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Why can't HTC put 1Gb of onboard RAM onto their devices ??

I am probably being naive here but with SD card prices so low now ....I cant understand why mobile manufacturers wont provide their devices with a "useable" capacity of memory .....
Or is the RAM memory very differant to SD memory ???
Is their a possibility of maybe in the near future, HTC launching a device with say a full gigabyte of onboard RAM ???

Yep, RAM is more expensive than ROM. By the way, this needs space which you just haven't in the Magician. It would also be too expensive, since a 1 GB card costs around 100 €, which is far too expensive for a manufacturer of these devices. Besides that, the magician is quite cheap in my opinion.

Dandie,
i think if i-mate provides us with the range of devices all would be happy and decide what to buy. e.g.:
-basic configuration - 64mb ram
-advanced conf - 64mb ram +512mb built in sd
-extreme 64mb ram +2gb built in sd
or whatever else breakdown is feasible or optimal. the price would respectively warry e.g. +$50; +$200.
i also don't see a problem to fit SD chip to device - its much smaller without body
it is also related to all device manufacturers. Since few of manufacturers do it i see some reasons for it:
1. low probable but: sd patent owners do not want to go for built in option or ask too much for it (but i know that some of the phone manufacturers already started production of the devices with build in miniSD chip);
2. it is not profitable or worthwhile from the marketing point of view;
3. I heard a lot from, people that SD cards are not very much reliable, sometimes it looses data, sometimes brokes. Thus it used for temporary storage purposes and nobody wants to take a risk with loosing your data…
4. and last but not least: they all are stupid and we here the only Einsteins who invented such simple way to increase memory

Although I have a 1GB SD Card in my JAM, I wouldn't want it to be built in. I'd rather take it out and put it in my card reader (USB 2.0) especially for transferring that 170MB DIVX file!
And what about those situations where you just give your SD card to your friend to copy stuff over and then back in your JAM?
And what about those situations where you just plug in your digi cam's SD card and have a quick view at the pics taken?

KTA,
nobody says "we want to replace external SD with built-in one" we say that we want to have both options: (i) BIG internal storage and (ii) SD/MMC slot for card.
internal storage would be used to keep our garbage on and forget about memory limit problems. And external for exchanging data with others, to move high-capacity data in and out and whatever else you want to use it for...
I never seen a person complaining on big HDD
Let people have an option!!!

Just guessing - but wouldn't there be an increase in power consumption with an increase in volatile memory?
Maybe the reason there is no 1gb RAM option in the PDA world today is that the battery life would be like 1 hour.

Mark One said:
Just guessing - but wouldn't there be an increase in power consumption with an increase in volatile memory?
Maybe the reason there is no 1gb RAM option in the PDA world today is that the battery life would be like 1 hour.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*BINGO* you got the answer right... :wink:
- $
- Battery life...
- OS Stability with bigger memory...
- Speed of OS with Bigger memory will reduce...
The rest is history...

xirc0m, Mark One,
DAMN WRONG !!!!
* Question of money is not discussed since people want to have extra memory and ready to pay reasonably. Again, I assume several options to fit every pocket. Don’t want extra memory – buy basic version.
*Do you have increased consumption with SD card inserted? Then why it should be with built in sd card?
* OS Stability with bigger memory… guys, if I have 100gb harddrive and you have 30gb does it mean that os stability is much lower in my case? I doubt
*Speed of OS with Bigger memory will reduce... SPEED would remain the same! But if you want to access built-in storage then you’ll get the speed of sd card
let me reiterate again. The whole idea is to have one big sd card built-in and have another slot for external card. There is still may be fast RAM as usual devices have

I suspect the main one is battery life; unlike SD card, which uses flash memory, which does not require power to maintain its content, the device's RAM needs constant power to maintain its content; that's why when your battery goes dead, your card content is still there, but not your main memory. You may then ask why not use flash for main memory? That's because Flash has a limited number of writes (although for most people it's virtually limitless now), and is slower.

