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Why Still Only 1GB of RAM on the iPhone 6?
- Thread starter macUser2007
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Well, it's also over a month old, and it does have information that has long been discussed here.
But your thread is an honest attempt at discussion, which is more than I can say about many of the threads I linked to.
Are you saying that iOS is not coded efficiently to make use of the pathetic amount of ram available for this day and age where everything is so ram intensive?
I get that but adding more memory would allow tabs to stay in memory longer before being kicked out because another app needs the RAM.
Got me as I haven't liked any others. I come from the desktop generation and know how RAM management and browsers work fairly well. RAM limitation will be an issue at some point if it isn't already.
Not too impressed so far with how my Plus handles multitasking. I've had it crash a few times just switching between apps. Hoping that's just a bug. Earlier I was watching a YouTube video and got a text. I switched over to the messaging app and went back. It had completely reloaded YouTube and I had to go navigate back to the video, and then spent a bit of time trying to figure out where I left off. Stuff like that is very annoying.
My take is that the phone is fast and beautiful but ask it to multitask and it falls on its ass. So far it's worse in this regard than my iPhone 5 and reminds me of my Retina iPad Mini. What do they have in common? 64-bit processors. And 64-bit apps use more RAM. Strangely enough, one of the primary benefits of going 64-bit is having more addressable RAM. So I have no idea what they're thinking! This is the biggest problem for me with iOS devices. Everything else is nearly perfect. I'm afraid that they've waited so long to make 2GB devices that even 2GB won't be enough by next year and especially 2016 and 2017.
Why can't iOS just cache things to disk? Surely the flash memory can handle it, especially for things like websites. And why doesn't YouTube remember what I was doing? I thought iOS was supposed to suspend apps and then resume them where you left off? Is Google just being lazy with the way it's coded? I feel like other apps do this too and I don't remember it happening as often several years ago. Maybe we're just doing more with our phones now and yet the RAM just doesn't follow suit.
My take is that the phone is fast and beautiful but ask it to multitask and it falls on its ass. So far it's worse in this regard than my iPhone 5 and reminds me of my Retina iPad Mini. What do they have in common? 64-bit processors. And 64-bit apps use more RAM. Strangely enough, one of the primary benefits of going 64-bit is having more addressable RAM. So I have no idea what they're thinking! This is the biggest problem for me with iOS devices. Everything else is nearly perfect. I'm afraid that they've waited so long to make 2GB devices that even 2GB won't be enough by next year and especially 2016 and 2017.
Why can't iOS just cache things to disk? Surely the flash memory can handle it, especially for things like websites. And why doesn't YouTube remember what I was doing? I thought iOS was supposed to suspend apps and then resume them where you left off? Is Google just being lazy with the way it's coded? I feel like other apps do this too and I don't remember it happening as often several years ago. Maybe we're just doing more with our phones now and yet the RAM just doesn't follow suit.
Programming would allow that. Simply adding RAM wouldn't do that on its own because iOS uses timers to determine when an app or tab should be moved to standby mode. In some cases (Safari) the app itself is using timers for that instead of the OS. So adding RAM wouldn't change those settings unless the code was rewritten to extend those timings.
Give another browser a try just to test that theory. There's some free ones. I think iCab mobile has a lite version. If anything it might help provide an alternate possibility to this tab reloading problem.
Thank you!
Finally, someone who is not an iSheep questioning why the fudge did Apple keep the 16 GB in the line up!
Please explain....
Lack of multitasking was one of the big things that used to bug me about iOS.
The other was the inability to use third-party keyboards, which was remedied in iOS 8 (although Swiftkey is not integrated as well into iOS as it is in Android).
I am a bit concerned about being able to do a few things at a time, such as listening to a podcast, while texting and having something like a flashlight, or navigation, on at the same time.
Sometimes it's not always the same moderator and they have different ideas about what is tolerated.
Perhaps you had Moderator A 2 days ago that is more strict, while now we have Moderator B who is more laid back.
Or perhaps 2 days ago the RAM threads were more out of control and taking over the forum (hence why they were locking a lot of them down at the time).
You can always PM a mod to find out if you really are curious and not just simply complaining.
Apple are obviously following the Rolls Royce pre-nineties marketing technique.
Every other manufacturer would proudly reveal the horse power and torque of the engines in their cars but Rolls Royce would only ever say that the power was 'sufficient'
Every other manufacturer would proudly reveal the horse power and torque of the engines in their cars but Rolls Royce would only ever say that the power was 'sufficient'
For those who say iOS doesn't need more RAM - why was it doubled from 512 back in the iPhone 4? 64-bit, more pixels, larger screens all have their demands so there's no excuse for Apple not to have bumped it again for the 6. Cost is no excuse - this is the most expensive mainstream phone on the market, memory is very cheap nowadays.
