Official iPhone 6 Plus Reviews Report 1 GB RAM

[jm001]

WTF is the problem with all you whiners out there? I have never experienced a problem related to RAM nor my relatives nor my friends who all own iPhones and iPads with the 1GB of RAM. Don't fall for the numbers game just because some Android or Windows device has 2 or 3 GB of RAM. Maybe they have that much because their devices can't optimally run their OS and apps as well as iOS devices. Maybe the question you should be asking is how well would THOSE devices run Android or Windows and their apps with only 1GB of RAM? My iPhone 5 has never felt sluggish using it for regular daily use. I've used split screen on Windows mobile devices and, for me at least, it wasn't useful. It's not the same as working on your desktop with multiple windows open.

 

[Rafterman]

WTF is the problem with all you whiners out there?

It simple. 2 is bigger than 1 and some Androids have 3. Therefore, they want it even though most can name few, if any, problems they specifically ever had using the device.

 

[skanska]

Well, keep screaming if it's important to you. The 1GB RAM hasn't caused any problems on my iPad or iPhone.



Maybe this year's iPads will have 2GB (or more). It's probably too late for Apple to change it now if they've already settled on 1GB. But there will be another new iPhone in twelve months, and it's probably on their list of enhancements to consider. Some pressure from the SCREAMING may influence their decision.



And there's always the option of Android. Or WindowsPhone. If Bigger GBs is what you really want, there's probably an Android phone out there that will give it to you. The ability to shop elsewhere is your biggest power as a consumer. When something is as important to you as this seems to be, then you have to be willing to make some sacrifices to make your point. Otherwise Apple has you by the whatever-it-is-you've-got.

This is so true as 2 years ago I needed a bigger screen and had to go with a note this time around I'm back with a 6 plus. So if you need more ram go els ware as screaming for something doesn't always get you what you want. Oh and by the way my note had 2gb of ram and it still crashed every day and every time it did I missed my iPhone for pure reliability you can have all singing and dancing but at the end of the day it has to work as well. I'm more than happy with spec as long as it works when I want it too and as for split screen I never used it. Stupid idea.

 

[bommai]

Limiting the ram is a way to force developers to be better software engineers and conserve ram. Believe me, if we have more of it we will just use it and then all the older devices will suffer in performance. Not cool. I work in an embedded system that has only 32 MB of RAM. We think about ram usage differently.

 

[Jago]

I asked my friend who works at Apple and actually develops iOS. He said iOS is more efficient and doesn't need more ram. In fact having more ram will simply encourage developers to be sloppier lazier and you end up with the same performance but greater battery drain. If you only give the developer 1gb they will learn to code better and maximize the resource they have. If they can't do it it will just weed out the inferior developers.

Apparently it doesn't encourage developers at Apple itself, since the main gripe of people crying out for more RAM is Safari behavior.

And the battery comment is full of ****, because having to reload stuff from NAND back into RAM is way more of a battery drain under heavy use.

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Limiting the ram is a way to force developers to be better software engineers and conserve ram. Believe me, if we have more of it we will just use it and then all the older devices will suffer in performance. Not cool. I work in an embedded system that has only 32 MB of RAM. We think about ram usage differently.

So when will it force developers at Apple itself to obey by this?

 

[jajabinks]

iPhone 6 is obviously selling, but this RAM situation is a big fail and makes me feel used as an Apple customer. Apple's "You don't need more than 1GB" is our generation's to "no one will ever need more than 640KB of RAM" (Bill Gates said that).

Interestingly, with the constant downsampling required on the 6+ and only 1GB of RAM, it will run slower than the standard iPhone 6. Gotta love that...pay more to get lower performance. If the iOS experience weren't so vastly superior to Android, I would be leaving the platform today over this instead of handing them more money.

They're going to get a pass on this one this round, from myself and millions of others, but I think if 2015 comes around and the RAM stays the same, it actually will affect their market share.