Did you see pictures of the PCB? There is just no space left for more/bigger chips. The only thing you can do is replace the current chips with ones of the same size but more memory. These are expensive. Adding another slot inside the case wouldn't really help, since you still need space for the socket and there would be another sensitive part with not soldered contacts. I guess devices with up to 512 MB ROM built in exist already but they are bigger than the Magician. Don't forget: The magician was the smallest PPC available when it was released. It even had the phone built in. Trust me: There is no space left. The SD-RAM memory upgrade availble is done by exchanging the current chip and the price of 200 € tells you that 1 GB is just not realistic. Even though Flash-ROM is cheaper, it would increase the price to about double i think (don't forget, the end customer price always is a lot higher than the manufacturing costs - at least double the price I'd say) - not really interesting.
So - wait for fast 2 GB SD cards to be released (I'm still waiting for my Sandisk Ultra 2GB for almost 6 months now) and there you have your 2 GB ...

Why not to solder chip on the circuit board then? No contacts, no connectors, just chip. Sure, there is no space now. But don’t forget that when circuit board was designed all components were distributed proportionally to cover all board. If you add new stuff – you redesign it and tighten components. It only seems that no more room.
I also agree that built-in sd price would be different from external sd. Again, 1gb, 2gb, 8gb – this is just talks; we discuss the idea on having chip flash memory built-in.

Well, there is a flash ROM chip built in, as you know. It has 64 MB and is used for the Storage, the Ext_ROM and the OS. There is an upgrade available that makes it 128 MB ROM - 200 bucks! And also, I don't agree with you saying theres enough space left on the Magician. There is no space left at all! This device is one of the most compact electronic devices on the market. There is not enough space for one single additional chip. You have to wait for either the other or the memory chips to decrease in size and/or increase in features/capacity/speed (what they do). The next device probably will have more RAM, more ROM - but not 1GB. That's for certain.

avyshnya said:
KTA,
I never seen a person complaining on big HDD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Using your HDD example, I thought the issue here was not the size of the "HDD" but whether the HDD is internal or external.
Can you imagine HTC with 3 different production lines, each with a different "embedded-SD" size? I don't think so ...

RAM goes against the whole quick standby capability of the device. I can suspend my handset into a minimal amount power consumption mode and then resume it right back to where it was before without any loading delay.
With RAM, I would have to hibernate any volatile information to a persistent store which takes both time and space. Otherwise I need to keep power applied the RAM while in suspend mode which costs me in battery life. Neither of these options are very attractive.
Plus a RAM store is yet another memory store to juggle. The OS would have to be modified to use it and I already have enough stores between main menory and the expansion slot. I shouldn't need to juggle another one. Finally, PCB real estate and battery load is limited so I don't want to add another memory controller or memory that needs constant recharging as RAM does.
Maybe increasing the cache on the processor is the way to go.

Dudes !!
You misunderstand my question !!
Yes I think having a removable SD Card is ESSENTIAL !!
I dont want to replace the external SD card with just an internal one !!
With 2Gb and 4Gb cards on the horizon - I dont think I would require much more storage (for the time being anyway!)
What I mean is .... would there be a possibility in the future of RAM prices dropping and sizes reducing - so that we could have a JAM type device with about 1Gb of RAM instead of the crappy 64Mb ???
What I HATE is having to worry about taking up too much of the measly 64Mb RAM which would then slow down and make the JAM unstable ..... I want to be able to install most/all of my "apps" into Main/Storage and then use my SD card for just Music, Movies, Games etc ....
Hopefully the RAM would be non-volatile so would remain even after a hard reset so no more need for constant Backups and re-installing etc !
1Gb Main/Storage Memory + 4Gb SD Card Memory = Perfect Device !!
It just seems crazy to me that Removable storage is reaching for the sky ..... but most of the time I have to be careful what/where I install programs on my device in case it slows down or becomes unstable ....
64Mb Ram + 2,4,8,16,32Gb SD Card = So Crazy It Makes Me Sick !!!
PS - I hear that JAM version 2 will have 128Mb RAM and built-in WIFI .... so there is room in there after all !!!

