Farewell to 8GB, a New Era of Smartphone Memory: Memory Upgrades Driven by AI

Farewell to 8GB, a New Era of Smartphone Memory: Memory Upgrades Driven by AIHow many Android smartphone users still remember the days of struggling with 256MB or 512MB of RAM? While Android smartphone RAM has rapidly increased to 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 6GB and beyond, those who have experienced the struggle are happy to see the advancements in hardware configurations.Nowadays, 8GB RAM phones have gradually disappeared from the market for smartphones priced above two thousand yuan

Farewell to 8GB, a New Era of Smartphone Memory: Memory Upgrades Driven by AI

How many Android smartphone users still remember the days of struggling with 256MB or 512MB of RAM? While Android smartphone RAM has rapidly increased to 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 6GB and beyond, those who have experienced the struggle are happy to see the advancements in hardware configurations.

Nowadays, 8GB RAM phones have gradually disappeared from the market for smartphones priced above two thousand yuan. Many Android flagship phones released this year have also abandoned the 8GB memory version, opting for higher-spec memory configurations. For example, the recently released vivo X200 series and OPPO Find X8 series have both eliminated the 8GB memory version, replacing it with a 12GB version. Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, recently revealed that the upcoming Xiaomi 15 series will completely remove the 8GB memory version, with the standard version starting from 12GB and a corresponding price increase. Wang Teng of Xiaomi explained that this decision is primarily based on the future development trend of AI applications for smartphones. As on-device AI large models require more memory, future flagship phones will likely eliminate 8GB memory. He recommends that, if financially feasible, consumers should choose versions with larger memory to ensure their phones can run various AI applications smoothly.

In fact, domestic smartphone manufacturers have been promoting large memory since last year. Since the beginning of 2023, a series of flagship phones, led by the OnePlus 11, have begun to popularize 12GB memory. When OnePlus equipped its models with a starting configuration of 12GB, while others were still using 8GB, it was well received by many users. However, some manufacturers' flagship models still offer 8GB memory, which has been criticized by consumers as "price gouging." Li Jie, President of OnePlus China, has also described this as a strange phenomenon in the industry, saying, "Many performance phones, in order to appear cost-effective, insist on creating a 8+128GB version that simply fills out the specs."

So, what's the secret behind the widespread adoption of large storage?

RAM: A Guarantee of Smooth Experience

RAM refers to the memory used by the phone to run programs, also known as RAM (Random Access Memory). It can only store data temporarily and is used to exchange high-speed cache data with the CPU. Generally speaking, for the same CPU, the larger the RAM, the more programs can be run simultaneously. This ensures that applications running in the background won't disconnect when users run multiple tasks, known as "background retention rate."

A higher background retention rate means that users don't need to frequently clear the background, and running multiple apps simultaneously won't cause lag. Even applications opened a long time ago can be accessed instantly. It's no doubt that faster phone responsiveness and quicker game loading times lead to a smoother user experience.

Some users have conducted tests and found that the OnePlus 11, with its 16GB large memory and technical enhancements, can run 40 commonly used apps without any pressure, truly achieving zero app kills.

Previously, @Chaping conducted three rounds of background retention tests on the Redmi Note 13 Pro/Pro+ with 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB memory, respectively, after turning off "Fusion Memory" (virtual memory). The results are as follows:

The test results show that the 8GB memory phone struggles significantly under multi-tasking conditions. In contrast, the 12GB and 16GB memory phones perform effortlessly.

The Necessity of Large Memory: Adapting to Application Development and the AI Era

The widespread adoption of large RAM serves two purposes. First, it meets users' demand for high performance. Larger RAM can enhance the phone's smoothness and multitasking capabilities. Second, it adapts to the development of applications. Today's applications and large-scale mobile games are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex, demanding more RAM from phones, especially productivity tools like video editing software that need to run in the background for a long time, continuously occupying computing space. This naturally requires larger memory capacity to ensure smooth operation.

After all, the open nature of the Android system allows users to open multiple apps simultaneously and keep them running in the background. The inclusion of large RAM not only allows the phone to retain more background apps but also ensures overall phone smoothness and app opening speed to some extent.

Moreover, as mentioned earlier, with the development of AI large models in China, hardware upgrades have become inevitable. The 8GB memory configuration is already struggling to keep up with current application scenarios and cannot meet user demands for a smooth experience and powerful performance.

Future Trend: 12GB as the Standard, Android Flagship Memory Upgrades are Irreversible

All of the above points to a further upgrade in Android phone memory configurations in the future. Based on this trend, the upcoming iQOO13, OnePlus 13, and HONOR Magic7 series, among other Android flagship phones, are expected to start with 12GB memory.

Apple Phones: A Sharp Contrast in Memory Strategy Compared to Android Phones

In contrast, Apple's iPhone 16 series, running iOS, still uses 8GB memory. Some users have joked that Apple's memory is more expensive than gold, not only because it sets a significant price difference between different memory configurations but also because Apple seems to be quite stingy when it comes to offering larger memory capacity.

Apple's memory capacity lags significantly behind Android, but thanks to iOS's memory running mechanism, even with 6GB of memory, switching between multiple open programs remains smooth. In other words, Android phones require more memory to ensure smoothness, while Apple phones achieve the same effect with less memory.

The iPhone 16 series has upgraded its memory from 6GB to 8GB across the board, in part due to the addition of AI. At least 8GB of RAM is required to support Apple's AI hardware. As AI features continue to develop, it's not impossible that the next generation will upgrade to 12GB of memory.

Price Challenges for Consumers

For consumers, the elimination of 8GB memory means having to pay higher prices for higher-performing phones. As exemplified by the Xiaomi 15 and other Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 flagship phones, their prices will likely exceed 4,000 yuan, making the days of 3,999 yuan pricing a thing of the past.

In conclusion, the advent of the AI era has driven a surge in smartphone memory upgrades. The 8GB memory configuration is a thing of the past, and a future of 12GB memory is upon us. Consumers need to be prepared to pay a higher cost for more powerful smartphone performance.