Reason why Android needs more RAM compared to iOS

[RedRound2]

Source: http://www.quora.com/How-come-the-iPhones-1-GB-RAM-is-touted-to-be-able-to-compete-with-more-than-2-GB-RAM-of-Android-phones/answers/7061202

             http://www.redmondpie.com/why-iphone-with-1gb-ram-performs-better-than-android-devices-with-2gb-or-more-ram/

 

Why, when some Android phones have up to three times as much memory, does the iPhone perform so well?

That was basically the same question put to Quora, the social website that gives people a way to ask questions and then have them answered by people who are experts in their respective field. The upvoting system adds a spot of authority tracking to the answers that are provided, and we have a clear winner as far as the question around why Android phones have so much more memory than iPhones.

 

Enter Glyn Williams.

 

Android apps use Java, and as a result Android does something called garbage collection which involves memory being recycled once applications are finished with it. That’s all well and good, and actually performs really well when given plenty of memory to work with. The problems arise when the system is starved of memory.

 

Using the diagram provided, Williams points out that garbage collectors are at their best when they have a relative memory footprint of 4 or 8. In effect, that means that Android needs 4 or 8 times as much memory as it’s actually using in order to perform its garbage collection duties. Reduce the amount of available memory, and things start to suffer greatly.

 

 

So what about iOS? Well, it doesn't use Android style garbage collection for starters, which means that it doesn't need all the extra memory associated with Java and Android. Apple designed iOS to need the memory that it’s using rather than have extra memory set aside for something like garbage collection and as a result iPhones don’t need to be packed to the gills with memory chips.

 

My Thoughts: Though I don't know much about this field, I guess it makes sense. iPhones do perform pretty well with 1GB RAM compared to 2GB RAM android devices. I always have 64% RAM used up on my HTC One with no apps running (Clean Master) 

[Sidiox]

So we need to ditch Java? Also I thought that it was already known that Java was the big memory hog on Android? Either way I hope that they manage to improve this crap

[Geekazoid]

Hmm...interesting. I still think iPhones and iPads should have at least 2GB of memory/RAM

because crashes often happen due to insufficient memory................which is quite annoying.

[BallGum]

There is also this to consider:

http://www.howtogeek.com/127388/htg-explains-why-you-shouldnt-use-a-task-killer-on-android/

Proponents of task killers notice that Android is using a lot of RAM – in fact, Android stores a lot of apps in its memory, filling up the RAM! However, that isn’t a bad thing. Apps stored in your RAM can be quickly switched to without Android having to load them from its slower storage.

Empty RAM is useless. Full RAM is RAM that is being put to good use for caching apps. If Android needs more memory, it will force-quit an app that you haven’t used in a while – this all happens automatically, without installing any task killers.

Task killers think they know better than Android. They run in the background, automatically quitting apps and removing them from Android’s memory. They may also allow you to force-quit apps on your own, but you shouldn’t have to do this.

Task killers aren’t just useless – they can reduce performance. If a task killer removes an app from your RAM and you open that app again, the app will be slower to load as Android is forced to load it from your device’s storage. This will also use more battery power than if you just left the app in your RAM in the first place. Some apps will automatically restart after the task killer quits them, using more CPU and battery resources.

Whether RAM is empty or full, it takes the same amount of battery power – decreasing the amount of apps stored in RAM won’t improve your battery power or offer more CPU cycles.

Finally: ART. It has supposedly a better garbage collector and anandtech found a significant improvement.

[RedRound2]

Hmm...interesting. I still think iPhones and iPads should have at least 2GB of memory/RAM

because crashes often happen due to insufficient memory................which is quite annoying.

 

In my experience only certain apps crash, and in like 2 days there will be an update to fix the issue

[Geekazoid]

In my experience only certain apps crash, and in like 2 days there will be an update to fix the issue.

True, but these updates can't solve insufficient memory problems.

