iPhone 4 to have 512MB of RAM, double the 3GS and iPad?

Apple has traditionally been -- how shall we put it -- cagey with revealing memory and CPU specifics of its mobile devices, but MacRumors is today reporting its discovery that the fourth-gen iPhone's RAM apportionment will be a very healthy 512MB. We've heard similar rumblings from reliable sources of our own. What it means is that iPhone 4 users can look forward to not only the same processor (though potentially at a lower speed) as their iPad compatriots, but also double the memory allowance. Of course, this will hardly be the first handset to offer half a gig for the OS to dance inside, but at least Apple's keeping up with the times. Wouldn't wanna disappoint all those pre-orderers now, would we?

[rand0 Posted Jun 17th 2010 3:55PM]

Epic

[KevOne Posted Jun 17th 2010 3:56PM]

@rand0

Double Epic.

[The Advanced Kind Posted Jun 17th 2010 3:56PM]

@KevOne

Right. Triple epic fail.

[Paul Elmy Posted Jun 17th 2010 3:58PM]

@KevOne

At least it won't disappoint the people who preordered.
It's nice to see apple catch up with the competition.

[Plazmic Flame Posted Jun 17th 2010 3:58PM]

@rand0

ONLY 512 MBs ??? Yet the UI is so goddamn smooth!??!?! WTF is everyone else doing wrong?? So frustrating...

[keyone Posted Jun 17th 2010 3:59PM]

@The Advanced Kind

Nope, not a fail. 256MB are enough for 4-5 apps running at the same time even when the multitasking is not done the right way. ^^

[Frawley Posted Jun 17th 2010 3:59PM]

@rand0 It's nice to finally learn some of the tech specs of a phone thousands of people already preordered.

[BrookLynnsFinest Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:06PM]

@rand0

EPIC WIN!!!!!

[rand0 Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:09PM]

@Frawley

Hundreds of Thousands*

[MikeUK Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:09PM]

@Frawley

"Thousands"? This isn't an Evo 4G we're talking about. It's the iPhone 4. So the correct term should be "hundreds of thousands"

[kamenwati Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:11PM]

@Plazmic Flame
I'm not an apple person and dont want their products or eco-system but I have to hand it to them you are so right how do they get that ui so smooth I always suspected its because it gets to use 90% of the gpu power but honestly I dont know.
They deserve an immense amount of credit for that.....whats wrong with everyone else in this department maybe its that the others are multi-platform while apple is just one hardware platform.

[Almo Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:12PM]

SWEEEEEET!

[James T Kirk Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:12PM]

@rand0
Goodbye reloading pages in Safari! This is great news.

[MoonWalkerCTE Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:13PM]

@Plazmic Flame Actually all current models run on 256 and the exeption of the 1st gen iPhone and Itouch and the 3G iPhone which run at 128MB

[huzzlehoff Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:16PM]

@rand0

I'm positively surprised. Still, I wouldn't buy it.

[Oghowie Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:18PM]

@rand0 iPad needs this more than the iPhone. Damn thing is always reloading web pages.

[berkleyberkley2010 Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:19PM]

@rand0
512MB.. what is this 2010? Sucks. Windows products have lots more ram.

[Goldaar Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:21PM]

@Plazmic Flame When you control the entire product from hardware up to the software you can optimize code pretty easily.

The PS3 has 256mb of ram, the xbox has a similar amount. These are all completely closed development projects, if Microsoft made an XBox OS for use with other consoles it would require much more power because it's not optimized correctly.

This is the reason WinPho7 is different than any other mobile OS, they are controlling the specs of the phones to give you an optimized feel without manufacturing the hardware in house.

[angermeans Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:22PM]

@Plazmic Flame my nexus one is plenty smooth especially with froyo. Its alot smoother than any of the 3 iphones that I had in the post three junes. The incredible is the smoothest phone I have ever used I would be really surprised if a phone can manage to be smoother than the incredible. The EVO isn't that bad either but it also isn't as smooth as the incredible

[Corriewf Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:23PM]

@rand0 APRIL FOOLS!!! Oh never mind, forgot it's June.....

