iPhone 6 Plus Might Be Limited to 1 GB of RAM

[randian]

But thank god Apple has a higher profit margin, that's what is most important

I hope it is about margin, because if it isn't Apple are morons. RAM is a minor driver of battery use. LTE and graphics are what suck up the juice. I doubt an extra 1 GB of RAM would significantly impact battery life.

 

[xmichaelp]

Steve Jobs wouldn't allow this.

He insisted for more RAM in the very first Macintosh...

But not the first iPad with it's 256MB

 

[2IS]

if your research needs non-refreshing web browsing experiences, why not have an android or laptop or desktop machine instead? at least it might not hinder your work further.

Let me try and explain this to you in simpler terms that hopefully are elementary enough to be within your mental capacity to grasp...

We are fully aware of devices that can have tabs open without refreshing. Many of us (probably most) have mac's and choose to buy an iPhone due to how well a mac and an iPhone integrate. We want to be able to do a reasonable amount of work on our phones when the situation calls for it, vs lugging a laptop around everywhere we go. 1GB of ram, severely limits how efficiently we can work on the phone.

To reiterate, we are fully aware that we have the option to inconvenience ourselves by carrying a laptop in our hands vs a phone in our pocket. That's not a resolution to the problem.

 

[Edd.Dantes]

Actually it isn't, it helps align where peoples priorities are. Where as an adult with a mortgage, loans, wife and kids, that person isn't going to be on a forum bitching about RAM. But a kid, or young adult, student yeah they will be, why? Because they have was less heavy things to care about....

Also, I am here because it's the internet, its everywhere, I can't avoid it. And I like watching people, like you, reply, to posts and stuff, it's funny reading the world.

You Edd Dantes get two internet points!

Ok, some relevant points but it still seems odd that you are here. I mean literally in this thread.

If this particular thing is something you can argue about, then you are indeed in the argument and therefore, you do care.

If you are just here to point out youth, which you are likely right and wrong about, then you really shouldn't interject your opinion.

Apple, iPhone and iOS obviously grab your attention but you claim you're not here for any other reason that to point out our youthful inaccuracies.

I'm not trying to discount you as someone that is older and "wiser" but if none of this matters... Why argue with us? You claim you have better, more important, things to do.

I just don't understand. Not a personal attack. I really don't understand.

 

[rsocal]

Benchmark tests/Customer satisfaction

Every year all the benchmark tests seem to favor Apple, and every year iPhone wins JD Power smartphone satisfaction surveys. iPhone has a 98% customer satisfaction rate. I can't swear to these as facts, just what I have read over time. I'm to sure what I think on the whole Ram issue going on here, but I'm confident the new iPhone's will work great and better then the competition. I've yet to have any real issues that Ram would make me salivate for more.

Samsung has always played the negative adds and spec games, but I really see it only helping Apple. Whenever a company or a person needs to put down their competition rather then pointing out their own strengths, is a clear sign they have less to offer.

I have a developers license and update to the iOS prior to public release in beta every year. I can tell you, iOS 8 is the best yet! With the new iPhone's people will love it!

I look forward to getting my new iPhone every year!

I can't wait to get my 6 Plus in my hand Friday, 1 or 2GB of Ram will be just fine. Yes, I multitask with both my iPhone 5s and iPad Air at my company without any issues.

I do have friends with Samsung S5's and Notes that do like them a lot. However 3 out of 4 of them have preordered an iPhone 6 Plus. Simply because they miss having iPhone's and have only wanted a bigger screen, now they have it.

The good thing is, Samsung is advertising for Apple pointing out they have a bigger screen choice.

 

[Soni Sanjay]

Okay let me try to explain this.

For Safari to display text it has to be turned into Pixels. On iOS this will most likely be done by an Apple framework called CoreText.

https://developer.apple.com/library...xt_Programming/Introduction/Introduction.html

If you take the text 'Hello World' you can't just pass that to the GPU and it magically display it on the screen as the GPU doesn't know what that is, it only understands images, instead you need to turn it into an image before the GPU can display it.