[RedRound2]

There is also this to consider: http://www.howtogeek.com/127388/htg-explains-why-you-shouldnt-use-a-task-killer-on-android/ Proponents of task killers notice that Android is using a lot of RAM – in fact, Android stores a lot of apps in its memory, filling up the RAM! However, that isn’t a bad thing. Apps stored in your RAM can be quickly switched to without Android having to load them from its slower storage. Empty RAM is useless. Full RAM is RAM that is being put to good use for caching apps. If Android needs more memory, it will force-quit an app that you haven’t used in a while – this all happens automatically, without installing any task killers. Task killers think they know better than Android. They run in the background, automatically quitting apps and removing them from Android’s memory. They may also allow you to force-quit apps on your own, but you shouldn’t have to do this. Task killers aren’t just useless – they can reduce performance. If a task killer removes an app from your RAM and you open that app again, the app will be slower to load as Android is forced to load it from your device’s storage. This will also use more battery power than if you just left the app in your RAM in the first place. Some apps will automatically restart after the task killer quits them, using more CPU and battery resources. Whether RAM is empty or full, it takes the same amount of battery power – decreasing the amount of apps stored in RAM won’t improve your battery power or offer more CPU cycles. Finally: ART. It has supposedly a better garbage collector and anandtech found a significant improvement.

 

I don't think Android moves many apps completely into RAM because it's never that lightning fast in opening up apps. I guess what you were trying to say was that Android stores that particular session in RAM which happens to be the main function of a RAM. I didn't read your article but I'm just replying to what you wrote

[RedRound2]

True, but these updates can't solve insufficient memory problems.

 

The thing is, how do you know that its suffering from insufficient memory. As I stated before almost all crashed I've witnessed is programming errors rather than a hardware limitation as I usually see updates to fix that particular issue later

[Geekazoid]

The thing is, how do you know that its suffering from insufficient memory. As I stated before almost all crashed I've witnessed is programming errors rather than a hardware limitation as I usually see updates to fix that particular issue later

If this is true, why has Apple put 2GB of memory/RAM in the iPad Air 2?

[Guest]

I hate it when people say iPhones are overpriced....

 

(Sarcasm)

[RedRound2]

If this is true, why has Apple put 2GB of memory/RAM in the iPad Air 2?

 

They have been working on a lot of iPad multitasking features for quite sometime now. Someone even managed to enable it in iOS 8 beta. Perhaps there's going to be a huge update for the iPad in coming months (maybe iOS 8.2 or iOS 9) that's going to utilize its insanely powerful chip and the extra memory

 

If they were actually running out of memory then new iPhones would also have 2GB RAM

[Geekazoid]

They have been working on a lot of iPad multitasking features for quite sometime now. Someone even managed to enable it in iOS 8 beta. Perhaps there's going to be a huge update for the iPad in coming months (maybe iOS 8.2 or iOS 9) that's going to utilize its insanely powerful chip and the extra memory

 

If they were actually running out of memory then new iPhones would also have 2GB RAM

Hmm...well maybe you're right. I don't have app crashes THAT often, but when I do they're quite annoying.

[mr moose]

What user type is this an issue for?  The only android device I have used that crashed was a $60 tablet with what I am pretty sure was not even genuine parts. 

[lufihengr]

What user type is this an issue for?  The only android device I have used that crashed was a $60 tablet with what I am pretty sure was not even genuine parts. 

You must be really lucky. My note 2 crashed fairly often. 

[mr moose]

You must be really lucky. My note 2 crashed fairly often. 

 

I don't know, not many of my friends have issues either.  It might be a power user thing or the type of apps that get used (that's why I asked what type of user this effects).  I have 2 ipads, a nexus 7, a yumcha 7" tablet,  two HTC phones, two windows phones in my family and my mate and his missus have iphones.  They all seem to work about the same bar the cheap yumcha tablet. 

