13 ms·

Only one gig of RAM and base storage still at 16 gigs really annoys me. I may end up with a Moto X and wait for the 6s.

downandout 12y ago
While I will buy a 6 for development purposes, I too was disappointed to find out that RAM is staying at 1GB. It's nearly 2015. More RAM does affect battery life, but still...they could have struck a balance here with 2GB.
- davidiach 12y ago
  For what do you need the additional 1GB of RAM on your iPhone?
  - pradn 12y ago
    So you can keep more apps in memory without having the OS put them to sleep.
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    So Safari stops running out of memory and crashing. (I assume that's at least part of the problem. It's much worse with 64-bit than it was with 32-bit.)
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    So I can keep 2 websites in RAM at the same time instead of it reloading when I switch between them. Apple fixing Safari's bad behavior and letting it sleep its state to flash would work too, but 6 iOS versions later it looks like they're incapable of that.
- eridius 12y ago
  Exactly how much does it affect battery life? I wouldn't be at all surprised if the answer is "a lot". I'm sure engineers at Apple would love to be able to provide 2GB of RAM (after all, they're using this device too!), but the fact that they're not either means it is cost-prohibitive (unlikely) or has an unacceptable impact on battery.
  - downandout 12y ago
    Samsung has managed to do it and still maintains (arguably) reasonable battery life. I like Apple products in general, but the whole overpriced/underpowered thing gets a little old.
    - eridius 12y ago
      > I like Apple products in general, but the whole overpriced/underpowered thing gets a little old. Funny, I'd say the same thing about the people who've been repeating the "overpriced/underpowered" trope ever since it stopped being true over a decade ago.
      - downandout 12y ago
        So you're OK with Safari crashing and other issues due to lack of RAM?
        eridius 12y ago
        I don't know what you're doing, but I can't recall the last time I ever had Safari crash on me on iOS.
        zephjc 12y ago
        I still have an iPhone 4 and don't have Safari crashing issues.
  - eridius 12y ago
    I asked someone I know about this and they confirmed that a RAM upgrade would have a significant effect on battery life. Can't provide any citations of course. They also pointed out that iOS already artificially limits the amount of RAM a single process can use, so adding RAM wouldn't even really do anything besides make it take longer for background apps to be evicted.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
ripter 12y ago
Honest question, what do you use the space for? I used to use mine for music, but now I use Pandora and Spotify.
- sniuff 12y ago
  Spotify offline on high quality eats through space like a hot knife + taking lots of photos / video + 1/2 games each 1-2 gigs
  - currysausage 12y ago
    Also: offline navigation.
- dghughes 12y ago
  And also not everyone lives in the US so no Pandora or Spotify.
  - crwll 12y ago
    Spotify is available in most of Europe and South America too. In fact US got it pretty late.
- was_hellbanned 12y ago
  Not GP, but my Nexus 4 is perpetually at its limit, filled with podcasts and a small selection of my music. I spend a lot of time in areas with a very poor signal, so streaming isn't useful to me. Personally, I want a MicroSD slot because that way we both win.
- cc439 12y ago
  Photos and videos chug through space, most of my iPhone-owning friends have to resort to deletion of old photos at inopportune moments when they're trying to take a new one. I know that it's easy to push old media off onto a computer but it seems that most people never sync their iPhones to their hard drive. It is pretty silly but also annoying as the iPhone has a strong following due to its "it just works" design. Girls in particular love it for the camera but 16gb just isn't enough space to get my SO and her friends past a few months of photo-frenzy.
sniuff 12y ago
What would be the difference if base model was 32 gigs and priced at 200$ ?
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> Only one gig of RAM Why does this matter? Apps run great as is. If the phone was slow I could understand but it isn't. >> base storage still at 16 gigs really annoys me. They pay a little extra for the larger models... It would have been nice to have a 32gb base model and it's a little strange they didn't do it but it's not like they don't offer larger storage versions.
- ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
  The extra ram is a great way to future proof the device, for starters. I remember how shitty the 4th gen iPod Touch ran with only 256.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    True but considering iOS 8 works right back to the 4S I wouldn't be too worried. Plus most people are on two year contracts and upgrade after that.
    - ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
      I'd have to really wonder how well it runs on the 4S. People have gotten burned in the past, downloading the latest iOS for their phones that Apple advertised as technically being able to be updated, but really didn't work out well in practice. IIRC the iOS3->iOS4 upgrade was like that.
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    Not increasing the RAM is like retroactively future proofing previous devices. As noted, updates (OS and apps) degrade quickly on devices with less memory once newer devices that have more come out. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a 2GB device, but I have little doubt that 1GB devices would be rendered half useless by memory hungry updates within six months if that were the case. Software abhors a vacuum.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  > Why does this matter? Apps run great as is. Safari doesn't play well at all with multitasking. I have to cross my fingers whenever I want to copy something into a form from another app because chances are the page will reload when I come back to Safari since it ran out of RAM. I also often get into the situation where I can't even tab between just 2 pages since Safari runs out of RAM and reloads each page. Apple fixing Safari's bad behavior and letting it sleep its state to flash would work too, but 6 iOS versions later it looks like they're incapable of that.
mikeash 12y ago
Where did you find out about 1GB of RAM?
kalleboo 12y ago
What's your source for 1 GB of RAM?
ssmoot 12y ago
I had a Moto X. If you're a current iPhone user, and haven't been a dedicated Android user, my advice would be don't. You'll regret it. "Active Notifications" are in all ways inferior to Apple's Notifications, and that's about the only thing the Moto X has going for it over a Nexus 5 besides being a bit smaller/lighter and having better battery life. RAM matters a lot more on an Android, and even with more cores, running faster, with more RAM, it will be objectively slower at most things than an iPhone 5C (and that much slower than an iPhone 6 I'm sure). Plus actually using it will eat through battery quicker (it wasn't a 36-hour device for me like the iPhone 5C was, despite similar usage) and (this one surprised me) eats more data. Not to mention if you have kids, the lack of iMessage and the inability to forward an HD video over to your spouse of the kids is almost a deal-breaker all by itself. Anecdotal, my 2c, etc. But I owned a Nexus One, every iPhone except the 3GS and 5S, a Samsung Galaxy S2, Moto X, Palm Pre, Palm Veer (loved that little guy, just too buggy) and most recently an LG G2. Discounting Apple on the basis of hardware and perceived performance would be a big mistake IMO. They're head and shoulders above everything else on those counts IME, and age so much better. I got so tired of the quirky G2 (I swear there was a 1 in 3 chance that just unlocking the phone would launch the Alarms app for no reason, and that forced Menu button... GRRRR) I swapped my SIM into an old iPhone 4S I had lying around yesterday. It's not quite as snappy. But it's not half bad either. From a perceived performance perspective (say that three times fast!), the G2, a flag-ship Android phone released only 12 months ago, is slower in every way than an iPhone 5, a phone twice it's age (and yup, the G2 has 2GB of RAM, the iPhone 5 had 1GB). If you prefer Android more power to ya. But if you're a long time iPhone user... Maybe I'll convince you to save some heart-ache (and $$$). ;-)
- ascendantlogic 12y ago
  There's a new Moto X about to come out and The Verge reviewed it, calling it "The best Android smartphone ever made".
  - ssmoot 12y ago
    IME that could very well be true and still make direct hardware comparisons an apples to oranges issue. Among Android devices I did like the Moto X the best...