To achieve this you would pass the text 'Hello World' into CoreText, it turns that text into what is basically an image representation (rasterisation) of the text in the correct font and this image (usually in raw uncompressed pixels) is then pushed to the GPU which then draws it on the screen.

Now take this concept and blow it up to a much larger scale for a webpage, every single piece of text has to be turned into an image to be shown. It's the same with curved borders and shadows from CSS, they have to be turned into pixels (images) to be displayed on the screen.

Ultimately all this uses a lot of ram to store the rasterised images, especially as it will probably do look ahead rasterisation and other things to speed up the scrolling.

Is that any clearer?

Yes, thank you for that.
If it takes that much RAM, why not give the phone another GB of RAM?

 

[anakin1992]

i don't get it.

you paid $$$ to buy an apple device; you use it to do research while this particular device is not capable of helping you on your work; and you are hoping apple to help you.

it is very annoying indeed.

As you may know. No $$$.

 

[Soni Sanjay]

Every year all the benchmark tests seem to favor Apple, and every year iPhone wins JD Power smartphone satisfaction surveys. iPhone has a 98% customer satisfaction rate. I can't swear to these as facts, just what I have read over time. I'm to sure what I think on the whole Ram issue going on here, but I'm confident the new iPhone's will work great and better then the competition. I've yet to have any real issues that Ram would make me salivate for more.

Samsung has always played the negative adds and spec games, but I really see it only helping Apple. Whenever a company or a person needs to put down their competition rather then pointing out their own strengths, is a clear sign they have less to offer.

I have a developers license and update to the iOS prior to public release in beta every year. I can tell you, iOS 8 is the best yet! With the new iPhone's people will love it!

I look forward to getting my new iPhone every year!

I can't wait to get my 6 Plus in my hand Friday, 1 or 2GB of Ram will be just fine. Yes, I multitask with both my iPhone 5s and iPad Air at my company without any issues.

I do have friends with Samsung S5's and Notes that do like them a lot. However 3 out of 4 of them have preordered an iPhone 6 Plus. Simply because they miss having iPhone's and have only wanted a bigger screen, now they have it.

The good thing is, Samsung is advertising for Apple pointing out they have a bigger screen choice.

Ok. But who gives a damn about Samsung?
The iPhone is a superb phone. I am just having an issue with it. Is that bad?

----------

i don't get it.

you paid $$$ to buy an apple device; you use it to do research while this particular device is not capable of helping you on your work; and you are hoping apple to help you.

it is very annoying indeed.

But that doesn't make any sense. I didn't know that it had that problem before buying the phone. iPhone 4S didn't have this issue. It was only logical to assume a newer version would do the same things than the previous phone.

 

[Edd.Dantes]

Dude, if you need a laptop to rid yourself of the terrible no good safari tab reload issue, let me know. I have two nice spare tiny Dell laptops here, no one uses them, they have Win 7, full office suite and 500GB HD. I will gladly help you out if you need a computer on the go, doing any research on a phone is silly, and I'd say that to anyone.

The problem is, Apple isn't going to fix the issue for you, and nothing here will help. And complaining, really yeah it sucks, but it is what it is.

But seriously, like i said, I know thy're Dell's but theyre barely two years old, and I know everyone under the roof here wouldn't mind helping a college kid, doing your stuff on the phone is silly. Let me know, message me through here, I dont mind helping you secure a laptop so you dont have to worry about this tiny safari issue.

Ok, that's a nice deed. I won't 1up you but I'll back you up.

Soni, PM me your paypal address, and some form of college proof, and I'll donate $100. Hopefully in an effort to upgrade one of those Dell's RAM

Seriously, PM and I'll help. iphone1105 may have just saved this thread from all out war.

 

[PRSGuitarist]

1gigers (any koolaid drinkers) are rude and show absolutely nothing but bitter anecdotes to back their claims. 1gigers, you are the vocal minority. Many forum members won't jump in to voice their opinion because you make this a hostile forum. One that is worth leaving for greener pastures.

