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[Q] [about to buy] Questions about ram

Im about to buy an unlocked phone @ amazon, im between the super hardware of the atrix with better front camera and led notifications, and the freedom of the nexus s.
The only thing that really keeps me thinking, its the amount of ram of each phone. Right now i have a Moto Milestone, just 256mb of ram, very annoying and limiting,i dont want that in the near future, so what do you think about this? Are the 512mb of ram plenty enough? Im used to keep just a few apps opened with the milestone, but im paying to improve, so i dont want to do a mistake and i want to hear opinions from actual users of the phone.
How good is the battery? Will it last 18hs?
Thanks a lot.

Hi,
my battery is at the end of the day at 30 - 70 %, depending on the usage of the day.
But I find the RAM really limiting. I use it some times for geocaching and displaying maps using Locus. This is a rather RAM consuming use pattern so I think that the 512 MB RAM (which aren't used completely by the way, because a part of it is used for the GPU) isn't enough.
I really like the freedom of chose for ROMs for the Nexus S but I personally would buy it at this time but go for a more advanced phone with more RAM and Dual-Core CPU.

development for the nexus s is crazy! so I dont think you can go wrong. battery depends on you but with the right setup I think you can easily get 18 hours from your phone. I have never had an issue with running out of ram but thats just my opinion.

..

I get 335mb useable ram with CNA 1.4 with T11 Trinity kernal. Amount may differ depending on kernal/rom combinations.
Sent from my Nexus S using xda premium

Yes 512mb ram will be enough
Battery life is also not bad
I'm personally an ex milestone owner as well
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Great phone all rounder.

The thing is, for the same price, i have the Atrix with 1gb of ram and a dual core tegra, but i dont know if the development is active, or good. And by good i mean that its possible to do things with the phone, no blocked things and so.
I would want a fully functional (i could skip fingerprint reader, webtop and hdmi) Rom, with no known issues, like camera not working or so.
And at the same time, i want a future proof hardware, i dont want to be where i am with my milestone right now with poor ram or processor.

Did you check the section here in XDA what ROMs are available?
I really like the development and the freedom of choice with the Nexus S, that was the reason to buy this phone for me last year. The new galaxy nexus is a little to big I think.
EDIT: I forgot to put the phone in the charger yesterday evening and got 32% this morning after about 23 hours.

I don't know the Atrix's capabilities first hand, but the specs say it is much better than the Nexus S hardware-wise. But nothing comes close to the freedom of choice and development that goes on for the Nexus line.
The 384MB available is a good number, but not a great one. This phone would be far better with 768MB overall, with 512 solely for the system. Is it a problem with regular use? Definitely not, and with custom kernels and roms performance doesn't really suffer at all except in performance heavy games.
It is still a single core though, albeit probably the best single core phone out there. Battery is not great, but it is what should be expected from a 4" touch phone. You'll likely get around 4 hours of screen time in a day with some battery to spare, though this also depends on how tightly knit you keep the system. It's generally no worse than any other android out there without some huge battery.
Have a look at the Atrix ROMs and features. In the end it's your choice, but i'd be looking at it with a freedom or power perspective. Which one means more to you?

Why do people always compare phones with the chipset and RAM?? The nexus S has a vastly superior display which is really important thing for smartphone experience.
And nexus S has much better still picture camera as well. Every chipset will ultimately be outdated but a beautiful screen and camera will always be good features.

[Q] Is it odd I'm considering a lower spec'd and resolution phone?

So I got a Droid DNA the other day because I got it for a good price ($300) and the specs are rockin, however, I'm not quite falling in love like I thought I would. I was highly considering a LG Optimus Vu P895 before this phone and seriously considering returning/selling this DNA and going with the Vu like I had originally planned.
Problem is that I'll be going from a S4 Pro and 1080p screen to a Tegra 3 and 1024x768 screen. The plus sides to the Vu though are double the storage space (16GB vs. 32GB - neither phone has expandable storage and I love having music and shows with me) and the 4:3 screen really makes for a nice e-reader and web browsing experience. Plus, despite it's hate, I like having the option of using Flash in the browser on the ICS ROM that the Vu comes with.
See, thing is that I had a Galaxy Note 1 before the DNA and really like the whole "phablet" thing though I have no desire to go back to it's (now) slow dual-core and think that while the Tegra 3 is showing it's age, it's still a nice CPU/GPU for gaming and what not. Granted, the DNA has a nice 5 inch screen...but it doesn't feel big...definitely not a phablet.
So is it crazy I'm considering downgrading from the DNA to the Vu? DNA is a nice phone, don't get me wrong...I'm just not as blown away as I thought I'd be and really just feel sort of "meh" about it.
Thoughts?

