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

[ghsDUDE]

No Go For Me

I am an absolute Apple Fanboy (I admit it).

I'm not too concerned with specs, I just want a great product. Literally, I would give Apple $1,000 right now for an iPhone 6 and iWatch without seeing it.

BUT - If this iPhone 6 has 1 GB of RAM there is NO WAY IN HELL I'd buy this thing.

If a Samsung Galaxy S4 released in 2013 has 2 GB of RAM, you can't be serious telling me Apple's flagship phone coming out at the end of 2014 (supposed to be used until 2016 in 2 Yr contract) will only have 1 GB of RAM.

I'll just keep my iPhone 5 and wait it out. The amount of time Safari spends reloading tabs is ridiculous, and from a customer satisfaction stand point I can't stand behind this phone if it only has 1 GB of RAM.

(Sorry for the rant)

 

[nviz22]

I'd add also wireless charging to the benefits of the Nexus 5. I know that lots of people here write it off as a gimmick, but it's one of those features that you don't want to give up after using it for some time. I bought my Nexus 5 as an interim phone after giving my iPhone 5 to my wife to replace her old iPhone 4. Now I'm actually liking the Nexus 5 so much that the iPhone 6 is not an automatic buy anymore. It needs to be an impressive device to justify its price, but the rumors so far are giving me the opposite impression.

Glad to hear that the Nexus 5 works well. Great device, but I have my gripes with it, but the price does it justice. It has pretty much the latest SOC, 2 GB of RAM, a 1080p screen, wireless charging, and latest updates for a modest price compared to the flagship price of $600-$800. The bad is the battery life is not up to where I want it to be. It's significantly better than the iPhone 5/5S, but it pales in comparison to the G2/G3 and S4/S5. The price is really good, so it's a great purchase, but it's not perfect because the camera sensor could be better, but overall 9.5/10 device for the price.

The current rumored specs makes the 6 feel like a glorified midranger because of a 720p display, 1 GB of RAM, modest battery mAh increase, etc. I feel like the Apple enthusiast can manage to make themselves feel the need to upgrade yearly because of marketing and brand loyalty. It's a shame because the glorified midranger lacks in so many areas. Little by little, the Apple smartphone market share is dropping. The US is the biggest iPhone market and there are various reasons why its popular here. If I go abroad to other countries, like Canada or the UK, people tend to favor the Galaxy in the Galaxy vs iPhone debate. I guess people are more frugal with their money in other countries while people in the US are tad more frivolous in general?

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I am an absolute Apple Fanboy (I admit it).

I'm not too concerned with specs, I just want a great product. Literally, I would give Apple $1,000 right now for an iPhone 6 and iWatch without seeing it.

BUT - If this iPhone 6 has 1 GB of RAM there is NO WAY IN HELL I'd buy this thing.

If a Samsung Galaxy S4 released in 2013 has 2 GB of RAM, you can't be serious telling me Apple's flagship phone coming out at the end of 2014 (supposed to be used until 2016 in 2 Yr contract) will only have 1 GB of RAM.

I'll just keep my iPhone 5 and wait it out. The amount of time Safari spends reloading tabs is ridiculous, and from a customer satisfaction stand point I can't stand behind this phone if it only has 1 GB of RAM.

(Sorry for the rant)

Smarter fanboy than the average one because you did admit the RAM problem is bigger than people think. The fact that the phone cannot multi task and load stuff as efficiently as it could (based on hardware) makes the device not worth the full sticker or contract price. I love how people say only the iPad needs 2GB of RAM instead of the phone.

 

[Roadstar]

Glad to hear that the Nexus 5 works well. Great device, but I have my gripes with it, but the price does it justice. It has pretty much the latest SOC, 2 GB of RAM, a 1080p screen, wireless charging, and latest updates for a modest price compared to the flagship price of $600-$800. The bad is the battery life is not up to where I want it to be. It's significantly better than the iPhone 5/5S, but it pales in comparison to the G2/G3 and S4/S5. The price is really good, so it's a great purchase, but it's not perfect because the camera sensor could be better, but overall 9.5/10 device for the price.

