I made an editing error and one short segment is repeated at 02:25. I have added chapters so you can just jump over the repeated segment. Sorry about that. 🤐
At 1:09 ".... Motorola G range...." Made more than one error, this one in error in your script. I have a Motorola G stylus 2024 5G I bought new in Summer 2024. It has 8GB of RAM plus it uses 4GB to cache the memory to simulate 12GB of RAM. A good old-fashioned swap space or swap file.... Where you fell into your pit trap that is there are two sides of the coin that is the Motorola G series. I paid about $250 for mine using using the discount straight talk gives me. There was also another one that was around $100 in the display case as well. Now, back to the regularly scheduled video....
lol i THOUGHT you was repeating yourself but if your saying that was a edit error dude that was so smooth it was cast off as something i commonly see on pluto tv my internet absolutely SUCKS! NEVER go with wireless internet if you can at all help it use a hardwired company if you can but im in the country. 2 things need to happen we as consumers NEED to be able to pick the amount of RAM on phones and 2 these companies need to STOP BLOATING THE DEVICES WITH NOT NEEDED CRAP i dont want anything to do with ai and i think im going to be forced to pick a phone with that crap good video. if your interested id like it if you could do a another video wich includes the upcoming apple I phone SE4 this is my next phone of choice but this has not been locked in
Did apps really get that many features? Like seriously whatsapp using half a gig of ram and subway surfers using almost 900 megs!! I used to juggle between these very same apps a decade ago with a 2 or 3 gigs of ram😂
Well I think apps will make use of RAM if it's there even if they don't necessarily "need it." I think this is largely true of devices in general although if I'm wrong there's probably plenty of people in this comment section that know better than me. But it has been explained to me that if the Rams there apps will use it.
@@michael_c2 Linux and therefore Android (and well most OSes really) will use free memory as cache to speed things up. Cause unused memory will take the same amount of power anyways. So if you add more memory your total memory consumption will increase because of cache. That being said a lot of apps nowadays are too frugal about memory and will use more resources than they need to and are also slower because they can "get away with it". I can't talk about any of the apps mentioned here since I'm not that heavy a mobile user nor a mobile developer so I don't keep a close watch on any of these to be able to tell
i have a lg v50 6gb and it has dual boot android 14 and windows 11 it use like 1.7gb and i dont know why but i only have 5gb ram instead of 6,maybe 1gb is alocated to gpu.and yes pc games work better than emulator live winlator
I have the non pro and it sucks. 6GBs isn't enough and even when it is, the aggressive bg app killer sucks. It's a hit or miss with bg apps. But I think custom ROMs help with that.
How much can one poweruse a phone though? Beyond the normal stuff and maybe some heavy games, I don't think there's anything that you can do on the phone that would need exceptional performance numbers.
Modern developers don't care about code optimization anymore. The quality of modern applications have definitely worsen. And you wonder why browsers are eating up your PC RAM.
Samsung has to actually compete in China where more top of the line phones have 16GB of ram... not to mention much much better batteries and about double the charging speeds both wired and wireless.
I've always seen high RAM usage a byproduct of feature bloat. It's often overlooked that there are those who need some smart features, but not the bleeding edge of things.
Not just feature bloat. Modern software is often developed by incorporating features from other software like libraries. Using 1k from a 1M library is not uncommon and often such libraries include other features. A lot of software is just thrown together without much consideration for resource consideration. That quickly happens because developers tend to use high-end devices for their testing and run only the piece of code they are working on, on their test system. This tendency to develop bloatware is getting worse with each generation of software. A lot of software in the app store seems to be generated just to generate downloads but with little attention to even coarse details 😞 Compare to the original apps of the like first two generations of iPhones. Swift, low features, little bloat.
My issue with my S21 FE with it's 8GB of RAM & 8GB Swap, is that how long it chooses to keep apps in memory, I need around 4 or so apps to be open, like Discord, photos, browser, and maybe a 4th app depending on what I do, like perhaps another social media app the issue is, I found out that the 2019 iPhone 11 with it's 4GB, actually have much much better RAM management, able to retain apps for significantly much longer time, and hold more apps than my S21 FE so my answer is not about really how much we have, it's about how it's used by the OS, I wish if it was like Windows or any other desktop OS, not to close stuff unless it's gonna crash, or at least allow for users to lock apps not to be closed or something
i have a lg v50 6gb and it has dual boot android 14 and windows 11 arm it use like 1.7gb ram and i dont know why but i only have 5gb ram instead of 6,maybe 1gb is alocated to gpu.and yes pc games work better than emulator live winlator
You can lock Apps in RAM with Samsung. Jst go into ur Background Apps screen (swipe and hold up if using gesture bar) Tap the Icon above the app window and select "Keep Open"
When it comes to phones I recommend buying a older flagship off eBay. No contract for the device, major savings and it's more powerful then a low end new phone. Make sure it's unlocked though and at least guaranteed 80% battery.
Agreed but I bought off swappa instead. $265 for an s20 ultra so I could still have mSD. 12gb of ram, security patch is less than a month old, good enough for me. I'd honestly still be on my old faithful note 9 if it worked on Visible.
I am unfortunate enough to own the base S23 Ultra, which means it has 8gb of ram. Handles my needs just fine, but on a rare occasion, i am able to "catch the phone off-guard" and have an app half-reload. TH-cam would reload, but it will toss me back to where i was when i closed/switched the app. So for the average user 8gb is just fine.
I came into this video not expecting so much technical depth into android memory management. Being a software engineer I really appreciate it. I was especially not expecting the memory usage details of local AI applications, which has been a big concern for me as I am looking to buy a new phone soon. Considering the Deekseek opensource development, all major apps and their grandma is going to start introducing AI capabilities. The need for RAM very soon going to skyrocket, and I want to future proof my new phone. Taking all this into account, the Oneplus 13's 24GB RAM doesn't look like overkill to me anymore.
Being a software engineer and having a brain you should know that buying a phone with hardware AI (NPU - neural processing unit) is the end of privacy, so you should buy a phone without hardware AI - and not giving AI possibility to do more spying on you by giving it more RAM.
@thrasosthrasos7353 Why does buying a phone with an NPU mean an end to privacy? I thought the whole point of an NPU was that your data DIDN'T need to be sent to the cloud and remained on your device. 🤷♂️
@@GaryExplains @thrasosthrasos7353 I hadn't thought about the privacy aspect, as I am from India, and privacy as a concept doesn't exist much here lol. But both of you are partially correct. Having a local AI means all your data stays on the phone, but at the same time, I am pretty sure the "insights" that they infer from the data (which is the main reason they want our data in the first place) will definitely be shared with the developers "to improve the product". But I live in Europe, so thanks to GDPR I can opt out of that. Being one of the people who takes the time to unclick on every "legitimate interest" button on websites, I will definitely opt out of sharing any insights from my phone data with the app developers. All things considered, I would still buy a phone which can support local AI. Whether to use it or not, is something I'll decide on a case to case basis. But I'd definitely want to have the ability to use it.
@@GaryExplains If you want to communicate with someone by using app that have end-to-end encryption, the only way to break it was to make periodic screesnhots (OS would do it without your knowledge, with e.g. 10 seconds period) and to send them to server to do analysis (probably by using neural network). Doing this was not possible for large number of users because multiple reasons (it is easy to detect because increased network traffic, too much bandwidth to the server, and there is no such server that could process so much data from millions of users). By moving NPU from server to phone - there is no more need for increased traffic (NPU will do processing inside the smartphone and instead of screenshot it will send a few hundreds of bytes of compressed text), no need for the powerfull server because processing is distributed from one data center to millions of smartphones, no need for nuclear power plant that powers data centar - end user will provide energy for NPU, there is no need for enormous RAM needed for data center - majority of end users will willingly provide additional RAM (as the guy I responded to). To be worse NPU inside smartphone is marketed as new feature which improves user experience, although it is not its primary function - here is an example: you can surround object on the photo and smartphone will tell you what that object is. More tech details you can find in th-cam.com/video/c52pKpYeZ74/w-d-xo.html . Shortly: having NPU inside the phone is like having 3-letter employee (NSA, CIA, FBI, ...) behind your sholder all the time you are using the phone.
