The RAM configuration of Android mobile phones on the market is getting higher and higher. Some high-end and flagship models are even higher than some laptops, and it is still a normal phenomenon. For example, the Pixel 6 Pro is equipped with 12GB, and the iPhone 13 Pro is equipped with 6GB RAM, iPhone 13 can support the audience with only 4GB, but there is no difference in performance, why is this?
Why does Android require more RAM than iOS?
Before getting into the topic, let’s first understand what is the RAM of a phone. RAM (Random Access Memory, random access memory) is the short-term data storage area of the system. Unlike flash memory, the phone’s RAM can only retain data when the phone is powered on. Essentially, it’s the phone’s working memory, which contains information regarding the device’s use at any time.
The higher your phone’s RAM, the more stuff you keep in working memory, and when you open other apps or other content in the same app, your phone allocates available RAM for each worker process. When your RAM has been allocated and nothing is left, your device must decide to kill those processes to allow all ongoing work to run smoothly. A phone with 8GB RAM will keep more active processes than a phone with 4GB RAM, other things being equal, so switching between jobs will feel faster on a phone with higher RAM.
Why does Android require higher RAM than iOS?
There is no single clear answer to this question, but there are several reasons for this phenomenon.
First of all, Android and iOS are constructed in different ways. Every year, compared with the flourishing Android mobile phone market, only a few new iPhones and iPads are launched by Apple, and the systems operate on similar hardware architectures. Since iOS applications can only run on a few homogeneous chip sets, development work for these chips can be done using so-called native programming languages (specifically Swift and Objective-C). Code written for an iOS application can be translated into instructions understood by the Apple CPU without translation.
On the other hand, Android supports an almost unlimited number of models. These models use chipsets from all over the world, such as Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek and others, and they have different architectures. Chipsets work fine. Since compatibility with all different hardware devices cannot be guaranteed, Android applications are developed in programming languages such as Kotlin and Java, which can be converted into common languages and then re-translated into hardware-independent The bytecode of the software run is then transmitted to the chipset. Compared to iOS running native code directly, the process of translating and then translating to byte code requires additional resources, which means that when running the same-looking application on Android and iOS at the same time , the former requires more available RAM.
The two operating systems manage RAM differently. Android uses a form of memory management called “garbage collection”, a process that periodically tries to free up resources by clearing RAM that is no longer used. iOS uses “ARC” to manage memory, automatically assigns a value to objects in RAM according to the number of other objects that reference them, and deletes objects whose value reaches 0. Since garbage collection only periodically scans for unused objects, it can cause useless information to temporarily accumulate in RAM. In contrast, ARC does not have this problem, and deletes unwanted objects from memory as soon as they are detected.
Is higher RAM a bad thing?
Because the Android and iOS operating systems work differently, the RAM requirements are naturally different. The Android operating system is more flexible than iOS, it can run on any device, and developers have more flexibility to work, but this flexibility comes at the cost of higher RAM to achieve similar performance to the iPhone. While Android may require more RAM, higher RAM isn’t necessarily a bad thing for users, if a manufacturer can offer a flagship that’s priced similar to or even lower than a comparable iPhone, it’s more likely to be a The advantage of excluding the price factor.
