iPhone 6 Plus Teardown: Twice as Big a Battery as iPhone 5s [Update: 1 GB RAM Confirmed]

[macduke]

I've had every iPhone except the 5S. I skipped that one because I moved the Verizon and didn't have extra upgrades on my line. My iPhone 5 felt miles ahead of the 4, so I can't even imagine how mind blowing this upgrade is going to be for you!

I traded my 64GB iPhone 5 in to Amazon for $340. So then my 128GB iPhone 6 Plus becomes a $160 upgrade. Not bad, and something you might consider for the 6S. You might only have to spend around $50. My wife is really happy with her iPhone 5 and doesn't want a bigger phone, so I might use her upgrade next year to get an iPhone 6S if it has more RAM. Honestly that is the only thing that bugs me about the new models.

So, I'm here with my trusty iPhone4 - 4 years and one month after purchasing it - trying to decide which iPhone 6 to go for.

The iPhone4 has 512MB RAM. I've just ran Geekbench on it which gave a score of 199.

Up to this week; the iPhone 4 was on the latest available operating system.

Now, I look to the shiny iPhone6+ with 10x CPU performance; over 3x the pixels (before downsampling to the physical display) but only a doubling of what is probably the most important single component in a computer: its RAM.

It is this imbalance in the growth of the basic systems of the phone that disappoints me. I don't care about a multiple Safari tabs - but I do care about being able to move between different apps without then being closed down and resumed. For some apps this is nearly invisible - but for other such as TomTom this is not the case.

An earlier poster stated very rationally that Apple have simply placed in the phones the level of RAM that is required today - and that is indeed all Apple need to care about.

However; that's not what I care about. iOS 9,10,11 will come. They'll need more RAM - computing always does - and the iPhone 6/6+ won't have sufficient RAM when this time comes. I care about length of service I can get out of this - pretty expensive - piece of kit.

But will I hold off and wait for a mythical iPhone6S/S+ next year? No, I don't think so. But I will be a little sadder over the iPhone 6/+ purchase - mindful of trouble yet to come. :-/

 

[burgman]

But thousands, perhaps millions, call Apple Care every year complaining that the phone is rebooting by itself and that apps are crashing. Just because they don't know what RAM is and can't identify the problem, it doesn't mean the problem is not there.

Any proof on your numbers? Didn't think so. Even if thousands call it is such a small number compared to number of IPhones sold. Thanks for proving my point.

 

[SonicSoundVW]

First off, if you've ever developed an iPhone app, and it is currently being sold in the iTunes store, regardless if you were part of a team or made it yourself, like this comment, so i can see how many people that have commented so far actually know something about memory management, and how it works. I only have an associates in programming. I somewhat know how it works, and have a grasp on the concept, but it seems a lot of people here don't even have a grasp. Im just wondering where the senior iOS developers are and what their take is on this memory issue.

 

[milo]

You need to stop using 10 tabs.

"You're holding it wrong".

 

[HiDEF]

some of you are in denial with this whole 1GB being enough.

Nonetheless, I'm picking up the phone this afternoon and expecting to be disappointed. I only say that cause I'm used to high specs coming from the OPO.

But, I'm hoping I'm wrong and I'd like to give iP6+ the benefit of the doubt

 

[Andropov]

What kind of aluminium do they use? 6xxx or 7xxx like the Apple Watch? It's important for me, I hope someone here knows

 

[Iconoclysm]

5 tabs is nothing. Try 10 and have other apps open in the background. Then see how 1GB holds up. If the next question is "why would you have all of that going at the same time?" , my question right back would be it's a premium smartphone that is advertised as being "the best" by Tim Cook and it should be able to do that in 2014.

Also, 1GB becomes less and less effective at handling operations as time goes on. Thus making the lifespan of this phone less than it should be

There is no legitimate argument against having 2GB of memory in iPhones and iPads these days. Battery life impact is negligible and it is strictly and solely a cost savings and thus profit increasing move to still use 1GB. Same goes for still keeping the 16GB iPhone but then jumping up to a 64 and then saying its a "deal" for consumers bc it's the same price as what the 32GB used to be. Right....

How do you know what the battery life impact is? Exactly, you don't.

 

[milo]

I am having issues, Safari crashing and reloading tabs, and I have only 2 or 3 tabs opened.

On the 6 or 6 plus? Or an older phone?

Why do people obsess about the number of tabs before reloading on a phone?

Obsess? I don't count tabs, I open what I need to have open and tabs reloading is annoying at best, at worst I'm trying to fill out a form and if I have to leave the tab it gets wiped out.