I am using 6 years old phone, Asus Zenphone 5Z base variant which has 6GB of RAM (LPDDR4X) and 64GB of (UFS2.2) Storage, and Snapdragon 845 Processor, which is still Running Smoothly sometime I play games and I satisfied with it's performance.
Similar for the S8. But the hardware is aging and there are no more OS upgrades so this is slowly coming to an end. I'm probably going to replace the battery to keep it around as a spare or for sw development.
I'm an old bloke and I have only used AI features once or twice. Now new phones want to have local AI constantly enabled? What on earth would I use that for? I don't want it, I don't need it and apparently I can't get rid of it. This sucks!
I’m old too bud , I don’t mind some of the AI , but a lot of it is pretty gimmicky to be sure , I think it is over hyped a lot. It’s the latest buzzword to try and make a buck out of . I believe the new galaxy’s AI will becoming subscription based by the end of the year, probably other companies looking to do the same.
This is only true if the models in question are of comparable quality. Which in this case they are absolutely not - LLMs small enough to run on a phone are incomparably worse than any of the cloud AIs. So you have to choose between privacy and usability.
I've used both an iPhone 16 and a Galaxy S22, and what I've noticed is that even though both have 8GB of RAM, apps in the S22 are more likely to restart/get kicked off the RAM even though both phones are performing similar tasks. Browser tabs are also more likely to reload on the S22 than on the iPhone 16. Is it possible that apps on the iPhone are more efficient when it comes to RAM usage or is it something else?
No. It's that iPhone use Paging on Storage devices and S22 may not be using that and second thing is JVM. Android uses JVM and iOS don't and that's the main thing.
The difference is the memory compression, phones doesn't use swap file like computers (well, you can add some on Android, but not a clever idea, you just ruin your write/rewrite cycles, those storages has limited write/rewrite cycles..), and iPhone even 10 years ago used that memory compression well, you can find a video even on this channel, where the 300MB game shrink to about 10MB once it's goes into the background, and when he opened the task again, immedietly jumped back to 300MB and opened.
From my experience, some firmwares use low memory killer module more aggressively than the others to conserve ram. I do think zRAM plays a part too but I'm not quite sure how But from my experience, android 15 is actually the lightest since the 13 era with 13 being the worst
This is weird, I have a Moto G30 with measly 4 gigs and it just runs fine. I restart it from time to time but don't feel any bit issues with switching between apps or anything; sure, it is not high end, but I just don't need more.
That's because Motorola's OS is very clean and free of bloatware. For example, I have a Samsung with 4GB of RAM, and it runs terribly when switching between apps. 😂
@@ImDarakI still use Galaxy M21, it still surprises me just how fast it feels after a factory reset, and the 6000 mAh battery still lasts the same time it used to when it was new even with this less efficient 10nm exynos 9611.
@sgky2k: What I mean is that my phone can't keep more than four or five apps running in the background. When I try, the apps restart. But the phone works correctly, it is the galaxy a15 :3
@@ImDarak maybe you have different needs; I use a Laptop for any serious stuff, my Smartphone is for browsing the web, watching some TH-cam or asking ai for Something. And those Tasks Work perfectly with 4 gigs. And yes, i rarely need more than 3 Apps at the Same time...
My Fairphone 4 has 8gb of ram and I use 3.3 on average. But I am a one app/browser tab open at a time type of person. Some people seem to live with 500 things open and I have no idea how they can ever find anything 😂
I think it's also a matter of headroom. I had a 4GB Samsung M21 and it can be slow despite only opening a few apps. But my 8GB Samsung A24, like in your case, (which I use for the same tasks essentially) only use around 3GB. So it's weird for me that the Samsung M21 occasionally slows down, even lags. I think there are times when apps suddenly asks for more RAM, think of it like someone driving a car on bumpy roads. His head might hit the roof of the car but it'll be less likely to happen when there's lots of headroom. This is the way I see it anyway because computer also do this at times (softwares suddenly eating up lots of RAM).
My device has 8 GB of RAM. I bought it in 2023. And still today it works just as new. I have found that the speed of RAM is a much better aspect to check rather than the RAM size. My OP 11 has LPDDR5X . Which makes it slightly faster than LPDDR5.
I agree with the verdict/conclusions. 6 GB should be bare minimum, 8 is good, 12 gets you where you rarely have to even think about apps staying in memory, 16 is beyond that and maybe future proofing and kinda the same with 24 gigs but now you got bragging rights. I remember when I first got my OP2 with 4 GB of ran and my laptop had 8GB, it felt a little too much but ever since my OP7 Pro (12GB) died on me and I'm stuck with a 4GB RAM phone, it is not enought for me or even and average user who switches between common apps like google docs and web browsers frequently. 6 GB should be the Bare minimum on android in my opinion and since 8GB is quite commmon now, one can go for it just in xase they underestimate their use cases. Although, with how much phones cost today and the horrendous "extended" RAM feature some phones boast, I just want as much RAM as possible to turn off that feature. It significantly reduces your NAND's lifespan and should not be used.
So, the new Galaxy S25 Ultra , advertised with "on device AI" is not going to be very happy with its max.12 GB of RAM (global version). I am wondering why the decision to ship the 16 GB version only in Korea, China & Taiwan. For me, as I wanted to make the jump from my Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (12 GB RAM) to the new S25 Ultra, this decision is a downer, so most probably I will skip a(nother) generation.
@@Knevitzdoug Cost savings does not explain the price differences between regions: the 16GB version is cheaper in Korea ($ 1538) than the 12 GB in Europe ($ 1615), US ($1420-$1800) or India ($2020). So most probably this is a marketing and strategic decision off Samsung, which I fail to understand.
The Palm OS ram management system was clever that the actual ios and android Ram management Why Google and Apple doesnt implement similar system nowdays
@GaryExplains PalmOS was a Master piece the applications were single tasking (Although it did have threads in the background.) As all data and code was in RAM databases, when you switched from one application to another it was actually saving its state, shutting down, starting up the other, and resuming from where it left off
For me as a android user, 12GB ram is a must and then the maximum for me will be 16GB, since i use multple apps on both my poco X6 pro and Poco X7 pro.
Samsung is really falling behind as they always looking for ways to cut corners e.g. no Bluetooth spen, same 12gb ram, 5000mah batt. While other Chinese manufacturer comes with up to 24gb ram and 6000mah batt. Next year from the rumors they will up the batt to 7000mah batt. Gg Samsung.
Turns out, getting 16GB of RAM on my new phone last year was a good call. I often use AI for the camera processing, image editing, and writing most of the time.
My Galaxy A7 with 4 gigs is doing everything I need from it. Of course, it's on android 10 so it needs less ram for the OS itself. Very solid phone. Not really thinking about replacing it yet.
TBF, I'd want top tier android phones to support desktop mode outside of just Samsung, and have at least 16gb RAM if not more. We can repurpose phones after a few years into a laptop/desktop for light usage
For me, just enough to run the OS, and maybe a maybe few background apps in addition to whatever is running in the foreground is sufficient. At the end of the day, it's a phone and therefore doesn't need apps. If I need apps, I use a computer or tablet.
