The Apple Core

Jason D. O'Grady & David Morgenstern

iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

By Jason D. O'Grady | June 17, 2010, 10:08pm PDT

Summary: The iPhone 4 will ship with 512MB of RAM, double the amount in its predecessor, the iPhone 3GS and the iPad. The additional RAM may be the reason that the iMovie app and multi-tasking aren’t making it to older devices.

MacRumors has confirmed that the upcoming iPhone 4 will ship with 512MB of RAM — twice that of the iPhone 3GS and iPad. The post notes that the iPhone 2G and 3G packed 128MB of RAM, while the iPhone 3GS and iPad ship with 256MB.

It’s believed that the lower RAM footprint in the original and 3G iPhones is the reason why Apple isn’t supporting multi-tasking on those devices in iOS4. Apple isn’t supporting the RAM-hungry iMovie app or its breakout video calling service, FaceTime, on any device other than the iPhone 4.

What’s more surprising, perhaps, is that Apple intentionally suppresses technical details of the iPhone:

Since the launch of the original iPhone, Apple has made efforts to hide some of the actual tech specs of the device from consumers. Apple has never advertised or even published the processor speed or amount of RAM found in the iPhone. Arguably, Apple is trying to shield customers from these technical distractions and instead trying to focus on overall functionality.

Apple confirmed the 512MB figure during WWDC last week in a session video (147, Advanced Performance Optimization on iPhone OS, pt 2) which is now available to registered Apple developers.

Nice catch by MacRumors and a nice little bonus for iPhone 4 customers.

Photo: Gizmodo

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Apple iPhone, RAM, MacRumors, Smart Phones, Memory, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, Jason D. O'Grady

Jason O'Grady is a journalist and author specializing in mobile technology. He has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets and his PowerPage blog has been publishing for over 15 years.

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

iusauser 27th Jun 2010

@frabjous

Of course

First of all, excuse me for my bad English

With the phrase "for a long time", I mean that, from its beginnings, other manufacturers such as HTC, which does not make so much noise, in a matter of hardware have gone a step further, respect of the leaders in sales.

So I did this little "roadmap" of Smartphone RAM, representing many HTC devices, Nokia and Apple

2002: HTC Wallaby:32MB

2003: HTC Falcon PPC-5050:64MB / Nokia 3620:8MB

2004: HTC Blue angel & Himalaya:128MB / Nokia 7610:16MB

2005: HTC Harrier:128MB/ Nokia N90:32MB

2006: (bad year)HTC Cingular8525 & other:64MB/ Nokia N73:64MB

2007: HTC Advantage x7501(Athena):128MB/ Nokia N800(tablet):128MB

2008: (begins a remarkable growth) HTC Diamond:192MB, HTC s740:256MB,
HTC Touch Pro:288MB / Nokia 5320:128MB
/ iPhone 1:128MB, iPhone 3G:128MB,

2009: HTC HD2:448MB / Nokia N97:128MB, Nokia N900:256MB(real)
/ iPhone 3GS:256MB

2010: Nexus One:512MB, HTC Desire:572MB / Nokia E73, X10, N87:256MB
/ iPhone 4(512MB)

2010 (third and fourth quarter): HTC Mondrian(commercial name TBA) :More than 576MB
& other Android high-end devices by Samsung, Motorola, Acer and Dell
/ Nokia N8:256MB, Nokia N87:256MB

source:

HTC Devices:
http://bit.ly/9Pf7B1

Nokia devices:
http://bit.ly/9lyQKS

Apple devices:
http://bit.ly/b0SXhy

Best regards

View in thread

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Apple has made technology intuitive

croberts 18th Jun 2010

I think it rubs us techies the wrong way, but consumers (and even a lot of IT guys) are finding that they don't want to be bothered with the details.

It is a legitimate expectation that if you buy a device or a piece of software, that it be intuitively usable. And that takes real skill, and development dollars to accomplish.

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

jcmg 18th Jun 2010

@croberts I agree for the most part, but Apple was being disingenuous when they said that the reason they did not do multi-tasking was that it drained battery life, while the Android phones were getting similar battery life to the iPhone and doing full multi-tasking. It turns out the problem the whole time was lack of memory, which I can confirm by looking at the available memory on my iPhone, which is practically zero when I'm only running one app.

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RAM is power consumption

richardw66 18th Jun 2010

@jmargaglione

Every chip in the device is going to use power, the RAM chips cannot be powered down when not needed, unlike the GPS & Wi-Fi.

The bigger the memory, the more the battery will be drained. Putting in more memory to allow multi-tasking does drain the battery faster.

The more activity on the RAM chips also increases the power consumption, and multi-taksing increases the activity, thereby increasing battery drain.

To suggest that Apple was disingenuous is stupid.

Apple put in as much RAM as would be feasible.

What drains battery life most on an iPhone is using the extra features. Standby time is good.

This also applies to my Sony-Ericsson phone, but more so. Using the phone as a phone, with no extras like bluetooth or we browsing, I get 3-6 days of use. If I turn on bluetooth, or use the mostly useless web browser then the battery drains away very fast.

Compare an Android phone doing the same tasks as the iPhone exactly, then talk about the life.

