A8 Chip From 4.7-Inch iPhone 6 Appears to Carry 1 GB of RAM

[sdugoten]

For example, all things being equal (same nits, GPS on or off on both, etc) the iPhone has similar battery life to the Note 3 on WIFI web browsing. Ars technica confirms this too.

Proof

Your comment just prove that Note 3 technically is superior to iphone 5S. You have to understand that Note 3 is having Full HD 1920x 1080 resolution + 3G ram, and Iphone with much lower resolution , screen size and less ram and only able to do similar battery life as Note 3.

And your comment also prove my point that having more ram would not make the battery life shorter.

 

[vh1981]

2X32bit dual channel(Elpida) ===> 64bit single channel(Apple A7)

Elpida 1GB LPDDR3 memory package in A7 has 2 512MB chips inside(32bit bus) and 64bit memory bus width.
It's confusing...

Good work ruler22 and I will take this a little bit further.

First I haven't read all the posts so maybe someone posted this already.

All those LPDDR3 parts are x32 in a standard PoP package.

Apple uses a custom PoP package - as do many application processors vendors. In the A7, the LPDDR3 memory interface is x64 - I think Anandtech has an article about the A7 that has this information as well as other places. The A7 has two 4Gb LPDDR3 dies to get 1GB of RAM.

So it seems very likely that the A8 has two x32 8Gb LPDDR3 dies on a x64 interface for 2GB of RAM.

I'm definitely not panicking because I think it does have 2GB of RAM

UPDATE: Looks like ee4life figured this out before me - good work!

 

[cgc]

... I have tried to make a webpage with 1GB of data to see what happens on my iphone 5s, and as far as I can tell, it just starts using flash, and there is barely a hickup.

Huh? This makes no sense...

 

[pedromcm.pm]

Your comment just prove that Note 3 technically is superior to iphone 5S. You have to understand that Note 3 is having Full HD 1920x 1080 resolution + 3G ram, and Iphone with much lower spec and less ram and only able to do similar battery life as Note 3.

And your comment also prove my point that having more ram would not make the battery life shorter.

What? The note isn't superior on any way. It has a huge (3x the volume) battery that, as it is known, clearly wins over the required extra resources for power big screens. That's why they exist. The iPhone tiny battery powers a much more advanced chip, more advanced LTE bands support, and then similar components.

About the RAM, you are obviously right. It has 0 impact on battery life, at this point.

 

[johnmacward]

It sickens me this kind of stinginess in the wake of such need.

I got the iPad Air upon release and even after multiple updates I still experience laggy-ness and constantly refreshing Safari tabs in iOS 7.1. Jesus, what is their problem here. The chips are unbelievably cheap these days.

 

[Ezhik]

Will I ever see an iOS devices that wouldn't have the reloading tabs issue in Safari?

Seriously, the lack of RAM is ruining my browsing experience, and has been for the past six years or so...

 

[Altis]

No.

1GB is better than 2GB because 1GB draws less power.

1 GB uses more power when the OS has to use a cellular antenna to redownload web pages and app data incessantly, on top of being very inconvenient. If you want to talk about wasted battery, look at that issue, or perhaps silly things like parallax that consume battery and serve no purpose.

Shame on you for thinking specs are more important than user experience.

Nobody cares about specs until the user experience suffers. That's exactly the point. iOS and its apps would have room to improve if it had more RAM. A higher resolution, 64-bit iPhone 6 would have far less usable memory than an iPhone 5 from 2 years ago.

It's simply not acceptable for a premium-dollar device.

Also interesting that specs such as thinness are marveled as something to behold at Apple, yet can make the device less comfortable, less space for a more extended battery, etc. Or specs such as how responsive the screen is compared with the competition, and then they introduce massive animation delays that cause gaps in touch response.

 

[pedromcm.pm]

1 GB uses more power when the OS has to use a cellular antenna to redownload web pages and app data incessantly, on top of being very inconvenient. If you want to talk about wasted battery, look at that issue, or perhaps silly things like parallax that consume battery and serve no purpose.



Nobody cares about specs until the user experience suffers. That's exactly the point. iOS and its apps would have room to improve if it had more RAM. A higher resolution, 64-bit iPhone 6 would have far less usable memory than an iPhone 5 from 2 years ago.

It's simply not acceptable for a premium-dollar device.

Also interesting that specs such as thinness are marveled as something to behold at Apple, yet can make the device less comfortable, less space for a more extended battery, etc. Or specs such as how responsive the screen is compared with the competition, and then they introduce massive animation delays that cause gaps in touch response.

Perfectly said. While 1 GB may use marginally less power than 2 GB by itself, the implications of having less RAM make the device use way more battery.

 

[Mr Fusion]

It sickens me this kind of stinginess in the wake of such need.

I got the iPad Air upon release and even after multiple updates I still experience laggy-ness and constantly refreshing Safari tabs in iOS 7.1. Jesus, what is their problem here. The chips are unbelievably cheap these days.

Their "problem" is people keep buying their stuff in record numbers. Zero incentive to change.

Maximize profits, minimize costs. Biz 101.

All this, "we try to make the best products for our customers" stuff is a load of **** and anyone who buys into that is a fool.

 

[mayhemburzum]

If you want to multitask, go use a laptop... or one of those terribly designed Android "phones" with 8 cores and 3GB memory and a giant 2800mAh battery that lasts 4 hours because idiots think more is better.