Hi Gary, amazing video. For pixel 9 pro, do you have any numbers or instructions on how one can derive these numbers if someone installs and runs a different OS like graphene/calyx? Since they don't have (last I checked) any local ai stuff, hoping that more RAM would be available for apps.
What about virtual ram? My phone has 8gb ram and 4gb virtual ram. Meaning it will use 4gb of the phones storage as ram if the 8gb ram runs out. Should I turn this feature off?
Yes swap is useless since your gonna force the storage to read/write to the virtual memory swa.p. Android Apps by design will get kicked out of ram as needed.
For what it's worth I have a brand new OnePlus 12R with 16 GB of RAM. It's great but I also sometimes go back and use my old Pixel 4 or Note 9 which have four and six GB. Maybe it's cuz they're running older versions of Android, 12 and 10 respectively but they're perfectly snappy. I mean they're not multitasking piece certainly the pixel especially but day to day I wouldn't find the experience of daily driving it terrible.
Sometimes I get a prompt in my 6gb ram phone to clear cache because it's full. Never have experienced it on my 8gb ram phone. I think 8gb is pretty good but the trend with latest apps are they are not optimized that much so they consume more ram. Instead of optimizing the app, phone manufacturer will just sell bigger ram capacity it's like they are conniving with each other lol. Bigger ram are getting common though, even 100$ phone has 8gb and mid range are getting 12gb as base variant
I assume by "memory swap" you're referring to what Samsung calls "RAM Plus." Is that true, and if so, do you have recommendations regarding its use? For context, I'm using the Galaxy S24 Ultra with 12 gigs of RAM and utilizing 8 gigs of RAM Plus.
Turn off the feature. At 12GB of ram there is no need for a swap. You have more than enough for everything to keep running. Gary explained in the video that the apps by design will get removed from ram as needed and it will not cause issues. That's just how jvm works. Swap should only be used on desktop/laptop imo
I have a Galaxy Tab S6 running an 855 processor and only 6gb of RAM and while it does load things slower than it used to. It is still entirely functional even six years later. The answer to this question, is realistically far less than these companies would have us believe. Yeah apps have become more demanding in a sense but Android has also become better with management.
I switched to firefox entirely on Android and it uses 800MB with all rules in ubo,dark reader extensions. I think Google photos uses more Ram on Pixel 7 while editing. I'm really excited with 6.1 kernel for all tensor soc as part of feature update this March.
I do use it for years and years.... with all the bad things Mozzila did to Firefox, it's still better on the resources on mobile and desktop. I've never understand the often read comments about Firefox is resource (RAM) hungry when you can have hundreds of Tabs and a few windows open on a standard pc with 8GB ish RAM and it still works while with Chrome ... Best thing on Firefox mobile is that you have at least noscript and ublock. I can't use the internet without an adblocker!.
@nopenope1 yep. I have tried edge for a few years until last year it was getting more sluggish than stock chromium builds. Only use chromium on Linux and Windows.
In order for your smartphone to last a little longer (in terms of android life), you should get the higher RAM as much as possible. The newer apps requires so much RAM...
How much ram does an android need? That depends, almost entirely, on whether you want to play Minecraft on it. Most phones don't need more than 4-6gb to run 99% of apps smoothly. Minecraft, however, is a freaking ram devouring monster, where the more ram you have- the more you can DO in your game. More villagers. Faster farms. More mobs. More particle effects. Higher pixel count textures. Any upgrade to performance is clearly noticeable in-game. I can't think of a single other app that is as resource intensive as MC.
That is wrong, even iOS have a background task management, it's only required a different method to use.. so it's only no background activity, if the devs are lazy to make a proper coding.. "My app uploads files in background. It's relatively simple. You need to change NSURLSession and then you can use standard http job." But sure it's easier to whine and not even try to solve things.. i personally saw this method in a cloud services first on iOS, they just needed to switch a less demanding, more efficient way like running the full app in the backgrpund without reason..
@@AponTechy that being said , its still a very capable device , im old , i go for walks with 14 PM with the step counter running, while its playing Spotify music , i stop to take photos , and it works flawlessly 99% of the time. Dont get me wrong , I’d love to see galaxy multitasking on the iPhones , but when you are used to them you learn how to work around not having multitasking in the UI. At the same time , IOS does have some cool features of its own , I’ve been using Android ( mostly galaxy’s) since 2012 these days IOS I have warmed too and since the 12 series an iPhone is my carry around, I will say however until I learned how to use it , for the first three months I bloody hated it 😊.
I think the biggest issue is when people spend 1300 USD on a flagship phone, they will expect to get the best components. 12GB or 8GB is enough for daily use, but it's not enough to convince people that what they paid is worth what they got.
Varies between individuals but for me who used his phone for light purpose, prolly still need minimum 8GB and if budget permits, would love for more than that just for the peace of mind coz god forbid app developers putting random unneeded useless bullshit features in their app over time, hogging more RAM with each mandatory updates
Using a 2020 phone it got 4 gb ram which 2.4 gb is free Poco F5 8 gb ram and around 3.8 to 4 gb free iQOO 13 16 GB Ram varient cant see the available ram But ram management the 2020 phone is perfoming similar as Poco F5...... Iqoo has more ram hence better ram management slightly
I'm still using Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 running android 15 Pixelage ROM. For me, 4gb is the right amount i need for daily usage, since I'm not a gamer who plays something like genshin impact or other heavy games like that. FOSS apps are a good solution for all those OEM & google bloatwares. So while i do think it's still possible to daily a cheap old phone these days, the steps to actually make it work is a whole another set of problem entirely. So for consumers, i guess you can at least use FOSS alternatives, debloat your phones and you're good to go. Maybe turn off every monitoring stuff too. Google has been cracking down custom ROMs that are actually the best way to get the most out of my phones, so i guess it's time for me to looks for a new one in near future. I don't keep up with all those AI stuff so i don't & won't use them at all, ever
My Samsung A23 has 4Gb of RAM and is super slow when switching between app or even opening a text box under Android 14. Almost useless. BTW It ran better with previous Androids.... I just got a Samsung A55 with 8Gb of RAM. Night and Day ! Same use case : i can keep all my applications open and the mobile still works fine and is very snappy and reactive. The processor speed plays a role of course. But i believe that RAM size does matter the most in my case. => I believe that 8Gb is the minimum on Android 14.
I'm using a galaxy S22 ultra which has 12GB of RAM. It fluctuates between 5.6, and 6.3 GB of free RAM depending on what I'm doing, or what apps are running. My "sweet spot" for my needs is no lower than 8GB.
When it comes to RAM in Android phones, no matter how large the RAM capacity is, nearly half the RAM is always occupied. If you need 2GB RAM, buy a phone with 4GB RAM If you need 3GB RAM, buy a phone with 6GB RAM If you need 4GB RAM, buy a phone with 8GB RAM If you need 6GB RAM, buy a phone with 12GB RAM If you need 8GB RAM, buy a phone with 16GB RAM If you need 16GB RAM, buy a phone with 32GB RAM and so on...
