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The phone I’m looking at comes in 2 variants.
4gb costs £40 more. Will I notice the difference?
Is that all you get for the 40 quid? If it also meant a doubling of storage I'd go for it.
/Pats 6gb ram while typing this
If you're planning on keeping it for a while then it should futureproof it a bit more, and as @johnnystorm says, if it also gives you double storage then it's definitely worth it.
*also pats 6gb RAM*
What does ram do?
shag sheep
[pats 8gb RAM]
shag sheep
😀
I assume this is an Android phone?
Personally, I would pay the extra. More RAM means more stuff stays in memory and doesn't need to reloaded when you go back to it in 5 mins/ tomorrow. As such it makes the phone faster in real world use.
Less of an issue for iPhones because they have more efficient memory management.
Is the amount of storage or processor different as well?
If you have the £40 then moar is always betterer.
Which one would make you more Scottish?
It's far more complicated than this but basically more RAM = more space to keep non-foreground apps alive. If you tend to switch between a lot of different apps I'd go with the larger model, if your usage is a couple of core apps and not much else than I wouldn't bother. (For reference, mine is 3GB and it's absolutely fine.)
Actually, that's not quite true. For the sake of £40 on something I'd be using daily for at least the next two years, I'd almost certainly buy the higher model personally. What I'm saying here was is if cost was a huge issue.
Less of an issue for iPhones because they have more efficient memory management.
Nope, that's not the case.
It's less of an issue on iOS because iOS apps typically require less RAM. It's nothing to do with "more efficient" memory management. Memory management on both OSes is somewhat different (as you'd expect from different platforms) but neither is particularly more efficient than the other overall.
Which one would make you more Scottish?
The cheaper one, obvs.
I'm not a mobile developer but I was under the impression the reference counting used in iOS was more efficient than the Java garbage collection in Android?
I imagine the runtime env overhead for android requires more memory in the first place anyway.
Unless you're really multitasking it won't make much difference.
Is serious multitasking even possible on a phone?
My current phone has 4gb ram, the previous one had 3. I can't tell the differences when switching between apps.
What does make a difference is battery size!
That said I only use my phone for Web browsing, bit of social media, bit of YouTube etc. An extra gig of ram I can't see making any difference.
Will 3gb use more juice than 4 gb?
Just checked and my current phone has 2 gb and seems as fast as my mac with 8gb.
I doubt it, at least in any practical sense. My current phone, a Huawei Mate 10 Pro outlasts any smartphone I've ever had regarding battery life despite being a much higher spec device (even taking battery size into account).
What phone are you looking at. we can have a look and see if you get anything else for your £40, or even annoyingly suggest something else to you?