I own a OnePlus phone, with quadcore snapdragon 801, 3GB of RAM and 3100 battery. You are the idiot because you keep paying premium price for a device that is no longer premium. My battery lasts 2 full days with heavy usage, I have full HD display and the phone is definately faster than any iPhone 5s i've worked with. It also multitasks between every APP I havê installed without reloading tabs on Chrome.

 

[Dranix]

I hate to say it but the reloading tabs has nothing to do with ram - It is simply bad code by apple in mobile safari... The pages could easily be cached on the ssd but they aren't...

 

[recklesslife85]

I own a OnePlus phone, with quadcore snapdragon 801, 3GB of RAM and 3100 battery. You are the idiot because you keep paying premium price for a device that is no longer premium. My battery lasts 2 full days with heavy usage, I have full HD display and the phone is definately faster than any iPhone 5s i've worked with. It also multitasks between every APP I havê installed without reloading tabs on Chrome.

Exactly, the OnePlus One is a great device and blows the iPhone away.

 

[johnmacward]

Their "problem" is people keep buying their stuff in record numbers. Zero incentive to change.

Maximize profits, minimize costs. Biz 101.

All this, "we try to make the best products for our customers" stuff is a load of **** and anyone who buys into that is a fool.

You ain't wrong.

 

[sdugoten]

I hate to say it but the reloading tabs has nothing to do with ram - It is simply bad code by apple in mobile safari... The pages could easily be cached on the ssd but they aren't...

You can try any browser other that Safari, even Chrome, Opera ..you name it. All having the same problem. I have yet find a browser on IOS that don't share this problem. None.

 

[smulji]

I hate to say it but the reloading tabs has nothing to do with ram - It is simply bad code by apple in mobile safari... The pages could easily be cached on the ssd but they aren't...

I guess we'll know when iOS 8 is released if there's any improvement.

 

[chrmjenkins]

after disappoint, i'm confused. ELPIDA ram used in iPhone 5s has 64bit I/O(inside packaging, there's 2 x 512MB 32bit ram).
apple a7's memory bus is 64bit single channel and there's no 64bit LPDDR3 in Hynix catalog.
i even suspicious that Hynix supplies LPDDR ram for iPhone 5S...
i searched iPhone 5s logic board picture and only sees ELPIDA 64bit 8Gb part number.
what's going on?

Look at the A7 silkscreen that we are comparing to. It is also a Hynix part number. So, unless that really is a B and not an 8, or the code differences indicate more density and an actual 128 bit interface, we are looking at 1 GB of RAM.

 

[Dranix]

You can try any browser other that Safari, even Chrome, Opera ..you name it. All having the same problem. I have yet find a browser on IOS that don't share this problem. None.

Then all browsers suck on iOS. The html and images of a webpage take very little space so complete reloading is insane. Rerendering from the cached site, yes - but that should be fast.

 

[Michael Goff]

You can try any browser other that Safari, even Chrome, Opera ..you name it. All having the same problem. I have yet find a browser on IOS that don't share this problem. None.

It could have something to do with the fact that every browser on iOS is a shell over pretty much the same rendering engine. >_>

 

[sdugoten]

It could have something to do with the fact that every browser on iOS is a shell over pretty much the same rendering engine. >_>

No, Its the memory. Not enough memory. It is a well known issue for IOS that it doesn't have enough RAM which make the browser keep doing stupid reloading all the time.



http://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...event-the-iphone-browser-from-reloading-pages

 

[wilky76]

IF the iPhone 6 does only come with 1GB of ram it still sell in it's millions as alot of people that buy iPhone's are not one bit interested in specs.

I think the real kicker will be if the 6S has 2GB which will mean Apple have broke tradition, and that will seriously piss off alot of people that are bothered about specs that bought the 6, moreso on a 2 year contract.

I will probably get a 6 couple of months after launch regardless if it have 1GB or 2GB, then sell it around this time next year for the 6S.

 

[recoil80]

I hate to say it but the reloading tabs has nothing to do with ram - It is simply bad code by apple in mobile safari... The pages could easily be cached on the ssd but they aren't...

Is not only about Safari and web pages.
If an app is purged from memory it will need to be reloaded back from the start next time is opened by the user.
This is a waste of power, since many operation (even involving network) have to be performed again and again.
Is bad for the user too, since apps are slower to load .

iOS is very optimised, I'm happy to write apps for this platform but I don't want another device with only 1GB of RAM because I'll need to support for 3/4 years when this amount of ram will be ridiculous.

I'd be very disappointed if they'll release next iPhone with only 1GB of RAM and I could wait 6S to upgrade, by then they will put 2GB for sure.

 

[winston1236]

That's highly disappointing, but maybe iOS 8 will introduce some of Mavericks memory compression technology.

Even if it did that's an embarrassingly low amount of RAM for a mobile device in 2014-15. Even if they doubled it to 2GB the amount of space lost is minimal and the gains of excess RAM significantly outweigh whatever space they are trying to save.

----------

Their "problem" is people keep buying their stuff in record numbers. Zero incentive to change.

Maximize profits, minimize costs. Biz 101.

All this, "we try to make the best products for our customers" stuff is a load of **** and anyone who buys into that is a fool.

Well said.

 

[hansonjohn590]

Yay for more crashes due to lack of ram.

 

[koban4max]

looks like people are no longer under apple's spell when they find out it is true.

 

[Dranix]

Yay for more crashes due to lack of ram.

What crashes? My iPhone4 has only 0,5GB and I have no such crashes...