The more they increase RAM, the heavier they keep making the OS and apps. They need to keep the "need to upgrade" alive. It always feels like "I just need to save money for a device with two more GB of RAM." I started with a Nokia N72 with less than 100MB of RAM, and I could multitask with it pretty well. Then I upgraded to an E63 which had 128MB, and it felt amazing. Then I "Upgraded" to X10 Mini Pro with 512MB of RAM. I was hoping that such a jump in RAM was going to blow me away. It did... But not in the way I expected. Multitasking was not even a thing on that phone. I donated that phone and upgraded to Neo V with 768 MB RAM. I was barely able to keep my sanity intact during that period, even after installing the lightest custom ROM and home launcher. I stuck to it because I could not afford a costlier phone. Then I saved up some money and upgraded to the Xperia Z with 2GB RAM. It felt ... usable; the first usable Android I had. But multitasking was not a thing. When the phone broke and I switched to the Z2 with 3GB RAM. After that, Sony kept releasing flagships with 3GB. It seemed Sony had an allergy to the number 4 just like Valve is allergic to the number 3. Then Moto came up with the Moto G and made flagships obsolete (for all purposes other than showing off). My first Moto was the G5s+ with 4GB. It still works. But I was still not getting true multitasking, even after all the lowmemorykiller hacks with ROM toolbox. By the time I needed another phone, Moto's growth had kinda died out and they were releasing average 4GB phones one after another. So, I switched to the Redmi Note 9 Pro with 6 GB. I wanted the 8GB version, but the store owner gaslit me into believing that no one needs 8GB. Big mistake! The experience was exactly like 4GB. So, I sold it and switched to Poco x4 pro 8GB. Soon after my purchase, Moto woke up from its long sleep and released a cheap 12gb banger. But it was a bit late for me. Even 8GB proved too little for the bloated MIUI OS, because of course it was designed that way. So, I rooted and installed Lineage. Never looked back. For the first time since the E63, it feels like I am truly multitasking on a phone. Apps still force close when I put too much pressure on it (Nokia used to reboot in such situations) But it is usable.
I personally disagree with the whole Android memory management and runtime philosophy. It's the heaviest the most unoptimized OS on the planet, and we use it in smallest devices. Desktop OSes don't need to preallocate 500 MB to every single background process or don't cache random apps in memory. They're however much faster, especially when talking about linux. Would be interesting how much battery life could properly optimized OS with compiled apps squeeze out.
My Moto Z4 is feeling the lack of additional RAMs. It only has 4 so I had to restrict my Health app from running in the background. Music stops if I open 2 more apps etc. It is still usable but with restrictions. 6 GB is still OK 8 is plenty for me. The more RAM is taken the greater the power usage although the power also gets used if the apps needs to reload so it only matters in standby mode.
I'm currently using the Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro which might have been the first phone to have 6GB RAM in 2016/17 and the device never crashed until one time when I started 4k TH-cam video playback while screensharing but now, it just lags while doing that instead of completely crashing and the device still handles 4k video playback but without screensharing completely fine, runs CODM at low 50 to 60fps with some small sttuters seldomly and Roblox at low 15fps (30fps on small servers)
My old G Power has 3 and runs ok, but only because its running Lineage OS without gapps. My Edge Plus 2023 is very comfortable at 8; i will like to have 12gb and up again at some point.
Hello sir I've got a Cubot king Kong X from AliExpress. It's got 16 GB of RAM and another 16 of virtual. Any thoughts on that purchase? I thought it was a win for 200 dollars. Is all that ram only a marketing strategy? Does it drain the battery? Do you recommend I keep the virtual memory on or off? How much of it should I keep on? Thank you
8gb in my phone 6gb in my tablet I will choose a high ram device next time. I'm new into photography and my camera can send raw files to my tablet. I use pro software to edit like On1 or Lightroom, so I'll go for a 16gb ram tablet (and phone) next time. And I'm like a Chrome tabs hoarder 😅
I mean it's not the only relevant variable though If you have on-device AI you'll have less available RAM to you on a higher RAM device. Which is great if you want it but if you don't want it you might actually be better off buying a lower ram device that is relying on the cloud for AI
i have a lg v50 6gb and it has dual boot android 14 and windows 11 it use like 1.7gb and i dont know why but i only have 5gb ram instead of 6,maybe 1gb is alocated to gpu.and yes pc games work better than emulator live winlator
Can you also make a video on Apple Intelligence and RAM being used within iPhones as it would be really useful to understand the reality behind the claims of Apple. Thanks!
Only 8gb on my base s23u. 😔 thought it was 12/256gb by Default but that's only for the USA. I can feel how slow it is to load apps and it's bugging tf outta me.
These days, especially Android phones should have at least 6gb ram. 4 just isn't enough when you want to use it for a longer period of time. If android would've been as well optimized as iOS, it would barely matter...
I have an ipad 9th generation. It has 3 GB RAM. Call of Duty Mobile is crashing very frequently in it. I am telling this to give reality check to some people who believe Apple is best.
I made an editing error and one short segment is repeated at 02:25. I have added chapters so you can just jump over the repeated segment. Sorry about that. 🤐
At 1:09
".... Motorola G range...."
Made more than one error, this one in error in your script.
I have a Motorola G stylus 2024 5G I bought new in Summer 2024. It has 8GB of RAM plus it uses 4GB to cache the memory to simulate 12GB of RAM. A good old-fashioned swap space or swap file....
Where you fell into your pit trap that is there are two sides of the coin that is the Motorola G series. I paid about $250 for mine using using the discount straight talk gives me. There was also another one that was around $100 in the display case as well.
Now, back to the regularly scheduled video....
You didn't mention 6 gb which is the most common amount today
lol i THOUGHT you was repeating yourself but if your saying that was a edit error dude that was so smooth it was cast off as something i commonly see on pluto tv my internet absolutely SUCKS! NEVER go with wireless internet if you can at all help it use a hardwired company if you can but im in the country. 2 things need to happen we as consumers NEED to be able to pick the amount of RAM on phones
and 2 these companies need to STOP BLOATING THE DEVICES WITH NOT NEEDED CRAP i dont want anything to do with ai and i think im going to be forced to pick a phone with that crap
good video. if your interested id like it if you could do a another video wich includes the upcoming apple I phone SE4 this is my next phone of choice but this has not been locked in
@@fsfan7384 thought I was having deja vu
Oops
Did apps really get that many features? Like seriously whatsapp using half a gig of ram and subway surfers using almost 900 megs!! I used to juggle between these very same apps a decade ago with a 2 or 3 gigs of ram😂
Useless bloatware features eating more RAM are the cultprit
Well I think apps will make use of RAM if it's there even if they don't necessarily "need it." I think this is largely true of devices in general although if I'm wrong there's probably plenty of people in this comment section that know better than me. But it has been explained to me that if the Rams there apps will use it.
@@michael_c2 Linux and therefore Android (and well most OSes really) will use free memory as cache to speed things up. Cause unused memory will take the same amount of power anyways. So if you add more memory your total memory consumption will increase because of cache. That being said a lot of apps nowadays are too frugal about memory and will use more resources than they need to and are also slower because they can "get away with it". I can't talk about any of the apps mentioned here since I'm not that heavy a mobile user nor a mobile developer so I don't keep a close watch on any of these to be able to tell
"Ai fEAtuReS!" 😂
@tracktornator I don't even understand why I am having access meta's large language model in my chatting app 😂.
Lesson learned from this video: Gary still sticks to Twitter as the app name
😜
Bought my current phone, a Xiaomi Poco X3 Pro, in June 2021; it has 8 GB RAM and still works great today. I'm far from a poweruser, though.
i have a lg v50 6gb and it has dual boot android 14 and windows 11 it use like 1.7gb and i dont know why but i only have 5gb ram instead of 6,maybe 1gb is alocated to gpu.and yes pc games work better than emulator live winlator
I have the non pro and it sucks. 6GBs isn't enough and even when it is, the aggressive bg app killer sucks. It's a hit or miss with bg apps. But I think custom ROMs help with that.
How much can one poweruse a phone though? Beyond the normal stuff and maybe some heavy games, I don't think there's anything that you can do on the phone that would need exceptional performance numbers.
500MB for an email client?! WTF!!! The world has gone mad!
Modern developers don't care about code optimization anymore. The quality of modern applications have definitely worsen. And you wonder why browsers are eating up your PC RAM.