The Tegra 3 is a no-go. The apps are not optimized for this chip and it also tends to overheat badly. S4 Pro is a newer architecture and is a lot better than Tegra 3.
Sent from my GT-S7500 using xda app-developers app

Frustrated with screen sizes on premium phones, back to Apple...

Hi xda,
I have small hands. I have largish hands for a female, but still too small to reach the upper left corner of my Nexus 4's screen when using it with one hand. Very annoying, since many important controls reside there; I often end up dropping the phone if I try to reach them.
It annoys me greatly that there are no Android devices with high-end specs that have a screen smaller than 4.3" All I want is a phone with Nexus 4 specs, in the body of, say, the Galaxy minis. But all I see is smaller screens with crippled hardware. The HTC One mini comes close, with 2GB of RAM (in my opinion, the needed amount for snappy performance in 4.2), but it's months dow the road with too many ifs, and I tire of waiting. I see many phones outside the US that fit my needs, but I don't see importing as a viable option, since rom support would be questionable.
As much as I dislike Apple's ecosystem, I'm about to switch back, since the iPhone is the only option that meets my needs. I recognize that the iPhone 5 has hardware commensurate to a much weaker phone on the Android side, but iOS, in my experience, is a bit less demanding. I would rather stick with Android, but handset makers do not cater to me

I'm female too, and my hands are relatively small (glove size 6/S). Yet I'm actually intending to buy a bigger phone: the 5.99" Note 3, because I find my SGS3 not big enough.
I don't know what you're doing wrong, but I can easily reach the top left corner of my screen with one hand. No, not if I keep my pinky around the phone, but if I slide it a bit, I can reach past the screen. And it's never in danger of falling out of my hand during the process.
The reason smaller phones have lesser hardware is because they don't require high-end specs: there's no point in having a 1080p screen in 4". And if your resolution is low, your hardware doesn't need to work as hard. So they put in lower-end hardware. What's the point of having and paying for high end hardware if it's never going to be used by the phone itself?

Bigger phones bigger ****
Sent from my HTC Explorer using xda app-developers app

Lol a girl in my school used to have a galaxy note 2 she had it around a few months and got rid of it... I guess she didn't like it. P.S if you're gonna drop your phone don't do it while you are lay down because it really hurts getting hit in the face with a big chunk of metal/plastic
Sent from my RAZR I XT890 using XDA premium

ShadowLea said:
The reason smaller phones have lesser hardware is because they don't require high-end specs: there's no point in having a 1080p screen in 4". And if your resolution is low, your hardware doesn't need to work as hard. So they put in lower-end hardware. What's the point of having and paying for high end hardware if it's never going to be used by the phone itself?
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I do not entirely agree. While true, a smaller screen is less demanding, the difference between a browser on 1GB of memory vs. 2GB is huge. My Galaxy Nexus before my Nexus 4 was much slower at rendering pages. I had a TF700t as well, and 1GB of memory did not sustain a comfortable experience and there was considerable lag launching and using applications.

Pfhortune said:
I do not entirely agree. While true, a smaller screen is less demanding, the difference between a browser on 1GB of memory vs. 2GB is huge. My Galaxy Nexus before my Nexus 4 was much slower at rendering pages.
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My guess is that the amount of RAM has nothing to do with page rendering, it helps with multitasking, the difference in page rendering you see is due to the raw CPU power the Nexus 4 has over the G.Nexus, not the amount of RAM, may i remind you the Nexus 4 has a S4 Pro with 4 cores @ 1.5 GHz while the G.Nexus is a TI OMAP dual core @ 1.2 GHz, not to mention the Krait cores on the S4 Pro have better performance than the A9 cores on the TI OMAP.

vcrp94 said:
My guess is that the amount of RAM has nothing to do with page rendering, it helps with multitasking, the difference in page rendering you see is due to the raw CPU power the Nexus 4 has over the G.Nexus, not the amount of RAM, may i remind you the Nexus 4 has a S4 Pro with 4 cores @ 1.5 GHz while the G.Nexus is a TI OMAP dual core @ 1.2 GHz, not to mention the Krait cores on the S4 Pro have better performance than the A9 cores on the TI OMAP.
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Ah, yeah, I realized my bad choice of words after posting, but couldn't edit for five minutes so went to do other things.
I completely get that the Nexus 4 has a better CPU. Bad example on my part.
Perhaps better though, is when I got my TF700t. That and the Nexus 4 have *somewhat* comparable CPUs, at least in terms of Ghz/Cores, correct me if I'm wrong. However, the Transformer was painful to use due to having half the RAM. Opening Chrome became a frustrating waiting game. The Galaxy Note 8 that I had for a short time, however, was much snappier. There was much less waiting for pages to become responsive.