 

[lk400]

well...how else is Apple going to sell the 6S?

and how else are they going to deprecate iPhone 6 when ios 12 comes out?

Do you really think "2 gb of ram" is a selling point to the very, very vast majority of purchasers?

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My question is this: Why is Apple so reluctant to put 2GB of RAM in these phones? Can anyone answer this?

It's not a reluctance, it's a design choice. It's not like every time a macrumors reader posts "I want 2gb, I hate 1gb" that apple considers it, and then decides not to do it. They (and the vast majority of their customers) are obviously happy with the performance with current ram and it's not on their radar as something that needs changing.

 

[Plutonius]

Eh, who cares, as long as it works well. Still, I don't understand why Apple wouldn't just preempt the complainers and add an extra GB of RAM. It really can't cost them too much. Couple bucks at most.

50 Million iPhones x $2.00 = 100 million dollars in cost.

1 GB is fine for the iPhone but, I'm hoping the Air 2 comes with 2GB.

 

[iregret]

Is it DDR4 ram?

 

[TigerWoodsIV]

It's Apple, they will squeeze every cent that they can get their hands on.
I'm more inclined now towards the S line up, which will cover iOS 9,10,11 more efficiently than dropping dead at 10 or below.

They have to keep people upgrading. I'll get the 7 just like I got the 5, 4, 3G. And I bought the original but upgraded after a year to the 3G

 

[MaSx]

Typical Apple. It's all about the profit now. I was thrilled about the iPhone 6+ due to larger display size (Thanks to Samsung) we finally have a choice (with ugly antenna band) let's be real now. Also, the way they're going with milking products nowadays, we will get 2GB with iPhone 7.

 

[alirz]

I would also like to know if the iPhone supports USB 3 now?

 

[nozebleed]

Edit: let me quantify it for everyone, just for fun. Let's say Apple opted for 2GB, a measly $5 more than their current 1GB modules (arbitrary price). Well, take the case of 4 million preorders. Welp, that's $20 million they just lost in revenue. Are you going to give up $20 million when your primary consumer base would never notice the performance difference?

Most here saying this was a financial decision, this guy as an example but many others, have no clue how business works. Taxes, regulation fees, "$5 arbritrary costs for more RAM" - all passed onto the consumer in the final retail price. If it is going to cost a company $20M more to produce something, they are NOT going to just cut it out of their profits. It WILL be passed to the consumer. Adding 1GB more RAM to the device had 0 to do with cost. They obviously do not believe they need more RAM for their device to run as they would like it to.

 

[doelcm82]

iPhone 6 is obviously selling, but this RAM situation is a big fail and makes me feel used as an Apple customer. Apple's "You don't need more than 1GB" is our generation's to "no one will ever need more than 640KB of RAM" (Bill Gates said that).

Interestingly, with the constant downsampling required on the 6+ and only 1GB of RAM, it will run slower than the standard iPhone 6. Gotta love that...pay more to get lower performance. If the iOS experience weren't so vastly superior to Android, I would be leaving the platform today over this instead of handing them more money.

They're going to get a pass on this one this round, from myself and millions of others, but I think if 2015 comes around and the RAM stays the same, it actually will affect their market share.

Apple hasn't actually said "You don't need more RAM". That happened in your imagination. They also didn't say you don't need more than 8 megapixels in a camera.

 

[Coreless apples]

Once again, To market with a device that is behind the competition. Good job Apple.

They might be behind the competition but can anybody compare an iphone 6 to a note or galaxy physically. The device alone is made out of a better material. They've put out benchmarks of both the 5S and the galaxy cellphones and just like anything else one phone does better than the other in certain margins. I don't see the RAM being that much of an issue. None of the reviews of the 6 said anything about it being sluggish or laggy. I think apple knows exactly what they're doing.

 

[TheRealTVGuy]

We all know that Apple is very concerned about user experience. What kind of experience will the user have when running two apps side-by-side on a 5.5" screen?