S 25 Ultra has 12 GB of RAM on European and American markets. 16GB is available only in some Asian countries.
True
I just bought a s20 ultra the other day, also has 12gb of ram.
For the Chinese government to run spy services on the phone.
Samsung has to actually compete in China where more top of the line phones have 16GB of ram... not to mention much much better batteries and about double the charging speeds both wired and wireless.
@@EhEhEhEINSTEINBut that's what, DDR4? Big difference
I've always seen high RAM usage a byproduct of feature bloat. It's often overlooked that there are those who need some smart features, but not the bleeding edge of things.
Not just feature bloat. Modern software is often developed by incorporating features from other software like libraries. Using 1k from a 1M library is not uncommon and often such libraries include other features. A lot of software is just thrown together without much consideration for resource consideration. That quickly happens because developers tend to use high-end devices for their testing and run only the piece of code they are working on, on their test system. This tendency to develop bloatware is getting worse with each generation of software. A lot of software in the app store seems to be generated just to generate downloads but with little attention to even coarse details 😞
Compare to the original apps of the like first two generations of iPhones. Swift, low features, little bloat.
My issue with my S21 FE with it's 8GB of RAM & 8GB Swap, is that how long it chooses to keep apps in memory, I need around 4 or so apps to be open, like Discord, photos, browser, and maybe a 4th app depending on what I do, like perhaps another social media app
the issue is, I found out that the 2019 iPhone 11 with it's 4GB, actually have much much better RAM management, able to retain apps for significantly much longer time, and hold more apps than my S21 FE
so my answer is not about really how much we have, it's about how it's used by the OS, I wish if it was like Windows or any other desktop OS, not to close stuff unless it's gonna crash, or at least allow for users to lock apps not to be closed or something
i have a lg v50 6gb and it has dual boot android 14 and windows 11 arm it use like 1.7gb ram and i dont know why but i only have 5gb ram instead of 6,maybe 1gb is alocated to gpu.and yes pc games work better than emulator live winlator
You can lock Apps in RAM with Samsung. Jst go into ur Background Apps screen (swipe and hold up if using gesture bar) Tap the Icon above the app window and select "Keep Open"
@watchout5508 oh thank you! I didn't know that, but it seems you can do that with one app
@gwynbleidd839 welcome! It's mostly jst useful for if you have a main app you want to keep returning to quickly...
When it comes to phones I recommend buying a older flagship off eBay. No contract for the device, major savings and it's more powerful then a low end new phone. Make sure it's unlocked though and at least guaranteed 80% battery.
Agreed but I bought off swappa instead. $265 for an s20 ultra so I could still have mSD. 12gb of ram, security patch is less than a month old, good enough for me. I'd honestly still be on my old faithful note 9 if it worked on Visible.
I am unfortunate enough to own the base S23 Ultra, which means it has 8gb of ram.
Handles my needs just fine, but on a rare occasion, i am able to "catch the phone off-guard" and have an app half-reload.
TH-cam would reload, but it will toss me back to where i was when i closed/switched the app.
So for the average user 8gb is just fine.
I came into this video not expecting so much technical depth into android memory management. Being a software engineer I really appreciate it. I was especially not expecting the memory usage details of local AI applications, which has been a big concern for me as I am looking to buy a new phone soon. Considering the Deekseek opensource development, all major apps and their grandma is going to start introducing AI capabilities. The need for RAM very soon going to skyrocket, and I want to future proof my new phone. Taking all this into account, the Oneplus 13's 24GB RAM doesn't look like overkill to me anymore.
Being a software engineer and having a brain you should know that buying a phone with hardware AI (NPU - neural processing unit) is the end of privacy, so you should buy a phone without hardware AI - and not giving AI possibility to do more spying on you by giving it more RAM.
@thrasosthrasos7353 Why does buying a phone with an NPU mean an end to privacy? I thought the whole point of an NPU was that your data DIDN'T need to be sent to the cloud and remained on your device. 🤷♂️
@@thrasosthrasos7353Rob braxman recently did a video on the end of end-to-end encryption because of AI on devices
@@GaryExplains @thrasosthrasos7353
I hadn't thought about the privacy aspect, as I am from India, and privacy as a concept doesn't exist much here lol. But both of you are partially correct. Having a local AI means all your data stays on the phone, but at the same time, I am pretty sure the "insights" that they infer from the data (which is the main reason they want our data in the first place) will definitely be shared with the developers "to improve the product". But I live in Europe, so thanks to GDPR I can opt out of that. Being one of the people who takes the time to unclick on every "legitimate interest" button on websites, I will definitely opt out of sharing any insights from my phone data with the app developers. All things considered, I would still buy a phone which can support local AI. Whether to use it or not, is something I'll decide on a case to case basis. But I'd definitely want to have the ability to use it.
@@GaryExplains If you want to communicate with someone by using app that have end-to-end encryption, the only way to break it was to make periodic screesnhots (OS would do it without your knowledge, with e.g. 10 seconds period) and to send them to server to do analysis (probably by using neural network). Doing this was not possible for large number of users because multiple reasons (it is easy to detect because increased network traffic, too much bandwidth to the server, and there is no such server that could process so much data from millions of users).
By moving NPU from server to phone - there is no more need for increased traffic (NPU will do processing inside the smartphone and instead of screenshot it will send a few hundreds of bytes of compressed text), no need for the powerfull server because processing is distributed from one data center to millions of smartphones, no need for nuclear power plant that powers data centar - end user will provide energy for NPU, there is no need for enormous RAM needed for data center - majority of end users will willingly provide additional RAM (as the guy I responded to).
To be worse NPU inside smartphone is marketed as new feature which improves user experience, although it is not its primary function - here is an example: you can surround object on the photo and smartphone will tell you what that object is.
More tech details you can find in th-cam.com/video/c52pKpYeZ74/w-d-xo.html .
Shortly: having NPU inside the phone is like having 3-letter employee (NSA, CIA, FBI, ...) behind your sholder all the time you are using the phone.
I am using 6 years old phone, Asus Zenphone 5Z base variant which has 6GB of RAM (LPDDR4X) and 64GB of (UFS2.2) Storage, and Snapdragon 845 Processor, which is still Running Smoothly sometime I play games and I satisfied with it's performance.
Similar for the S8. But the hardware is aging and there are no more OS upgrades so this is slowly coming to an end. I'm probably going to replace the battery to keep it around as a spare or for sw development.
The RAM talk "free RAM, available RAM..." is repeated twice... Little editing mistake
Yeah, sorry about that, I pinned a comment with some extra info about that.
@GaryExplains there is also Gemma the AI on a slide....
I'm an old bloke and I have only used AI features once or twice. Now new phones want to have local AI constantly enabled? What on earth would I use that for? I don't want it, I don't need it and apparently I can't get rid of it. This sucks!
I’m old too bud , I don’t mind some of the AI , but a lot of it is pretty gimmicky to be sure , I think it is over hyped a lot.
It’s the latest buzzword to try and make a buck out of .
I believe the new galaxy’s AI will becoming subscription based by the end of the year, probably other companies looking to do the same.
If you are using Pixel, unlock the bootloader and install lineageos
If you do want AI, it's always best to have it local
This is only true if the models in question are of comparable quality. Which in this case they are absolutely not - LLMs small enough to run on a phone are incomparably worse than any of the cloud AIs. So you have to choose between privacy and usability.
not too long ago 6gb was considered as sweet spot
Just got my 1tb 24gb oneplus 13 for about 700 usd to replace my 5+ year old phone. Currently play around try to figure out all features and quirks.
I've used both an iPhone 16 and a Galaxy S22, and what I've noticed is that even though both have 8GB of RAM, apps in the S22 are more likely to restart/get kicked off the RAM even though both phones are performing similar tasks. Browser tabs are also more likely to reload on the S22 than on the iPhone 16.
