Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Equipped With Two Accelerometers for Power Management, Improved User Experience

Some people seem to know for certain that Android is just as efficient with RAM as iOS. They also seem to know for certain that RAM does not affect battery life. Thus, they are certain that more RAM is ALWAYS better, and that there is NO compromise involved, and NO benefit to less-than-2-GB RAM beyond greed.

What are the sources for these details? Or are they really just making assumptions? (Like assuming a 4-core Android phone performs tasks faster than a 2-core A8, when the reality is the reverse?)

I love a bullet-point marketing spec number as much as the next nerd, and would LOVE to hear an iPhone had 2GB, or 200 GB... but I love real-world functionality so much more. If one spec number has to go down for another to go up, that's just reality. 90s-style spec wars help nobody if we don't look at the big picture of what the device delivers for the user. Software plus hardware in the real world, targeting the most common uses over less common ones. Very complex--although we humans don't tend to like complexity! We wish the world were black and white, and no decision were ever a trade-off.
 
ChrisCW11 said:
$0.05 more of extra RAM in a phone never hurt anybody, except Apple's bottom line, which is why they don't simply put 8gb of RAM in their phones by now.

I mean why did Apple go to 64bit mobile processing? It certainly is NOT necessary for MOST mobile applications, and there is many that have suggested even the iPhone's 5s A7 CPU is woefully underutilized, so why did Apple have to rush out a phone with an overpowered A8 CPU this time around? Certainly it looks much better on paper to see a CPU version bump and to boast about how many more times powerful the new iPhone 6 is over the previous generations.

So if you are going to suggest to me that Apple is not bumping up the RAM because they don't believe it's technically necessary and that Android phones are just doing so for prestige or necessity, bull-****. Apple started the whole "my specs are better then your specs" game a LONG time ago.

Apple most likely hasn't found a financial reason to spend more money on their phones to add the extra RAM, but you can be sure the moment Apple decides that a phone needs 32gb of RAM, then Tim Cook will be on stage proudly boasting about how the new iPhone X is so much better than all those phones with only a paltry 4gb of RAM.
Click to expand...

It's primarily about power consumption, and secondarily about cost. Hence, Apple speccing two devices where the higher end one would suffice, and all the engineering R&D that Apple does on all its products to reduce power consumption. Low power consumption means thin and light devices that the discriminating user wants.
 
Last edited:
Big difference

I play a lot of iOS First person shooters, and use the gyroscopic aiming. I could tell it was much smoother and easier to aim.

To give you a number, I've probably have got twice as many headshots because the motion is smoother and more accurate. Modern combat 5 plays likes butter!
 
rsocal said:
Unfortunately, for so many people, it's never enough!

I hate to even say it but, the "it bends" shows the mentality of people who just don't get what these people are doing!:apple:
Click to expand...

I don't disagree with this totally, and I think that bendgate is ridiculous. But just like Apple claims that innovation means saying no to projects sometimes (and I agree) they also must understand that innovation sometimes means saying no to thin for the sake of thin. Sleek and sexy doesn't have to mean razor thin at the expense of functionality. Apple has proven that time and time again.

----------
ChrisCW11 said:
$0.05 more of extra RAM in a phone never hurt anybody, except Apple's bottom line, which is why they don't simply put 8gb of RAM in their phones by now.

I mean why did Apple go to 64bit mobile processing? It certainly is NOT necessary for MOST mobile applications, and there is many that have suggested even the iPhone's 5s A7 CPU is woefully underutilized, so why did Apple have to rush out a phone with an overpowered A8 CPU this time around? Certainly it looks much better on paper to see a CPU version bump and to boast about how many more times powerful the new iPhone 6 is over the previous generations.

So if you are going to suggest to me that Apple is not bumping up the RAM because they don't believe it's technically necessary and that Android phones are just doing so for prestige or necessity, bull-****. Apple started the whole "my specs are better then your specs" game a LONG time ago.

Apple most likely hasn't found a financial reason to spend more money on their phones to add the extra RAM, but you can be sure the moment Apple decides that a phone needs 32gb of RAM, then Tim Cook will be on stage proudly boasting about how the new iPhone X is so much better than all those phones with only a paltry 4gb of RAM.
Click to expand...

Ooh, you've got this all figured out. Where can I buy your phone?
 
nagromme said:
Some people seem to know for certain that Android is just as efficient with RAM as iOS. They also seem to know for certain that RAM does not affect battery life. Thus, they are certain that more RAM is ALWAYS better, and that there is NO compromise involved, and NO benefit to less-than-2-GB RAM beyond greed.

