Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
WHEN APPLE UNVEILED the iPhone 6S last week, it told us all about the new 3D Touch technology in its screen, its enhanced camera, and its improved processor.
What it didn’t tell us, however, is how much RAM (or Random Access Memory) is in the phone.
Developer Hazma Sood, who regularly digs up details about upcoming Apple products by noodling around in the company’s software, recently discovered that the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus will have 2GB of RAM.
That’s a considerable jump from the 1GB of RAM found on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Sood posted his findings to Twitter, saying that he made the discovery when using Apple’s developer tool XCode, which helps engineers build apps for Apple’s platforms. The tweet was quickly picked up by blogs such as 9to5Mac and Macworld among others.
This is important because it tells us more about the performance enhancements we can expect to see in the iPhone 6S. The more RAM a device has, the more tasks it’ll be able to handle at once without stuttering. So you’ll be able to run more apps in the background and load more tabs in Safari before your iPhone needs to refresh them.
Hamza Sood / Twitter
Hamza Sood / Twitter / Twitter
Here’s a really simple way to think about what RAM does for your phone. As Michael Crider from Digital Trends explains, you can think of RAM as the top of a desk. The larger it is, the more room you have to spread out papers and read them all at once. Think of the papers in this analogy as background processes and apps running on your phone.
While Apple has upgraded the iPhone to include 2GB of RAM, other smartphone manufacturers are already cramming twice as much memory into their new phones. Samsung, for instance, has fit 4GB of RAM into its new Galaxy Note 5, which makes it as powerful as a laptop. According to Sood, Apple also packed 4GB of RAM into its new 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
Apple doesn’t usually disclose the amount of RAM it puts into its phones and tablets. It’s usually not until a company such as iFixit does a full teardown of Apple’s new mobile devices that we get to see how much RAM is inside.
Apple has not immediately responded to Business Insider’s request for comment.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
This might be the poorest informed article I’ve read on an Apple release in a while.
1) Doubling the ram is something just “does” in its phones, almost year on year.
2) 2GB of ram wasn’t a surprise, it was widely speculated and assumed that would be the case.
3) Extra ram, on iOS, doesn’t really affect how apps run in the background; it allows larger apps to run more processes in the foreground. That means better graphics in a game because it can load more triangles / drawing processes etc.
4) Cramming 4gb of ram into something with a mobile chip doesn’t make it as powerful as a laptop, it just has as much ram as one. A lot of these things still run on really crappy processors, and Android is a one-for-all operating system – it’s not built to get the most out of any 1 combination of processor make / speed / model, combined with a ram / speed / make / model. So you can’t really compare them based on the headline number of a single part of it.
Apple also launched it’s first Android APP called ‘Move to iOS’ yesterday on Google Play as part of the iOS 9 launch…. It got blasted with over 8 thousand 1 star reviews (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.movetoios) Most of the reviews are just rants against Apple.
I thought Apple Music was the first Apple app released on Android?
John… Aside from Beats Music for Android, which Apple acquired, this is the company’s first Android APP. Apple didn’t announce ‘Move to iOS’ at WWDC 2015. Instead, the APP was quietly listed on Apple’s What’s new in iOS page the same day.
My vodafone smart ultra 6 has 2gb Ram and lots of other stuff the iphone 6s has and it only cost me €170!! The only thing it doesnt have is the apple logo on the back :( I’ll just have to live with not being cool!
Funny enough when I see someone flashing the apple logo on their phone or laptop/tablet I just think knob!!!
boulder on your shoulder Brendan
I have a MacBook Pro. I will never use a windows laptop again.
The Journal.. Sponsored by Apple!!!
I updated my iPhone 5 to iOS9 today. Purely by chance I discovered that, with this new update, it automatically starts your 3 month free trial with Apple Music and – in the small print – after the 3 month trial is up, Apple will start charging your account. I wouldn’t have known this only a friend and I were chatting about Apple Music this evening and I had a quick look at it. I have never signed up for the free trial so am really Annoyed by it.
Well it hasn’t opted me in on any of my devices not any of my friends I have checked with so you must just be unlucky
Surely you seen this nugget of information in the 400 pages of terms and conditions that you read before agreeing to iOS9 ;-)
During testing of iOS9 it was discovered that there is an issue for users who use custom Access Point Names (APN) to access their corporate networks.
This could affect some customers using Vodafone Office Access, Vodafone Data Control or customers who have custom-built APNs.
The impact it may have is that if a user upgrades to iOS9 they may lose complete data connectivity.
As a precaution we strongly recommend that any users who use custom APNs, Vodafone Office Access or Vodafone Data Control do not upgrade to iOS9, until further notice. We understand that Apple are working on a fix.
have your say