Is it possible that apps on the iPhone are more efficient when it comes to RAM usage or is it something else?
No. It's that iPhone use Paging on Storage devices and S22 may not be using that and second thing is JVM. Android uses JVM and iOS don't and that's the main thing.
The difference is the memory compression, phones doesn't use swap file like computers (well, you can add some on Android, but not a clever idea, you just ruin your write/rewrite cycles, those storages has limited write/rewrite cycles..), and iPhone even 10 years ago used that memory compression well, you can find a video even on this channel, where the 300MB game shrink to about 10MB once it's goes into the background, and when he opened the task again, immedietly jumped back to 300MB and opened.
@@HoshangGovilFrom what I understand iOS doesn’t use paging at all.
JVM?@@HoshangGovil
From my experience, some firmwares use low memory killer module more aggressively than the others to conserve ram. I do think zRAM plays a part too but I'm not quite sure how
But from my experience, android 15 is actually the lightest since the 13 era with 13 being the worst
This is weird, I have a Moto G30 with measly 4 gigs and it just runs fine. I restart it from time to time but don't feel any bit issues with switching between apps or anything; sure, it is not high end, but I just don't need more.
That's because Motorola's OS is very clean and free of bloatware. For example, I have a Samsung with 4GB of RAM, and it runs terribly when switching between apps. 😂
@@ImDarakI still use Galaxy M21, it still surprises me just how fast it feels after a factory reset, and the 6000 mAh battery still lasts the same time it used to when it was new even with this less efficient 10nm exynos 9611.
@sgky2k: What I mean is that my phone can't keep more than four or five apps running in the background. When I try, the apps restart. But the phone works correctly, it is the galaxy a15 :3
@@ImDarak maybe you have different needs; I use a Laptop for any serious stuff, my Smartphone is for browsing the web, watching some TH-cam or asking ai for Something. And those Tasks Work perfectly with 4 gigs. And yes, i rarely need more than 3 Apps at the Same time...
For SoC's where CPU, GPU, NPU etc share the same ram, memory bandwidth is more important than size.
My Fairphone 4 has 8gb of ram and I use 3.3 on average. But I am a one app/browser tab open at a time type of person. Some people seem to live with 500 things open and I have no idea how they can ever find anything 😂
I think it's also a matter of headroom. I had a 4GB Samsung M21 and it can be slow despite only opening a few apps. But my 8GB Samsung A24, like in your case, (which I use for the same tasks essentially) only use around 3GB. So it's weird for me that the Samsung M21 occasionally slows down, even lags. I think there are times when apps suddenly asks for more RAM, think of it like someone driving a car on bumpy roads. His head might hit the roof of the car but it'll be less likely to happen when there's lots of headroom. This is the way I see it anyway because computer also do this at times (softwares suddenly eating up lots of RAM).
WOW ram usage on those apps is INSANE
And people thought it was chrome...
My device has 8 GB of RAM. I bought it in 2023. And still today it works just as new. I have found that the speed of RAM is a much better aspect to check rather than the RAM size. My OP 11 has LPDDR5X . Which makes it slightly faster than LPDDR5.
I agree with the verdict/conclusions. 6 GB should be bare minimum, 8 is good, 12 gets you where you rarely have to even think about apps staying in memory, 16 is beyond that and maybe future proofing and kinda the same with 24 gigs but now you got bragging rights. I remember when I first got my OP2 with 4 GB of ran and my laptop had 8GB, it felt a little too much but ever since my OP7 Pro (12GB) died on me and I'm stuck with a 4GB RAM phone, it is not enought for me or even and average user who switches between common apps like google docs and web browsers frequently. 6 GB should be the Bare minimum on android in my opinion and since 8GB is quite commmon now, one can go for it just in xase they underestimate their use cases.
Although, with how much phones cost today and the horrendous "extended" RAM feature some phones boast, I just want as much RAM as possible to turn off that feature. It significantly reduces your NAND's lifespan and should not be used.
Maybe you are ignorant of emulation on android. PS2 through wii to switch and PC.
Emulating especially pc games will require up to 16gb and above.
So, the new Galaxy S25 Ultra , advertised with "on device AI" is not going to be very happy with its max.12 GB of RAM (global version). I am wondering why the decision to ship the 16 GB version only in Korea, China & Taiwan. For me, as I wanted to make the jump from my Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (12 GB RAM) to the new S25 Ultra, this decision is a downer, so most probably I will skip a(nother) generation.
It’s just cost saving on the extra ram.
@@Knevitzdoug Cost savings does not explain the price differences between regions: the 16GB version is cheaper in Korea ($ 1538) than the 12 GB in Europe ($ 1615), US ($1420-$1800) or India ($2020). So most probably this is a marketing and strategic decision off Samsung, which I fail to understand.
The Palm OS ram management system was clever that the actual ios and android
Ram management
Why Google and Apple doesnt implement similar system nowdays
I don't know too much about the ram management in palm os, but what aspects do you think could be applied to Android or iOS?
@GaryExplains PalmOS was a Master piece the applications were single tasking (Although it did have threads in the background.) As all data and code was in RAM databases, when you switched from one application to another it was actually saving its state, shutting down, starting up the other, and resuming from where it left off
@@khy8358this sounds like already been implemented in iOS too. web OS could be the inspiration for it.
Saving its state to resume at later date.
this video reminds when i first came across your articles many years ago. Great explanation as always
my pixel 6 pro with 12 GB RAM is great, still getting updates.
I'm mad that companies no longer care to optimise their apps, I mean, it's phone, why does it have to use as much as a Windows PC?
For me as a android user, 12GB ram is a must and then the maximum for me will be 16GB, since i use multple apps on both my poco X6 pro and Poco X7 pro.
I too own the x6 pro 12/512 variant.
How was ur experience after upgrading to x7 pro? What differences did u feel?
12 at the most 🤷
Samsung is really falling behind as they always looking for ways to cut corners e.g. no Bluetooth spen, same 12gb ram, 5000mah batt. While other Chinese manufacturer comes with up to 24gb ram and 6000mah batt. Next year from the rumors they will up the batt to 7000mah batt. Gg Samsung.
Great detailed video👍, why is it that previous android versions before Android 8 used less ram, what's the fundamental change?
What an awesome video! Thanks for putting this together! 👍
Turns out, getting 16GB of RAM on my new phone last year was a good call. I often use AI for the camera processing, image editing, and writing most of the time.
I haven't seen you in years. Nice to see you are still around
Hi. Glad you found me again. I didn't go anywhere I have hundreds of videos on this channel.
This was a very useful video for a majority of viewers. Keep it up good sir! 🤓👍
I always forget how many people are on contracts to pay their phone 😂
Still using a 6GB ram phone and it works just fine
My Galaxy A7 with 4 gigs is doing everything I need from it. Of course, it's on android 10 so it needs less ram for the OS itself. Very solid phone. Not really thinking about replacing it yet.
Amazing video. Super informational. Thankyou Gary sir
TBF, I'd want top tier android phones to support desktop mode outside of just Samsung, and have at least 16gb RAM if not more. We can repurpose phones after a few years into a laptop/desktop for light usage
At least 16GB RAM on 2025...
For me, just enough to run the OS, and maybe a maybe few background apps in addition to whatever is running in the foreground is sufficient. At the end of the day, it's a phone and therefore doesn't need apps. If I need apps, I use a computer or tablet.
Hi Gary, amazing video.
For pixel 9 pro, do you have any numbers or instructions on how one can derive these numbers if someone installs and runs a different OS like graphene/calyx? Since they don't have (last I checked) any local ai stuff, hoping that more RAM would be available for apps.