I know eventually it will come, but I'd like to see it on the iPad before I worry about it on the iPhone.

 

[doelcm82]

Typical Apple. It's all about the profit now. I was thrilled about the iPhone 6+ due to larger display size (Thanks to Samsung) we finally have a choice (with ugly antenna band) let's be real now. Also, the way they're going with milking products nowadays, we will get 2GB with iPhone 7.

And you're a typical consumer. You want what you want and you want it now!

As a business, Apple has to balance what you want against the wants of other customers and potential customers, and find a mix of new features that they can technically make, and still sell at a price that's low enough for people to buy, and high enough for them to make a profit.

 

[tito2020]

Today`s release of ios 8 will determine if can hold 1gb of ram.

 

[iphone5att64]

Limiting the ram is a way to force developers to be better software engineers and conserve ram. Believe me, if we have more of it we will just use it and then all the older devices will suffer in performance. Not cool. I work in an embedded system that has only 32 MB of RAM. We think about ram usage differently.

All older devices have suffered because they lack RAM: iPhone 3G unusable by iOS update while 3GS is, iPhone 4 can't update while 4S can, iPad 1 can't update while iPad 2 can, iPad 3 can't update. 4x pixels with previous generation specs make devices unusable.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Try to find "A5" on the iPod touch tech specs page on Apple's website.

http://www.apple.com/ipod-touch/
Right there, on the main site, takes up about a quarter of my screen where it talks about hardware.

http://www.apple.com/ipod-touch/features/
Then the A5 takes up about my entire screen, halfway down this page.

I guess you can argue they hid it in plain sight?

 

[jclardy]

The additional power consumption and cost is probably the biggest, but there's a couple other possibilities:

For one, we don't know the exact speed at which the iPhone's NAND flash reads/writes, but it could be fast enough that there isn't a ton of overhead going to the disk.

Another possibility is that it's currently not possible to fit the extra RAM on the board and still maintain everything else that's crammed into the phone.

Finally, it's possible that 2GB of RAM doesn't produce the performance gains that everyone thinks it does. Therefore it isn't worth putting in due to other tradeoffs.

It isn't about performance gains, it is about usability and not having apps relaunch because of memory pressure.

Personally I don't have a big problem with this on iPhone because I am using maybe 3 apps simultaneously. But on iPad where I am am constantly flipping between apps while using it then it sucks because things are constantly relaunching (You can tell by seeing the launch images, usually just a blank UI, sometimes a company logo.) Most apps launch quickly...but when you have a larger app bumped out, or Safari then it means you will be wasting a lot of time waiting for them to load again.

Again, right now in the iPhone it isn't a huge deal, but if Apple wants iOS as a platform to continue to grow they need to bump the RAM on the iPad so that developers can build bigger and better experiences.

 

[Rm.237]

What?

You have to read it with this playing in background to make sense. And read slowly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGXzWkD6AWM

 

[Spicedham]

Even on my oneplus one with 3gb ram and nexus 7 with 2gb ram chrome will reload pages just like safari on my iPad air. There's probably another reason they program the browser apps to do that. Adding more ram might not change the reloading.

 

[IJBrekke]

This is good news for the lifespan of my 5S.

 

[kilcher]

Can it seriously be saving them that much money? Do they not care at all what their customers are screaming for? Man, I sure wish I wasn't such an Apple fan, and have such an Apple ecosystem, or I would strongly consider jumping ship. Unless there is something I am missing, Apple as a whole sure seem to have their heads buried in their own asses, not their customers (where it should be).

What their customers are screaming for? You mean the tens of millions of customers who buy the phone anyway? Most people don't know and don't care. And most of those who do know still don't care. And most of those who do know and do care buy the phone anyway.

Even though I've personally never had a problem with it I'm not saying they shouldn't have done. But there's also a reason why Apple is sitting on 150 billion plus in cash.