Over the past decade, the amount of RAM in smartphones has increased dramatically. Today, smartphones are equipped with different amounts of RAM.

 Economical smartphones have 2 GB of RAM, while in flagship phones this amount can even reach 16 GB. This raises the question: how much RAM does a smartphone need?

The short answer to this question is 4 GB. This amount of RAM is enough for web browsing, social networks, video streaming, as well as playing some popular mobile games. While this may be enough for a wide range of users, the amount of RAM required will depend on the applications you use. So how much RAM does a smartphone need?

Why does a smartphone need RAM?

Random Access Memory (RAM) is one of the essential components of a computer. Your desktops, laptops, and other portable gadgets use RAM to temporarily store commonly used information. RAMs may have different designs and architectures, but in any case their performance on different devices is similar.

Amount of RAM usage in Android and iOS

Apart from the applications you use, the operating system of your phone or computer takes up a significant amount of RAM. As you know, there are two popular operating systems in the smartphone market: iOS, which belongs to Apple devices , and Android, which is found in other portable devices.

iOS consumes less RAM than Android . This is also because the iPhone chips are optimally designed to be compatible with Apple products. Today, even an iPhone 6 from 2014 can run the latest version of iOS with just one gigabyte of RAM.

This is while Android is used by many companies. In addition, each company puts its own shell on the operating system. Such a case causes more RAM to be used. For example, the operating system of the latest Samsung Galaxy series phones takes up about 2 to 3 GB of RAM.

How much RAM is enough for a smartphone?

The exact answer to this question will vary from person to person. Some users use their phone for browsing, messaging, calling and video streaming. Such applications do not require much RAM. However, there are users who use their phone to play or edit video. To further help you determine the amount of RAM your phone needs, let’s first take a look at the most common activities performed by smartphones.

• Social networking apps like Facebook and Instagram take up about 100 to 300 MB of RAM (depending on user activity).
• Video browsers and players, such as Google Chrome and YouTube, consume about 500 MB of RAM (depending on the number of tabs opened and the quality of the video viewed).
• In the case of mobile games, this amount depends on the graphic quality as well as whether the game is online or offline. Games like FIFA Soccer on Android can take up about a gigabyte of RAM while running.

Of course, you should keep in mind that to the above values, you must also add the amount of RAM used by the operating system. This way you can better understand why manufacturers make phones with 6, 8 or 12 GB of RAM.

How to determine the amount of RAM used by your phone?

If you want to know how much RAM your phone needs, then you first need to understand how much RAM your phone is currently using. To do this, you must follow these steps:

On Android phones

1. Go to “Settings” and then tap “Device Care” or “Device Maintenance” (depending on your phone model).
2. Touch “Memory”. Here you can see the total amount of RAM on your phone. In addition, the amount of RAM used by running applications and services can be seen here.
3. On some phones, you must enable “Developer Options” before going through the previous two steps. To do this, you must go to “Settings> About”. Scroll down and then touch “Build Number” 7 times. Then if you are asked for a password, then you must enter it as well.

On iPhones

1. On your iPhone home screen , go to “Settings> General”.
2. Then, by touching “iPhone Storage”, you can see the available RAM and the used RAM memory. You can also see a list of apps that use your phone’s RAM here.

Is 8 GB of RAM necessary for a smartphone?

About a decade ago, smartphone RAM was less than a gigabyte. However, today there are flagship phones that, in addition to their other impressive features, also have 16 GB of RAM.

Mid-range smartphones typically have 8GB of RAM. However, you might say to yourself that this amount of RAM is not as necessary as you might think for a smartphone. In any case, the advantage of having more RAM is that your phone can run more applications in that unit, without having to worry about one of them slowing down or having to close one of them.

There are also some heavy games like PUBG and Black Desert Online that require at least 8 GB of RAM to run properly. In short, having 8 GB of RAM is good, but not always necessary. If you do not want to run heavy games or run multiple applications at the same time, then 4 GB of RAM (or maybe less) will suffice.

Is 2 GB of RAM enough for a smartphone?

If you use an older iPhone, then 2 GB of RAM is more than enough to run apps properly. Even Apple’s iOS 14 runs on older iPhones like the iPhone 6S (which has 2GB of RAM).

With Android phones, too, if you want to do more than just surf the web or watch a video, you may experience some problems. You may even experience operating system slowness at times while doing your daily chores.

Last year, Google announced that phones running Android 10 and 11 must have at least 2GB of RAM. If you feel your phone is slowing down while working with regular apps, then you might want to consider buying a phone with more RAM.

More RAM means better performance of your smartphone

The answer to the question of how much RAM a smartphone needs will vary, depending on the individual. Since users have different uses for their phone and also have different priorities in mind, then naturally the amount of RAM required for them can also vary from 2 to 12 GB. In any case, it is better that your phone RAM is always a little more than the required amount. 

In this way, you can insure yourself to some extent against future updates of the operating system or newer applications.