What about virtual ram? My phone has 8gb ram and 4gb virtual ram. Meaning it will use 4gb of the phones storage as ram if the 8gb ram runs out. Should I turn this feature off?
Yes, turn it off. You don’t need that much of swap
Yes swap is useless since your gonna force the storage to read/write to the virtual memory swa.p. Android Apps by design will get kicked out of ram as needed.
For what it's worth I have a brand new OnePlus 12R with 16 GB of RAM. It's great but I also sometimes go back and use my old Pixel 4 or Note 9 which have four and six GB. Maybe it's cuz they're running older versions of Android, 12 and 10 respectively but they're perfectly snappy. I mean they're not multitasking piece certainly the pixel especially but day to day I wouldn't find the experience of daily driving it terrible.
Sometimes I get a prompt in my 6gb ram phone to clear cache because it's full. Never have experienced it on my 8gb ram phone. I think 8gb is pretty good but the trend with latest apps are they are not optimized that much so they consume more ram. Instead of optimizing the app, phone manufacturer will just sell bigger ram capacity it's like they are conniving with each other lol. Bigger ram are getting common though, even 100$ phone has 8gb and mid range are getting 12gb as base variant
Always a fantastic & Informative Presentation.
I assume by "memory swap" you're referring to what Samsung calls "RAM Plus." Is that true, and if so, do you have recommendations regarding its use? For context, I'm using the Galaxy S24 Ultra with 12 gigs of RAM and utilizing 8 gigs of RAM Plus.
Turn off the feature. At 12GB of ram there is no need for a swap.
You have more than enough for everything to keep running.
Gary explained in the video that the apps by design will get removed from ram as needed and it will not cause issues. That's just how jvm works.
Swap should only be used on desktop/laptop imo
I do not like when TH-cam restarts and I lose videos I plan to watch in the background. Even on high memory devices.
Chrome using 3 GB RAM is crazy when you think Genshin imapct a game that has 30 GB require storage runs almost half of chromes RAM.
I have a Galaxy Tab S6 running an 855 processor and only 6gb of RAM and while it does load things slower than it used to. It is still entirely functional even six years later. The answer to this question, is realistically far less than these companies would have us believe. Yeah apps have become more demanding in a sense but Android has also become better with management.
I switched to firefox entirely on Android and it uses 800MB with all rules in ubo,dark reader extensions. I think Google photos uses more Ram on Pixel 7 while editing.
I'm really excited with 6.1 kernel for all tensor soc as part of feature update this March.
I do use it for years and years.... with all the bad things Mozzila did to Firefox, it's still better on the resources on mobile and desktop. I've never understand the often read comments about Firefox is resource (RAM) hungry when you can have hundreds of Tabs and a few windows open on a standard pc with 8GB ish RAM and it still works while with Chrome ... Best thing on Firefox mobile is that you have at least noscript and ublock. I can't use the internet without an adblocker!.
@nopenope1 yep. I have tried edge for a few years until last year it was getting more sluggish than stock chromium builds. Only use chromium on Linux and Windows.
16gb oneplus 13 user, I can't remember the last time an app had to reload
In order for your smartphone to last a little longer (in terms of android life), you should get the higher RAM as much as possible. The newer apps requires so much RAM...
How much ram does an android need? That depends, almost entirely, on whether you want to play Minecraft on it. Most phones don't need more than 4-6gb to run 99% of apps smoothly. Minecraft, however, is a freaking ram devouring monster, where the more ram you have- the more you can DO in your game. More villagers. Faster farms. More mobs. More particle effects. Higher pixel count textures. Any upgrade to performance is clearly noticeable in-game. I can't think of a single other app that is as resource intensive as MC.
Now compare with ios in 2025
Ios ram management sucks. It doesn't run anything in the background
Yeah because there's no multi tasking in ios
No multitasking , thats why
That is wrong, even iOS have a background task management, it's only required a different method to use.. so it's only no background activity, if the devs are lazy to make a proper coding..
"My app uploads files in background. It's relatively simple. You need to change NSURLSession and then you can use standard http job."
But sure it's easier to whine and not even try to solve things.. i personally saw this method in a cloud services first on iOS, they just needed to switch a less demanding, more efficient way like running the full app in the backgrpund without reason..
@@AponTechy that being said , its still a very capable device , im old , i go for walks with 14 PM with the step counter running, while its playing Spotify music , i stop to take photos , and it works flawlessly 99% of the time.
Dont get me wrong , I’d love to see galaxy multitasking on the iPhones , but when you are used to them you learn how to work around not having multitasking in the UI.
At the same time , IOS does have some cool features of its own , I’ve been using Android ( mostly galaxy’s) since 2012 these days IOS I have warmed too and since the 12 series an iPhone is my carry around, I will say however until I learned how to use it , for the first three months I bloody hated it 😊.
I think the biggest issue is when people spend 1300 USD on a flagship phone, they will expect to get the best components. 12GB or 8GB is enough for daily use, but it's not enough to convince people that what they paid is worth what they got.
I'd love to have a video explaining how IOS uses ram and how it manages to be so efficient with it
Your wish is my command: th-cam.com/video/7fvgJ0PJg3U/w-d-xo.html
@@GaryExplains Thanks Garry!
Im using a s21 and ive come to realise all I actually use it for is 40% Whatsapp 50% TH-cam, and 10% Camera.
I doubt these really need much RAM...
I think Ram hardware type (lpddr) also contributes to experience; along with amount of Ram
Gary's been aging in reverse
Professor - Another excellent video.
My current mobile has ram of 8gb
Varies between individuals but for me who used his phone for light purpose, prolly still need minimum 8GB and if budget permits, would love for more than that just for the peace of mind coz god forbid app developers putting random unneeded useless bullshit features in their app over time, hogging more RAM with each mandatory updates
Using a 2020 phone it got 4 gb ram which 2.4 gb is free
Poco F5 8 gb ram and around 3.8 to 4 gb free
iQOO 13 16 GB Ram varient cant see the available ram
But ram management the 2020 phone is perfoming similar as Poco F5......
Iqoo has more ram hence better ram management slightly
Can you run 7-32B LLMs on a OnePlus 13? 24GB should be enough, right?
Yeppp
You can but at 32b it's going to slow down. I'd stick to 22b models or lower.
thanks for listening to my request !!
I'm still using Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 running android 15 Pixelage ROM. For me, 4gb is the right amount i need for daily usage, since I'm not a gamer who plays something like genshin impact or other heavy games like that.
FOSS apps are a good solution for all those OEM & google bloatwares. So while i do think it's still possible to daily a cheap old phone these days, the steps to actually make it work is a whole another set of problem entirely.
So for consumers, i guess you can at least use FOSS alternatives, debloat your phones and you're good to go. Maybe turn off every monitoring stuff too.
Google has been cracking down custom ROMs that are actually the best way to get the most out of my phones, so i guess it's time for me to looks for a new one in near future.
I don't keep up with all those AI stuff so i don't & won't use them at all, ever
My Samsung A23 has 4Gb of RAM and is super slow when switching between app or even opening a text box under Android 14. Almost useless. BTW It ran better with previous Androids....
I just got a Samsung A55 with 8Gb of RAM. Night and Day ! Same use case : i can keep all my applications open and the mobile still works fine and is very snappy and reactive.
The processor speed plays a role of course. But i believe that RAM size does matter the most in my case.
=> I believe that 8Gb is the minimum on Android 14.
I'm using a galaxy S22 ultra which has 12GB of RAM. It fluctuates between 5.6, and 6.3 GB of free RAM depending on what I'm doing, or what apps are running. My "sweet spot" for my needs is no lower than 8GB.
So only if you have 64 gb RAM in your smartphone , You are truly future proofing.
