That wouldn't tell you how much RAM it had though.
A quick way of doing it, roughly, would be to run one of those ghastly 3rd party "free up memory" (derp) apps. But of course, the App Store would be locked down, so good luck getting it installed.
Correct, but with new devices, these apps usually need an update as otherwise they will see it as a Air 1, which would then state as having 1GB of RAM in total. Geek bench should however determine that RAM.
I personally see with the leaks of the A8X along side the 2GB of RAM, they got the CPU (and CPU colour
) correct so I see it being 2GB. When Apple used the A7 for the iPad Air, they wanted it to be the same SoC across all devices. The GPU on the A7 gave hardly any increase over the A6X though, so that is why Apple will have used a "X" series SoC: because they release that the iPad requires more power than the iPhones. The same will most likely go to RAM, as the iPad Air had quite a few RAM salvation issues (tabs reloading, apps being kicked from memory, low memory error logs...) but the iPhone 5S was not affect as much (due it it not only running on a lower resolution (where by there would be less 'virtual' VRAM in use) but also an iPhone app usually is much more basic than the iPad app, and the same goes for websites (mobile vs desktop)).
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We are talking Apple here not Microsoft or Android. As a general rule, Apple products run great at half the RAM of the other two. It has to do with software design. I would love to have 2GB of RAM but I guarantee that 98% of the time no one would notice the difference. It's an iPad not a Mac Pro.
The iPad Air did not run great with 1GB of RAM. Even on its original OS (iOS 7), there was several tab reloading, as well as apps getting forced out of memory as well as low memory logs). Every time iOS gets a major update, the RAM usage increases due to new features taking more resources. The iPad Air also ran the 64 bit A7, and due to it being 64 bit, any apps made for the A7 would have an increased RAM footprint of around 30%. Both Anandtech, I and others have noticed this (use Xcode and you will see how bad the RAM usage is). When these same apps running on an older iPad (i.e run in 32 bit), they take up less RAM. To put this in perspective, the iPad Air running 64 bit apps is the same as an iPad with around 700MB of RAM running 32 bit apps (30% lower RAM footprint over 64 bit). This makes the iPad Air 1 a downgrade in RAM usage over the iPad 3 and iPad 4.
This is why the iPad Air 2 needs and will have 2GB of RAM.