1GB RAM would indeed be nice, but that would be too expensive. The SD cards aren't made the same way. They're cheaper but slower. Even the Storage is a lot slower (which I found out by doing simple tests).
PS - I hear that JAM version 2 will have 128Mb RAM and built-in WIFI .... so there is room in there after all !!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bet that they will make it even smaller, because most of the parts in any device will get smaller over the time. When they developed the Magician there wasn't any room for anything more though.

Interesting article on the future of Flash Memory .....
http://www.tomshardware.com/business/20041112/index.html

Dandie said:
Well, there is a flash ROM chip built in, as you know. It has 64 MB and is used for the Storage, the Ext_ROM and the OS. There is an upgrade available that makes it 128 MB ROM - 200 bucks! And also, I don't agree with you saying theres enough space left on the Magician. There is no space left at all! This device is one of the most compact electronic devices on the market. There is not enough space for one single additional chip. You have to wait for either the other or the memory chips to decrease in size and/or increase in features/capacity/speed (what they do). The next device probably will have more RAM, more ROM - but not 1GB. That's for certain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd gladly trade the cheapo toy-grade camera they shoehorned into this thing for a more appropriate amount of memory - anytime. That's for sure!

grrrrrr..
i think, another reason for not putting a 1gb a internal memory is because the phone still cant stand to have that large appilcation running.. it will surely always lockup if a total of 1gb load of applications you put in there. not to say + the another 1gb in external.

avyshnya said:
xirc0m, Mark One,
DAMN WRONG !!!!
* Question of money is not discussed since people want to have extra memory and ready to pay reasonably. Again, I assume several options to fit every pocket. Don’t want extra memory – buy basic version.
*Do you have increased consumption with SD card inserted? Then why it should be with built in sd card?
* OS Stability with bigger memory… guys, if I have 100gb harddrive and you have 30gb does it mean that os stability is much lower in my case? I doubt
*Speed of OS with Bigger memory will reduce... SPEED would remain the same! But if you want to access built-in storage then you’ll get the speed of sd card
let me reiterate again. The whole idea is to have one big sd card built-in and have another slot for external card. There is still may be fast RAM as usual devices have
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yo...avyshnya,
Guess you have never work in a Mobile Phone / a PDA device company before...or have you done any R&D on this...
As I mention above still valids...
-$ , its all about Marketing issue...you are not looking at their point of view.... anything is possible the throw in the big chunk of memory...Technology is there...but they will not excute that so fast...
- Consume more Batt...yes it does with more memory...to your naked eye...you do not see it... if you seriously benchmark it you will realise it does...whether its external or internal memory
- Stablity on OS... still does... you are talkin about your PC...this is no PC...its PocketPC... sorry you are not benchmarking in correct terms...
- Speed... go n do a benchmark...you will see it yourself...

replace the onboard memory chip with a larger one???

Ok, so we all know the internal memory is way to limited for the amount of apps most people will have on the market. So, I have a crazy idea of finding a tech shop that can do the work, and have them replace the onboard memory chip with a larger one. I am fairly, though not 100%, sure that the OS can handle the larger amount of ram.
What do you guys think, would it be a possibility?

Technogen said:
Ok, so we all know the internal memory is way to limited for the amount of apps most people will have on the market. So, I have a crazy idea of finding a tech shop that can do the work, and have them replace the onboard memory chip with a larger one. I am fairly, though not 100%, sure that the OS can handle the larger amount of ram.
What do you guys think, would it be a possibility?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off, I don't see why you'd want more RAM, I've never seen any app crash cause the phone ran out of RAM, so I'm guessing you're talking about the built in flash storage. Secondly, I'm fairly sure they solder everything onto the motherboard so unless you're looking to do some elite hacking and happen to have a virtually identically sized but larger capacity flash ROM unit lying around, I wouldn't suggest it.

We aren't called HACKERZ for nothing.

