"Pro", "Ultra", and "Fold" phones definitely should get 16GB or more. They are big and powerful enough to run 2 apps side by side, do video editing and hopefully soon will get proper "desktop" mode.
In my case, I use my phone a lot for Outlook and the extra RAM going from 8GB to 12GB made a huge difference. I'd specifically be looking for 16GB in any future phone so it can keep up with more memory demanding apps over the next few years.
Just keep in mind it's really hard to isolate for ram being the cause of improved performance because very few of us are going from one phone to the exact same phone with more ram. We're almost always upgrading to a phone that not only has more ram, but also likely has a faster processor. Unless there's a use for that ram, there should be no real change in performance. When I went from 16 gigs in my PC to 32, there was honestly no appreciable difference.
@@shanecraigtech That's a fair point; and it may just be that my use case is particularly memory heavy, but there are tell-tale signs when RAM is the performance bottleneck: (i) first, apps that are computation-simple but memory-heavy stutter and freeze (eg. Outlook, Chrome, Acrobat); (ii) eventually the system/home screen/app drawer itself stutters and freezes; and (iii) clearing cache for one of the memory-heavy apps drastically improves performance. And the thing with RAM is exactly as you going: getting more than you need will not improve performance; so you'll really feel the difference going from 8 to 16, but depending on your use-case you may not see any difference going from 16 to 32.
No doubt that more heavy use of LLM based AI in the upcoming A15 stable, especially Google's flavor of it, is what is driving Google to include more RAM in the Pro phones. I think you're into something though with the multimodal AI which is definitely more system intensive and probably more RAM intensive than anything else, being one of the biggest drivers for needing 16GB to work well. Also the Pixel 9 series, not sure of the base model but the Pro's are rumored to have UFS 4.0 storage which will be a first for a Pixel phone and should also help general performance.
And considering their phones are supposed to get software updates for 7 years one has to consider how that is going to hold up when a phone is 5 years old.
My concerns with the Z Fold line arent to do with AI or ram. For me, my concern is with Samsung's lack of passion and innovation in its foldable. Theyve chosen to stay stagnant for 3 Z Fold genrations now. Everything since the fold 3 has been nearly identical.
While there are a few things I wish they would change, I think for the most part they've hit on a design that ticks all the boxes for what a fold "should" be, and pretty much all that's left is refinement. I mean almost every issue I've had with my fold 4 has been software related, and those aren't common. If I could wave a wand and magic away every issue I have with the physical build of it (compared to the leaked Fold 6 specs, and operating under the assumption that only things I think are actually possible can happen), my full laundry list of changes would be - remove the screen protector on the inside - make the inner screen more durable so a protector isn't needed - remove the brushes from the hinge - make the hinge IP68 so the brushes aren't necessary - make the device 8% taller like the S24 Ultra for a ~6.5x5 aspect ratio on the main screen - include the S Pen in the box, and have it attach to the back like the Tab line does - less crease I could come up with a total of 7 things if I could make the perfect fold built just for me. Remove the opinion-based one about the aspect ratio, boil down all the durability ones into "improve the durability", really there are 3 - improve the durability, less crease, and give us a Tab-like S Pen experience. If you want a wider aspect ratio, by all means pick a different fold. I think the aspect ratio Samsung landed on could be taller if anything though.
Google might've had these things in development for a long while already, and the 16GB ram choice could've been in selection since then\. I really don't even think they're competing with Apple how we think they are.
I was worried about RAM when I was buying my Tab S8 Ultra a month or so back, since the base model only came with 8gb, which isn't far off from what I regularly am using if I check on my phone at any given time - and then RAM has never been a problem. Literally have never hit the 8gb limit as far as I'm aware, so having more would have literally done nothing for me. Of course there's nothing wrong with having a little more for future-proofing, but I think "a little more for future proofing" is 12gb right now, and 16 is more future proofing than I'll likely need before the time I'd want to upgrade.
It's not really needed. 12gb of RAM will work perfectly fine for the long run. The adding of 4gb more RAM I'm assuming is just to have a small bit more to play with.
@@shanecraigtech so it's because it's running the G2? I'm willing to accept that as the reason. Do you think that is more of an "excuse" or is a legitimate reason?
A lot of RAM is great for using your smartphone in ways it wasn't intended to be used (as a server, NAS drive, Winlator, etc.). The AI stuff just makes my eyes roll to the back of my head.
