how does 6+ perform with lots of open tabs?

[darknyt]

So you could not do any "actual work" because a page reloaded

Yeah genius. Or much of anything. Guess what I just tried to do? Post on this forum and go to ONE OTHER TAB to get a link to post. TWENTY SECONDS LATER, I go back to the tab to finish my post and it had reloaded.

Post gone. RIDICULOUS.

 

[vgamedude]

You are completely stuck in the specs game. Like their cameras, iPhone screens may not always have the best 'specs' on paper but they consistently look the best, measure the best or among the best, and the new 6's have been recently been determined to be the best lcd screens ever put in a phone. Can't argue with that.

Their SoC, are consistently at the top of the heap in performance while also using the least power.

Seriously you are going to argue about the casing materials and attention to detail? Have you held a Samsung S5 lately??

Power concerns are not just about active device use. Doubling the RAM nearly doubles the power required to power it and the RAM is one component that has to be powered 100% every second the device is on - even in sleep - their is no sleep state for ram to save power. This could have a non-trivial effect on standby battery life.

Keeping code tight is extremely important in order to maintain the performance we expect from these devices. Else we end up with a situation like in Windows where tiny helper programs have blown up over the years to using hundreds of Megs of ram because of sloppy programming.

"Doubling the RAM nearly doubles the power required to power it and the RAM is one component that has to be powered 100% every second the device is on - even in sleep - their is no sleep state for ram to save power. This could have a non-trivial effect on standby battery life. "

thats flat out wrong, raising the amount of ram in a system no matter what has little to no effect on power. Apple could have fit 2gb in the same SOC it would have made no difference at all. And certainly wouldnt have doubled the power requirements that's incorrect.

"Seriously you are going to argue about the casing materials and attention to detail? Have you held a Samsung S5 lately??"

why do you assume I like samsung? I don't. And yes their phones are crap but I have no damn clue what that has to do with apple.

"Keeping code tight is extremely important in order to maintain the performance we expect from these devices. Else we end up with a situation like in Windows where tiny helper programs have blown up over the years to using hundreds of Megs of ram because of sloppy programming"

one extra gigabyte won't make devs flip **** and start messily doing everything. If it's that much of a worry apple can police RAM requirements for apps. They already do a good job of policing the appstore for everything else.

"Their SoC, are consistently at the top of the heap in performance while also using the least power. "

As far as cpu yes they are among the best if not the best, but that doesn't change the fact that the RAM is apart of the SOC in the iphones and it's horribly inadequate.

"and the new 6's have been recently been determined to be the best lcd screens ever put in a phone"

Display mate said the 6+ was the best they had seen or something like that, not sure how objective they are haven't read it in full but I don't think they mentioned the 6 being ahead of the 6+ did they?

 

[zhenya]

thats flat out wrong, raising the amount of ram in a system no matter what has little to no effect on power. Apple could have fit 2gb in the same SOC it would have made no difference at all. And certainly wouldnt have doubled the power requirements that's incorrect.

It's not quite a doubling due to increased density but neither is it without impact. Every other major power consumer in these devices has seen massive improvements in power usage in recent years as the increases in frequency and bandwidth allow them to race to sleep more quickly accomplishing more work in less time and allowing them to sleep longer. The same is not true for ram which has remained relatively static in its power requirements which grows to be a larger proportion of the overall draw as everything else is improved.

 

[vgamedude]

It's not quite a doubling due to increased density but neither is it without impact. Every other major power consumer in these devices has seen massive improvements in power usage in recent years as the increases in frequency and bandwidth allow them to race to sleep more quickly accomplishing more work in less time and allowing them to sleep longer. The same is not true for ram which has remained relatively static in its power requirements which grows to be a larger proportion of the overall draw as everything else is improved.

It's inconsequential, the absolute worst case that it would result in is a few minutes off the phones usage time, if that, I have never found anything to suggest otherwise and I have looked.

The hard part is it's difficult to find phone energy measurements where RAM is even considered because it uses so little in comparison to everything else, not just a little less, A LOT less.

Also cant believe I forgot to add this but if you had more RAM and less reloads you would use less power as the CPU would be doing less work during things like safari reloads, I'm pretty hopeful we can both agree the CPU draws far more power than the RAM.

 

[zhenya]

It's inconsequential, the absolute worst case that it would result in is a few minutes off the phones usage time, if that, I have never found anything to suggest otherwise and I have looked.

The hard part is it's difficult to find phone energy measurements where RAM is even considered because it uses so little in comparison to everything else, not just a little less, A LOT less.

Also cant believe I forgot to add this but if you had more RAM and less reloads you would use less power as the CPU would be doing less work during things like safari reloads, I'm pretty hopeful we can both agree the CPU draws far more power than the RAM.

Again, I'm not talking about in-use time I'm talking about standby time where the iPhone is consistently at the top of the pack by a considerable margin. The thing about RAM is that while its power use is low, it uses that same amount of power ALL the time - even when sleeping. So when you are looking at a manner of hours - or days in some cases, that small amount begins to add up.