I wouldn't consider my iPad usable at all for doing forms, if I need to open another tab or switch apps to get some information I have zero confidence that the form will still have my info when I come back. That's a major limitation in usability for an EXTREMELY simple use case for devices like this.

No obsessing, I just can't ignore this issue since it's constantly staring me in the face. And that's with just a few tabs, nowhere close to ten.

three more words - it runs fine
twelve and final words - you don't even have the phone yet so stop criticizing for nothing

So which is it? It runs fine? Or you don't even have the phone yet, so how do you make that claim?

You just explained Apple's flow of logic on 1GB for iPhone 6. It's not profits, it's setting up reasons to upgrade. They don't want you keep the old one for long.

Wanting a device to be not be useful as long and upgrade sooner is still about profits.

 

[dojoman]

Android has 1GB for years.

 

[Menneisyys2]

iPhone 5 will have more available RAM than iPhone 6 Plus. 5 will run iOS11 better than 6 Plus.

That's true.

1. The higher the screen resolution, the more RAM used by, say, Safari.

2. Native 64-bit apps also use more RAM than the 32-bit ones of the same version.

This means the iPhone 5 will be much more stable than the 5s or, even worse, the iPhone 6 or, the worst, 6+.

----------

First off, if you've ever developed an iPhone app, and it is currently being sold in the iTunes store, regardless if you were part of a team or made it yourself, like this comment, so i can see how many people that have commented so far actually know something about memory management, and how it works. I only have an associates in programming. I somewhat know how it works, and have a grasp on the concept, but it seems a lot of people here don't even have a grasp. Im just wondering where the senior iOS developers are and what their take is on this memory issue.

I'm a senior iOS dev and have posted countless articles on the memory problems / usage of iOS, even in these forums.

In a word: it' a pity the 6+ hasn't received 2GB of RAM. It wouldn't seriously decrease the battery life (no matter what some Apple fa..., sorry, enthusiasts say) but would be far more future-proof (see the fate of the iPhone 3G under iOS4 / iPad 1 under iOS5) and would fare much better even today under Safari or any app using the extra-memory-hungry UIWebView.

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Power costs of doubling the ram is not "neglible" according to the people who actually build these products, like ex microsofts Steven Sinofsky:



http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/12/ram-energy

...he knows more than some people complaining on MR.

how many tabs and apps can Samsung run?

Feel free to present some figures. Exactly how shorter the battery life would become with 2GB of RAM?

Current 2GB phones from, say, Nokia (see the 1020) show there wouldn't be a major difference. I'd state 5% at most (and that's the worst case!), assuming casual usage (2-3 hours a day for Web browsing, calls, texts etc.).

All in all, the "2GB RAM would severely decrease battery life" is a plain lie (when stated by Apple) or Apple fa..., oops, enthusiasm (when stated by other people).

 

[Medic311]

Power costs of doubling the ram is not "neglible" according to the people who actually build these products, like ex microsofts Steven Sinofsky:



http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/12/ram-energy

...he knows more than some people complaining on MR.

how many tabs and apps can Samsung run?

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Yes because these devices make themselves thinner, implement Touch ID by themselves, develop 64-bit by themselves, design amazing new Mac pro by themselves, write iOS and OS X, etc... Certainly not the work and innovation of apple.

if using 2GB of memory is so detrimental to battery life, how come competitor phones sport that yet make the iPhone battery life look shameful ?

that's wonderful you can copy/paste things from the internets, but i urge you to stop blindly defending apple. if it was the other way around and a competitor phone only had 1GB, you would be throwing insults left and right

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Android had 1GB for years.

i made the above in past tense. it's 2014

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How do you know what the battery life impact is? Exactly, you don't.

it's not difficult at all. just take a look at competitor phones to see what the difference in battery life was. basically nothing. after all, apple does have competitors which apple seems to be chasing now instead of the other way around

apple is known for processing efficiency. with the advances of the A8 and the bigger battery they could have easily put in 2GB of memory without any difference at all, or instead of the 1 hr increase in battery life for the 6 Plus it could have remained the same

IMO - they should at least have made the 6 Plus with 2GB of memory. at least that would be substantial justification for paying an extra $100...to get a more powerful and capably device. vs paying an extra $100 for a slightly bigger screen and image stabilization improvements over the 6.

 

[Hurda]

Now twice as big on the inside" or some crap like that

iTARDIS

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Power costs of doubling the ram is not "neglible" according to the people who actually build these products, like ex microsofts Steven Sinofsky:

Well, duh, it's another electrical load, of course it's going to use "more" power.
But how much "more"?
How much "more" in the grand scheme of things?