What are the important things which reside in the upper left corner?? hmm.. never gave it a thought- pls tell!!

Pfhortune said:
Ah, yeah, I realized my bad choice of words after posting, but couldn't edit for five minutes so went to do other things.
I completely get that the Nexus 4 has a better CPU. Bad example on my part.
Perhaps better though, is when I got my TF700t. That and the Nexus 4 have *somewhat* comparable CPUs, at least in terms of Ghz/Cores, correct me if I'm wrong. However, the Transformer was painful to use due to having half the RAM. Opening Chrome became a frustrating waiting game. The Galaxy Note 8 that I had for a short time, however, was much snappier. There was much less waiting for pages to become responsive.
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Have you bothered to read even one page in the TF700 forum? Because we've made it abundantly clear that the amount of RAM is not the issue: The I/O issue is what's responsible for the lag. Flash a different ROM (Cromi-x) and the Tab is the fastest on the market.
Also, and I am getting quite tired of saying this time and time again: The Nexus 4 is 1280x768, the TF700 is 1920x1200. That's almost twice as many pixels it has to push, on a screen almost three times as big. Do the math. The N4 is pretty much a Vehron in an urban 30kph zone. Way too much power it's never going to need.

And also a small point regarding the comparison between the tf700t and the nexus 4. The nexus 4 has the s4 pro, which far and away destroys the tegra 3 because of the superior architecture. Just because both are quad core does not mean you can expect similar performance.
Sent from my HTC Sensation using Tapatalk 4 Beta

One Mini vs Nexus 4

Hi,
I know that such comparison may seem a little odd but after 3 solid years using iPod Touch as smartphone replacement I'm finally buying something new and I end up narrowing my choice to those two.
I would like to get some opinion/advice from actual users of One Mini as my sister has Nexus 4 and I played with it a little bit.
Basically it seems like Nexus 4 is just better but I'm still hestitating.
Pro Nexus 4:
- it's cheaper (I can get Nexus 4 unlocked in Poland for ~380 USD and One Mini for 470USD)
- way more powerful
- twice as much ram - I guess it's possibly a deal breaker - Is 1GB real problem in everyday use (e.g. multitasking Maps, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter and Instapaper)?
- stock android and updates! (I guess last update for HTC One Mini will be Android 4.4)
Pro One Mini:
- it's smaller! 4,7 is nice but I still find it a little bit too much for me.
- it's just beautiful
- aluminium better than glass
- Probably better battery life because Nexus 4 is apparently awful. Am I right?
- Probably better audio. I'm particularly interested in headphones jack audio quality as my iPod Touch was really good.
- LTE (though I guess I won't be using that much)
+ Is there something there I've omitted what would justify buying less powerful, ram lacking smartphone for almost $100 more?

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of battery life in a smartphone, especially if I understand you correctly that you haven't actually been using a smartphone for 3 years? An Ipod Touch has no cellular network connection so a smartphone's battery life isn't going to be comparable.
While pretty much all smartphones have decent battery life these days to get you through a day of light to medium usage, the Nexus 4 is definitely on the low side.
1GB RAM is fine for a smartphone. For comparison a 3 year old Ipod Touch has 256MB. The iphone 5s, faster than pretty much any other smartphone, has 1GB.
That said, your point about the Nexus getting Android updates for longer is a valid one.

