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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

What do you do with your phone that requires you to know the memory details? Genuine question, I have absolutely no idea how much memory my iPad or phone have and don’t see why I would need to know

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Running not-particularly-useful local models.

The models are pretty useful, especially when it comes to asking things you may not want to go over a network.

To know what you're getting. No further reasons needed.

I think an honest answer would be to account for software bloat over time. I'm one of those luddites who likes to keep a phone for a minimum of five years. in order to accomplish this, I select phones that have higher-than-average in-class RAM so that things I care the most about (snappy feeling, app loadtimes) stay good for longer

especially for Apple, I imagine if I were buying a phone knowing they historically throttle processors on older models, I'd try to at least control the one aspect that wouldn't make sense to throttle

Hmm, yeah, that’s a good reason

I only care about it because I'm waiting for a MacBook Neo with more than 8gb of memory.

I'm waiting for a software release for my iPhone 16 Pro Max that will let me plug in a dock that has an attached SSD, keyboard, mouse, and display, and an option to pop up on my phone to reboot into MacOS.

Also, if they make a neo 2 from the A19 with 12 GB that'd be cool.

I’m pretty sure the efficiency cores in the A20 Pro have more juice than the performance cores in my M1 Pro laptop.

You’ll be waiting awhile. iPads have had desktop M-series CPUs for ages now, and you still can’t run macOS on an iPad.

It’s just a software restriction. I’m sure they have macOS running on iPhones and iPads internally, probably both through a VM and natively. But it’s very Apple to block this use case.

With the price of ram going up by 5x, I want to see our industry move in the opposite direction. Computers for regular people should go back to 4gb or even 2gb of ram, just to keep the prices sane. We should get software working well on those devices, just like it did a decade or two ago.

Small, memory efficient programs run better everywhere. It feels like theft to make consumers pay for our inefficient software. Electron / react on the desktop is such a rort.

I wonder how much we could reclaim just by going back to 32-bit pointers. If we're going back to 4GB it should be fine, right?

Yes and no. If I recall, 32 bit windows has a fixed allocation of 3gb for userland and 1gb for the kernel’s memory space. I think 32bit only really works well for memory sizes smaller than 4gb. It might not be worth it, given a lot of OSes are in the process of deprecating 32bit support.

First, we don't need to be restrained to "how Windows did it twenty years ago." But either way, if we are targeting a 4GB PC, it's inappropriate for any single app to actually use more than 3GB regardless.

>With the price of ram going up by 5x, I want to see our industry move in the opposite direction. Computers for regular people should go back to 4gb or even 2gb of ram, just to keep the prices sane.

Sure. Right along with Intel Core 2 Duo and Windows Vista.

Modern CPUs and memory, just less ram

Modern operating systems too. Windows xp only used a few hundred megs of ram. Windows 11 is more complex, but none of its features justifies windows 11 needing 100x as much memory to run.

Slim the fat!

Let's stop filling static websites with javascript. That should instantly reduce the overhead

Yep. And let’s stop putting react apps in the windows start menu.

It's because of the local model use case. Running AI locally on the phone is a feature (they brag about the processor), but it's constrained by memory and bandwidth.

I want to know how it compared to what I currently have.

Ok Bill.

sell another phone with "more than iPhone" and claim is better because "more X" right ?

People who actually care about their money often like to compare competing products and decide which one provides them the best value.

> best value

> iPhone

Pick one.

The amount of RAM doesn’t tell you anything about "the best value". Bad software with a large amount of RAM provides less value than highly-optimized one with a lower amount of RAM, for example. This was the whole advantage of the iPhone at the beginning: not a lot of RAM (meaning less energy needed) but a highly-optimized OS that works well even with that constrained environment.

It tells you a lot about the best value. It certainly doesn't tell you everything, and you might well pick a more expensive phone with less ram for other reasons, but all else being equal a phone with more ram will be better.

> but all else being equal a phone with more ram will be better.

Sure, but this situation where "all else being equal" doesn’t exist.

Because I am buying a phone to use for the next 3 years and want to buy it based on the most important property of compute devices right now. I couldn't care less about the camera and the 13 random metrics that all look the same as every other camera announcement. I will happily take 96GB of RAM in my phone (and I know what that means) and would gladly allow you to make it 1.2mm thicker in the process.

What on earth would you do with an iOS device that has 96GB of RAM? You realize the last generation (i.e, the most powerful consumer phone in the world today) had 12 GB of RAM? You feel the need for eight times that amount?

Number go up, I guess? A lot of people derive great satisfaction from ever larger (or sometimes smaller) number. But, uh, 8X is probably too much, need to spread that out over a few generations.

They obviously want to run AI models on their phone.

In theory it sounds alright, although in reality, the heat and power consumption make this less than ideal.

I am not sure single digit tk/s on weak model like ChatGPT OSS 20b @ Q3_K_M is going to be worthwhile.

Not to mention this has to be <0.01% of users who "want" to do this. The iPhone tooling would make it hard to even configure and spin up a local LLM.

Very obviously you get a Mac Studio for that, not a phone. (Oh, the 96GB Studio is almost $6000, you counter? Imagine how much it would cost in a phone form factor).

You can't possibly expect Apple to take that market segment seriously.

> the most powerful consumer phone in the world today

According to what? (I don't disagree, just curious)

You want a 96GB RAM phone and only plan to keep it 3 years? I cannot fathom the way some of you live. I have an iPhone SE from 2022 that I don’t expect to get rid of before at least 2-3 more years, meaning it would have been in use for 6-7y at minimum. And it’s perfectly comfortable to use, I’m not forcing myself in any way to keep it longer. And you’re talking about wanting a ridiculously expensive phone and only have it for 3 years? That sounds so wasteful and unnecessary

People sued apple for selling a device with no mention of ram and then apple released the next gen saying "this has more ram, you need to upgrade to it to use the features we advertised for last gen."

How about avoiding that scenario again? Is that a good enough reason? Being a diligent, informed consumer?

I couldn’t agree more. I’m typing this on an iPhone 12, bought new 6 years ago. My phone still feels snappy. And it gets me through a whole day with 60%+ battery remaining. The only real complaint I have is that I only have the 64gb model. I need to delete things every time a software update comes out because of how bloated modern software has become. But the hardware is fantastic.

I have no idea how much ram my phone has. So long as apps run well, why would I care?

You're missing the important bit in the GP comment:

> the most important property of compute devices right now

Memory didn't matter when iPhone 12 was released, but these days it determines which local LLMs you can run on device. That's the point of that comment.

It's about multitasking. RAM is the upgrade trigger for me. I'm so exhausted by developer introduced bloat in software such that almost every app fully reloads when switching. Devs ruin multitasking every few years until another RAM upgrade.

I’m being hyperbolic. Sharing the amount of RAM seems table stakes with the current demand and failing to disclose it seems like the answer wouldn’t be positive.

If you keep a phone in good condition, the resale / trade-in value isn’t insignificant after 2 years.

The net price for a new phone then can be considered a relatively inexpensive hobby when looked at from a per week basis.

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