Naturally the Nexus 5 is not perfect either and I agree with the downsides you listed. However, for me the battery life issue is mitigated by the aforementioned wireless charging. I have charging pads at home, in my car, and at the office, so I can get a top-up charge with virtually no effort so I'm not typically running out of juice.

The current rumored specs makes the 6 feel like a glorified midranger because of a 720p display, 1 GB of RAM, modest battery mAh increase, etc. I feel like the Apple enthusiast can manage to make themselves feel the need to upgrade yearly because of marketing and brand loyalty. It's a shame because the glorified midranger lacks in so many areas. Little by little, the Apple smartphone market share is dropping. The US is the biggest iPhone market and there are various reasons why its popular here. If I go abroad to other countries, like Canada or the UK, people tend to favor the Galaxy in the Galaxy vs iPhone debate. I guess people are more frugal with their money in other countries while people in the US are tad more frivolous in general?

I guess one of the reasons is a different business model. For example here in Finland the true cost of the phone is clearly visible. There's just no such thing as a $99 or a $199 flagship phone, but the (optional) phone part in your contract depends on the price of the phone and the carriers must make the true price of the phone very clear. Buying the phone separately from the mobile subscription is also quite popular here, and it's also the iPhone that's been selling this way. However, the iPhone has been getting more and more expensive with almost every iteration, so if the rumored price increase occurs once again, it's pushing all too many models into the price range where you can choose whether to get 1 iPhone 6 or 2 Nexus 5 devices. Costing twice as much as a comparable competing device is a little bit too high a premium.

 

[nviz22]

Naturally the Nexus 5 is not perfect either and I agree with the downsides you listed. However, for me the battery life issue is mitigated by the aforementioned wireless charging. I have charging pads at home, in my car, and at the office, so I can get a top-up charge with virtually no effort so I'm not typically running out of juice.



I guess one of the reasons is a different business model. For example here in Finland the true cost of the phone is clearly visible. There's just no such thing as a $99 or a $199 flagship phone, but the (optional) phone part in your contract depends on the price of the phone and the carriers must make the true price of the phone very clear. Buying the phone separately from the mobile subscription is also quite popular here, and it's also the iPhone that's been selling this way. However, the iPhone has been getting more and more expensive with almost every iteration, so if the rumored price increase occurs once again, it's pushing all too many models into the price range where you can choose whether to get 1 iPhone 6 or 2 Nexus 5 devices. Costing twice as much as a comparable competing device is a little bit too high a premium.

Yeah, technology gets more and more expensive for the latest and greatest, but at least you guys have oversight in Finland to show the price of the phone and what not. Here, we're moving towards tab systems now that the phones are paid off monthly on 0% financed interest rates for the life of the installment plan while the monthly plans are dropping as well. At some point, economics have to kick in and people can say "well, the opportunity costs are higher to own an iPhone since it involves higher phone prices and repair prices along with higher peripheral prices too." Not too many people think like that though. The Nexus 6 or Nexus X would be a worthwhile upgrade for you as well. I have a LG G2 as well, but I might even upgrade that to the Nexus X.

 

[zipa]

So basically you said exactly what i am saying. And you tell me my points are wrong. Marvelous.

No, I'm saying the exact opposite of what you are saying. Being a mizer with RAM will not prevent a poor developer from wasting all of it, but it will hinder a good developer from accomplishing features the are bound by the amount of RAM.

So, what I'm proposing will benefit everyone, and provide perhaps a little "band-aid" for the poor developers' apps that are not well optimized, whereas your suggestion won't benefit anyone and will actively harm some people. You don't need to be a wizard to see which is the better options.

 

[Tycho24]

Try March 2012

Ah... thank you!
That should've read "1st iphone to have 1gb RAM", I stand corrected.

 

[gavroche]

No, I'm saying the exact opposite of what you are saying. Being a mizer with RAM will not prevent a poor developer from wasting all of it, but it will hinder a good developer from accomplishing features the are bound by the amount of RAM.

So, what I'm proposing will benefit everyone, and provide perhaps a little "band-aid" for the poor developers' apps that are not well optimized, whereas your suggestion won't benefit anyone and will actively harm some people. You don't need to be a wizard to see which is the better options.

You clearly did not understand what I was saying, or did not want to. So we are both wasting our time to debate. Lets just go our separate ways.