When it comes to RAM in Android phones, no matter how large the RAM capacity is, nearly half the RAM is always occupied.
If you need 2GB RAM, buy a phone with 4GB RAM
If you need 3GB RAM, buy a phone with 6GB RAM
If you need 4GB RAM, buy a phone with 8GB RAM
If you need 6GB RAM, buy a phone with 12GB RAM
If you need 8GB RAM, buy a phone with 16GB RAM
If you need 16GB RAM, buy a phone with 32GB RAM and so on...
The more they increase RAM, the heavier they keep making the OS and apps. They need to keep the "need to upgrade" alive. It always feels like "I just need to save money for a device with two more GB of RAM."
I started with a Nokia N72 with less than 100MB of RAM, and I could multitask with it pretty well. Then I upgraded to an E63 which had 128MB, and it felt amazing.
Then I "Upgraded" to X10 Mini Pro with 512MB of RAM. I was hoping that such a jump in RAM was going to blow me away. It did... But not in the way I expected. Multitasking was not even a thing on that phone.
I donated that phone and upgraded to Neo V with 768 MB RAM. I was barely able to keep my sanity intact during that period, even after installing the lightest custom ROM and home launcher. I stuck to it because I could not afford a costlier phone.
Then I saved up some money and upgraded to the Xperia Z with 2GB RAM. It felt ... usable; the first usable Android I had. But multitasking was not a thing. When the phone broke and I switched to the Z2 with 3GB RAM. After that, Sony kept releasing flagships with 3GB. It seemed Sony had an allergy to the number 4 just like Valve is allergic to the number 3.
Then Moto came up with the Moto G and made flagships obsolete (for all purposes other than showing off). My first Moto was the G5s+ with 4GB. It still works. But I was still not getting true multitasking, even after all the lowmemorykiller hacks with ROM toolbox.
By the time I needed another phone, Moto's growth had kinda died out and they were releasing average 4GB phones one after another. So, I switched to the Redmi Note 9 Pro with 6 GB. I wanted the 8GB version, but the store owner gaslit me into believing that no one needs 8GB. Big mistake! The experience was exactly like 4GB.
So, I sold it and switched to Poco x4 pro 8GB. Soon after my purchase, Moto woke up from its long sleep and released a cheap 12gb banger. But it was a bit late for me.
Even 8GB proved too little for the bloated MIUI OS, because of course it was designed that way. So, I rooted and installed Lineage. Never looked back. For the first time since the E63, it feels like I am truly multitasking on a phone. Apps still force close when I put too much pressure on it (Nokia used to reboot in such situations) But it is usable.
I personally disagree with the whole Android memory management and runtime philosophy. It's the heaviest the most unoptimized OS on the planet, and we use it in smallest devices.
Desktop OSes don't need to preallocate 500 MB to every single background process or don't cache random apps in memory. They're however much faster, especially when talking about linux.
Would be interesting how much battery life could properly optimized OS with compiled apps squeeze out.
I hate it when my phone uses swap on top of ram. Just degrades my phones internal (non changable) storage faster and I have less storage to use!
I've got 4Gb ram
Pixel 9 here, so i guess I am in the sweet spot! It does not have the AI running locally, right?
My Moto Z4 is feeling the lack of additional RAMs. It only has 4 so I had to restrict my Health app from running in the background. Music stops if I open 2 more apps etc. It is still usable but with restrictions. 6 GB is still OK 8 is plenty for me.
The more RAM is taken the greater the power usage although the power also gets used if the apps needs to reload so it only matters in standby mode.
I'm currently using the Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro which might have been the first phone to have 6GB RAM in 2016/17 and the device never crashed until one time when I started 4k TH-cam video playback while screensharing but now, it just lags while doing that instead of completely crashing and the device still handles 4k video playback but without screensharing completely fine, runs CODM at low 50 to 60fps with some small sttuters seldomly and Roblox at low 15fps (30fps on small servers)
My old G Power has 3 and runs ok, but only because its running Lineage OS without gapps. My Edge Plus 2023 is very comfortable at 8; i will like to have 12gb and up again at some point.
I'm using 6 gigs of RAM, it really depends on the optimisation of the UI.
Hello sir I've got a Cubot king Kong X from AliExpress. It's got 16 GB of RAM and another 16 of virtual. Any thoughts on that purchase? I thought it was a win for 200 dollars. Is all that ram only a marketing strategy? Does it drain the battery?
Do you recommend I keep the virtual memory on or off? How much of it should I keep on? Thank you
Developers are just lazy to optimize anything
Really? You have experience in this area? Please share your top 3 ways to reduce memory usage on Android .
@@GaryExplainsWould you understand if they did?
Yes, I am a software engineer, an Android programmer, and I have a computer science degree.
how did you know how much memory an app takes ? for example when editing a image in google photos vs simply gmail for simple scrolling ?
Did you watch the video?
@@GaryExplains yes. i don't know how you constantly know the ram usage while actually editing the photo for example.
@deepfxd8 I was using the Android Debug Bridge (adb) to monitor the system and the individual apps.
@@GaryExplains thank you sir
Less than half RAM only available at startup is CRAZY, tell me about optimization.
ANDROID really needs to and must to more optimization
8gb in my phone
6gb in my tablet
I will choose a high ram device next time. I'm new into photography and my camera can send raw files to my tablet. I use pro software to edit like On1 or Lightroom, so I'll go for a 16gb ram tablet (and phone) next time.
And I'm like a Chrome tabs hoarder 😅
I mean it's not the only relevant variable though If you have on-device AI you'll have less available RAM to you on a higher RAM device. Which is great if you want it but if you don't want it you might actually be better off buying a lower ram device that is relying on the cloud for AI
i have a lg v50 6gb and it has dual boot android 14 and windows 11 it use like 1.7gb and i dont know why but i only have 5gb ram instead of 6,maybe 1gb is alocated to gpu.and yes pc games work better than emulator live winlator
Can you also make a video on Apple Intelligence and RAM being used within iPhones as it would be really useful to understand the reality behind the claims of Apple. Thanks!
Can you do a video about ram booster / storage cleaner for android in 2025? Do we need it?
Do you have a particular app in mind?
Please test the new snapdragon elite for galaxy against others.
Android Authority have an article: www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-8-elite-for-galaxy-benchmarks-3520872/
Only 8gb on my base s23u. 😔 thought it was 12/256gb by Default but that's only for the USA. I can feel how slow it is to load apps and it's bugging tf outta me.
These days, especially Android phones should have at least 6gb ram. 4 just isn't enough when you want to use it for a longer period of time. If android would've been as well optimized as iOS, it would barely matter...
Watching on my Honor magic 7 RSR 24gb ram 1TB storage and it's just fine 😆
My One Plus 12r has 16gb. Only because I wanted the 256gb storage version. One Plus ups both storage and RAM together.
Hi Gary, does RAM boost actually help?
Editing mistake around 2:00. It repeats at 2:38.
@WDCallahan Darn! Well done for spotting that. I have added chapters so you can just jump over the repeated segment. Sorry about that. 🫣
My one plus 10pro closes youtube if i open the camera while playing video
I have an ipad 9th generation. It has 3 GB RAM. Call of Duty Mobile is crashing very frequently in it. I am telling this to give reality check to some people who believe Apple is best.
4gb on my android tablet is enough for my basics daily use (even in my phone, but the 2018 processor doesn't help)
Compare to iOS 18 with Android 15? And how about the new HarmonyOS of Huawei?
8gb with no configurable swap on my Moto 2023 Edge Plus. Seems fine for me, and I do a lot of swapping between apps.
What to choose? Snapdragon 8 gen3 16/512 or snapdragon 8 elite 12/256?