 

[vgamedude]

Again, I'm not talking about in-use time I'm talking about standby time where the iPhone is consistently at the top of the pack by a considerable margin. The thing about RAM is that while its power use is low, it uses that same amount of power ALL the time - even when sleeping. So when you are looking at a manner of hours - or days in some cases, that small amount begins to add up.

Every thing I have ever read mentioning RAM in smartphones points it to being absolutely and totally inconsequential, especially when in the iPhone 6's case you could fit it on the same SOC and not get hardly any more power usage.

Even in standby I have seen nothing to suggest that would have any effect on battery life. Why do you think this is the case?

Also even if it did affect standby time a little is that more important than on use time? I'm sure the screen on time would be better with more ram, you would have less CPU usage.

 

[zhenya]

Every thing I have ever read mentioning RAM in smartphones points it to being absolutely and totally inconsequential, especially when in the iPhone 6's case you could fit it on the same SOC and not get hardly any more power usage.

Even in standby I have seen nothing to suggest that would have any effect on battery life. Why do you think this is the case?

Because it's most certainly the case in laptops. Until SSD's became commonplace which made hybrid sleep modes available that dumped the contents of RAM to disk yet still allowed acceptably quick wake times you had to choose between either hibernate which was slow but preserved your battery life, or sleep which resumed quickly but could drain the battery overnight. The typical laptop battery is something like 6-8 times the capacity of the iPhone's, yet even those huge batteries could be drained overnight just by keeping the ram powered.

To answer your edit, yes standby is hugely important to me. One of the greatest things about my idevices is that they will reliably be ready to go even if I leave them on and sitting for a couple of days. I don't get that same experience even with modern Android devices.

 

[vgamedude]

Because it's most certainly the case in laptops. Until SSD's became commonplace which made hybrid sleep modes available that dumped the contents of RAM to disk yet still allowed acceptably quick wake times you had to choose between either hibernate which was slow but preserved your battery life, or sleep which resumed quickly but could drain the battery overnight. The typical laptop battery is something like 6-8 times the capacity of the iPhone's, yet even those huge batteries could be drained overnight just by keeping the ram powered.

To answer your edit, yes standby is hugely important to me. One of the greatest things about my idevices is that they will reliably be ready to go even if I leave them on and sitting for a couple of days. I don't get that same experience even with modern Android devices.

" I don't get that same experience even with modern Android devices."

Actually yes you do. The new sony z3 for instance completely obliterates the iphones battery life, and with the modes they have that you can select for reduced power and what not the standby time is insane. Go google it.


Also it's not very fair to compare laptops with smartphones the entire way the os works is different, plus the RAM is way slower and draws A WHOLE lot less energy.

 

[zhenya]

" I don't get that same experience even with modern Android devices."

Actually yes you do. The new sony z3 for instance completely obliterates the iphones battery life, and with the modes they have that you can select for reduced power and what not the standby time is insane. Go google it.


Also it's not very fair to compare laptops with smartphones the entire way the os works is different, plus the RAM is way slower and draws A WHOLE lot less energy.

The z3 has a battery nearly the size of the 6+'s in a device the size of the 6. Of course it has great battery life. (I guess I'm thinking of the z3 compact - but the point remains roughly the same - these devices have huge batteries compared to the competition)

The way the OS works is immaterial - the RAM is consuming power all of the time. Sure the ram consumes less battery, but you are also starting with ~1/6 the capacity so it should scale relatively equally.

 

[vgamedude]

The z3 has a battery considerably bigger than that of the 6+ in a device the size of the 6. Of course it has great battery life.

The z3 compact then. Which has a smaller battery than the iphone 6+.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Sony...us-to-the-era-of-two-day-battery-life_id60955

Frankly I don't care if it's because the battery is bigger. They don't have ginormous bezels they aren't unwieldy or anything. Very light weight too. The z3 compact weighs exactly the same as the iphone 6 I believe.

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The z3 has a battery considerably bigger than that of the 6+ in a device the size of the 6. Of course it has great battery life.

The way the OS works is immaterial - the RAM is consuming power all of the time. Sure the ram consumes less battery, but you are also starting with ~1/6 the capacity so it should scale relatively equally.

"The way the OS works is immaterial - the RAM is consuming power all of the time. Sure the ram consumes less battery, but you are also starting with ~1/6 the capacity so it should scale relatively equally. "

I don't think theres much point to even continue discussing this. We aren't going to convince each other. I can't find sources for what I'm saying and I don't see sources for what you're saying.

 

[zhenya]

I don't think theres much point to even continue discussing this. We aren't going to convince each other. I can't find sources for what I'm saying and I don't see sources for what you're saying.

I suppose that's probably true. As I started this conversation with - 'I suspect Apple knows something we don't.'