I understand what you're saying, but using the flashlight was a poor example. Once the flashlight is on it's not consuming ram. Having multiple things going at once is a function of ram.
I don't have my iPhone 6+ yet so I can't really test anything, but I think the ram thing has been blown WAY out if proportion. I guess folks need something to complain about.
Unless we can measure current memory consumption at any given time, we won't know the measurable impact the ram size is having. We won't have that ability until there's a jailbreak on A8 devices.
Building a battery powered portable device is a balance of function vs power consumption. Taken to extremes, we would have a ton of ram, hell 16gb maybe, but it would be under utilized and consume power, leading to poor battery life.
These are the first versions with larger screens. Someone at Apple made a judgement call. They weighed the cost to benefits. Here's my guess.
They wanted to include a larger amount if ram but the real world cost, both monetarily and power consumption wise, was too great. So they went with a smaller amount of DDR3 ram. (DDR3 ram is cheaper and what apples been using.)
DDR4 ram is more energy efficient. Possibly this time next year it'll be cost effective to go with 2gb of DDR4 ram. DDR4 ram is faster and more energy efficient. There would be a minimal hit to power consumption and they can keep the price down as well.
It's easy to bitch about the ram but apple is a company as well. I find it unlikely that they purposefully withheld ram so they could upgrade it later. I think maintaining power consumption with a larger screen, while keeping with their price point, was the goal.
That being said, ios is pretty good at controlling memory allocation. It's designed to be efficient.
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Read my post above. Also, they doubled it in the iphone 5 iirc. That is 32bit architecture.
Cost is always an excuse. Don't be ridiculous.
I see what you mean now. Thanks for the explanation.
Perhaps you are right and Apple is waiting for DDR4, I hadn't even thought of it.
But, I am still concerned that my $900 phone may start choking when DDR4 is implemented next year and iOS 9 is designed to take advantage of larger memory modules. I kind of understand the potential drawbacks of sticking a 2gb DDR3 module in there now, but the iPhone Plus has a more robust battery and I am not sure that the potential hit would be significant.
If it is cost, I'd be really p!ssed: even if the overall cost would increase by $2 per device, based on 100 million devices, Apple would end up spending $200 million more. This is a lot of money, but if there is usability issue a year (or even two) from now because of such cost cutting, the advertising budget needed to counter bad publicity may end up being larger than that. Even the closest iPhone 6 knock off from China, the Meizu MX4, sports 2gb DDR3 module, and it retails for about $330 in China (http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/02/meizu-mx4/).
Anyway, I guess I'll know more soon, as I just got an email from T-Mobile with my tracking number, showing that my iPhone 6 Plus will be delivered tomorrow
I see what you mean now. Thanks for the explanation.
Perhaps you are right and Apple is waiting for DDR4, I hadn't even thought of it.
But, I am still concerned that my $900 phone may start choking when DDR4 is implemented next year and iOS 9 is designed to take advantage of larger memory modules. I kind of understand the potential drawbacks of sticking a 2gb DDR3 module in there now, but the iPhone Plus has a more robust battery and I am not sure that the potential hit would be significant.
If it is cost, I'd be really p!ssed: even if the overall cost would increase by $2 per device, based on 100 million devices, Apple would end up spending $200 million more. This is a lot of money, but if there is usability issue a year (or even two) from now because of such cost cutting, the advertising budget needed to counter bad publicity may end up being larger than that. Even the closest iPhone 6 knock off from China, the Meizu MX4, sports 2gb DDR3 module, and it retails for about $330 in China (http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/02/meizu-mx4/).
Anyway, I guess I'll know more soon, as I just got an email from T-Mobile with my tracking number, showing that my iPhone 6 Plus will be delivered tomorrow
I don't disagree with you, especially with the larger battery capacity of the iphone 6+. I think they wanted to keep the performance as similar between the phones as possible.
I'm not so sure they'll add more ram capacity in the next phone revision. Time will tell though. I'm guessing it may be added in the iphone 7. Which by the way, I'd like them to change the name. Isn't it time for iphone? Like 2014 iphone? Or iphone 7th generation? Anything? What are we going to call the iphone 14? lol
I feel your pain, but I think this was a money thing. There's nothing we can do about it though.
And yet my 6 Plus is the most responsive and fluid device I've ever owned and I've had about all high end phones released on AT&T in the last 3 years. I'm not an iPhone guy and I'll gladly take this 1gb iPhone over my 3gb LG G3. 
