common in pcs? what is that writer smoking. I'd love to see someone try to run anything with W7-10 with only 4gb of ram. The OS may load and you can run notepad but a couple chrome tabs and you're out of ram.
Click to expand...

Except thats not even remotely true. Windows 8 on 2GB is very usable. My tablet with an atom chip and 2gb was perfectly capable of browsing the web with youtube etc. no problems. Played hearthstone well. Having several tabs up on a browser worked just fine.

People need to stop making ignorant assumptions about memory. If you system has excess RAM then most modern desktops will use it. That does not mean that much ram is required to do what you are doing... Just like android phones, just because your system is using 2/3 of your ram does not mean it needs to. Its a lot of pre caching etc. done by the kernel to make it feel a teeny bit snappier.

I cant believe all these ignorant pre conceived notions are still being passed around. Just like the anti vista crowd that cried about memory usage you guys flat out dont know shit about how a modern OS uses memory.
 
mi7chy said:
Article is non-sense unless you're running iOS with limited foreground and background multitasking. Otherwise, it's important to balance CPU performance and DRAM. Android devices have gotten so powerful and capable approaching that of a PC that they're running out of DRAM before CPU cycles. With the upcoming ARM A72 core performance boost it makes more sense to increase DRAM to 6GB if not 8GB.

Here's Exynos 7420 ARM A57 running Sky Force game, playing a movie, streaming Twitch.tv in highest source quality and acting as a file and media server in the background. It probably has CPU cycles left over to do more but is constrained by DRAM.
Click to expand...

Heres an idea, lets take an extreme edge case scenario and use that to make a blanket statement and try to prove a point. Makes sense right? :rolleyes:
 
Disposed said:
Heres an idea, lets take an extreme edge case scenario and use that to make a blanket statement and try to prove a point. Makes sense right? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

That's the beauty of a free market and choices. Android for the [H] power users and iOS for the dumbsumers.
 
Disposed said:
Heres an idea, lets take an extreme edge case scenario and use that to make a blanket statement and try to prove a point. Makes sense right? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Hey man, he's just really happy that he has a $12 phone that beats Apple hands down AND allows any developer just to continuously sap the phones resources unabated. Realistic expectations for realistic needs.
 
Disposed:
Windows 8 on 2GB ram is theoretically 'very usable', but it's a user experience that goes from bearable to unbearable the second you transition between task steady-states.

Memory caching is currently one of the most intelligent ways an OS can work with its hardware resources to provide a truly fluid and continuous user experience.

Your insulting / downplaying of the benefits to the user computing experience ("teeny bit snappier") provided by effective memory caching tells me all i need to know about your body of knowledge with respect to the technical non-functional aspects of software/OS design.

It also tells me that you're probably not even old enough to remember just how horrible it was to be caching things out from memory to a spinner just because it was to cost-prohibitive to go past even 512MB SDR/DDR ram.
 
atp1916 said:
Disposed:
It also tells me that you're probably not even old enough to remember just how horrible it was to be caching things out from memory to a spinner just because it was to cost-prohibitive to go past even 512MB SDR/DDR ram.
Click to expand...

Memory was pretty affordable by the time 512MB was available....assuming your talking about PC-133 memory. At that time memory took a big plunge in price. It was much more cost prohibitive during the 16-64MB days, and lets not even get in to SIMM's where memory cost twice as much as the advertised price because the motherboard required pairs instead of just 1 stick at a time.

But at that time I was loading games off a ZIP disc (since the harddrive had no space left on it), and it was bearable. Shits been relative for as long as I can remember....and I'm only 34.
 
Another voice for 4GB of RAM working fine with Windows 7. It's what I'm stuck with on my work PC where I can run multiple tabs in Chrome, have a virtual desktop running through a VPN connection, and have yet another [crappily programmed] app running. It's not ideal, and I'm up to about the limit, but it makes it through about 90% of my workdays without needing a reboot.
 
It's kind of funny and sad that it's the phone industry, notably Samsung, that's driving higher DRAM. Even Apple conceded that their dumbsumers were wrong and and equipped iPad Prosumer with 4GB. I'd like to also see Intel stop dicking around with 2GB in products like the PC stick, SBC, etc. and make 4GB minimum so I'll actually buy one.
 