It is all too easy to get false comparisons between different users doing different things.

Then for reference look at the reviews of the HTC EVO.

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

scottmahaffy Updated - 18th Jun 2010

why only 512mb - Ram is CHEAP! 512 is like circa 1960's - toss in a couple of gigs and it costs what $80? Maybe I am missing something but it seems a very tiny allotment.

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

gtvr 18th Jun 2010

@scottmahaffy
Space. Power. Cost.
vs.
Requirements.

Plus, in the 60s, I doubt anything had 512MB of RAM. Maybe 512MB of disk storage, if you had a few million dollars.

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

Schoolboy Bob 18th Jun 2010

@gtvr
In the 80's I ran a mainframe for a bank that had 8MB of RAM. 512MB was some serious mass storage.

My iPhone 3G frequently run out of RAM, recycles it (or something), while you wait, or the app crashes. It's what they do. I will be very happy to get a more reasonable allocation of RAM and hopefully fewer little crashes.

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

rhonin 18th Jun 2010

@gtvr
why I switched to the 3GS - have not had much of an issue.
Makes me wonder exactly how the multi-tasking will work on the 4 to require 500mb vs. the 256 it has in te 3GS...

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

Zc456 18th Jun 2010

@scottmahaffy Wrong era. Anyway, this isn't a desktop computer. 512mbs of RAM is a lot for a phone.

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4KB was a lot back then

richardw66 18th Jun 2010

@scottmahaffy

I know of people who worked for a large finance company that had a mainframe that had 4K of RAM. This ran all of the accounts.

I was told this as part of their amazement at the 64K Apple IIs that we were using.

At about that time we purchased a network server and the discussion was would we purchase a 5MB or 11MB hard drive.

For reference:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Bill_Gates

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Yup

frabjous Updated - 18th Jun 2010

@scottmahaffy You are missing something, like 30 years. The first personal computers to offer 512 MB RAM were in the mid-1990's--in the 1960's expensive business computers were really big boxes and maybe had 128 KB (that is a K) of wired memory.

Today, RAM is obviously much cheaper and draws much less power--but there is a cost in money and battery life, both of which are powerful engineering criteria. It seems Apple chose to optimize many aspects of smartphone usability, size and price--and decided 512 MB was more than adequate, and better than competitors. The question for a buyer is not the RAM quantitiy but how the device satisfies his or her user needs and budget. If it doesn't suit you, don't buy it.

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

tbln930 Updated - 18th Jun 2010

Do we really trust this? The iPhone 4 displayed at the bar clearly had a 256 MB ram chip on it and we got a visual. What's up with that?

Sounds like there are two 128 MG chips integrated on the A4.

http://gizmodo.com/5557101/iphone-4-the-definitive-guide

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

tbln930 18th Jun 2010

A lot of things were said at WWDC but....

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

Pete "athynz" Athens 18th Jun 2010

@tbln930 But remember the iPhone stolen from the bar was a prototype, not the finished product...

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RE: iPhone 4 packing serious heat (512MB RAM)

Jimster480 18th Jun 2010

I am pretty sure that it has 256MB of ram, which isnt that much. I have a 1st gen iPod Touch and it is out of ram without even running applications. I bought WORMS for iTouch and had to uninstall it because I couldn't even play it in the memory that I had.

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Unclear

Ktroje 18th Jun 2010

@Jimster480

You're pretty sure WHAT had 256MB of RAM? From the developer's documentation to the now-free WWDC videos, it's official that iPhone 4 has 512MB of RAM. Anything previous is a gamble. iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3G and iPad have 256MB, but iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2G have 128MB.

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You haven't figured it out yet?

The_Curmudgeon 18th Jun 2010

It's called planned obsolescence, and it's how many companies, Apple included, improve the bottom line.

Only put in enough hardware so the consumer (suckers) has to buy the next generation when it comes out.
This is one reason I never buy a new Apple product and only own an iPod.
Other companies offer much better value for the majority of Apple's products IF, repeat IF a person will actually read the instructions for a device.

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iPad OS update in Fall might mean more RAM

tricktytom 18th Jun 2010

I have a sneaking suspicion that the iOS4 update for the iPad will mean that it will come with 512Mb of RAM, instead of 256Mb.

It's likely not going to run multitasking very well on 256Mb.

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Foxconn goes "one" step behind

iusauser 18th Jun 2010

512MB of RAM would not be the big news, for example, HTC has taken this route (in RAM amonts), for a long time.

Wallaby:32MB(2002);
HTC Falcon PPC-5050:64MB(2003);
Blue angel & Himalaya:128MB(2004);
HTC Diamond:192MB(2008);
HTC s740:256MB(2008);
Touch Pro:288MB(2008);
HD2:448MB(2009);
Nexus One:512MB(2010);
HTC Desire:572MB(2010);
HTC Mondrian:+572MB(last quarter 2010)

...And from 2009, equipped with processors with 1GHz or More

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Huh?

frabjous 18th Jun 2010

@iusauser Your (undocumented) listing doesn't show HTC offering 512 MB until...2010, and since it is now only June, 2010, it is not clear what you mean by "a long time." Please clarify.