Many of today’s top-tier smartphones currently ship with 3GB or 4GB of RAM. But soon we could see smartphones with even more memory.

Samsung has begun mass production of a new type of LPDDR4 memory that could make it possible to cram 6GB of RAM into future phones and tablets.

samsung lpddr4

The news comes at a time when there are still plenty of phones with just 1GB to 2GB of memory. Heck, plenty of Windows laptops and tablets have 2GB of RAM or less.

In other words, you probably don’t need 6GB of RAM to get by. But the more memory, the better your phone will be able to handle multitasking and other memory-intensive tasks. Right now there aren’t many mobile apps that require a massive amount of memory… but that’s probably because there aren’t a lot of phones that would be able to run those apps.

If and when phones with lower amounts of RAM start to fade away, we could see apps and games that require extra amounts of memory.

Until then, the main thing you’ll probably be able to do with a smartphone packing 6GB of RAM is the same party trick you can do with 4GB phones: Load up half a dozen or so games or more and flip between them without waiting for any of them to reload.

Anyway, Samsung’s announcement is still interesting for a few reasons. Not only does it pave the way for a future when we might actually be able to make full use of phones with 6GB of RAM, but the company says its new 20 nanometer 12Gb LPDDR4 memory is also more than 30 percent faster than 8Gb LPDDR4 and twice as fast as DDR4 DRAM used in PCs. It also uses less energy.

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10 replies on “Are you ready for phones with 6GB of RAM?”

  2. I just bought a $36 iRulu Android tablet from eBay. It has an ARM quad core processor but only 512mb of DDR3L RAM. I was skeptical at first, but it seems to work ok with Android 4.4. Geez, I don’t see why they skimped on an extra dollar or two for 1gb of RAM instead. It seems almost as fast as my Dell Venue 8 Android tablet with 2gb DDR2 RAM that cost 4 times as much.

  3. Yes, please. @_@ It’s not as big of a deal as on laptop/desktops (where 8 gb really doesn’t cut it anymore) but the more ram the better.

  4. I’d personally prefer improved battery technology to last me a few days.

  6. Why do you need 6GB on phone? My Surface pro barely needed more than 5 GB of Ram.

    1. It’s not just for phones, any device that uses mobile parts for advantages like better power efficiency and lower costs will benefit and those include devices like the Surface 3 that uses a mobile SoC with eMMC and LP-DDR RAM…

  7. I see the day when phones will have adequate enough specs to replace desktops and notebooks. There will be a slot on the side of the larger units to slide in the phone when a user needs a larger screen and keyboard. I know it has been attempted before, but the phones were too sluggish.

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