What are the sources for these details? Or are they really just making assumptions? (Like assuming a 4-core Android phone performs tasks faster than a 2-core A8, when the reality is the reverse?)

I love a bullet-point marketing spec number as much as the next nerd, and would LOVE to hear an iPhone had 2GB, or 200 GB... but I love real-world functionality so much more. If one spec number has to go down for another to go up, that's just reality. 90s-style spec wars help nobody if we don't look at the big picture of what the device delivers for the user. Software plus hardware in the real world, targeting the most common uses over less common ones. Very complex--although we humans don't tend to like complexity! We wish the world were black and white, and no decision were ever a trade-off.
Click to expand...

My note3 has 3gb ram and it has great battery life. To those who said having more ram may not be better, that a pretty lame excuse. The extra battery used by ram is so miniscule compared to other factors.
 
Glassed Silver said:
Virtual memory is the last thing a flagship smartphone should make extensive use of
Click to expand...

He's not talking about virtual memory but simply about an application persisting data structures to disk when it does not need them. This has nothing to do with swap file, it's just about being a good citizen on a device with limited resources...
The problem with Safari is not that it unloads the data structures linked to the tabs from memory - that's actually a good thing. It that it just throws them away without persisting them first.

Just keeping data in RAM because you can rather than freeing RAM for the foreground application would be plain lazy.

Come on, we applaud Apple's genius for including 2 accelerometers to save battery life, but then we accept 1GB of RAM in 2014?
Click to expand...

The problem is that the day you put 2GB in a phone, the whole line before becomes obsolete in a few weeks... Obsolete as in most of the newer games will need more than 1 GB or RAM.
 
Glassed Silver said:
Hmm, well then explain the very frequent reloading of Safari tabs, apps losing their state when multitasking between more than just 2-3 apps, don't dare to use background tasks like music players or something...
Click to expand...

Okay, I'll explain.
1) Modern web sites are memory hogs due to huge images and (to an lesser extent) huge HTML5 scripts.

2) Most apps are written badly. They consume vastly more amounts of RAM than they should because the devs were too lazy to cache things effectively. Apple has an energy meter in iOS 8 for power-hungry apps, but they should also put a RAM usage meter in there to shame these developers.

So, if developers did their jobs properly and conformed to Apple's best practices, 1GB would be adequate. But they're lazy and are often given short deadlines to launch products/features. And if Apple gives us 2GB devices, the developers will just be more lazy. Developer laziness expands proportionally to the amount of slack given to them. So then soon you'll be clamoring for 4GB.

I'm not arguing we don't need 2GB of RAM, but what we also need is more efficiency.
 
Glassed Silver said:
Virtual memory is the last thing a flagship smartphone should make extensive use of for simple things like keeping a FEW apps ready to go as soon as I multitask back into them, let alone keeping more than 3 or 4 Safari tabs loaded.

Come on, we applaud Apple's genius for including 2 accelerometers to save battery life, but then we accept 1GB of RAM in 2014?
No, just no.

I'll likely update sooner or later, because I can make use of quite some features that will be new to me as iPhone 5 owner and my contract allows for an upgrade soon, but I know damn well that with 1GB of RAM this will be one short-lifed phone in terms of performance on the second next iOS version.

Glassed Silver:mac
Click to expand...


I love people who have never engineered a computer/smartphone before, never written a line of code, but have definitive answers to things that Apple should do. You have no idea how iOS uses the RAM, how the apps use the RAM, and why you think your problems will be solved by you having more RAM. You really don't.
 
rdlink said:
I don't disagree with this totally, and I think that bendgate is ridiculous. But just like Apple claims that innovation means saying no to projects sometimes (and I agree) they also must understand that innovation sometimes means saying no to thin for the sake of thin. Sleek and sexy doesn't have to mean razor thin at the expense of functionality. Apple has proven that time and time again.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with that, but did they sacrifice functionality?
This is splitting hairs but, is a thicker, more robust phone, not a sacrifice on comfort functionality?

I would rather have the thin phone, then bullet proof. I don't see the "bend" as a sacrifice on functionality, not to many people carry 55lbs of pressure in their pocket.