[email protected] said:
First off, I don't see why you'd want more RAM, I've never seen any app crash cause the phone ran out of RAM, so I'm guessing you're talking about the built in flash storage. Secondly, I'm fairly sure they solder everything onto the motherboard so unless you're looking to do some elite hacking and happen to have a virtually identically sized but larger capacity flash ROM unit lying around, I wouldn't suggest it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe you mis-understood him.
He meant physical storage.
The apps take up space when you have many of them.
And as you may know, there is a limit to how much space is available since the applications are not stored on the Mem. Card but rather internal memory.
He wants to know if there is a way we can increase the internal storage memory size.
Hope I explained it well.

There have been people that have upgraded the soldered SSD drives on the EEE laptops with larger chips, but the problem becomes the controller. It must be programmed, and unless you have access to the company that sells the controller chip you will have a very hard time flashing it. The ones that have upgraded them all had inside help with flashing the controller. I dont know how much of this would cross over to phone, but it definatly isnt as easy as just replacing the chip- and even that requires a shop capable of reflow work
If you think in terms of computers, your not just replacing the stick of memory, your replacing just the chips ON the stick of memory, and then flashing the controller to be able to address it.

I upgraded the RAM in my PALM a few years ago from 4 to 8 meg.
What a nightmare.

Yeah, it seems easier to install apps to the SD card.

It's exactly what's being said here. It isn't that it can't be done, but it isn't just as easy as replacing the onboard RAM module.
In most cases, it is directly soldered to the MOBO, so, you've got to have someone remove the old RAM module, hopefully not destroying anything else in the process, and then run the risk of the system not booting because the controller for the RAM module doesn't recognize the new chip.
It is a complicated process, to say the least, and it COULD be done....but I wouldn't recommend it.

I had the HTC XV6800 and a lot was discussed about upgrading the memory. That was 2 years ago and nothing has happened. With that said I'm sure it is possible, but you would need a lot of resources and it probably isnt worth it. If you need more space you can always move your apps to the sd card. It works quite well and is available today.

I had a Dell Axim x51v upgraded to 128MB RAM. A Friend of mine had a Universal with 128MB too. Not every device could be upgraded though. Some of the devices have empty place on the board where somebody can just soldier a new compatible chip. For some there is empty place, but the existing chips could be exchanged for bigger ones.
But it is possible and had been done for various HTC devices.
The storage is big enaugh and Apps-to-SD is a matter of seconds. Bigger RAM would be invaluable. Now apps keep unloading themselves all the time when you start a new app, which more or less beats the point of having multitasking OS. I would like to be able to start Music, Browser, Skype and AndNav without having to use the slow swap-to-SD.

326MB of RAM?

Just got a Samsung Vibrant.
I noticed the phone says I only have 326MB of total RAM. I thought this phone was suppose to have 512MB of RAM? Is 326MB normal or did I get an odd phone?

No that's right. It's all the kernel will allow us to use. Even with the unofficial froyo roms out, we only get 341mb.
Friends don't let friends flash drunk...

Cool. Thank you for the information.

Ravynmagi said:
Hmm... Seems strange they make Android phones with 512 and 768MB of RAM. Will the official Froyo be able to access more RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"

jrizk07 said:
It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say it is more like on your PC. You may have 4 GB installed, but when you look at it it will tell you you have only access to 3.5 GB because other hardware is using the memory, like a shared GPU etc.

jrizk07 said:
It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm getting tired of people making these retarded f****ng comparisons. Hard Drive capacities go down due to formating. Also, a 1 byte file takes up the smallest allocation unit on the drive, so space is wasted there as well. Better file systems are better about it, but unless you're writing raw data to the hard drive there's no way to avoid formatting it and losing space or writing data to it and losing space due to allocation boundaries. I've never heard of anyone Formatting RAM, have you? If the smallest allocation unit on the HDD is 4KB, then a 1Byte file will really take up 4KB on the drive's FS.
RAM is totally different. If there is 512 RAM there's 512 RAM. The only time you will see less than your amount of RAM on a computer is if the computer is allocatting a certain amount of RAM for use by an integrated graphics card (or something else).
Problem with our phones is that they're set up like the latter.
We don't have 512 RAM. We never have, and we never will. We haev 340'ish and the rest is GPU RAM. You're never going to run general applications on that RAM.