Smart phones were intended to run as it's own server since smart phones were originally designed, it's the only way they were able to run on the network carriers data. Even more so now since Data is the main way devices run.
good point. i use my vivo x fold for my share investing. i keep 20 google Chrome tabs open at a time. swapping between them to see what's happening to each stock I'm watching. mine has 12 gigs of RAM+expantion. and this is a + year old flagship 8' fold. still going strong, but I'll make sure the coming, whatever brand, has at least 16gig. better to have it in the bank for later...because you can't just add more these days. good food for thought. 😊
Well wouldn't the stronger chipset optimize the LLM well enough to make up for the lack of RAM or vise versa in Google's case? (The extra RAM compensating for the lack of raw power in the tensor?) I could be way off in my thinking though. I'm more of a Wally West kind of smart and not a Mr. Terrific kind of smart.
It could but the way LLM's work, it'll put too much pressure on the SOC. Like imagine running a gaming PC. We can have the best CPU and best GPU, but the moment we start running that high graphic intensive game it'll burn through the memory in both very fast. Need the extra RAM to help carry that load.
@@macrochipped Honestly, if you have 12gb of RAM in your current device, it'll be perfectly fine. For the new device, even if they add 4gb more RAM, it's still using an Exynos variant SOC for the Tensor. Personally, I'd just wait for the Pixel 10 as it's rumored that they're ditching Samsung's chipset and going for something better.
I know this video is not about the camera capabilities of the pixel devices, but I'm disappointed every single year when upgrading to the latest pixel device, to find that none have yet been superior to the pixel 2 XL in terms of portrait mode capabilities. I remember the 2XL just blowing me away 9 out of 10 times when I would take a portrait mode photo of my daughter, but I've been nothing but disappointed with every pixel device since then. The only one that has came close in my opinion, was the 4XL. Ive started to wonder if maybe Google is sabotaging its phones cameras on some way, at least in the days prior to their release of a new pixel.
I like how the OnePlus open has 16 and you can use 12gb from your 512 GB for a total of 28gb 😃 i used to minimize youtube and go into something else on the fold 4 and it would close TH-cam most of the time. I can have something running on the OnePlus all day and it wont close anything. Even pokemon go stays open all day in the background.
the base iPhone yes, 6 to 8, the pro no, given that the M4 starts at 8GB, but Apple LLMSs only taske around 4.5GB so it's manageable with 8GB and on iOS 8GB are more efficient than 8 on Android, probably more like 10GB
@@shanecraigtech I'd say let's wait and find out since this new LLM for Siri was built from the ground up. Now true it's been in the works for years back when it was codenamed "Siri-X", but we still need to see how it performs in the real world. My guess is Apple will bump that 8gb they did the the 15pros to at least 12gb eventually.
Is iOS more efficient though? It's easy to be when actively killing off tasks, ie Google Photos backups, not offering multitasking and no desktop mode at all. MsDOS needs less ram too by limitations of it's abilities similarly iOS. The AI Apple announcement has proven 6GB is no good.
More ram is better always. People have been saying this since 2gb was normal amount. Obviously more ram equals ability to run stronger applications as well as emulation and virtualization
Notice how most the "Budget" phone brands have that feature. This is because when you use your storage as RAM, it literally slowly kills your storage. All dedicated storage in phones can be written for a LIMITED amount, when you use it as RAM you are constantly writing data to that storage. Unlike dedicated storage, RAM can be written to an unlimited number of times. Your dedicated storage was never meant to be written to so constantly, and there are many cases of budget phones dying early because their dedicated storage got too damaged from being used as RAM. Bigger phone brands need to be reliable or else their public perception turns bad, if they also started using dedicated storage as RAM, their phones would also start dying earlier, making them look bad. It's always better to have more real RAM, not using dedicated storage as RAM
OR, if they were wrong about the standard Pixel having 12Gigs of RAM. MAYBE, they're wrong about the Pro and Pro XL having 16Gigs. Maybe it's 8 and 12 (Pro/Pro XL), and not the 12 and 16 gigs shown in the debunked article.
@@jeremythompson829 Hey be happy they give us the choice. When iOS 18 rolls out, iphone users won't get a choice, not like they'll fight it considering current Siri sucks ass and has sucked for a decade.
I mean sure, but Google makes that money back from Samsung anyway since Samsung has a closer deal with Google than anyone else, that's why Samsung gets Android updates way before the other brands.
@@rsupremexx3971 Actually it does. As both are businesses and by blowing one away means they'll perform better and outsell the other. I just pointed out that it doesn't matter if Samsung sells more and blows google away, because Google gets their money back from Samsung and pretty much every other brand that runs Android.
If youre gonna push on-device AI, you'd better have as much as you can provide to future proof as much as possible. See Bill Gates meme quote about MS-DOS and 640K RAM lives on.
