How much RAM does your phone REALLY need in 2019?

https://www.androidauthority.com/how-much-ram-do-you-need-in-smartphone-2019-944920/

 

Whatever my iPhone has is enough. It does not bog down, does everything I want it to do. If I had an android phone it would be a different story.

 

What the article didn't mention is how long the SSD memory will last if it i continually being written to. The answer depends on a very variable write durability but there is always going to be a limit.

Using any sort of SD as a cache is just asking or trouble.

If your phone starts slowing down, I say close stuff before you bugger it for good.

Good argument for 4GB, at least.

 

Needs:
iPhone: 2GB
Android: infinite

Thank Android creators for choosing Java.

 

2GB is barely enough for ios 11 and above on 64bit, 4GB is the optimal amount because idevices render images and text at higher resolutions which are then scaled to display resolution. People using Facebook,Twitter, instagram,snapchat etc.. will find 2GB barely unusable.

 

Beg to differ, my 6s only has 2 gb of ram, and it's fast. I have no issues with that. I think my 8 only has three, and thats faster again. In the world of android, yes, you need crap loads of ram. In the world of iphone, you don't.

 

Even 2GB seems low to me when you consider the phone OS will be updated for 5 yrs. My mom complained once or twice about app reloading issues. She uses only Whatsapp and youtube, nothing else. When I checked AIDA64, memory was almost full.

 

How phones are used is a big variable: A user that cycles between only a few apps will face few redraws, those that have 17 tabs open in Chrome and a dozen or more apps open are going to use more ram if available or again, face redraws. After that you have the fact that android is designed to be used on an unlimited number of different devices with different build trees and massive disparities in capability. Meanwhile on iPhone you have essentially one build and a very limited number of similar devices. That gives iphone apps the ability to be much more finely tuned for performance, both the stock payload and store apps. On android you can only overcome this with brute force because the best developer still cannot overcome the need for broad compatibility. Like most things brute force does work and few modern android phones have performance issues. Mr Crab has the latest iphone, and it's no faster or smoother than my 6T, if anything, it's slower. Times change.

 

My son uses his iphone 5s as a backup and it still hums along fine. It's using its memory it's not lacking in memory.

 

My wife's 6s hums along as the day it was new, and she heavily uses Faceberg, Messenger, Amazon, etc, along with having about a dozen Safari tabs open at all times.

 

" Once you go over 8GB, you enter 'Nonsense' land, where Mr. Silly lives."

" More than 8GB?
Once you go over 8GB, you enter “Nonsense” land, where Mr. Silly lives. Even with 3GB of memory, like in my trusty Mate 8, we aren’t talking about what apps the device can run, we are looking at how many apps it can simultaneously keep in memory! 4GB is workable, 6GB is sweet, 8GB is edging close to Nonsense land, but still falls within the sweet spot. 10GB, 12GB, 16GB are just plain stupid. These are examples of nothing more than specification overload, which increases the price and brings little or no benefit to the user."

Long article, simple answer, of course it's spec wars to attract the "shiny object" buyers.

I find it easier for me to listen to the video while doing other things...

How much RAM does your phone REALLY need in 2019?
Android Authority
Published on Jan 28, 2019
Android smartphones had humble beginnings with smaller screens, smaller batteries, and lower amounts of RAM. Today there are devices with 10GB of RAM with 12GB or more on the horizon. But how much RAM does your smartphone actually need?

Spoiler: Click for more info...

I have done some investigation and some experimentation and this is what I found out.

Android Memory Management - How does it work? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEbKF...

Download the Android Authority App: https://andauth.co/aa-app

Plus I get to see and hear more about Mr. Silly in the video:


It comes down to app's used and usage pattern's, and over time memory usage typically increases. Overbuying memory is what I do and even then if I keep it long enough I often wish I purchased more when buying / building it.

 

It was my first and last iphones. Dunno know much about the inner working of iOS. I really think iOS 12.2 manages RAM much worse than iOS 12.1.x.
For now, I found that Holding Power button and Home button clears standby RAM and it did improve benchmarks and got rid of slight UI lag.
I will update my iOS cleaning thread with iTunes artwork cache deletion step.

 

Phone buyers shopping

 

Very true Indeed. I'm looking at specs, IP rating etc.... Too many damn phones to choose from......

 

I was insinuating that most just go...this has more ram/faster/etc....it's I gotta have it. like..oh...a peice of candy. My iphone 6s is still a killer phone. The only reason I got the 8 was because of the deal we got on them.

 

Redmi 6 user here with 4GB of RAM (180AUD, 130 USD, 110 EURO) running MIUI 10 based on Android 8.1. At anytime I have over 500MB of RAM left free (not cached) even though I have set the RAM to start closing background applications at 100MB left. I usually have 10 apps locked to memory (i.e, system won't close them) including outlook, Edge, Youtube, etc. I never close my apps in the background because I can't be bothered.

This way, except after I force-close apps or reboot, I never have to wait for my apps to reload. The locking in RAM helps because of my sub-par Mediatek Helio P22 (Think SD 710), re-loading apps take a few seconds which I'm not willing to wait for lol.

I will never buy crApple's iPhones just to say "Oh look, my phone is so much more efficient with my RAM than urs". My phone costs one tenth the price of an iPhone with 4GB of RAM. My Android phone can do every single thing an iPhone can do and more. Just imperceptibly slower.

 

EDIT Can Admin please delete this accidental duplicate?

 

Too each their own. Yes, your phone maybe able to do the same things the iPhone can, however....inperceptibly slower, I think not. That being said, using "crapple" makes you sound like you are ten. I use all platforms, and I have yet to see an android phone be faster and smoother than an iPhone of similar generation.

 

Tried Pixel 2/3? I hate SameSong phones where OS updates are locked by carriers.

 

Had a 2 xl for a short time. Didn't like it. Went back to my 6s.

 

2 XL is a huge brick whilst comparing 6s. 6s is a beautiful and elegant device.

 

Yes, the size is larger. I am not comparing that. I am comparing speed, as we were discussing. We were not discussing the device itself. We were talking about the speed of Android vs. IOS.

 

I don't use animation on either OS, so I felt Android to be 0.1% faster and 20-30% cheaper than Android. So, its a win in my book. iOS with animation certainly feels smooth but I get headaches looking at parallax effects or animation effects on both iOS and Win 10.

 

I'm bowing out now, I am spiralling down the vasudev rabbit hole again!

 

That gives off a different meaning although you can use because NBR isn't PG rated.

 

Everyone knows what I meant. ok, lemme change it. I am getting sucked into the Vasudev alternative reality vortex! That better?

 

I would say a minimum of 4GB ram would be the minimal for an average user. For the multi tasker, 6GB.

I've experienced where apps don't load up due to ram being held up by a lot of apps running in the background.

 

I don't know....I have a s9 plus and 6gb of ram....it always says I have 2gb free....so if you never want to reload I say 12gb is the minimum...leaving you with 8gb free ram

 

Well, I suggest you use adb to remove Samsung Exp and other bloatwares to make OS optimised. I used devbase ROM (Stock Oreo) on dad's S7 after the phone was infected by script based malwares, I don't know how it happened but I hard reset everything and used adb and app inspector to remove unwanted package and installed Google Phone,Contacts and what not and set them to default apps. Afterwards, I used uninstall cmds to remove Samsung Bloatware, now 20% drain on standby overnight is eliminated and battery life is good.