Oh. I had edited my reply because I had assumed I found my answer from this...
developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html
"HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB"
I had assumed that mean the official Froyo when we got it would have 512MB available.
So I guess I misunderstood their meaning there. So the 326MB is pretty much the max my applications will have to work with on this phone?
I guess I'm puzzled because I was in T-Mobile a couple days ago and I was going back and forth between getting this Vibrant and the MyTouch 4G. The MyTouch 4G advertises 768MB of RAM, while the Vibrant advertises 512MB of RAM.
So now I'm back to my original confusion. Why would HTC put 768MB of RAM in the MyTouch 4G if Android can't even use 512MB? *confused*
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
This is my first Android device, so I'm still trying to figure out these things. Sorry for the dumb questions.

Ravynmagi said:
Oh. I had edited my reply because I had assumed I found my answer from this...
developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html
"HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB"
I had assumed that mean the official Froyo when we got it would have 512MB available.
So I guess I misunderstood their meaning there. So the 326MB is pretty much the max my applications will have to work with on this phone?
I guess I'm puzzled because I was in T-Mobile a couple days ago and I was going back and forth between getting this Vibrant and the MyTouch 4G. The MyTouch 4G advertises 768MB of RAM, while the Vibrant advertises 512MB of RAM.
So now I'm back to my original confusion. Why would HTC put 768MB of RAM in the MyTouch 4G if Android can't even use 512MB? *confused*
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
This is my first Android device, so I'm still trying to figure out these things. Sorry for the dumb questions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all. There are no dumb question. Second. Android uses all of the RAM. But as the phone reserves memory for hardware and other system essential services, you will only be able to use a certain amount of the memory. In this case around 345 out of the 512. The rest is put away so that the OS can run stable etc.
So for the MyTouch 4G it says that there is 768 MB installed, but you won't see all of that. The phone will reserve certain amount for it's hardware and you will never be able to free it unless you know how to change the kernel.
Hope this clears any confusion up.

Ravynmagi said:
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for xp, the memory limitation is due to 32bit memory addressing. 32bits can address a theoretical 4gb, however due to also addressing gpu memory and probably some other reasons xp can't address the entire 4gb and so you see 3.xGB.
i can't really speak to android or the vibrant, but i'm guessing (like others have said) we are losing some of our ram in a share with the gpu.

I think most people are missing the issue here.
The phones are advertised as having 512 MB RAM.
When you buy a computer, and it says 512, it comes with 512 (only exception is the one I stated - integrated graphics cards sharing system RAM - but that is usually listed on the Computer Spec sheet).
So, when they get a phone and it says 512 MB RAM, they expect for there to be 512 Application-accessible RAM on the device.
HTC adds more RAM to put the user closer to the advertised specs. Most other manufacturers do not.
So users end up with 326 MB RAM wondering if they got what they paid for.
Which... they really didn't if you use you common sense, but companies will always use technicalities tand semantics o defend their decisions and/or actions.

N8ter said:
I think most people are missing the issue here.
The phones are advertised as having 512 MB RAM.
When you buy a computer, and it says 512, it comes with 512 (only exception is the one I stated - integrated graphics cards sharing system RAM - but that is usually listed on the Computer Spec sheet).
So, when they get a phone and it says 512 MB RAM, they expect for there to be 512 Application-accessible RAM on the device.
HTC adds more RAM to put the user closer to the advertised specs. Most other manufacturers do not.
So users end up with 326 MB RAM wondering if they got what they paid for.
Which... they really didn't if you use you common sense, but companies will always use technicalities tand semantics o defend their decisions and/or actions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely agree with you. In fact some of us in xda have discovered that sgs indeed has less than 512MB of RAM. We are still somehow trying to defend Samsung by say Galaxy TAB has more RAM (when Samsung advertise 512MB only for TAB)!
On a side note - Hard Drive capacity is measured in millions of bytes hence 500,000millionbytes
will be around 465GB only (unformated)!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I doubt ~170 mb is being allocated for the radio and for hardware addressing space. It's my opinion that the phone actually only comes with 384mb ram.