Just stop with this BS, the reason Google has to have more RAM, they use the Tensor chip. It is awful at RAM management. Snapdragon chips are much better with RAM management. DUH !
If you think the idea that Google would launch a phone with a massive amount of RAM because they're going to have a large language model unpacked and running on that device 24/7 is bullshit, I genuinely have nothing else to say.
@scaryifliteral does this mean that any phone that has less than 16gb of RAM will not be able to run Googles LLM, effectively making the 8pro absolute because it only has 12gb RAM.
You act like the Tensor chip currently is Google's fault. Samsung has been only giving Google the Exynos variants to work with. Let's just hope the rumors are true and for the Pixel 10 they're finally ditching Samsung's Exynos.
"Pro", "Ultra", and "Fold" phones definitely should get 16GB or more. They are big and powerful enough to run 2 apps side by side, do video editing and hopefully soon will get proper "desktop" mode.
Yes LLMs locally need lots of power. I run mistral on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and it can bring it to its knees very quickly.
In my case, I use my phone a lot for Outlook and the extra RAM going from 8GB to 12GB made a huge difference. I'd specifically be looking for 16GB in any future phone so it can keep up with more memory demanding apps over the next few years.
Just keep in mind it's really hard to isolate for ram being the cause of improved performance because very few of us are going from one phone to the exact same phone with more ram. We're almost always upgrading to a phone that not only has more ram, but also likely has a faster processor.
Unless there's a use for that ram, there should be no real change in performance. When I went from 16 gigs in my PC to 32, there was honestly no appreciable difference.
@@shanecraigtech That's a fair point; and it may just be that my use case is particularly memory heavy, but there are tell-tale signs when RAM is the performance bottleneck: (i) first, apps that are computation-simple but memory-heavy stutter and freeze (eg. Outlook, Chrome, Acrobat); (ii) eventually the system/home screen/app drawer itself stutters and freezes; and (iii) clearing cache for one of the memory-heavy apps drastically improves performance. And the thing with RAM is exactly as you going: getting more than you need will not improve performance; so you'll really feel the difference going from 8 to 16, but depending on your use-case you may not see any difference going from 16 to 32.
8gb is more than enough for a phone
@@bmoz3675maybe for your use case, I'm on 8.1gb of ram usage rn and not trying that hard.
Pixel does what iPhon't.
No doubt that more heavy use of LLM based AI in the upcoming A15 stable, especially Google's flavor of it, is what is driving Google to include more RAM in the Pro phones. I think you're into something though with the multimodal AI which is definitely more system intensive and probably more RAM intensive than anything else, being one of the biggest drivers for needing 16GB to work well.
Also the Pixel 9 series, not sure of the base model but the Pro's are rumored to have UFS 4.0 storage which will be a first for a Pixel phone and should also help general performance.
Just for the reason of the 7 year system updates, Pixel phones should have 16gb at min.
Waiting for pixel 10
And considering their phones are supposed to get software updates for 7 years one has to consider how that is going to hold up when a phone is 5 years old.
I definitely think this type of speculation makes for fun videos.
My concerns with the Z Fold line arent to do with AI or ram. For me, my concern is with Samsung's lack of passion and innovation in its foldable. Theyve chosen to stay stagnant for 3 Z Fold genrations now. Everything since the fold 3 has been nearly identical.
While there are a few things I wish they would change, I think for the most part they've hit on a design that ticks all the boxes for what a fold "should" be, and pretty much all that's left is refinement. I mean almost every issue I've had with my fold 4 has been software related, and those aren't common.
If I could wave a wand and magic away every issue I have with the physical build of it (compared to the leaked Fold 6 specs, and operating under the assumption that only things I think are actually possible can happen), my full laundry list of changes would be
- remove the screen protector on the inside
- make the inner screen more durable so a protector isn't needed
- remove the brushes from the hinge
- make the hinge IP68 so the brushes aren't necessary
- make the device 8% taller like the S24 Ultra for a ~6.5x5 aspect ratio on the main screen
- include the S Pen in the box, and have it attach to the back like the Tab line does
- less crease
I could come up with a total of 7 things if I could make the perfect fold built just for me. Remove the opinion-based one about the aspect ratio, boil down all the durability ones into "improve the durability", really there are 3 - improve the durability, less crease, and give us a Tab-like S Pen experience.
If you want a wider aspect ratio, by all means pick a different fold. I think the aspect ratio Samsung landed on could be taller if anything though.
After those specs... I would definitely go for The Pixel Fold. I hope they add pen support.
Unless you're an enthusiast I would seriously hold on with the pixel fold...until a few months pass by for bug fixes
Very good points Shane!!
100% agree and ai will need to use more ram so google might be feeling pressure to compete with apple after their recent announcement too.
