3 gigs of RAM

[jaj324]

Now that Google is reducing the footprint of the Android OS is there any need for devices with 3 gigs of RAM? I don't think so. What do you think?

 

[UJ95x]

Now that Google is reducing the footprint of the Android OS is there any need for devices with 3 gigs of RAM? I don't think so. What do you think?

If they're going to be making the processors 64-bit they might need that much. Either way, they aren't going to reduce the RAM because they use it for marketing

 

[patruns]

If they're going to be making the processors 64-bit they might need that much. Either way, they aren't going to reduce the RAM because they use it for marketing

32-bit processors already support 3GBs of RAM. As to the marketing statement.... huh?

Seriously, there seems to be some clear misconceptions of Google's statement that Kit Kat will run on less powerful devices. Yes, it will.... but it will also make the most use of more memory. If you have less than 1GB of memory Kit Kat will use less. If you have more Kit Mat will run additional services to make the most of it. The intention is to allow cheaper devices to still be able to come with Kit Kat and avoid all the "fragmentation" of Android.

 

[UJ95x]

32-bit processors already support 3GBs of RAM. As to the marketing statement.... huh?

Seriously, there seems to be some clear misconceptions of Google's statement that Kit Kat will run on less powerful devices. Yes, it will.... but it will also make the most use of more memory. If you have less than 1GB of memory Kit Kat will use less. If you have more Kit Mat will run additional services to make the most of it. The intention is to allow cheaper devices to still be able to come with Kit Kat and avoid all the "fragmentation" of Android.

I didn't mean it in the sense that they advertise it to the public but a lot of the people who care about specs look at stuff like RAM when buying a phone. Regardless of whether or not it is needed.
I know that 32-bit phones support 3 GB of RAM but when they do go to 64-bit they'll need more

Posted via Android Central App

 

[someguy01234]

Goofy tech sites and YouTube tech channels going on a rave about this. You can use more than 4GB of ram on a 32bit system with the kernel running PAE (physical address extension).

For now KitKat is really efficient, so more than 2GB is not needed, but technology is moving fast so more is always better.

But 4GB of ram is not going to prevent TouchWiz from lagging.

 

[iN8ter]

Kit Kat achieves its ability to run on less specs by nerfing the capabilities of the OS. This is no different than Apple removing or toning down features in iOS so that it runs decently on older models...

It removes transitions, doesn't run certain processes, etc. to lower the OS' footprint.

The OS achieves efficiency by nerfing itself when it senses specs are lower.

This is incomparable to something like Windows Phone which can run the full OS, full bore, on low specs with literally no performance implications... Microsoft didn't need a Project Svelte to manage its OS' resource consumption to make sure it runs on those devices. It just runs well because it was well designed from day one, and their decision to use older hardware for first generation Windows Phone devices really helped them manage their resource consumption, since they couldn't count on the hardware taking up so much slack for them the way Android could at that point when hardware specs were increasing at a massive pace (they used 1GHz S2 SoCs and some devices like the DVP only had 256 MB RAM, yet ran without any performance issues).

It's surprising that Google waited this long to make the OS run better on lower end devices. They should have been doing this (with focus) at every major OS revision, no?

 

[jerrod6]

I wonder if the OS and apps automatically will run with less ram or if developers have to take advantage of improved APIs and techniques that Google has provided in the Software Developers Kit.

Reason I am wondering is that I either looked at a video or read something from the Google developers G+ or someplace, that was giving developers suggestions on how their apps could run in less memory space. Seems like the developers must take advantage of specific things and include them in their apps for them to perform well with less resources.

So if a phone has less ram the developer would have to have a version of their app that would be able to run in less ram or during any install certain things must be eliminated from the app so that it will run on a system with less memory. It just seemed like it was not automatic and that action would have to be taken at the developers end to have the app be able to run with less resources.

I may be way off with this idea but that was the suggestion I thought I read.

As mentioned before this is what happens with IOS. You have all these phones running IOS7 but not all of them have the same functionality. So they are at the same level but not actually the same. This works well if you want the press and the public to think that there is no fragmentation in your system, but from a user functionality perspective if you are have an iphone 3G you ain't running the IOS 7 an iphone 4 or a 5S is.

 

[alishast]

32-bit processors already support 3GBs of RAM. As to the marketing statement.... huh?

Seriously, there seems to be some clear misconceptions of Google's statement that Kit Kat will run on less powerful devices. Yes, it will.... but it will also make the most use of more memory. If you have less than 1GB of memory Kit Kat will use less. If you have more Kit Mat will run additional services to make the most of it. The intention is to allow cheaper devices to still be able to come with Kit Kat and avoid all the "fragmentation" of Android.

True same thing happened with my Windows 8 PC , I had 4 GB RAM and Core-2-duo processor i thought Win8 is great as it was running smoothly then i had to remove 2 GB RAM and now i can't even open multiple tabs on firefox. Same thing will happen with Kitkat and Low memory.