raduque said:
I doubt ~170 mb is being allocated for the radio and for hardware addressing space. It's my opinion that the phone actually only comes with 384mb ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no.
10ch

Prankey said:
I completely agree with you. In fact some of us in xda have discovered that sgs indeed has less than 512MB of RAM. We are still somehow trying to defend Samsung by say Galaxy TAB has more RAM (when Samsung advertise 512MB only for TAB)!
On a side note - Hard Drive capacity is measured in millions of bytes hence 500,000millionbytes
will be around 465GB only (unformated)!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Many do list that but what makes the drives smaller is formatting. The raw size is what it is, but the formatted capacity is much less. You can ser this on sf cards easily. Format it as fat32 then ntfs, and the end (formatted) capacities will be different. Then play with allocation sizes as well ;p
If you have hordes of small files it can really eat inyo the space on ut hard drive, as well, since a file can only be as small as the smallest cluster size in the filesystem.
Even if they made the drive 1024mb x however many gb they say it is, that will be instantly cut fown tje minute you format a fs onto the drive. There is also space the fs reserves for system use, as well. Mft and such.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

anthonys2r said:
no.
10ch
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He's right hardware addrrssimg shouldn't need that much, and graphics in a phone shouldn't need that much either. Maybe so,eone should sue Samsumg for false advertisement and see what they say.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

anthonys2r said:
no.
10ch
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.

raduque said:
You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree just checked and vibrant shows similar ram to htc aria, which has 384mb ram stock.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

raduque said:
You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a thread in the i9k forum that details the amounts of ram reserved in the kernel source. Just about every feature on the phone has dedicated ram, weather or not it's currently in use. That plus what the kernel shows as available adds up to 512mb. It's stupid, but that's how it is. Poor and lazy software engineering, IMO. Unfortunately, doing the allocation in a sane way and having it work in android properly is very difficult without all of the source, which we will probably never have.
It's not really any better with other manufacturers. They all do it. I think they ought to be required to disclose user available ram amounts, but nobody cares what I think.

N8ter said:
I'm getting tired of people making these retarded f****ng comparisons. Hard Drive capacities go down due to formating. Also, a 1 byte file takes up the smallest allocation unit on the drive, so space is wasted there as well. Better file systems are better about it, but unless you're writing raw data to the hard drive there's no way to avoid formatting it and losing space or writing data to it and losing space due to allocation boundaries. I've never heard of anyone Formatting RAM, have you? If the smallest allocation unit on the HDD is 4KB, then a 1Byte file will really take up 4KB on the drive's FS.
RAM is totally different. If there is 512 RAM there's 512 RAM. The only time you will see less than your amount of RAM on a computer is if the computer is allocatting a certain amount of RAM for use by an integrated graphics card (or something else).
Problem with our phones is that they're set up like the latter.
We don't have 512 RAM. We never have, and we never will. We haev 340'ish and the rest is GPU RAM. You're never going to run general applications on that RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had 326 RAM .After installation of FROYO 2.2,my Galaxy can see only 304 RAm.Why?I expected to get more RAM with FROYO 2.2 Why did this happened?

N8ter said:
He's right hardware addrrssimg shouldn't need that much, and graphics in a phone shouldn't need that much either. Maybe so,eone should sue Samsumg for false advertisement and see what they say.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you should do it. You know, since you know exactly what you're talking about.

[Q] can flash memory "burn out"?

Hi,
I'm just wondering if the type of flash memory used for onboard storage (the 16 or 32GB memory) can wear out over time, or if they last so long that it really shouldn't be a concern? Is the max read/write cycle something to be concerned about?
If you transfer data to the tablet frequently (via downloading from cloud), is it better to use the micro-SD or the onboard flash?
Just a theoretical question I guess. If flash memory lifespans are anywhere close to a couple years, this gives tablets with removable micro-SD a big advantage.
On magnetic hard drives, you could block out bad sectors if they wear over time. Is this done with flash memory?
Thanks for your opinion.