These are big decisions that have to be made with every great product. I think Apple does a great job most of the time with those decisions.:apple:
 
I was conducting a non-scientific experiment at the Apple Store today with the 6 and the 6 plus. I closed all apps and turned up the brightness to maximum on both and loaded a web page that is completely blank. The 6 plus was noticefully brighter than the 6.
I turned on the flashlights and they seemed to be equal in brightness.
Then I was conducting app launching speeds. I saw that both has clumsy ninja so I started both at the same time and the 6 was ready a second before the plus. Closed the apps and launched them again and this time the plus beat the 6 by a second. Weird. I tried this several times and every subsequent launch was faster on the plus.
 
Glassed Silver said:
Hmm, well then explain the very frequent reloading of Safari tabs, apps losing their state when multitasking between more than just 2-3 apps, don't dare to use background tasks like music players or something...

There is only so much you can get out of 1GB of RAM.

Glassed Silver:mac
Click to expand...

I can answer that for you, it is a very simple answer. I'm looking it up in my talking points.

OK, I found it.

1)Ram is not the issue. Its a safari problem, ram will not help this. Wait a decade or so till apple fixes the problem. Ram might alleviate the symptoms a bit, but its to the root cause.


2) I don't need to use more than one tab at a time, why do you?
 
Maximum sensitivity

I'm pretty sure the InvenSense MPU-6500 maximum sensitivity is not 16684. 16384 May be a little closer :)
 
JosephAW said:
I was conducting a non-scientific experiment at the Apple Store today with the 6 and the 6 plus. I closed all apps and turned up the brightness to maximum on both and loaded a web page that is completely blank. The 6 plus was noticefully brighter than the 6.
I turned on the flashlights and they seemed to be equal in brightness.
Then I was conducting app launching speeds. I saw that both has clumsy ninja so I started both at the same time and the 6 was ready a second before the plus. Closed the apps and launched them again and this time the plus beat the 6 by a second. Weird. I tried this several times and every subsequent launch was faster on the plus.
Click to expand...

WTF.....:confused:
 
rsocal said:
I totally agree with that, but did they sacrifice functionality?
This is splitting hairs but, is a thicker, more robust phone, not a sacrifice on comfort functionality?

I would rather have the thin phone, then bullet proof. I don't see the "bend" as a sacrifice on functionality, not to many people carry 55lbs of pressure in their pocket.

These are big decisions that have to be made with every great product. I think Apple does a great job most of the time with those decisions.:apple:
Click to expand...

My problem is not with the supposed bending issue. My problem is with the fact that the camera lens sticks out the back. And if they'd have increased the thickness to accommodate a flush lens they would have been able to put that much more battery in the phone.

But I am really enjoying the phone, nonetheless...
 
PlutoPrime said:
HAVE.. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD... HAVE... :cool:
Click to expand...

HAZ. Gee bro where u

----------
Lictor said:
He's not talking about virtual memory but simply about an application persisting data structures to disk when it does not need them. This has nothing to do with swap file, it's just about being a good citizen on a device with limited resources...
The problem with Safari is not that it unloads the data structures linked to the tabs from memory - that's actually a good thing. It that it just throws them away without persisting them first.

Just keeping data in RAM because you can rather than freeing RAM for the foreground application would be plain lazy.



The problem is that the day you put 2GB in a phone, the whole line before becomes obsolete in a few weeks... Obsolete as in most of the newer games will need more than 1 GB or RAM.
Click to expand...

My iPod 5 with only a half gig isn't obsolete. It just has a lot more browser crashes than my 5 or 5s. I'd guess the 4s people are in a similar situation. IPad2 folks probably too.

I remember back in the day electronics were large enough that people could piggyback solder extra ram right on motherboards. It would be interesting to do that to an iPhone and see what happens.
 
Patriot24 said:
All Android devices from here on will have at least 3 accelerometers as a result.
Click to expand...

More likely either four (quad accelerometers) or eight (octa accelerometers). Its an android phone spec monkey's fantasy come true.

----------
JosephAW said:
I was conducting a non-scientific experiment at the Apple Store today with the 6 and the 6 plus. I closed all apps and turned up the brightness to maximum on both and loaded a web page that is completely blank. The 6 plus was noticefully brighter than the 6.
I turned on the flashlights and they seemed to be equal in brightness.
Then I was conducting app launching speeds. I saw that both has clumsy ninja so I started both at the same time and the 6 was ready a second before the plus. Closed the apps and launched them again and this time the plus beat the 6 by a second. Weird. I tried this several times and every subsequent launch was faster on the plus.
Click to expand...

You've got entirely too much time on your hands.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back