 

[horsebattery]

All I have to say to you guy's is when you read random forums or blogs around the web, and people ask questions about something they've read on anandtech and then in the same breath state they know it's biased towards Apple, you know it has a reputation. And yes I have seen that.

I'm not going to separate Phone Arena as their are many other tech sites out there, but anandtech bias towards Apple is very very very well known, and therefore it's reporting and benchmarks cannot be trusted, plenty of other websites where that information can be found. It should speak with the same tone and passion for ALL brands and technology's, then it wouldn't have the reputation it has got.

The answer to the problem of bias can be found in your second paragraph - other sources are used to corroborate with Anandtech's findings. Bias is an inherent trait in humans - people that are responsible for objective reporting (generally) attempt their best judgment to reduce the amount of subjectivity in their work. It is for this reason why despite that Anandtech may seem biased towards Apple (which, for the record I do not agree with, having read both their Apple and non-Apple articles), their reviews are regarded as sound and reliable, and why you also have reviews from other sites such as Gizmodo, which are generally not seen as equivalents.

 

[johnmacward]

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...

Yeah, a possible solution for Safari (a poor one in my opinion that just suggests being cheap is a better solution t doing the right thing) but what happens when you've solved Safari tab loading with SSD caching and because memory is still so low your game is re-loading every time you jump to another app and every other app you jump to is starting from scratch even though you just performed something on it 5 minutes ago.

Memory is cheap and Apple need to up the game here.

 

[nooaah]

Welcome to 2010. People have been complaining about this reloading issue and low memory issue on iphone/ipad since...........2010

https://www.google.com.hk/#q=ios+browser+reload+site:forums.macrumors.com

And...IOS8 STILL having this issue.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1740454/

Welcome to reading comprehension. I have iOS8 and it's no worse than iOS7. It's only a problem for me on my iPad. As I said, if they take a STEP BACK in this regard, then skip this version. If it's no worse, then I, for one, will go ahead and upgrade.

 

[apolloa]

I wasn't disputing the rumor that Apple may charge more. I'm disputing the logic that suggests that RAM is the only component that factors into the price. I would love to see more RAM (though it doesn't seem like much of a limiting factor on the 5s). I just don't see why more money couldn't be to cover several other things that could be more important.

So I guess to you, in the current lineup it'd be foolish for anyone to buy a 5s, because it has the same amount of RAM as the iPhone 5/5c.

Sure more money can cover things but what? The only new thing that may cost more is a sapphire glass screen but that no where near justifies the rumoured $100 price hike. Everything else has existed for the last couple of years at least already, bigger battery, bigger screens, NFC, wireless charging, and ALL on devices costing less than the current iPhone, Apple are the ones who design the SOC bar the GPU but then they have shares on PowerVR, so I imagine they heavily control the costs of the SOC. And a bigger metal case doesn't justify it either.
I'm sorry but this just stinks of Apple's business plan which is to maximise profits on everything riding the hype wave on devices made for low costs. They heavily rely on their eco system, iOS and brand name and design authestics to get sales.

We will need to wait and see of course as we are talking about pure an utter rumours at the moment. But from reading on here, an extra GB of RAM is literally peanuts in cost.

We'll see what Anand says in his review of the iPhone 6.

iPhone 5S has less memory to use than the iPhone 5, due to its 64 bit CPU. It was very apparent in the list of memory consumption for the apps. Yet he didn't say a word about that. Just expected the iPhone 6 to have 2 GB of RAM.

So... yes, will be interesting to see if he has the balls to criticise Apple this time.

I bet they don't. But yes, it will be interesting to see if anandtech do defend a premium phone at the top top price bracket for it's market, with a small battery and 1GB RAM and sub 1080P screen in the second half of 2014. Nasa is working towards taking men to Mars, Apple according to rumours can't even put 2GB RAM in it's phones..

 

[Eduardo Forneck]

Maybe 2 GB...

So, I was taking a look at the iPhone 4s tear down by iFixit, and I saw that it has 2x 2 Gb (256 MB) RAM modules inside the A5, total 512 MB, what if maybe the iPhone 6 is the same thing? 2x 8 Gb (1 GB) modules, with total 2 GB.