coachclass said:
Hi,
I'm just wondering if the type of flash memory used for onboard storage (the 16 or 32GB memory) can wear out over time, or if they last so long that it really shouldn't be a concern? Is the max read/write cycle something to be concerned about?
If you transfer data to the tablet frequently (via downloading from cloud), is it better to use the micro-SD or the onboard flash?
Just a theoretical question I guess. If flash memory lifespans are anywhere close to a couple years, this gives tablets with removable micro-SD a big advantage.
On magnetic hard drives, you could block out bad sectors if they wear over time. Is this done with flash memory?
Thanks for your opinion.
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Click to collapse
Yes, it can wear out, and generally *much* quicker for any given sector than with magnetic media. That said, flash manufacturers know this, and build wear-leveling features into their firmware to account for it. For most people, it's unlikely to be an issue inside the life of the tablet, but it depends how you use it. If you keep the internal memory almost full, the wear-leveling algorithms don't have much room to work with, and you can kill the few remaining sectors much more quickly.

Burn out.....no unless it is hit with a powerful shock.
Now if you meant WEAR OUT.....then yes it can do that.
Two completely different things.

coachclass said:
Hi,
I'm just wondering if the type of flash memory used for onboard storage (the 16 or 32GB memory) can wear out over time, or if they last so long that it really shouldn't be a concern? Is the max read/write cycle something to be concerned about?
If you transfer data to the tablet frequently (via downloading from cloud), is it better to use the micro-SD or the onboard flash?
Just a theoretical question I guess. If flash memory lifespans are anywhere close to a couple years, this gives tablets with removable micro-SD a big advantage.
On magnetic hard drives, you could block out bad sectors if they wear over time. Is this done with flash memory?
Thanks for your opinion.
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I was just reading an article about IBM engineers creating a new type of non volatile memory that was better and faster than flash...I won't get into here, but in that article it also talked about the limitations of flash memory.
They said that regular flash memory has a 3,000ish write life span, commercial grade flash has about a 30,000 write life span. My guess is that is per sector or block or whatever they were not specific. In the article they equated the 3,000 write span to 3-5 years of regular consumer use.

I just put an SSD in my desktop at home and did a little research.
Most flash chips can withstand hundreds of thousands of write cycles per sector, but they do still do wear leveling.
Most of the time, you won't write too much stuff to a flash drive. However, in the presence of swap space, it can get written to quite a lot. My box now only has 2GB RAM, and I'm sure it's swapping a bit to the SSD, but I'm not worried since I'll be upgrading in a month or so, and will bump the RAM way up, and will use an OS that supports wear leveling.
Anyway, I don't think it will be much of a problem for a tablet. Most of the data on it will be pretty static, and I don't think they will do much swapping.

Digiguest said:
Burn out.....no unless it is hit with a powerful shock.
Now if you meant WEAR OUT.....then yes it can do that.
Two completely different things.
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Click to collapse
You mean, if he means the exact words he used in the first sentence of his post? Yes, he used different wording in the subject line, but it was clear what he meant.

I've tried looking around at some technical descriptions of how Android works.
I still don't know how Android handles memory. I can't imagine it using the flash memory for swap space if the working memory required goes over the 1GB ram. The forum member who is upgrading his PC soon - I hope you upgrade your RAM really soon! Using SSD as swap space seems really hard on it.
I also don't really understand how Android handles closing of programs.
That's probably the biggest difference between the windows desktop experience and Android. In windows, you close the programs. In Android, it may or may not close when you use another program...who knows.
I suppose the idea behind Android is less task focused...if you're not using it, you probably don't need it?

coachclass said:
I suppose the idea behind Android is less task focused...if you're not using it, you probably don't need it?
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I think it's just the opposite. That's what I've read.

Um, if your phone's NAND flash memory haven't worn out over the time you've used it. I don't see how it'd differ with a tablet. The life expectancy of the NAND flash used (probably MLC to cut down cost), will last longer much longer than you'll ever use it for. Heck, it'd last for at least 5 years under normal use if you use it with Windows 7. If it is Android (which barely writes anything under normal usage), it'll last at least twice as long. And yes, Android do swap when needed. You notice this when the tablet is super slow and unresponsive when running out of RAM (using a torrent app like ttorrent). It'll swap to the NAND flash and keeps doing so hogging all the cpu cycles making the tablet really slow.