Probleminfected said:
I absolutely hate my iPhone 6 plus. Maybe it was when iOS9 really started to suck??? Regardless, the thing is slow and laggy as hell now.
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I"ve noticed that on my 6 too. It's not all the time, but it's often enough. I'm not sure what they did, but I really think they should give us a way to go back to 8 if it's going to affect performance. I really feel sorry for those on the 5/5s
 
I will give that writer my 1gb ram android and see how he likes it.
I can't even run ONE app without the shit lagging within a few minutes.
Chrome browser lags to hell after several websites visited.
 
I hate it that browser tabs require reloading (or cannot background load) or that apps will close themselves due to lower memory.
I would love for phones to get to the point of persistence that desktop computers enjoy.
 
You can never have enough ram. I had 32GB of ram in win7. 7 didn't take advantage of it but 8 did a little more. Now 10 can reach around 16-20GB during serious usage. Always go for more if you can.
 
Disposed said:
Except thats not even remotely true. Windows 8 on 2GB is very usable. My tablet with an atom chip and 2gb was perfectly capable of browsing the web with youtube etc. no problems. Played hearthstone well. Having several tabs up on a browser worked just fine.

People need to stop making ignorant assumptions about memory. If you system has excess RAM then most modern desktops will use it. That does not mean that much ram is required to do what you are doing... Just like android phones, just because your system is using 2/3 of your ram does not mean it needs to. Its a lot of pre caching etc. done by the kernel to make it feel a teeny bit snappier.

I cant believe all these ignorant pre conceived notions are still being passed around. Just like the anti vista crowd that cried about memory usage you guys flat out dont know shit about how a modern OS uses memory.
Click to expand...

Crysis 1 on Vista 64bit with 2GB of RAM seemed the same as 4GB of RAM to.

I will mirror someone else in saying that 16GB is not enough. I only have a few apps on my phone yet use almost 8GB. It is a iPhone 5S. If I used a lot of apps and put some files on there I would run out in no time.
 
Win7 on 4GB is indeed quite tolerable. 1GB on my phone is painful. I wonder how much better it would be if 1) google got their act together and cleaned up Play services to not take up so much freakin' RAM and flash, and 2) if apps were compiled to native code, rather than Java.
 
Flogger23m said:
Crysis 1 on Vista 64bit with 2GB of RAM seemed the same as 4GB of RAM to.

I will mirror someone else in saying that 16GB is not enough. I only have a few apps on my phone yet use almost 8GB. It is a iPhone 5S. If I used a lot of apps and put some files on there I would run out in no time.
Click to expand...

What???
 
Megalith said:
Hahahahaha.... Oh, man, if only.

Here's something that happens to me daily with my iPhone:

1) Open Safari. Do some web browsing.
2) Open a link in a new tab. Use that tab for a little bit.
3) Switch back to the first tab. Wait for it to reload from scratch.

It's incredibly annoying when you're using a site that doesn't track where you are on the page. For example, 9gag. Their page shows 9 funny pictures, then when you scroll down, it loads 9 more. After a little while the page gets pretty big, so you click a link to get to the next set of funny pics. If you go to another tab while on 9gag, you have to start the process all over again. Scroll down, wait 30 seconds, scroll down, wait 30 seconds, repeat until you got to where you left off. 5 minutes of wasted time scrolling when you're trying to waste time laughing.

It's also frustrating if you're playing a game and want to have the strategy guide up in Safari at the same time. Either the game crashes, or you have to load up the 100KB text file again and spend a good 30 seconds finding the point you stopped at before.

Bring on the RAM. I could use it.
Click to expand...
 
mi7chy said:
That's the beauty of a free market and choices. Android for the [H] power users and iOS for the dumbsumers.
Click to expand...

I really dont understand this mentality. Why are apple users automatically dumb? I go back and forth between android and iOS when i get tired of them and never understood this ridiculously childish way of thinking.

You dont like it so everyone that uses it is automatically less than you are?

You should really sit down and take a minute and think about this way of thinking. Its really not healthy at all.

A year with android and ill start to miss the things iphones offer like the generally good audio components vs androids massively hit or miss audio hardware. Like the audio out from the charge port, why the fuck is it now 8 years into android and this isnt a thing? Apple does a very good job of tightly integrating things together on iOS, the theme and UI is pretty consistent. Android is all over the damned place with UI and themes. iOS as an OS is rock solid, android has always felt like windows XP in the sense that it seems to degrade in performance over time needing a full restore after about 6 months.

Then a year with the iphone and ill get bored of it and want the customization android brings.

I even really like windows phone and would buy those from time to time if they had the app support.

I am so sick of those acting like you are beneath them because of what brand of phone you use. Its disgusting.
 
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