 

[Count Blah]

No, I'm saying the exact opposite of what you are saying. Being a mizer with RAM will not prevent a poor developer from wasting all of it, but it will hinder a good developer from accomplishing features the are bound by the amount of RAM.

So, what I'm proposing will benefit everyone, and provide perhaps a little "band-aid" for the poor developers' apps that are not well optimized, whereas your suggestion won't benefit anyone and will actively harm some people. You don't need to be a wizard to see which is the better options.

You do realize that apple can reject submissions that to above and beyond a certain level of RAM. Apple can also limit what each app can take. So your "poor developers will use it all up" stance is really is a non issue.

 

[xgman]

I absolutely hate the idea of this new so-called flagship phone having only 1 gb of ram. It is enough to keep me from purchasing one. I don't care how "optimized" the OS is. This is just ridiculous.... and just kind of sad really. I still hold out hope there will be a 2gb mem model. (come on Apple, the LG G3 has 3gb of ram. If they can do it, Apple can do at least 2!!)

 

[zipa]

So your "poor developers will use it all up" stance is really is a non issue.

If you read the conversation, you'll see that it is not my stance, but what I am actually arguing against.

 

[Dranix]

Guys, stop, take a deep breath - THIS ARE RUMOURS NOT FACTS. I don't believe how worked up people here get on a rumour...

 

[Roadstar]

The Nexus 6 or Nexus X would be a worthwhile upgrade for you as well. I have a LG G2 as well, but I might even upgrade that to the Nexus X.

Yep. I'll be checking the releases of both the iPhone 6 and the next Nexus before making any purchase decisions, but if the current leaks are accurate, I think I'll end up with the Nexus.

 

[gothamm]

So how this justifies Apple's decision to make yet another crippled product?

Apple doesn't have to justify it. A vast majority will purchase simply because its the "next iphone" aka "the best iphone yet"

 

[mscice]

i strongly don't think 1Gb is enough ? wow

 

[bobenhaus]

Its about the profit margins and not for the customers. Another 1gb of memory would of made it to expensive.

 

[nviz22]

Its about the profit margins and not for the customers. Another 1gb of memory would of made it to expensive.

Apple's comparative advantages are Chinese companies and brand marketing. Jobs built it so much that even Cook's anemic decision making has led to more profits. 2gb would make the profits drop by like $20 a unit since RAM is so much cheaper than years ago.

 

[bobenhaus]

Its so sad and obvious and the ones who are going to accept this are going to get burned. So sad. They will see its because iOS is so much more optimized that 1gb is enough. Memory is never enoight. Sad

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Apple's comparative advantages are Chinese companies and brand marketing. Jobs built it so much that even Cook's anemic decision making has led to more profits. 2gb would make the profits drop by like $20 a unit since RAM is so much cheaper than years ago.

Its so sad and obvious and the ones who are going to accept this are going to get burned. So sad. They will say its because iOS is so much more optimized that 1gb is enough. Memory is never enoight. Sad

Update

 

[mikeash]

I absolutely hate the idea of this new so-called flagship phone having only 1 gb of ram. It is enough to keep me from purchasing one. I don't care how "optimized" the OS is. This is just ridiculous.... and just kind of sad really. I still hold out hope there will be a 2gb mem model. (come on Apple, the LG G3 has 3gb of ram. If they can do it, Apple can do at least 2!!)

Android takes a lot more RAM to run, so does the manufacturer skin over it and don't forget all the carrier bloatware! No thanks. I'll keep my non lag, bloat free phone, even with 1GB of RAM

 

[rockarollr]

Apple always holds something back

And one of the selling points of iPhone 6S will be that it has 2 gigabytes of RAM... right? The iPhone 6S will be what the 6 should have been.

Apple sure knows how to (as we say in the south) "string-em along"!

 

[nviz22]

Its so sad and obvious and the ones who are going to accept this are going to get burned. So sad. They will see its because iOS is so much more optimized that 1gb is enough. Memory is never enoight. Sad

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Update

Or you cannot let Apple half-*** stuff anymore and demand more for your $. I don't give Apple my money for smart phones. Apple enthusiasts are going to settle for more mediocrity rather than focus on accountability for making the best product possible.