[LAwLz]

It's kind of amazing what conclusion you can come to when cherry picking benchmarks, isn't it?

Here are two other benchmark from the same paper:

 

One thing to remember is that not all GCs are created equal. The results gathered from GC X does not necessarily reflect how GC Y performs.

If you look at the GenMS results you can see that it actually outperforms the manual allocation at about 3x memory in the benchmark he posted.

 

It seems like the students who wrote the paper also wrote the different garbage collection implementations. I think it's pretty safe to say that a big company like Google is better at optimizing their collector than some students who has to write 7 different ones, test and write a report about them.

 

There is also a lot of different techniques for improving the performance of GCs. Anandtech did a really good article on the changes Google has made with ART. There are some really fantastic improvements such as a 10x improvement in allocation speed.

[RedRound2]

It's kind of amazing what conclusion you can come to when cherry picking benchmarks, isn't it?

 

Honestly I don't what the graphs mean. I just copied whatever is written on the second source link. Thought it'll be a good answer to some of the question regarding Apple's RAM implementation

[Linus_torvalds]

today i installed Android L on my Nexus 4 and it's amazing.

 

It's working on improved ART, everything is faster and overall performance is smoother. battery saving feature is amazing, it lowers cpu so that phone can work on standby mode like +1-2 days. 

visually it's staning. theme is white so you can lower brightness and also improve battery performance. I have 2 GB RAM and it's all for android let it use it so android will be even faster when you do not kill everytime processes

 

I do not give a shit for IOS and Apple. They better lower prices like 3x because their Dual core, 1 GB RAM, 720p Display and fucking 8 Mpixel camera in 2014-2015 year is low end smartphones specs 

[RedRound2]

I do not give a shit for IOS and Apple. They better lower prices like 3x because their Dual core, 1 GB RAM, 720p Display and fucking 8 Mpixel camera in 2014-2015 year is low end smartphones specs 

 

You sir, just showed an example of what a fanboy would say

[harrynowl]

You sir, just showed an example of what a fanboy would say

Yep.

 

As a tech enthusiast they should know there's more to it than cores. Apples ARMv8 "Cyclone" architecture is currently the highest IPC of any phone, the graphics performance of the phone is unmatched (K1 is a tablet SoC) and the A8X graphics is faster than K1.

 

The 720P screen and 8MP camera also happen to be some of the best screens and cameras on the market...

 

Only thing I'd like to see is 2GB of RAM, wouldn't hurt and doesn't cost any more than $9 per unit to add.

[LAwLz]

Honestly I don't what the graphs mean. I just copied whatever is written on the second source link. Thought it'll be a good answer to some of the question regarding Apple's RAM implementation

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't trying to bash you or anything.

It was more directed at Glyn on Quora.

[BallGum]

I don't think Android moves many apps completely into RAM because it's never that lightning fast in opening up apps. I guess what you were trying to say was that Android stores that particular session in RAM which happens to be the main function of a RAM. I didn't read your article but I'm just replying to what you wrote

I quoted the article. This is what android does. It purposely fills up memory as unused ram is considered to be wasted ram. It then clears the ram whenever an app requests more memory.

[lufihengr]

-snip-

 

 

-snip-

 

 

These are the kind of people that think that an FX-8350 is faster than a 5960X because the 8350 has more gigahurtz

 

I mean mate mate not you two

[harrynowl]

These are the kind of people that think that an FX-8350 is faster than a 5960X because the 8350 has more gigahurtz

 

I mean mate mate not you two

of course it's faster?!

 

fx9590: 5 x 8 = 40ghz

 

5690x: 3 x 8 = 24ghz

 

can't you seee??

/s

 

those kind?

[cesrai]

So that's why ART is being used in Android L?? from my experience Ion Nexus 5 I used ART as my default run time when I got my phone, the phone had only app crashes with shadows warrior for some reason, it's been a solid experience for me and waiting for OTA android L update, any questions I would happily answer.