Apple iPhones Typically Use Less RAM Than Flagship Android Phones, But Why? In This Article, We Will Compare The Management Of Apple Vs. Android.

The amount of random access memory (RAM) that your phone needs to perform multitasking processes is unclear; Especially since Apple and Android phones use different RAM. Smartphones rely on RAM to maintain operating systems such as Android and iOS and run applications and some cache and buffer data.

Rome needs to be organized and managed so that programs can run smoothly. When a new program is launched, there must be free space to load and run the available memory. Likewise, you must return its occupied space to the operating system when you exit a program.

As long as free and sufficient RAM is available to start programs, everything is fine; But what if there is no free memory? How does iOS manage memory in this situation? How about Android?

A brief history of managing Apple RAM versus Android

Smartphones in the early days of Android and iOS did not use much RAM, and there was not much difference in the amount of RAM between iPhone and Android phones. In 2008, the HTC Dream had only 192MB of RAM, and Apple’s first iPhone had only 128MB of RAM.

The iPhone 3G came with 128MB of RAM, and the iPhone 3GS came in 2009 with 256MB of RAM. The amount of RAM doubled on the iPhone 4 and increased again on the iPhone 5. By 2015, Apple iPhones would come with 1GB of RAM, but with the iPhone 6S, the RAM of this device increased to two gigabytes. Finally, in 2021, the iPhone 13 was released with 6 GB of RAM.

The amount of Android RAM versus iOS

Here, we see the amount of RAM on iPhones and Android devices is significantly different. In the Android ecosystem, the Samsung Galaxy S (since 2010) came with 512MB of RAM and the Galaxy S2 with 1GB of RAM. The Galaxy S3 launched in 2012, like the Galaxy S4 in 2013, with two gigabytes of RAM.

Samsung uses two gigabytes of RAM in the Galaxy S4, while two years later, Apple introduced the iPhone 6S with two gigabytes of RAM. If we look at 2021 to 2022, we have Android devices like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, which will use 16 GB of RAM.

Is less iPhone RAM better than Apple phones?

Such a difference in the amount of RAM has led us to hear phrases like: “iPhones are better optimized” or “iPhones do not need as much RAM as Android phones.” These sentences seem logical, But it is not so simple. Android phones use more RAM is related to the operating system’s decision to use Java.

Objective-C / Swift vs. Java / Kotlin

When developers develop an app for iOS, the app will compile directly into code that can run on the iPhone processor. It means that the code is natively known and does not require any other virtual environment or interpreter to run. Also, Android works differently in this regard. As mentioned, Android uses Java.

Java’s motto is “Write once, run everywhere,” which has many advantages for compatible platform visibility. When Java code is compiled, it becomes a processor-independent middleware (Java Bytecode). The same Java bytecode can run on a logo processor, an x86 processor, or a chip based on the RISC-V architecture.

Different programming languages ​​used in Android and iOS require different amounts of RAM.

However, Java has one drawback: Every operating system and processor combination requires an environment known as the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to run and understand the Java bytecode and convert it to the central processor code. It is done by interpretation, and then the next piece of code is read, and the rest is executed in the same way.

Over time, various techniques have been developed to speed up this process, such as pulling out pieces of previous code, compiling it in native time, scheduling it ahead of time, etc.

However, it does not matter how good these techniques are; Because two problems remain: Executing native code is better than executing code through JVM; ۲. Using JVM (even if you are using premature compilers) increases the amount of RAM used by the program.

The following is a table of RAM used with various applications running on iOS and Android:

Play	iOS (MB)	Android (MB)
Subway Surfers	500	761
1945 Airforce	550	852
Candy Crush	219	289
Brawl Stars	572	507
Minecraft	462	803
Asphalt 9	749	803
Shadowgun Legends	1130	899
Elder Scrolls Blade	1030	952
Genshin Impact	1270	1400

Here, it can seem that some games on Android use less RAM; While others need more Rome. IOS games use an average of 10% less RAM than Android versions. It shows the difference between using JVM and the Android user interface compared to building a game with native code.

10% of the number is self-explanatory; But when everything is so close, we should also look at things like compiler versions, screen resolution, compression, texture resolution, Metal, Open GL ES, and so on. The bottom line is that the amount of RAM required for Android and iOS gamers is almost the same.

What is the ideal amount of RAM for an iPhone?

If not enough memory is released using compression, iOS will remove an application from RAM to make the memory needed to run the new application available.

Knowing what we mean by ideal is essential when considering the ideal amount of RAM for a smartphone. Running the app on the iPhone, even on older models, will usually be smooth and hassle-free. The question is: how many applications or games can remain in the device memory simultaneously? In other words, how many programs can be actively switched without reloading? How many programs or games do you use several times a day?

If you send an email, play an instant game, post content on social media, and then go back to the email app and find that the app is reloading, your user experience will be poor. This restriction will soon disappoint the user.

“Ideal” is defined herein by how you use your iPhone. Efficiency? Play?

Social media? Video editing? Photography and If there is not enough free memory available when you launch the app, iOS will do one of two things:

1. Tries to compress some memory blocks (called pages) that have not been used for some time. iOS picks up some pages, compresses them, and then rewrites them. If you have 128,000 eligible pages, assuming 50% compression, you can release 128,000 pages to 64,000 contractions and 64,000 pages;

2. If not enough memory is freed up using compression, iOS will remove an application from RAM to recover the memory. If you go back to the deleted application, that application must reload. This process is called the Jetsam event.

Here is a timeline of the amount of RAM used and the amount of compressed RAM; Because various programs will launch on the iPhone SE 2020 with 3 GB of RAM.

iOS initially only squeezed about 200MB of RAM and used just over 2GB of RAM. Then, with the start of various programs, the amount of RAM used increases, and compressed RAM also increases. You can see the first increase in attention by starting the Booking.com app.