While I will buy a 6 for development purposes, I too was disappointed to find out that RAM is staying at 1GB. It's nearly 2015. More RAM does affect battery life, but still...they could have struck a balance here with 2GB.

davidiach 12y ago
For what do you need the additional 1GB of RAM on your iPhone?
- pradn 12y ago
  So you can keep more apps in memory without having the OS put them to sleep.
- tedunangst 12y ago
  So Safari stops running out of memory and crashing. (I assume that's at least part of the problem. It's much worse with 64-bit than it was with 32-bit.)
- kalleboo 12y ago
  So I can keep 2 websites in RAM at the same time instead of it reloading when I switch between them. Apple fixing Safari's bad behavior and letting it sleep its state to flash would work too, but 6 iOS versions later it looks like they're incapable of that.
eridius 12y ago
Exactly how much does it affect battery life? I wouldn't be at all surprised if the answer is "a lot". I'm sure engineers at Apple would love to be able to provide 2GB of RAM (after all, they're using this device too!), but the fact that they're not either means it is cost-prohibitive (unlikely) or has an unacceptable impact on battery.
- downandout 12y ago
  Samsung has managed to do it and still maintains (arguably) reasonable battery life. I like Apple products in general, but the whole overpriced/underpowered thing gets a little old.
  - eridius 12y ago
    > I like Apple products in general, but the whole overpriced/underpowered thing gets a little old. Funny, I'd say the same thing about the people who've been repeating the "overpriced/underpowered" trope ever since it stopped being true over a decade ago.
    - downandout 12y ago
      So you're OK with Safari crashing and other issues due to lack of RAM?
      - eridius 12y ago
        I don't know what you're doing, but I can't recall the last time I ever had Safari crash on me on iOS.
      - zephjc 12y ago
        I still have an iPhone 4 and don't have Safari crashing issues.
- eridius 12y ago
  I asked someone I know about this and they confirmed that a RAM upgrade would have a significant effect on battery life. Can't provide any citations of course. They also pointed out that iOS already artificially limits the amount of RAM a single process can use, so adding RAM wouldn't even really do anything besides make it take longer for background apps to be evicted.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

ripter 12y ago

Honest question, what do you use the space for? I used to use mine for music, but now I use Pandora and Spotify.