I've come to this hypothesis because of my experience of years of laptops that would be dead every morning due to powering the RAM for sleep mode. To me this seems like a far more plausible explanation as to why Apple keeps a tight limit on RAM (especially since they made such a big deal about their standby life in the early days). Knee-jerk reactions about Apple 'cheaping out' on $1 or so worth a RAM just doesn't hold much water with me.

 

[vgamedude]

I suppose that's probably true. As I started this conversation with - 'I suspect Apple knows something we don't.'

I've come to this hypothesis because of my experience of years of laptops that would be dead every morning due to powering the RAM for sleep mode. To me this seems like a far more plausible explanation as to why Apple keeps a tight limit on RAM (especially since they made such a big deal about their standby life in the early days). Knee-jerk reactions about Apple 'cheaping out' on $1 or so worth a RAM just doesn't hold much water with me.

Well at least for me the reloads and low memory crashes (especially on the air) were too much. It's the main reason (next to screen issues) that I returned my ipad. This could simply be the way apple intends safari to function who knows. (minus crashes)

I'm going to use the iphone 6 extensively these next couple of days since I know someone getting one and I'll see if I can handle the reloads, if I can't I guess I'll go with something else.

 

[macfoxpro]

i keep lots of open tabs in firefox and chrome on my android....sometimes 30-40 tabs.

How does the iphone6+ perform when doing this?

Thanks

 

[uncreativedan]

Well this is weird. I've always had lots of trouble with safari refreshes. Like, this past week I tend to have 3 tabs open (att.com, macrumors bitching thread, and some random tab) and they refresh all the time all day. Sometimes minutes later without opening anything more than the camera. It's bizarre.

BUTT, I downloaded Chrome this morning and I've not had one refresh checking the sites at my normal times. No longer have I had to keep entering my info in the ATT order status page.

 

[vgamedude]

Well this is weird. I've always had lots of trouble with safari refreshes. Like, this past week I tend to have 3 tabs open (att.com, macrumors bitching thread, and some random tab) and they refresh all the time all day. Sometimes minutes later without opening anything more than the camera. It's bizarre.

BUTT, I downloaded Chrome this morning and I've not had one refresh checking the sites at my normal times. No longer have I had to keep entering my info in the ATT order status page.

You still can't set third party browsers to be your default browser right?

 

[uncreativedan]

You still can't set third party browsers to be your default browser right?

Nope, only with jailbreak tweaks.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Yeah genius. Or much of anything. Guess what I just tried to do? Post on this forum and go to ONE OTHER TAB to get a link to post. TWENTY SECONDS LATER, I go back to the tab to finish my post and it had reloaded.

Post gone. RIDICULOUS.

Looks like you just need to move on then. I am pretty sure you can find more RAM with Android.

Genius!

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RAM whiners.

LOL, that is funny!

 

[darknyt]

Looks like you just need to move on then. I am pretty sure you can find more RAM with Android.

Genius!

----------

RAM whiners.

LOL, that is funny!

You're presuming it's a RAM issue. Do we know that? I just know it's a user experience issue.

It's certainly not going to drive me to Android yet. Would like a cheap one to play around with though similar to the Lumia 521 I got. No harm in seeing how the other side works.

 

[s3w3ll]

The iPhone 5 allowed apps to use about ~600 MB or the 1GB of RAM for applications. Let's just assume this is about the same on the 6/6+ give or take a bit.

Let's assume the app itself needs 100MB (which is incredibly generous) just to be open with no tabs. That leaves 500MB of memory for web pages in tabs.

The average web page size is about 1246kb in 2014. So, you could fit nearly 500 of them in memory. Let's assume there's some lack of efficiency there, but still, there is more than enough memory available to applications to have several tabs open without reloading them. Thus, someone made a decision on the software side to limit this.

It may also have to do with when your app goes to the background since it no longer has that memory access. In this case, the app would have to write the open tabs to disk (solid state storage, in this case) in order to preserve the content. This is likely what the app you described is doing and probably is not a feature Apple has implemented in Safari. Even so, this would still point toward a software issue and not a lack of hardware.

The data received from a webpage vs the data required by memory (RAM) to display the page are 2 different sizes.

Google's homepage send ~2100bytes over the network, renders in desktop format, and uses 40mb worth of RAM to display. Scripts run and HTML needs to be displayed as it is intended. <h5>hello</h5> and <h1>hello</h1> use the same amount of characters but when displayed will take up more RAM.

Reddit runs at 70mb RAM (desktop)

Don't forget about cached items, loading youtube videos, youtube videos you have watched and kept open, pages running AJAX, pictures in hi-res, and ads.

Mobile sites usually run at 15% less RAM, totally depends on the type of site, a mobile site is an interface change more than content change.

On my PC at home, every day chrome uses 2-4GB of RAM (I shutdown each day because Origin) with all the tabs I have open and their content, according to your logic then over a month I should have used 60-120GB of data, however I use 30-40GB a month, including some gaming and youtube, I don't go over since my cap is 40GB.