iPhone 14 Pro Rumored to Feature 8GB RAM, Matching Galaxy S22

[yabeweb]

Adding more ram will only mean they will optimize less the OS..

 

[EugW]

Yes but why? Apps will still reload after 30 seconds.

Yes and no. As Apple has been increasing memory amounts in their iDevices, Apple has also gradually been increasing the amount memory allocatable to individual apps.

I suspect this will be further increased soon, esp. once they discontinue support for the iPhone SE (1st gen), iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, and iPhone 8. Those are the last devices with 2 GB RAM.

Memory problems could have been solved years ago for old devices running newer iOS version by allowing a swap file on the storage chips.

This is exactly what Apple has not wanted to do.

 

[cocoua]

I remember when Apple didn't publish specs, didn't get into a spec-flexing war, and noone really cared.

People do care but Apple always sell products with the bare minimun requisites to work under the “optimized SO/hardware” ram and Gpu use to be always limitations.

And While this claim have been proven true, there is no magic under that trick, and code gets messy with time, OS arent optimized for long time and iPhones and macs gets slow and slow over time with the updates. Even Windows hold it better (my 4RAM surface 2012 goes similar than my 16RAM rMBP 2012 for common task)

My wife’s main computer is a 2009 white macbook with 8GB Ram and a SSD. And runs quite quite good with El Cap.

 

[EugW]

My wife’s main computer is a 2009 white macbook with 8GB Ram and a SSD. And runs quite quite good with El Cap.

Yeah, but El Capitan is ancient. I retired a Mac Pro a while back partially because of lack of modern software support with El Capitan.

That said, Monterey runs just fine with 8 GB RAM too. I'm typing on a 2014 Mac mini with 8 GB RAM, NVMe SSD, and Monterey right now. It's my primary work machine (VPN, business apps), until I decide to upgrade to Apple Silicon. (I don't actually need to upgrade to Apple Silicon, but I just want to try out an AS machine for fun.)

 

[huge_apple_fangirl]

It’s about time! Hopefully USB-C is next. “Pro” devices should have pro specs.

 

[Mr. Dee]

2 GBs is not significantly much more. But what it suggest is the next iPhone Pro’s will likely rely heavily on video.

 

[CTHarrryH]

I remember when I started in the computer business and worked on mainframe computers I did work on one that had 16K of memory.

 

[jouster]

Would love to see mobile phones utilize all this power and turn them into dockable PCs

HP produced a dockable Windows phone. It had some compromises but generally worked. The phone itself had good specs for the time and was well made. No one bought it. Of course, that may be because it was a Windows phone! But I wonder how much demand there is for this convergence.

 

[_Spinn_]

I wonder if this extra RAM is needed for the rumored spec bump coming to the camera?

 

[Syk]

I sure hope the don't do that ! camera/sensor thing but it's Apple so they probably will?. My X is starting to show a little age plus I want a 5G phone and access to the lower bands..

 

[tobyw7]

HP produced a dockable Windows phone. It had some compromises but generally worked. The phone itself had good specs for the time and was well made. No one bought it. Of course, that may be because it was a Windows phone! But I wonder how much demand there is for this convergence.

Also check out the Ubuntu Touch now community developed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch

 

[kemal]

do users actually bump into the limits of RAM? I would have thought 6GB is plenty unless you are editing large media files on a phone sized device

We were using an iMac with 8GB of RAM with lots of photos, documents, and lots of tabs loaded and it was quite fine. But for a phone, 8GB seems overkill? I would actually prefer if Apple gave you a bump to 256 storage for a lesser cost....that would be more useful for a lot of users (I only use 60GB of my 128)

I could be wrong, but while MacOS has virtual memory, the phones / tablets do not.

 

[krspkbl]

obviously related to image/video processing. the average user might not necessarily need 8GB but for the hardware and OS to work together it will be needed. a higher camera quality means more data being moved about and maybe apple has new features they are working on....crazy i know.

tech moves on. right now we might think 8GB is overkill and it might be but we'll look back and think wow we only had 8GB?? iphone started with 128mb.

 

[jeffpeng]

Yes but why? Apps will still reload after 30 seconds.
Memory problems could have been solved years ago for old devices running newer iOS version by allowing a swap file on the storage chips.

This is a very bad idea. Those tiny flash chips are nowhere as fast and resilient as an actual SSD.

Would love to see mobile phones utilize all this power and turn them into dockable PCs

That's kinda my unrealistic dream. Just stick my phone into a dock - boom, it's a mac. Insert it into a laptop chassis - boom, macbook. But .... it's hard to market those things. It's definitely technologically possible, even feasible, but hard to come up with a product the average Joe understands.

On topic: I think a spec bump would make sense, especially if it hardly costs anything. It won't matter anything now, but it will matter in 2027 when you consider if your ancient iPhone 14 Pro is still good enough now that Virtual Augmented Plutonium 5D-Hoverboard-Reality is the standard for connecting with dating wormholes and "kinda" requires 8 Gigs of Ram.

 

[Steve121178]

I remember when Apple didn't publish specs, didn't get into a spec-flexing war, and noone really cared.

Well, people started caring when Safari open web pages and apps kept closing etc due to the memory limitations.

It went from being slightly bothersome to downright annoying as time went on & apps and webpages consumed more and more resources.

 

[melgross]

Yeah, we’ll, we don’t need as much memory.

 

[tridley68]

Just give it 2TB of ram and be done for the time being

 

[jezbd1997]

I am very happy with the amount of RAM on my 13 pro. I've never had an issue. In fact, the last iPhone where I remember having RAM issues was my old iPhone 6, which was crippled with 1 GB from the beginning.

yep, no problems with any iPhones on ram except that 6. so glad i sold it quick

 

[827538]

With iPhones approaching PS4 levels of power, and Unreal Engine 5 games releasing on iOS, I'm sure games will easily use all 4GB of RAM that iPhone 13s have. 8GB is good

That's a good point. I still feel like my iPhone 13 Pro is so much more powerful than we really need - not that its a bad thing. I came from a 6S to a 13 Pro and whilst it was faster it didm't blow me away which I think is a testament as to how good Apple's A series chips and iOS have been for a long time.
The 120Hz OLED display did blow me away! Also the Qualcomm X60 modem is unquestionably better than the Intel modem I had previously.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Is it just a spec competition at this point?

Apple is mostly just out of ideas

There’s no reason to even be pushing out all “new” phones every year …. Other than profit motive

 

[subi257]

Apple is mostly just out of ideas

There’s no reason to even be pushing out all “new” phones every year …. Other than profit motive

There's no reason to be pushing out new car models every year, or anything else either. Profit is the motive...companies need to constantly make a profit or they fold.....capitalism, the basis of our country.

 

[turbineseaplane]

capitalism, our founding basis.

What is the "our" you are referring to?

 

[polyphenol]

Is there any possibility that 8GB actually works out cheaper than 6 - to Apple?

(Even to the extent that a lower model could have 8GB of physical RAM but only 6GB accessible.)

 

[subi257]

What country is the "our" you are referring to?

Capitalism certainly isn't the "founding basis" of the United States

Sorry....it was just supposed to be "basis" the alternate is the "C" or "S" word that makes people frankly **** themselves

 

[mcbrice]

Funny because on my old S21 Ultra I was always facing memory problem (app reload and crashes) but none on my 13 Pro. We don’t care about he hardware spec if it isn’t well managed. And this is always the case in the Android world.