Google Pixel

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Tested: Google's Pixel 9 Pro models only have 13GB RAM for apps (www.androidauthority.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The huge amount of RAM on Android in general is less about supporting a single hungry app and more about keeping as many apps as possible in memory so that you can multitask between them without any of them losing their state. If one app manages to eat most of the memory, then it's already too little for the intended experience.

Also the memory is supposed to be enough for at least the 7 years this phone will be supported for - that's plenty of time for apps memory footprint to grow.

Maybe I'm biased by always having used devices with RAM size in the lower end (which is always also coupled by a not-so-great CPU so when you do run out of memory and the system starts killing apps you want to multitask between, you're going to notice it that much more), but I'll always take more RAM in a device that might survive a decade with a couple of battery swaps.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

apps that are programmed by a 13 year old that wants to scam people.

That's a weird way to spell "project manager who doesn't let developers waste time making efficient apps when they could just add more marketable features". The competition won't hesitate, and users will always flock to apps with more features and nicer UI over optimizations.

People need to learn how to close apps.

If you have enough RAM, there's no reason to - it's not like they are actually running and consuming CPU cycles. If you don't have enough RAM, you also don't need to - Android will do it for you. My phone with 3 GB of RAM could barely handle maps and a browser at once, so there were plenty of times when the map app restarted and recentered on my current position when I came back from checking the website of whatever company I looked at.

The recent apps screen is really just a history of open apps, with some of them maybe still in memory, and with some opaque mechanism for automatically removing old entries. You can reboot your phone and the apps will still be there with a screenshot of their last state. Doesn't mean they will get back to that state when you switch to them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

If apps and the OS weren’t such ram/storage hogs, this would be plenty. Like does the Home Depot app really need half a gig or more? 🙄

[–] Dudewitbow 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

id imagine some apps are just running on electron or some microbrowser, so theyre fuctionally browsers and come with some of the memory penalties from running with said sdks. not many conpanies want to design something from the bottom up.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It’s shitty coding and the app stores should reject this garbage and tell the dev to ship it as a web app. If you’re going to ship an entire web browser with every app, then what’s the point of it being an app?

See also apps that bundle twenty different frameworks and then use maybe one or two percent of what’s bundled. 🙄

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

You most likely wouldn't be shipping an entire web browser with the app. You would use the Webview component (or similar) which just uses the Android System WebView system app that should already be on the phone.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I presume if you run a custom ROM it would not reserve the RAM in this way

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Not sure, it could be allocated in the firmware, kind of like integrated GPUs on desktop/laptop processors. For example my Amd 6800HS laptop with 16GB RAM has only 14 available because the GPU takes up 2GB (but I can change it in BIOS)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

I was going to say NBD, 3GB is a decent bit for the OS, but 13 should be fine for anything you want on your phone.

But most of it is for shitty LLM nonsense? Fuck that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Damn. I wonder if a custom OS remove this “feature”…

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And? I have six total and I've never seen it go above 4 used

What are people doing on their phones that could use so much ram?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Better question. What value does Google occupying 3GB of ram on my phone offer me? What other resources is it hogging on the phone that could cause potential bottlenecks? How much will these 3gb of bloat drain my battery? Are my user land ram safe from future Gemini updates, or is google going to take even more of my RAM?