Every few years, the amount of Storage and RAM we need on phones keeps increasing. With increased app sizes as developers add more features, improve designs, and reduce bugs, our phones need more storage to hold those apps. To open these apps fast and keep them in the background while performing in-app tasks like downloads and uploads in the background, our phones must have good RAM with proper RAM management.
Recognizing this, even the iPhone 15 Pro and Max finally offer 8GB RAM, despite how iOS handles background tasks. iOS is notorious for pausing several tasks in the background. Either that or it only lets them run for a few seconds. This is presumably for battery reasons or security reasons. We can also attribute this to the lack of enough physical RAM capacity. iPhones are efficient with their amount of RAM since developers optimize apps well for the chips. However, that’s not the case on Samsung phones due to the very fragmented nature of Android.
Since developers do not optimize apps per chip or device, Android uses a one-size-fits-all solution for apps. It needs more RAM headroom to hold apps in the background properly. Android’s approach to background task handling is superior, and Android phones definitely need more RAM. Companies like OnePlus now offer 16GB RAM on phones, and others like Google offer 12GB models.
However, Samsung’s S23 Ultra still starts at 8GB RAM in the USA. This is not good enough for an Ultra phone. The S21 Ultra had 12GB RAM on the base model, so this downgrade does not make sense. Samsung claims that the Virtual RAM feature compensates for it, but it’s not true. Virtual RAM is the Swap Memory mechanism from Linux, which Android uses to handle background apps.
Turning on Virtual RAM will not affect this process; the phone will do it regardless. UFS internal storage is nowhere near as fast enough as physical RAM. It cannot act as compensation since it’s not fast enough for apps that need live memory. It’s only a good replacement for apps that do not need Dynamic Memory.
According to the Geekbench listing, the US version of S24 Ultra (SM-S928U) will apparently still start with only 8GB of RAM. This is not good enough for an Ultra flagship in 2024. Samsung is doing it to cut costs, and the phone should have had 12GB RAM at least. The S24 Ultra will get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset. The chip breaks 17,000 in the Vulkan 3D Mark score, and it’s a good upgrade from the 8 Gen 2, about 70% better. These phones were also spotted on 3C certification, confirming that the Plus and Ultra models will have 45W of charging.
The 8 Gen 3 has one Prime Core at 3.3 GHz, three performance cores at 3.15 GHz, and two eff 8 Gen 3 SoC. The result further details that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC has one prime core clocked at 3.30GHz, three performance cores at 3.15GHz, two mid-tier, and three efficiency cores. Unfortunately, according to the same listing, the phone still has 8GB RAM. It’ll launch with Android 14 out of the box, with the One UI 6.1 skin. We can expect it to launch on 18th January 2024.
