Many people asked me what a RAM was, being a blogger I find it as my
duty to help you all in the course of unde5rstanding what RAM exactly is and
how much RAM is necessary for your smartphone. When comparing the performance
of different smartphones and tablets, many people just look at the processor.
That is, they just look at the processor’s clock speed and the number of cores that it has. In reality, there
are many other factors that have an influence on performance – a key one being
the amount of RAM. In this article, we look at RAM on smartphones and tablets. We’ll
discover the purpose of RAM and look at how popular devices compare for RAM.
We’ll also look at how you can manage RAM usage on your Android device. “RAM”
stands for Random Access Memory. It’s a key component in every smartphone and
tablet and it plays a vital role in ensuring the performance and stability of
your device. RAM can have a huge effect on how smoothly your phone runs: it’s
arguably more important than the speed of your processor and the number of cores that it has.The latest
high-end smartphones have up to 2GB of RAM storage. Unlike other types of
storage, such as internal storage and Micro SD card storage, RAM isn’t designed as a place
where you can store your files or your photos for the long term. Instead, it’s
a space for your smartphone to store things in the short-term. This could be
data that you’re currently working on, or information that you’re likely to
need very soon.The best way of thinking about RAM is to think of it as the
equivalent of your brain’s short term memory. Like the brain’s short term
memory, RAM is very easy to access and is fast. However, data doesn’t stay
there very long – after a while it’ll be replaced with something else.This is
in contrast to internal storage and Micro SD card storage. These are equivalent
to your brain’s long-term memory: there’s a much bigger capacity and any data
that’s stored there will last for a long time. However, it can take longer to
access this information.The main benefit of RAM storage is that it’s
super-quick. Compared to accessing data from the internal memory or an SD card,
it takes just a fraction of the time to access data from RAM storage. With RAM,
data can be read 6 to 10 times faster.The operating system on your smartphone is responsible
for managing the RAM allocation. It’ll try and maximise the performance of your
device by placing applications and files that you use regularly into the RAM.
By making these files faster to access, loading times are reduced and the
performance on your device is improved.As an example of the benefits of RAM,
consider an instant messaging app such as WhatsApp. These apps are used periodically
through the day when you want to talk with your friends.An instant messaging
app like WhatsApp consumes about 25MB of memory. If the application is to be
loaded from your phone’s internal storage, it would take about 1.3 seconds for
the application to load. Whilst this could be acceptable the first time you open
the application, it would quickly become annoying to wait 1.3 seconds each time
you want to reply to a message.To speed things up, your operating system
notices that you use WhatsApp on a regular basis and loads the application into
RAM. From RAM, it takes just 0.2 seconds to re-load the application. This means
you can reply to your friends faster: there are fewer delays as you wait for
your phone to catch up and your phone behaves more responsively.
The read speeds on different types of storage compare as follows:
|
Form
of Storage
|
Speed
|
Time
to load 25MB
|
|
RAM
Memory
|
1,066Mbit/s
|
0.2
seconds
|
|
Internal
Storage (NAND Flash)
|
160Mbit/s
|
1.3
seconds
|
|
Micro
SD Card
|
120Mbit/s
|
1.7
seconds
|
|
Cloud
Storage (via 4G)
|
15Mbit/s
|
13
seconds
|
|
Cloud
Storage (via 3G)
|
4Mbit/s
|
50
seconds
|
Whilst it can be possible to build a smartphone with limited amounts of
RAM, performance will always be sluggish as everything needs to be loaded from
internal storage. Handsets with greater amounts of RAM can avoid the
performance bottleneck of internal storage by making use of RAM storage. When
comparing today’s smartphones, there’s a large variation in the amount of RAM
that they ship with. On phones with an insufficient amount of RAM, you’ll
notice sluggish performance due to a greater number of trips to the internal
memory storage. You may notice a greater number of “Loading…” and “Please Wait”
screens – especially if you’re playing multimedia content or games with a large
number of graphics.Today’s high-end smartphones have at least 1GB of RAM. On
lower-priced handsets, you’ll find as little as 256MB. For decent performance,
we would recommend choosing a handset that has at least 512MB of RAM.If you’ve
got an Android-based device, you can manage the RAM usage on your phone using a
task manager application.
|
Smartphone
|
RAM
Storage
|
Price
Range
|
|
Apple
iPhone 3G S
|
256MB
|
Entry
Level
|
|
Apple
iPhone 4 & 4S
|
512MB
|
Mid-Range
|
|
Apple
iPhone 5
|
1GB
|
High
End
|
|
HTC
One
|
2GB
|
High
End
|
|
Huawei
Ascend G330
|
512MB
|
Entry
Level
|
|
Google
Nexus 4
|
2GB
|
High
End
|
|
Nokia
Lumia 920
|
1GB
|
High
End
|
|
Nokia
Lumia 620
|
512MB
|
Entry
Level
|
|
Samsung
Galaxy Ace
|
278MB
|
Entry
Level
|
|
Samsung
Galaxy Note II
|
2GB
|
High
End
|
|
Samsung
Galaxy S III
|
1GB
|
High
End
|
|
Samsung
Galaxy Young
|
768MB
|
Entry
Level
|
|
Sony
Xperia Z
|
2GB
|
High
End
|
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