We all know that the larger the phone’s memory (RAM), the better the performance and experience. But in addition to capacity, there are many factors that affect the performance of the phone’s memory.
Don’t confuse the memory (RAM) and memory chip (ROM, also known as flash memory) inside the phone
Memory standard
Nowadays, mobile phone memory is mainly based on LPDDR4X and LPDDR5 standards. Compared with LPDDR4X, LPDDR5 improves battery life by about 10% in comprehensive scenarios, saves about 20% power when playing games, and improves WeChat video and voice battery life by about 10%. In fact, from LPDDR3 → LPDDR4→ LPDDR4X → LPDDR5, the next generation of memory has these advantages over its predecessors.
Memory frequency
We all know that the higher the memory frequency, the stronger the performance. LPDDR4X has LPDDR4X-1866 (equivalent to 3733MH) and LPDDR4X-2133 (equivalent to 4266MHz) two frequencies, LPDDR5 also contains LPDDR5-2750 (equivalent 5500MHz) and LPDDR5-3200 (equivalent 6400MHz) two frequencies, now many flagship mobile phones equipped with the so-called “full blood LPDDR5 memory”, refers to the LPDDR5-3200 standard.
Memory channels
The LPDDR memory dedicated to mobile phones is 16-bit channel by default. The low-end mobile platforms represented by the Snapdragon 7 series, 6 series, and 4 series are all 2×16bit, that is, 16-bit dual channels (a total of 32 bits); The Snapdragon 8 series mobile platform is 4×16bit, that is, 16-bit quad-channel (64-bit total). In addition, flagship chips can generally be paired with higher frequency LPDDR5 memory, so they can maintain a comprehensive suppression of mid-range chips.
Memory management mechanism
The memory of the iPhone is far inferior to the Android flagship of the same period, but the former can still maintain good fluency, and it is rare to hear that the system is stuck due to insufficient memory, and behind this is the difference in the logic of the management mechanism such as memory call and recycling. Configure the same Android phone, open the same number of apps and always have a smoother one, indicating that its R & D team’s “soft power” is stronger.
RAM Boost technology
RAM Boost first appeared on the OnePlus 7 Pro launched in 2019, allowing the OnePlus 7 Pro with 8GB of RAM to have multitasking background capabilities equivalent to 12GB of memory competitors.
In 2021, almost all mid-to-high-end new products began to support similar RAM Boost technology.
Honor X30i
Realme Q3s
The so-called RAM Boost is memory virtual rapid expansion technology, we can understand it as the “virtual memory technology” in the PC field, that is, part of the hard disk capacity is virtual memory, when the background program is about to fill the memory, part of the program is divided into virtual memory. RAM Boost works similarly to it — using your phone’s idle ROM flash memory to absorb fragmentation from physical memory.
Opening countless programs at the same time is originally a pseudo-demand for mobile phone use
However, the read and write speed of ROM flash memory is much inferior to RAM memory, and if you really reside dozens of applications in the background at the same time, and fill the RAM and ROM virtual memory at the same time, the system smoothness will definitely suffer. Therefore, RAM Boost does not improve memory performance, it can only host more programs in memory at the same time. Instead of expecting surprises, it is better to expect the phone to be directly equipped with larger memory and more efficient memory management mechanisms.