Another shock was when Google Photo launched, and iOS now uses more than one gigabyte of compressed RAM. After Tasty started, more than 12 apps were on the memory, and none were deleted. Try To put more memory on the system, open the Safari app in this experiment, and load several websites in separate tabs. At this point, Safari used 850 MB of RAM, and iOS had to remove the Keynote from memory.

As mentioned, games use more memory than apps.

The same iPhone SE can simultaneously hold about four games (Subway Surfers, Brawl Stars, Kennedy Crash, and 1945AirForce). However, the start of the fifth game, Asphalt 9, caused iOS to drop two games, Subway Surfers and 1945 Airforce, to make the RAM needed to run the new game available.

The more RAM will remove, the fewer apps and games. Here is a diagram for the iPhone 13 Pro (with 6GB of RAM) that shows how the device manages multiple games in memory:

The iPhone 13 Pro can store more games in memory simultaneously compared to the iPhone SE. The RAM of this device is twice as much as SE. Recent games have a large volume, and some of them require more than one gigabyte of RAM to run.

When Genshin Impac ran on the device, iOS could not compress more memory pages. At this point, more than two gigabytes of RAM had already been compressed; So he had to delete 1945Airforce, Subway Surfers, and Brawl Stars from memory to run the new game.

An iPhone with 3GB of RAM seems suitable for everyday use, But you will need more RAM to run the games.

One final aspect to consider is foresight. iPhone gamers need to consider the buffer type and choose the device that provides them with the most RAM possible. Genshin Impac is a great game that takes up more than 1.2 GB of RAM in iOS. This game was released in 2020, and who knows what other heavy games will be released in the next few years.

Result

If you are looking to buy a new iPhone; But if you do not like the SE model, you should choose the models with 4 GB of RAM. For people who only use productivity and social media apps, 3 GB of RAM on iOS is enough. If your smartphone activity is limited to using multimedia content, 4 GB of RAM will be enough for you; But you can also consider models with 6 GB of RAM.

If you are a gamer and want to use your phone for the next few years, we strongly recommend buying an iPhone with 6 GB of RAM.

How much RAM is ideal for Android?

We’ve seen before that Android apps use more RAM than iOS. It means that the Android operating system and its default applications also use more memory. The result is that Android needs more RAM from the start.

When Android does not have enough memory to run an application or game, it uses techniques similar to the iOS approach. In this case, Android compresses the memory pages. In Android, this method is known as switching to zRAM, which, due to the Unix / Linux tradition, uses z to indicate compression.

The Pixel phone with 4 GB of RAM can run all the apps from the table above (from Play Store to Twitter) and keep all these apps in memory; ‌, so you can move freely between them without reloading. However, the situation will be slightly different when you have only 4 GB of RAM when playing games on Android:

The Pixel 3X uses 4GB of RAM, But only 3579 MB of this memory is available to the user.

It seems that this product should be labeled with 3.5 GB of RAM and not 4 GB. Notice how memory is used in Android from the beginning.

As games begin, memory compression (switching to zRAM) increases. When Brawl Stars ran on this phone, it used more than 1.5 GB of compressed RAM; But this amount is still not enough, and Subway Surfers will be closed. However, the story is a little different for devices like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which use 12GB of RAM:

As you can see, 12 GB of RAM in Android is enough for gamers. More RAM means you can run more games on the device simultaneously. All Subway Surfers to Genshin Impact games remain in the Galaxy S21 Ultra memory. The phone did not use all the memory capacity until Shadowgun Legends ran, and then the amount of SRAM used in it increased.

Even when the final games are loaded and played, none of the other games are deleted from memory. To force Android to delete a tournament from memory, you have to launch Chrome and open 12 separate tabs on it. In this case, the device removes the Minecraft game from memory.

Result

If you only use a small number of applications simultaneously and are not a long-term web browser, an Android phone with 4 GB of RAM will be enough for you. When buying a regular Android smartphone, consider 6 GB of RAM; Because these models will be suitable for people who use productivity applications and social media a lot. This amount of RAM is enough to run the game at standard level and web browsing.

For Android phones, 4 to 6 GB of RAM will be enough for most users; But models with 12 GB of RAM will be suitable for heavy users.

Utilizing 12 GB of RAM in the Galaxy S21 Ultra is one of the advantages of this device for gamers and professional users. 8 GB of RAM for mid-range or high-end Android devices will provide a satisfying multitasking experience. Also, being equipped with 12 GB of RAM seems suitable for people who plan to use their phone in the next few years.

Which is better: iOS or Android?

Android and iOS both use the in-memory compression technique to help reduce some of the extra physical capacity. Both operating systems do this quickly, and both need to decompress the compressed memory before reusing it. The performance of these two operating systems is almost the same in terms of technology; While in general, Android tries to do more compression before deleting applications on the memory.

If you are a professional gamer and plan to use your phone in the coming years, you should consider iPhones with 6 GB of RAM. However, since iOS uses native and intermediate language code, the iOS apps and the operating system are lighter. This distinction is less important when dealing with games, But it is still a significant factor.

In short, 6 GB of RAM in the iPhone 13 Pro is enough for professional users and gamers. Although the iPhone 13 Pro did not perform well in keeping apps on the Galaxy S21 Ultra memory, we must remember that the RAM S21 Ultra is twice as good as the iPhone 13 Pro.

Since Android needs more memory, if you are looking for an experience similar to the iPhone with 6 GB of RAM, you should use Android phones with 8 GB of RAM.