MercuryStar said:
I wouldn't underestimate the importance of battery life in a smartphone, especially if I understand you correctly that you haven't actually been using a smartphone for 3 years? *An Ipod Touch has no cellular network connection so a smartphone's battery life isn't going to be comparable.
While pretty much all smartphones have decent battery life these days to get you through a day of light to medium usage, the Nexus 4 is definitely on the low side.
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I'm actually kind od hardcore iPod Touch user. I use iBluever (cydia tweak) to connect to the Internet via cellphone and after three years battery life is awful when you take into account that bluetooth is supposed to be energy efficient. It's 11.55 AM up here, battery was full at 8.45AM, I used Spotify offline for half an hour and browsed for another half an hour. Battery is now 55%. When it comes to battery life I just want to have device which will survive my workday (12-14 hrs outside home).
MercuryStar said:
1GB RAM is fine for a smartphone. *For comparison a 3 year old Ipod Touch has 256MB. *The iphone 5s, faster than pretty much any other smartphone, has 1GB.
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I know, but isn't that true that Android needs more memory than iOS to be really fast in everyday use?*
Thank you for your answer!

I know, but isn't that true that Android needs more memory than iOS to be really fast in everyday use?*
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People say a lot of things about memory use and Android that aren't true or are half-truths. What I do know is that the One Mini is not laggy or slow by any means.
I get annoyed by people who write reviews that tend to judge a phone's responsiveness by the most shallow means: simply by swiping between home screens or bringing up the app tray. Then they compare this on a Galaxy S4 with an older Samsung phone with 1GB and conclude that the Galaxy S4 is faster because of its 2GB RAM. So many things wrong with this! Firstly, no matter how much you swipe between home screens and bring up the app drawer you're still within the same app - you're not testing the OS, you're only testing the home screen app! And three's no way that home screen app uses over 1GB RAM - probably more like 50-100MB at most. To really have a test that taxes memory you'd need to switch between several *different*, memory-hungry apps (like a browser with many tabs open, a heavy game, etc) rapidly. Secondly, the comparison is always between newer, faster processors with 2GB RAM and older, slower processors with 1GB RAM. The obvious answer to why the newer one is faster is that the processor is significantly faster, not the RAM since the home screen app won't be taxing that much RAM anyway. And thirdly, very few reviewers look at mid-range phones like the HTC One Mini - but even with 1GB RAM it is arguably more responsive swiping between the home screens and bringing up the app tray even than the full-size Galaxy S4 with 2GB RAM. How can you observe this and still conclude that the RAM is the defining factor in performance? If reviewers looked at lower-spec "modern" (ie, not with a 2-year-old processor) Android phones with 1GB RAM they'd see similarly that 1GB RAM is fine and that the reason that flagships were slower back when they had 1GB RAM is not because of their lower RAM but because they were slower, older phones.

MercuryStar said:
People say a lot of things about memory use and Android that aren't true or are half-truths. What I do know is that the One Mini is not laggy or slow by any means.
I get annoyed by people who write reviews that tend to judge a phone's responsiveness by the most shallow means: simply by swiping between home screens or bringing up the app tray. Then they compare this on a Galaxy S4 with an older Samsung phone with 1GB and conclude that the Galaxy S4 is faster because of its 2GB RAM. So many things wrong with this! Firstly, no matter how much you swipe between home screens and bring up the app drawer you're still within the same app - you're not testing the OS, you're only testing the home screen app! And three's no way that home screen app uses over 1GB RAM - probably more like 50-100MB at most. To really have a test that taxes memory you'd need to switch between several *different*, memory-hungry apps (like a browser with many tabs open, a heavy game, etc) rapidly. Secondly, the comparison is always between newer, faster processors with 2GB RAM and older, slower processors with 1GB RAM. The obvious answer to why the newer one is faster is that the processor is significantly faster, not the RAM since the home screen app won't be taxing that much RAM anyway. And thirdly, very few reviewers look at mid-range phones like the HTC One Mini - but even with 1GB RAM it is arguably more responsive swiping between the home screens and bringing up the app tray even than the full-size Galaxy S4 with 2GB RAM. How can you observe this and still conclude that the RAM is the defining factor in performance? If reviewers looked at lower-spec "modern" (ie, not with a 2-year-old processor) Android phones with 1GB RAM they'd see similarly that 1GB RAM is fine and that the reason that flagships were slower back when they had 1GB RAM is not because of their lower RAM but because they were slower, older phones.
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It's defiantly a very snappy phone, but when I have several heavy apps open the apps it starts to lag at times, but closing an app solves the problem so it isn't a big deal. I think it's the memory that's responsible for it. Quad core phones are usually running with two cores disabled to save power, but they can multitask better because almost all of them have 2GB of memory to work with. I always run my phone under-clocked to 1.134 GHz to save battery and everything is always butter smooth until I have lots of heavy apps open. The UI is always snappy, if an app is lagging and I open the notification menu it opens smooth as butter and if I press the home button it goes to the home screen instantaneously so I don't think it's the processor that slows the phone down.