Google might've had these things in development for a long while already, and the 16GB ram choice could've been in selection since then\. I really don't even think they're competing with Apple how we think they are.
I was worried about RAM when I was buying my Tab S8 Ultra a month or so back, since the base model only came with 8gb, which isn't far off from what I regularly am using if I check on my phone at any given time - and then RAM has never been a problem. Literally have never hit the 8gb limit as far as I'm aware, so having more would have literally done nothing for me.
Of course there's nothing wrong with having a little more for future-proofing, but I think "a little more for future proofing" is 12gb right now, and 16 is more future proofing than I'll likely need before the time I'd want to upgrade.
I thought I would keep my Pixel 8 Pro for a couple years but now I have a reason to upgrade. If the Pixel 9 Pro has 16GB, I'm upgrading
For 4 extra GB of ram. Interesting
It's not really needed. 12gb of RAM will work perfectly fine for the long run. The adding of 4gb more RAM I'm assuming is just to have a small bit more to play with.
Don't understand why the Pixel Fold won't be running Gemini Nano locally
Older SoC
@@shanecraigtech so it's because it's running the G2?
I'm willing to accept that as the reason.
Do you think that is more of an "excuse" or is a legitimate reason?
@@JediSteele It's the legitimate reason. The G2 wasn't designed for it.
Good insights and we will see what happens with these future devices when they are launched. Will the predictions (leaks) be accurate?
A lot of RAM is great for using your smartphone in ways it wasn't intended to be used (as a server, NAS drive, Winlator, etc.). The AI stuff just makes my eyes roll to the back of my head.
Smart phones were intended to run as it's own server since smart phones were originally designed, it's the only way they were able to run on the network carriers data. Even more so now since Data is the main way devices run.
good point. i use my vivo x fold for my share investing. i keep 20 google Chrome tabs open at a time. swapping between them to see what's happening to each stock I'm watching. mine has 12 gigs of RAM+expantion. and this is a + year old flagship 8' fold. still going strong, but I'll make sure the coming, whatever brand, has at least 16gig. better to have it in the bank for later...because you can't just add more these days. good food for thought. 😊
Well wouldn't the stronger chipset optimize the LLM well enough to make up for the lack of RAM or vise versa in Google's case? (The extra RAM compensating for the lack of raw power in the tensor?) I could be way off in my thinking though. I'm more of a Wally West kind of smart and not a Mr. Terrific kind of smart.
Newer SOC will help, but my understanding is that these LLMs are just big and need to unpack into RAM.
It could but the way LLM's work, it'll put too much pressure on the SOC. Like imagine running a gaming PC. We can have the best CPU and best GPU, but the moment we start running that high graphic intensive game it'll burn through the memory in both very fast. Need the extra RAM to help carry that load.
@@hobbitpsi Makes me think I might have to upgrade much sooner than I thought I would then.
@@macrochipped Honestly, if you have 12gb of RAM in your current device, it'll be perfectly fine. For the new device, even if they add 4gb more RAM, it's still using an Exynos variant SOC for the Tensor. Personally, I'd just wait for the Pixel 10 as it's rumored that they're ditching Samsung's chipset and going for something better.
@@hobbitpsi Unfortunately I got an 8GB S23U 🤦
I know this video is not about the camera capabilities of the pixel devices, but I'm disappointed every single year when upgrading to the latest pixel device, to find that none have yet been superior to the pixel 2 XL in terms of portrait mode capabilities. I remember the 2XL just blowing me away 9 out of 10 times when I would take a portrait mode photo of my daughter, but I've been nothing but disappointed with every pixel device since then. The only one that has came close in my opinion, was the 4XL. Ive started to wonder if maybe Google is sabotaging its phones cameras on some way, at least in the days prior to their release of a new pixel.
12 I think is the sweet spot for multitaskers
I think your on to something is very interesting to see your videos I always learn something new I appreciate you
I have the pixel 8 pro but I'm so excited to see the pixel 9 pro XL 😊
I like how the OnePlus open has 16 and you can use 12gb from your 512 GB for a total of 28gb 😃 i used to minimize youtube and go into something else on the fold 4 and it would close TH-cam most of the time. I can have something running on the OnePlus all day and it wont close anything. Even pokemon go stays open all day in the background.
I have one ebook that will not open on a 8gb ram phone. And I use that book a lot.