Upgrade RAM?

Hello! Is it possible to replace and upgrade your phone's RAM and solder aftermarket RAM in it?
Thanks!
ps. Sorry for bad English

I do not think you can, these phones aren't really made for upgrades.

I have heard mention of this before ... but the compact design of the phone and the ability to find (upgraded) ram that would work with the chipset (soldered or otherwise) seems nearly impossible to find to me.
However, if someone was successful in this I would certainly be interested in hearing how.

I think it is too hard or You cant ('x ' )

Seeing as how the RAM modules built into the phone mother board are BGAs (ball grid arrays) it is nearly impossible to replace them without highly specialized equiptment like a FineTech BGA rework machine and the proper heat profiles for the given parts. That said you are more than welcome to try some methods that are not proven but seem very funny to me. I believe there is a youtube video of a man desoldering a BGA using an oven.
Needless to say of you dont like the amount of RAM your device has you may just have to wait until you can get another device.

In especial cases you can UNLOCK the RAM, but it didn't happen as a lot of devs tried and a really small quantity(of devs not phones) reached this point and the only phone that I know is unlockable is the ZTE Blade.

As an embedded system with some [normally] tightly controlled schematics and firmware, this would be unlikely for you to acomplish, since you're asking the question to begin with.
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium

hyztname said:
In especial cases you can UNLOCK the RAM, but it didn't happen as a lot of devs tried and a really small quantity(of devs not phones) reached this point and the only phone that I know is unlockable is the ZTE Blade.
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Not at all related to this, blade had 512mb of RAM in it, but it wasn't accessible- solved by a kernel change
Sent from my fingerz 2 ur eyez

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all smartphone devices have x amount of ram. say if you have 1gb ram in your phone you might only be able to use 868mb of it . it is becous your phone uses 128 mb for your gpu. it is plausible to make some of your gpu ram available as regular ram and that is done with an kernel mod. for my phone(lg optimus) 2x it is called a ram hack. it always comes with some faults depending on how much you take from the gpu. i have a 32mb shared ram hack so i cant reboot just have to turn the phone on and off

hey all
I guess it would be possible, however it might not so easy, I upgraded the ram of a wrt router some time ago: http://neophob.com/2006/01/wrt54g-ram-upgrade/

There's no chance of upgrading a mobile phone RAM .

I think the same,no way to upgrade ram on mobile phone

This is possible, but as others have said the complexity and difficulty to desolder a BGA ram chip and then put a new one on perfectly without messing anything up is incredibly high. And in addition, you have to find a ram chip that is compatible with your device (pin count and configuration, physical size, voltage, timings) and of a higher density, another difficult feat. So while it is technically possible, the practical answer is no it is not possible for anyone to do in the real world.

Hmm dont think you can.

EniGmA1987 said:
This is possible, but as others have said the complexity and difficulty to desolder a BGA ram chip and then put a new one on perfectly without messing anything up is incredibly high. And in addition, you have to find a ram chip that is compatible with your device (pin count and configuration, physical size, voltage, timings) and of a higher density, another difficult feat. So while it is technically possible, the practical answer is no it is not possible for anyone to do in the real world.
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ive seen it done, it can be done. its just really hard and nerve racking

Man bga chips are pain in a$$, unless u have sophisticated workstation.
A single short circuit/ loose contact can blow up ur entire CPU/motherboard.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using xda premium

Hate to say it but no, in many of the SoC (System on a Chip) devices, the RAM is a soldered component of the main board. They are using RAM Modules rather then SODIMM Chips. It would be nice though

Parts
Anyone have any ideas of where you could even start to look for ram that would work? I have a HTC Evo 4G. I wonder if its possible to find parts from a HTC Evo 3D and modify.

seems so
just from the CoE course, revers engng and tweaking hardware is a good start

it's possible, but if you think you'll save money that way, you're wrong.
lol