The smartphone industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. However, given how smartphone technology has matured so far, its not surprising when we see manufacturers bringing in new features every year.
Take one specification as an example, the RAM. Seems like it was only yesterday when phones came out with 1-2 GB of RAM. This was back in 2013. Fast forward to 2016 and companies like Vivo and Oneplus are already introducing phones with a massive 6 GB of RAM.
It is highly likely that companies will continue this trend this year as well with more phones with 6 GB and even 8 GB (!) of RAM coming out. ASUS’s Zenfone AR unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show 2017 featured 8 GB of RAM.
Is the rising amount of RAM on phones bordering on overkill? Or is there agreement that more GBs means better performance on your phones?
4 GB is “Good Enough”
Some of the major smartphone makers seem to disagree with following this trend. One of Huawei’s top executives Lao Shi, is amongst the vocal opponents against more RAM on phones.
In his recent post on Chinese social media site Weibo, he argued that 4 GB of RAM is good enough to run a phone smoothly. He added that Huawei’s phones would actually run better on 4 GB rather than 6 GB of RAM and that the most important thing for smartphone companies is to optimize the OS for efficiency.
Mr. Lao mentioned Apple’s example with iOS. Apple’s iOS is optimized well enough and does not need huge amounts of RAM to run smoothly. He said that adding more RAM also increases the cost of the smartphones “exponentially” and its not worth expanding on this side of smartphone hardware.
Never Enough
There was a time when people considered 1 GB of RAM in a PC too much or having a 120 or 250 GB HDD ludicrous. As phones improve over time an increase in RAM capacity is also inevitable as even Apple had to move from 1 GB of RAM to 2 GB in the iPhone 7. This is not to say that certain scenarios don’t exist where bigger numbers work, as long as the hardware and software can make full use of the added specs.
Will we see more phones with 8 GB of RAM this year? Would others follow Apple or Huawei’s trend of not increasing the RAM capacity? Only time will tell.
ahan agreed
Yes Huawei U Beauty !
True Honor 6x is the best.
4gb Ram is enough. Agreed with Huawei Statement.
Agreed
Agreed.
4 GB RAM is enough for now, but with time apps size Android OS size there might be a need of little extension in RAM.
More RAM more battery usage, More charge more bigger batteries.
ASUS, VIVO and OnePlus brand are like putting truck engine parts into a car engine.
More electricity bill ultimately.
Well by keeping a fact now Specially in Android the Application size are enormous. Plus with substandard cards the phone performance goes down. Therefore people finds the remedy of the situation by getting the enhanced RAM version Phones.
Dear Huawei, As things are progressing every year with constant software updates and new new features You just cannot say this or that is enough .. 4GB is enough for now but wunt be enough in 2-3 years !!!
Agreed..
Wese bhee 6 GB ram dekar bhee user available ram 1.5GB hi bachnee hai to whats worth having it
Apple’s example is good enough to make a statement to improve OS. Other things like Battery and Ram depend on user’s priority. Huawei, Samsung and Oppo are camera phones
Agreed
4GB mobile main aur 2GB computer main.
Aisay log bhi hain mojoud jo kehtay hain PC k liay 2GB bohat hai.
4 gb is more than enough for mobile ..In PC my ram didn’t cross 8gb limit at highest resources I use games apps etc..8gb for pc
dear make it 16gb and you will see the difference. you need to experience 16gb to have an idea that whats difference between 16gb and 8gb.
1. 1-2 years back huawei said thier is no need of QHD screens. and now you see huawei at last joined the QHD party. but i guess Huawei is the last one to join QHD. LG started it 3 years back in 2014 with G3. now htc samsung sony all are making QHD smartphones mainly flagships
2. steve job once said apple will never build a phone above 4 inches of size. and after his death what apple did with thier screen sizes .every one know here at propakistani.
my point is when 6 gb ram phones already available . 8 gb around the corner. what huawei is doing is going against the tide. may be 4gb is enough and may be 6-8gb ram is marketing tactic. but you cannot resist it. its future of smartphone. 3-4gb ram was only available in flagships last year. but now its more of a mainstream
jab bana ni skte, tu roote kiyn ho :|
Android take more memory to use multitasking which depend upon resident size of memory(Required more ram).Apple IOS does compress resident size of memory(Required less Ram) .IOs use a special algorithm to use less memory for multitasking.
iPhone LOLs at this. They think 2GB is enough. :)
the best is oneplus 3t
100% agree with huawei statement. I am using honor 6x,, best phone with 3GB
1 year from now, 4GB RAM will not be enough. Last year I bought a phone with 1GB RAM and that was more than enough at that time. Now I have a 4GB RAM Android phone and its OS consumes more than a GB most of the time. Its exponential and never enough….!
Agreed
Correct observation, even if the purpose of Huawei may be to take a jab at its new competitors – Xiaomi, Asus, Oppo.
The current processing power, I/O bus speeds and even the OS and application capability are limited and extra RAM only burdens the pocket of the customer – and more importantly, battery. Even phones with 2GB RAM work fine on Android 5 and above.
There is a reason why Apple do not give you an extra MB of RAM, they configure iOS (and regulate their app ecosystem) to optimise performance within the given memory. No wonder they are taking away 3/4 of the smartphone industry profits. Only if google could work more towards making its own end-to-end smartphones.