sniuff 12y ago
Spotify offline on high quality eats through space like a hot knife + taking lots of photos / video + 1/2 games each 1-2 gigs
- currysausage 12y ago
  Also: offline navigation.
dghughes 12y ago
And also not everyone lives in the US so no Pandora or Spotify.
- crwll 12y ago
  Spotify is available in most of Europe and South America too. In fact US got it pretty late.
was_hellbanned 12y ago
Not GP, but my Nexus 4 is perpetually at its limit, filled with podcasts and a small selection of my music. I spend a lot of time in areas with a very poor signal, so streaming isn't useful to me. Personally, I want a MicroSD slot because that way we both win.
cc439 12y ago
Photos and videos chug through space, most of my iPhone-owning friends have to resort to deletion of old photos at inopportune moments when they're trying to take a new one. I know that it's easy to push old media off onto a computer but it seems that most people never sync their iPhones to their hard drive. It is pretty silly but also annoying as the iPhone has a strong following due to its "it just works" design. Girls in particular love it for the camera but 16gb just isn't enough space to get my SO and her friends past a few months of photo-frenzy.

sniuff 12y ago

What would be the difference if base model was 32 gigs and priced at 200$ ?

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> Only one gig of RAM Why does this matter? Apps run great as is. If the phone was slow I could understand but it isn't. >> base storage still at 16 gigs really annoys me. They pay a little extra for the larger models... It would have been nice to have a 32gb base model and it's a little strange they didn't do it but it's not like they don't offer larger storage versions.

ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
The extra ram is a great way to future proof the device, for starters. I remember how shitty the 4th gen iPod Touch ran with only 256.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  True but considering iOS 8 works right back to the 4S I wouldn't be too worried. Plus most people are on two year contracts and upgrade after that.
  - ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
    I'd have to really wonder how well it runs on the 4S. People have gotten burned in the past, downloading the latest iOS for their phones that Apple advertised as technically being able to be updated, but really didn't work out well in practice. IIRC the iOS3->iOS4 upgrade was like that.
- tedunangst 12y ago
  Not increasing the RAM is like retroactively future proofing previous devices. As noted, updates (OS and apps) degrade quickly on devices with less memory once newer devices that have more come out. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a 2GB device, but I have little doubt that 1GB devices would be rendered half useless by memory hungry updates within six months if that were the case. Software abhors a vacuum.
kalleboo 12y ago
> Why does this matter? Apps run great as is. Safari doesn't play well at all with multitasking. I have to cross my fingers whenever I want to copy something into a form from another app because chances are the page will reload when I come back to Safari since it ran out of RAM. I also often get into the situation where I can't even tab between just 2 pages since Safari runs out of RAM and reloads each page. Apple fixing Safari's bad behavior and letting it sleep its state to flash would work too, but 6 iOS versions later it looks like they're incapable of that.

mikeash 12y ago

Where did you find out about 1GB of RAM?

kalleboo 12y ago

What's your source for 1 GB of RAM?

ssmoot 12y ago

I had a Moto X. If you're a current iPhone user, and haven't been a dedicated Android user, my advice would be don't. You'll regret it. "Active Notifications" are in all ways inferior to Apple's Notifications, and that's about the only thing the Moto X has going for it over a Nexus 5 besides being a bit smaller/lighter and having better battery life. RAM matters a lot more on an Android, and even with more cores, running faster, with more RAM, it will be objectively slower at most things than an iPhone 5C (and that much slower than an iPhone 6 I'm sure). Plus actually using it will eat through battery quicker (it wasn't a 36-hour device for me like the iPhone 5C was, despite similar usage) and (this one surprised me) eats more data. Not to mention if you have kids, the lack of iMessage and the inability to forward an HD video over to your spouse of the kids is almost a deal-breaker all by itself. Anecdotal, my 2c, etc. But I owned a Nexus One, every iPhone except the 3GS and 5S, a Samsung Galaxy S2, Moto X, Palm Pre, Palm Veer (loved that little guy, just too buggy) and most recently an LG G2. Discounting Apple on the basis of hardware and perceived performance would be a big mistake IMO. They're head and shoulders above everything else on those counts IME, and age so much better. I got so tired of the quirky G2 (I swear there was a 1 in 3 chance that just unlocking the phone would launch the Alarms app for no reason, and that forced Menu button... GRRRR) I swapped my SIM into an old iPhone 4S I had lying around yesterday. It's not quite as snappy. But it's not half bad either. From a perceived performance perspective (say that three times fast!), the G2, a flag-ship Android phone released only 12 months ago, is slower in every way than an iPhone 5, a phone twice it's age (and yup, the G2 has 2GB of RAM, the iPhone 5 had 1GB). If you prefer Android more power to ya. But if you're a long time iPhone user... Maybe I'll convince you to save some heart-ache (and $$$). ;-)

ascendantlogic 12y ago
There's a new Moto X about to come out and The Verge reviewed it, calling it "The best Android smartphone ever made".
- ssmoot 12y ago
  IME that could very well be true and still make direct hardware comparisons an apples to oranges issue. Among Android devices I did like the Moto X the best...