If you think people are rude, it might be because you are inciting them by posting rude things. That's how your comment to me came across, when I did nothing but say I have not noticed this issue. The fact that I have not noticed it clearly doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I am a software engineer, deal with bugs every day, and know how these things go. Your subsequent posts show perhaps you do know what you're talking about, but your initially quoted post to me made you come across very poorly.

 

[rsocal]

Ok. But who gives a damn about Samsung?
The iPhone is a superb phone. I am just having an issue with it. Is that bad?

I just posted what I felt, nothing directed at any one person!

Clearly you're not the only one with that issue. I'm just not sure why you're asking me if it's bad?

 

[anakin1992]

oh, i see. your 4S does not have the issue, but 4S only has 512MB DRAM DDR2!

then mostly likely increasing to even 10GB DRAM will not solve your issue.

have you tried another broswers? maybe they will be ok?

then you should have filed a bug to apple to explicitly ask them to fix this in this software.

But that doesn't make any sense. I didn't know that it had that problem before buying the phone. iPhone 4S didn't have this issue. It was only logical to assume a newer version would do the same things than the previous phone.

 

[darthgeekonius]

It could just be me, but I don't think this ram thing is as bad as an issue as claimed. Maybe certain individuals can tell the difference in ram on a smartphone, but I can't. My devices might be different, but they seem pretty fast to me.

And then there are these benchmarks....

 

[raam89]

I was looking to get a 6+ but looks like I'm going to wait for next iteration. I don't need to have the latest version every year and I'm happy with my 5

 

[andyyardley]

Yes, thank you for that.
If it takes that much RAM, why not give the phone another GB of RAM?

No idea, I presume 2GB of RAM would take double the space on the SoC which might affect it's size or maybe cause thermal issues. Adding more memory onto the die could also affect the chip yield, resulting in a high cost for manufacture. I really have no idea though.

Fundamentally the iPhone 5S has been fine with 1GB of RAM as it's screen isn't that high a resolution, I have a few apps which I know are very memory inefficient and they cause me problems from time to time. But when you start talking about iPad & iPhone 6+ resolutions then a whole lot of that 1GB of RAM is going to be used to just draw to the screen, meaning less space for the OS, for running Apps, etc, resulting in more frequent safari and app refreshes.

If it comes with just 1GB of RAM Apple have probably decided that's enough for most users, and the sad reality is 99% of users probably will never notice or care.

 

[2IS]

On any normal day, if you meet someone who is relieved that a devices has half the ram as potentially rumored, you'd call them an idiot.

Well, lets just say the idiot factor in this thread is high, and it all stems from envy. In other words "if the phone I bought doesn't have it, yours better not either!" Bunch of retards in here.

 

[Edd.Dantes]

If you think people are rude, it might be because you are inciting them by posting rude things. That's how your comment to me came across, when I did nothing but say I have not noticed this issue. The fact that I have not noticed it clearly doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I am a software engineer, deal with bugs every day, and know how these things go. Your subsequent posts show perhaps you do know what you're talking about, but your initially quoted post to me made you come across very poorly.

Maybe all of us can de-escalate our tones and turn this into a truly intelligent conversation?

I am willing.

 

[Soni Sanjay]

oh, i see. your 4S does not have the issue, but 4S only has 512MB DRAM DDR2!

then mostly likely increasing to even 10GB DRAM will not solve your issue.

have you tried another broswers? maybe they will be ok?

then you should have filed a bug to apple to explicitly ask them to fix this in this software.

Yes. I do know that. However I've seen that due to the 64-bit chip, the 5S uses more RAM, and according to the other guy who taught me how the phones renders images, it uses more RAM.

Yes, I tried Chrome, and I tried Coast. It is better, but I still have some issues.

And yes, even better, if the RAM is not the problem, then Apple needs to fix it, but almost a year has passed, and still no solution is available.

 

[Edd.Dantes]

On any normal day, if you meet someone who is relieved that a devices has half the ram as potentially rumored, you'd call them an idiot.