 

[MacVault]

1gb... Wth?!!!

Only 1GB! WTH is Apple thinking?!! It's year 2014, not 2000!!!
Anyone knows one can never have enough RAM!!!

 

[Sonmi451]

"You're holding it wrong".

buy a laptop or desktop son

 

[randian]

Power costs of doubling the ram is not "neglible" according to the people who actually build these products, like ex microsofts Steven Sinofsky:

Sinofsky's analysis assumes a steady state. Yes, more RAM shortens standby time. That's not an interesting use case. It also uses much less power than lighting up flash to reload a program or running the LTE radio to reload a safari page.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Sinofsky's analysis assumes a steady state. Yes, more RAM shortens standby time. That's not an interesting use case. It also uses much less power than lighting up flash to reload a program or running the LTE radio to reload a safari page.

Exactly. The CPU usage to build up a DOM tree of a HTML page may even result in a far higher load on the battery than the (very small) additional power RAM requires for remembering its content all the time.

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Well, duh, it's another electrical load, of course it's going to use "more" power.
But how much "more"?
How much "more" in the grand scheme of things?

5% at most, I'd state, even if you rule out the CPU (= battery current) peaks needed for actually reloading / parsing Web pages because of the RAM shortage. LOLZ.

BTW, Apple fanb..., oops, enthusiasts tend to forget the article they're all the time referring to is dated back to 2011. Memory factory methods have been improved since then.

 

[milo]

buy a laptop or desktop

"You're holding it wrong".

And if Apple can't make a device that can fill out a simple web form and switch over to a couple other tabs without requiring a LAPTOP, that's an absolutely dismal fail on their part. We're not talking about final cut pro, we're talking about "hey, my kid's registration needs the doctor's phone number, hang on I'll just get it from their web page". Or from an email. Or from the address book app. Or getting something basic from the calendar app.

"buy a laptop" for something that other phones and tablets can do just fine is an admission that Apple has botched their mobile devices. iPhone's whole reason for existence is so that users don't have to carry around a laptop all the time for basic functionality...and then that basic functionality doesn't work right.

 

[MacBH928]

Any one knows that RAM makes a device more useful, especially for a heavy user. Jumping from one app to another and not having to refresh or restart.

I said this before, I don't know why Apple has no problem double 32GB of storage, but not add 1 GB extra of RAM.

I can't do anything about this, and only hope 6s will have 2GB of RAM. If I find iphone 6 not as snappy as I would like, I would probably upgrade to S and then to all new 7 . Reselling your old iphone should justify the purchase of a newer one

 

[Menneisyys2]

I said this before, I don't know why Apple has no problem double 32GB of storage, but not add 1 GB extra of RAM.

Planned obsolescence? Probably just like with the iPad 1?

 

[Judas1]

With only 1 Gb of ram, the iphone 6 and 6+ are walking dinosaurs. iOS is getting stale, and if they ever implement some real multifunction features in iOS, these phones will be in big trouble. The point of having a bigger phone is so you can do more on it. So they'll need to seriously update iOS to take advantage of the size, but they'll be limited by the ram ... So yeah, walking dinosaur.

 

[jamesryanbell]

I don't know why anyone is surprised that either phone has 1GB of RAM. Everyone I know expected that.

 

[bawbac]

buy a laptop or desktop son

We'll pass on the word to people that if they want to browse more than one web page, dump the iPad/iPhone and get a laptop/desktop.

I think Apple will thank you...

 

[Sonmi451]

We'll pass on the word to people that if they want to browse more than one web page, dump the iPad/iPhone and get a laptop/desktop.

I think Apple will thank you...

Claiming iPhone can only browse 1 page is trolling. I'll give you time to play with an iPhone 6 and correct yourself.

 

[V_Man]

Claiming iPhone can only browse 1 page is trolling. I'll give you time to play with an iPhone 6 and correct yourself.

Just admit it. Apple screwed up. Stop making excuses. Jesus Christ. They aren't the end all phones. Apple can screw up just like Samsung lol

 

[ecrispy]

It's like living in a bizzaro world.

Every time Apple has something lacking compared to others (e.g. screen size, memory size, features), Apple apologists make the same excuses -

- its enough, no one needs more
- making it better would compromise the phone
- specs don't matter
- Apple must have its reasons, they are looking out for us!

Then a few years later when Apple does get the feature (and rest assured, they *will* increase the RAM), the tune changes completely -

- its better than competition who did it years ago
- Apple did it right

Why?