Today, Every Smartphone manufacturer is trying to provide top line specifications in its smartphones. Even if it’s a budget range device or a smartphone that costs a kidney, they are trying to fill more and more stuff inside. As you might know, Recently launched OnePlus 5 is packed with 8 GB of RAM. Not only OnePlus 5, there are many others who are offering 4GB to 8GB of RAM. Even budget-oriented devices are now coupled with some impressive amount of RAM.
If we look at the current marketing strategies of companies, they are playing a number game. Like Vivo and Oppo is playing it in the form of Megapixels (20MP Moon Light Camera… Ahaa..!) while others are in different things. Some phones are even configured in immature ways. For example – A phone which is powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek processor is coupled with 4GB of RAM. So whats the point in having 4G of RAM and opening so many applications, if your processor is not capable of processing tasks with a good speed.
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How RAM Works?
RAM or Random Access Memory is faster than the internal storage and typical memory cards. Whenever we launch an app, its data are fetched from internal storage or from SD card and the application is loaded to RAM which is the main memory. Then the app uses RAM to execute all its tasks. Let’s go a little deep and understand how Android handles memory management and RAM?
Android categorizes each process into five categories (Foreground, Visible, Service, Background, and Empty) ranging from most important to least important to keep running. Processes belonging to each category are killed off at different levels of free memory remaining (called the LMK minfree value). Now, these minfree values aren’t typical on most devices these days as manufacturers love to tweak these to their liking depending on how they feel it best suits their device. So you can’t expect same multitasking experiences on different phones with similar specs.
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Bloatware also decreases the available RAM on any smartphone. Custom Skins like Samsung’s TouchWiz or Xiaomi’s MIUI comes with a lot of unwanted apps and features whose functioning requires a lot of RAM and thus leaves lesser room for third-party apps. In Simple words, the main difference between a phone with 2GB of RAM and phone with 3GB of RAM is that the phone with 3GB can cache more processes in the background for a longer time.
How much RAM is enough for our smartphones?
I Hope you have understood the working of RAM. So coming to the main question, how much RAM do our smartphones really need? According to me, 3-4 GB of RAM is enough at this time. If you are going for a smartphone like Moto E4 Plus or any other with stock Android, then 3GB is enough. But if you are planning to buy a Samsung, Xiaomi or any smartphone that comes with custom layer over the stock AOSP, then you should prefer at least 4GB of RAM.
One more thing, Most of the Android apps keep updating and with new features, they also become more resource extensive. So, considering a phone with big RAM is always a good option as it keeps your phone ready for future application updates and Android Version updates (if your phone is lucky..!!).