Well, lets just say the idiot factor in this thread is high, and it all stems from envy. In other words "if the phone I bought doesn't have it, yours better not either!" Bunch of retards in here.

I'm not sure if I want to shake your hand or hit you. Haha.

Some of us use these "phones" (horrible misnomer) as mini-computers. We don't give 2 bowel movements about telling people our specs, we just want the phones to work better.

 

[macjunk(ie)]

Dude, if you need a laptop to rid yourself of the terrible no good safari tab reload issue, let me know. I have two nice spare tiny Dell laptops here, no one uses them, they have Win 7, full office suite and 500GB HD. I will gladly help you out if you need a computer on the go, doing any research on a phone is silly, and I'd say that to anyone.

The problem is, Apple isn't going to fix the issue for you, and nothing here will help. And complaining, really yeah it sucks, but it is what it is.

But seriously, like i said, I know thy're Dell's but theyre barely two years old, and I know everyone under the roof here wouldn't mind helping a college kid, doing your stuff on the phone is silly. Let me know, message me through here, I dont mind helping you secure a laptop so you dont have to worry about this tiny safari issue.

That is awfully nice of you! Though I am not too happy with Apple's stand on RAM...

 

[stevejobz]

Honestly i don't understand why people are surprised or complaining. This had to happen with the way the design was and there is no necessity for more anyway.

 

[Soni Sanjay]

No idea, I presume 2GB of RAM would take double the space on the SoC which might affect it's size or maybe cause thermal issues. Adding more memory onto the die could also affect the chip yield, resulting in a high cost for manufacture. I really have no idea though.

Fundamentally the iPhone 5S has been fine with 1GB of RAM as it's screen isn't that high a resolution, I have a few apps which I know are very memory inefficient and they cause me problems from time to time. But when you start talking about iPad & iPhone 6+ resolutions then a whole lot of that 1GB of RAM is going to be used to just draw to the screen, meaning less space for the OS, for running Apps, etc, resulting in more frequent safari and app refreshes.

If it comes with just 1GB of RAM Apple have probably decided that's enough for most users, and the sad reality is 99% of users probably will never notice or care.

So are you saying Apple rather have a thinner phone than a better performing phone? Or that they may lose a little bit of $$$? That is sad, really.

 

[Moto G]

~~ Welcome back to 2004 ~~

My iPAQ HX4700 contains a mere 64MB of RAM, and works perfectly well.

I thank you.

 

[Soni Sanjay]

Ok, that's a nice deed. I won't 1up you but I'll back you up.

Soni, PM me your paypal address, and some form of college proof, and I'll donate $100. Hopefully in an effort to upgrade one of those Dell's RAM

Seriously, PM and I'll help. iphone1105 may have just saved this thread from all out war.

Thanks man, but there is no need. I actually accepted one of his spare computers. However, we both know he won't give me anything and that he is only trying to make fun of us. Which is sad, as he says, if these issues are not important to him, why bother with us?

Nice to see there are still some reasonable people in here. Thank you so much.

 

[PRSGuitarist]

Maybe all of us can de-escalate our tones and turn this into a truly intelligent conversation?

I am willing.

I'd say the root cause is that each of us independently perceives others as being hostile, so we may start assuming others are being that way too. Like how if anyone defends Apple on here, people automatically assume they don't know anything, then the person who insults them gets dismissed as an Android fan boy.

Anyway, now that I think about it.. I think the only time I have noticed this problem was when using outlook web services to check my work email, and I would have to log in again. It was probably because I had upgraded my iPad to iOS 7 and my company's IT hadn't yet finished it's testing with it. I'm not usually doing anything that requires logging in again after a reload, or filling out a form that gets cleared, though, so that's why I wouldn't have noticed it otherwise.

Apple devices can't do everything you want them to, and sometimes have limitations, but as a whole I'm happy with how they work, and it can be frustrating to watch people dismiss the entire thing because it is lacking some arbitrary benchmark expectation they set for it. In this particular case, it seems warranted to an extent.