Ecstacy42 said:
It's defiantly a very snappy phone, but when I have several heavy apps open the apps it starts to lag at times, but closing an app solves the problem so it isn't a big deal. I think it's the memory that's responsible for it.
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Android's memory management is such that the memory used by any app not currently in the foreground is expendable and can be purged when the memory is needed for something else. This applies to pretty much every app except those that have specifically requested to run in the background - for example, part of a music player app.
If you run, say, 9 memory-hungry apps one after the other, then probably by the time you run the 4th or 5th the operating system is probably going to start purging the memory that was held by the first ones you had open, to reclaim memory so it doesn't run out of free memory or cache. When it does this, the apps that are purged are given the opportunity to save their state to disk so if they are switched back to, you get the illusion that they never closed. Not all apps do this particularly well.
Note that the list of recent apps in the app-switching menu that you get to by pressing the app switching button/double tab on home on Android phones does not necessarily mean that these apps are still all resident in memory. Some may have already had their memory purged by the OS, saving their state to disk. Swiping these away does purge them manually if they haven't been purged already.
Individual apps may be quick or slow to save their state to disk or may misbehave in this area. This is something that can happen whether you have 1GB or 8GB RAM but is of course going to happen more often if you have 1GB. App misbehaviour when switching to/from an app or when the app is requested to close or suspend is probably going to be the biggest cause of lag when task switching for most people. The home screen app on the Sense 5 devices definitely is very snappy and doesn't seem to cause any noticeable slowdowns. I don't know if HTC has pegged the home screen app to be always-resident though I suspect not; it's probably just quite well-behaved.
I always run my phone under-clocked to 1.134 GHz to save battery and everything is always butter smooth
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This is a testament to the awesome processing power of these Snapdragon Krait CPUs. Another thing to note is that the power management baked into them probably means they would rarely go over 1GHz anyway during normal use, so if you limit their max CPU speed to 1.1GHz like you did, it will only make a difference during high CPU load situations, not normal use or even I/O heavy use (such as network or disk communication).

How the 2GB RAM version behaves on PKMN GO?

I have the 1gb RAM version I've been thinking, for some months ago to purchase the 2GB version, because of the extra gb on the ram. Although I want to know if it has any notable lag on Pokemon Go, bc the 1GB has, thx

Uninterrupted said:
I have the 1gb RAM version I've been thinking, for some months ago to purchase the 2GB version, because of the extra gb on the ram. Although I want to know if it has any notable lag on Pokemon Go, bc the 1GB has, thx
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Yes, there is still noticeable lag... at least compared to phones like the S7 or HTC 10, this is due to the low-end graphics processor and low powered CPU of the Snapdragon 410 more than RAM though.
Honestly, I would just get a Moto G 4th gen at this point, the price point is nearly the same and you get a faster processor with more cores, 2GB RAM, a far superior graphics processor, full HD, 16 or 32 GB of storage, and a gyroscope.

acejavelin said:
Yes, there is still noticeable lag... at least compared to phones like the S7 or HTC 10, this is due to the low-end graphics processor and low powered CPU of the Snapdragon 410 more than RAM though.
Honestly, I would just get a Moto G 4th gen at this point, the price point is nearly the same and you get a faster processor with more cores, 2GB RAM, a far superior graphics processor, full HD, 16 or 32 GB of storage, and a gyroscope.
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I don't mind not having the giroscope. Only if it's gonna be more fluid (or notable more) than the 1gb version

Uninterrupted said:
I don't mind not having the giroscope. Only if it's gonna be more fluid (or notable more) than the 1gb version
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The game does not play differently or more smoothly between the 1GB and 2GB version of the G 3rd Gen in my experience. I do not have the 1GB version, but my friend who plays does, and the extreme lag when scrolling through Pokemon lists or after you open one and swipe side to side or try to scroll down, is equally evident on both devices... If you are going to get a new device, I would still recommend getting a 4th Gen model.

acejavelin said:
The game does not play differently or more smoothly between the 1GB and 2GB version of the G 3rd Gen in my experience. I do not have the 1GB version, but my friend who plays does, and the extreme lag when scrolling through Pokemon lists or after you open one and swipe side to side or try to scroll down, is equally evident on both devices... If you are going to get a new device, I would still recommend getting a 4th Gen model.
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Thank you, I think I'm staying with the 1gb version :good::good: