

What do we need 4GB RAM smartphones for? - replete

I&#x27;ve been looking to replace my Nexus 4, a 2012 android handset with 2GB RAM. It has always been swift, but more recently with software updates - buggy. I don&#x27;t feel like the bugs are down to exceeding the 2GB of RAM.<p>Phones like the Oneplus2 are now shipping with 4GB DDR4 RAM. Beyond the obvious marketing gimmick - is there software waiting for more RAM that are yet to see on our phones?<p>Curious to know if anyone has anything to share on this.
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allendoerfer
You need them, because people want to write text editors in JavaScript. It is
basically like fashion. The customer does not want highly optimized and
functioning things but new shiny stuff.

A less cynical man would say, that performance gains in the lower levels frees
the developer to optimize the UI/UX.

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Zigurd
Android has maximum heap sizes that are vastly smaller than total RAM. They
can be as small as 16MB. 32MB is common. Browsers do get special treatment in
some configurations. But, still, Android is designed to keep many runtime
instances happy together in memory. Large in-memory data models don't work
well in Android.

Therefore the value of large RAM is limited. Samsung makes their maximum heap
sizes extraordinarily large, but that just makes bloatware bloatier.

If you want a big, complex software system on Android, break it up into
multiple runtime instances, e.g. a shared data model in a ContentProvider
component, and a suite of apps built around it. It you have a gigantic app and
you are trying to do a straight port from iOS, you're going to have a bad
time.

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dpc_pw
My desktop has 32GB, and if I could I would have more. Why? Because RAM is
always useful. Caching in RAM is such a nice feature, speeding up your daily
work-flow.

Same thing applies in the phone. IMO, the biggest RAM increase drive is
graphics and UI. With 1080p screens things are getting big: textures, icons,
UI elements, photos, videos, etc...

And why would we artificially constrain ourselves? If the current
manufacturing process makes 4GB feasible or even cost efficient, than it makes
sense to use this size.

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benologist
2,097,152K ought to be enough for anybody?

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2534312/operating-
syste...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2534312/operating-systems/the--
640k--quote-won-t-go-away----but-did-gates-really-say-it-.html)

Exceeding 2gb of ram in your desktop 10 years ago had limited benefits, now
that's about a minimum computers ship with and even 4gb can be insufficient.

More memory and better processors makes phones more useful to the extent they
are now trending towards becoming full-featured desktop computers themselves,
the extra ram isn't for "today's app ecosystem" it's breathing space against a
more demanding generation of apps and usage.

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replete
I'm kind of with you on this. 6-8GB RAM for modern development has been more
than enough for most requirements for at least 5 years. From my point of view,
2GB on an android smartphone seems to be a similar amount.

Some interesting points raised above about heaps.

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wodenokoto
I thought it was for keeping multiple apps and web history in memory.

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TheSpiceIsLife
Something that annoys me about my iPhone 4S is the almost constant app-
refreshes for anything that isn't a really simple app. Safari will even close
in the background, stopping streaming music, if I open another resource-
hogging app. I think I read this is due to the phone only 1GB RAM, anyone know
if this is correct? The iPhone 6 still only has 1GB.

Is this, or something similar, also a problem on Android?

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replete
Android is real multi-tasking, iOS isn't quite the same as there are
background services for apps.

It's also how Apple get away with much less RAM.

