Smartphone manufacturers have been adding more and more RAM in newer devices and everybody thinks this is a really good thing. More RAM, more stuff a phone does? Faster phone? However, that’s not really what smartphone RAM is about. Manufacturers like Razer, ZTE, Xiaomi, Samsung, Oppo and Vivo have devices of 8GB of RAM. Apple is following suite ever since it doubled the iPhone 5 RAM on the iPhone 6.
So how much RAM is enough for your smartphone?
User demands
RAM is used basically for your applications. Whenever you open an application, it goes into the RAM. If you are a heavy user who installs so many applications, you will definitely need a phone with at least 4GB of RAM. However, light users who only need the phone part of the phone (SMS and calls), 1GB of RAM is enough for these tasks.
Smartphone OS.
Different smartphone operating systems have different RAM requirements. For example, Android uses approximately 830MB to operate while iOS uses approximately 200MB. That is why most Android phones have more RAM than the iPhones. If you decide to use Android, choose a phone with at least 3GB of RAM. You should also be okay with an iPhone of about 2GB of RAM.
Android Skins.
Since most users use the Android platform, it’s quite necessary to talk about the different skins that manufacturers use on top of Android. Examples of Android skins include Touchweez (Samsung), MIUI (Xiaomi), EMUI (Huawei), XOS (Infinix), HiOS (Tecno), Oxygen OS (OnePlus) among others. Some skins use more RAM than others. You may need at least 4GB of RAM to have snappy operation on Samsung’s heavy Touchweez skin. OnePlus skins are lighter, and you should be okay with at least 3GB in a OnePlus device. Research about the manufacturer’s skin RAM needs on ‘Google’ before you decide how much RAM is enough for a smartphone. Also, each skin has different memory management capabilities. Some skins will automatically kill memory hungry apps in the background. If your skin of choice has better memory management, you will need slightly lower minimum RAM than skins with poor memory management.
Budget or Flagship?
At least 2GB of RAM should be available in budget devices such as Tecno, Infinix and Itel. Also, 1GB of RAM is enough to deliver smooth functionality on devices powered by Android Go. However, for flagship functionality, a smartphone needs about 4-8GB. More: Is Intel Optane Memory faster than RAM? Now you know how much RAM is needed in a Smartphone. Image: XDA
