I don’t get why Android phones have so much ram.

They often have more ram than my wife’s MacBook and the same or my as my desktop.

How much ram is needed if you’re not gaming or video editing?

In my case, it’s a very occasional picture or video recorded and then just social media apps and web. Do I need to get a phone with 12gb? Or is that just thrown in there for marketing?

  • loki@lemmy.ml
    ·
    6 months ago

    Well, Android runs over JVM which runs over Linux. There's overhead and Android needs to compensate. Add in poor memory management and OEMs that happily kill apps in the background for no good reason (even if you tell them not too), and marketing guys trying to out RAM competitors just so they can release a phone with an "upgrade" every year, you get current Android RAMathon.

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
      ·
      6 months ago

      I've got 6GB in my phone. It's been plenty for me even though Android eats half of it. The most resource intensive thing I do is use Firefox with a few tabs open though.

      I can't believe how bloated Android has gotten. My first Android tablet only had 256MB and it ran fine on that. Now my phone uses 3 times more memory than my desktop at boot.

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
      ·
      6 months ago

      I had a 4GB phone and after an update, processes were constantly swapping or closing because I was bouncing off the limit. I later got a 6GB phone and I was able to get multiple updates and run more programs without any issues.

  • Cloudless ☼@feddit.uk
    ·
    6 months ago

    Because Android multitasking is inefficient with memory use.

    My Palm Pilot had 512 kB of RAM and it could multi-task properly. When I re-open an app on Palm, I could always get back to EXACTLY where it was left off. Palm OS saves the app state before swapping it out of the RAM.

    Android apps have to completely restart from fresh after being closed. It multi-tasks by keeping apps running in memory. But you are never going to have enough RAM for the apps if you use a variety of apps.

    Samsung's RAM Plus does something similar, but the apps are not designed to be efficient for virtual memory.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
      ·
      6 months ago

      I think inefficient is a matter of perspective. Android has somewhat different goals. For example, Java has been an enormous pain when it comes to memory use, but it provided developers when the platform critically needed attention with its first phones.

      Much work has been done on that front, but today Android places a lot of weight in helping developers write applications quickly, somewhat to the detriment of the specifications.

  • limerod@reddthat.comM
    ·
    6 months ago

    Your wife's macbook and your desktop rely on swap space under pressure while your android will start killing apps.

    As for your question

    How much ram is needed if you’re not gaming or video editing?

    The answer will vary depending on your use case and how long you intend to use your current smartphone and if it will receive future OS upgrades. If you plan to keep the smartphone for longer than 2 years get the higher ram variant with more storage.

    In my case, it’s a very occasional picture or video recorded and then just social media apps and web

    Get at least 8gb of ram smartphone for smooth operation. 6gb is serviceable but it will be a bottleneck down the line in a few years. You don't necessarily need 12gb of ram. It's just nice and makes things smooth overall. You have budget smartphones with 12gigs of ram. If the price is not high get it. Otherwise, you should be fine.