Do you think that the iPhone will get a RAM update next year? It seems hard to believe that 8Gb of RAM will future-proof for long
iOS is so much more RAM efficient, who knows
the base iPhone yes, 6 to 8, the pro no, given that the M4 starts at 8GB, but Apple LLMSs only taske around 4.5GB so it's manageable with 8GB and on iOS 8GB are more efficient than 8 on Android, probably more like 10GB
@@shanecraigtech I'd say let's wait and find out since this new LLM for Siri was built from the ground up. Now true it's been in the works for years back when it was codenamed "Siri-X", but we still need to see how it performs in the real world. My guess is Apple will bump that 8gb they did the the 15pros to at least 12gb eventually.
Is iOS more efficient though? It's easy to be when actively killing off tasks, ie Google Photos backups, not offering multitasking and no desktop mode at all. MsDOS needs less ram too by limitations of it's abilities similarly iOS. The AI Apple announcement has proven 6GB is no good.
Pixel fold 12 g ram. Llm?
Probably
That extra ram is for all the new A.I features they are adding
Where on earth would you have heard something like that?
@@shanecraigtech I mean he's not 100% wrong as LLM's are the Generative AI.
More ram is better always. People have been saying this since 2gb was normal amount. Obviously more ram equals ability to run stronger applications as well as emulation and virtualization
It's just not that simple. Law of diminishing returns.
This would be very cool!
There's a NOTICEABLE difference b/t 8 & 12gb ram not as much b/t 12 & 16.....
Google is the best .512 gb pixel fold is the best
My economy Redmi note 12 allows for virtual ram using some of the phones storage
Couldn't Google or Apple just do that?
Notice how most the "Budget" phone brands have that feature. This is because when you use your storage as RAM, it literally slowly kills your storage.
All dedicated storage in phones can be written for a LIMITED amount, when you use it as RAM you are constantly writing data to that storage. Unlike dedicated storage, RAM can be written to an unlimited number of times.
Your dedicated storage was never meant to be written to so constantly, and there are many cases of budget phones dying early because their dedicated storage got too damaged from being used as RAM.
Bigger phone brands need to be reliable or else their public perception turns bad, if they also started using dedicated storage as RAM, their phones would also start dying earlier, making them look bad. It's always better to have more real RAM, not using dedicated storage as RAM
Google does do that, but physical RAM will always be much faster and efficient as opposed to using storage.
OR, if they were wrong about the standard Pixel having 12Gigs of RAM. MAYBE, they're wrong about the Pro and Pro XL having 16Gigs. Maybe it's 8 and 12 (Pro/Pro XL), and not the 12 and 16 gigs shown in the debunked article.
Geekbench agrees it's 16GB for the Pro XL
@@shanecraigtech 👍🏻
I'm not excited about a.i. I think it's a dumb thing to worry about on a phone right now and not a big selling point
There's a reason Apple's value went through the roof when they showed off their AI stuff
Strongly disagree
@@shanecraigtech yeah but Google has been kind of confusing lately do I use ok Google or the other one?
@@jeremythompson829 Hey be happy they give us the choice. When iOS 18 rolls out, iphone users won't get a choice, not like they'll fight it considering current Siri sucks ass and has sucked for a decade.
My Galaxy s 21 ultra has 16g of Ram. Phone is awesome
Why not? Future proof it.
Because it's a business first and foremost. They want people to keep buying phones, not stay on one single device for years.
Pixel 6 pro doesn't have enough RAM.
I’ll say this. Even with 12gb of ram Samsung will blow Google away
Most likely
I mean sure, but Google makes that money back from Samsung anyway since Samsung has a closer deal with Google than anyone else, that's why Samsung gets Android updates way before the other brands.
@@hobbitpsi that has nothing to do with what I said lol
@@rsupremexx3971 Actually it does. As both are businesses and by blowing one away means they'll perform better and outsell the other. I just pointed out that it doesn't matter if Samsung sells more and blows google away, because Google gets their money back from Samsung and pretty much every other brand that runs Android.
If youre gonna push on-device AI, you'd better have as much as you can provide to future proof as much as possible. See Bill Gates meme quote about MS-DOS and 640K RAM lives on.
Just stop with this BS, the reason Google has to have more RAM, they use the Tensor chip. It is awful at RAM management. Snapdragon chips are much better with RAM management.
DUH !
If you think the idea that Google would launch a phone with a massive amount of RAM because they're going to have a large language model unpacked and running on that device 24/7 is bullshit, I genuinely have nothing else to say.
@scaryifliteral does this mean that any phone that has less than 16gb of RAM will not be able to run Googles LLM, effectively making the 8pro absolute because it only has 12gb RAM.
You act like the Tensor chip currently is Google's fault. Samsung has been only giving Google the Exynos variants to work with. Let's just hope the rumors are true and for the Pixel 10 they're finally ditching Samsung's Exynos.
one minute ago🎉