[Cg006 Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:24PM]

@MikeUK

You both have it wrong...

"Millions of Phones"

[angermeans Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:24PM]

@keyone are you trying to say that the crippled way that apple does multitasking on iOS is the right way? Android us a much better way cause it's actually multitasking not just a task manager

[JJMoBerry Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:25PM]

@kamenwati You're correct - they're leveraging the use of OpenGL quite low in the display and GUI stacks that allow them to accelerate bit blitting, panning, scrolling, etc. without using the CPU at all. And all of the display/GUI code is native C/C++ code.

Android unfortunately uses a Java VM for part of its rendering stack - it completely utilizes the CPU without any acceleration from hardware. This is why a 1GHZ Snapdragon is still unable to pan smoothly while my 1st gen Ipod touch (running at 450Mhz) is still able to pan web page without even breaking a sweat.

Good engineering is what it is :)

[Oflife Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:29PM]

@Plazmic Flame Don't forget, unlike ANY of the other handset manufacturers, Apple bring > 30 years of computer software and hardware development to the table. iOS is based on years of R&D, including QuickTime, Quartz and other highly optimized Apple developments. To be frank, they are light years ahead in all but actual wireless technology - hence problems with iPhone 3GS signal quality (I sold mine it was so useless as a phone), iPad WiFi and even many MacBook WiFi signals. The one error Apple made was not buying or working with a mobile/cell phone vendor. They could have got in with Motorola before Moto chose Android. Or perhaps even bought Nokia? I have man Nokias and their signal quality is tops. For that is their expertise - not slick GUIs! :P

[who said what Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:30PM]

@angermeans

This comment is something that intrigues me a lot. If I showed you two screens both showing me email and running pandora in background, and one of them is iOS and one of them is Android... would you really be able to tell which one is "REAL" multi-tasking?

[ravissimo Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:34PM]

@rand0

512MB?!? that's WAY too much. no one will ever need more than 637kb of memory. It's just not necessary for any computing device.

[KLANDA Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:35PM]

@keyone

Its not just that. Batter life is the main concern.

[dharmarules Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:36PM]

@angermeans Android has its own pluses, but it doesn't come close to the iPhone on the UI front. And I'll throw in web browsing as well. The android browser is somewhat choppy when zooming, and definitely not quite as refined as mobile Safari.

[ivallt Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:36PM]

@rand0
Obviously not "epic" since as the article states, this 512mb is just keeping up with the times. Nothing surpassing the ordinary... Im glad Apple is at least keeping up

[CCTV36 Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:44PM]

@Goldaar

Even with the KIN though the UI is a little laggy.

[Tagbert Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:48PM]

@KLANDA The Pitcher is pretty important, too.
:)

[tcc3 Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:56PM]

@Oflife

They tried that. Remember the Rockr?

[hungarianhc Posted Jun 17th 2010 4:59PM]

@kamenwati
1) The Palm Pre's UI isn't optimized cuz it's written crappily
2) The Android's UI isn't smooth because it's written in JAVA

[CannedCorn Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:09PM]

@Plazmic Flame Apple's iOS runs smoother with 128mb on the first gen than any other OS on any phone I've seen to date. I have a froyo nexus one on AT&T too.

[jaffreywali Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:22PM]

@Paul Elmy Have you tried the ipad UI. It's so smooth it blows away any product I've ever used! That it does it with such mediocre hardware specs is amazing. Give the ipad a shot and then talk.

[DonClark Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:24PM]

@Plazmic Flame

The UI on the 3GS is ridiculously smooth also, and it only has 256mb!!!

I was shocked the first time I used a DROID and then the EVO. I thought they were 'better' than my iphone until I slid my finger across the screen, its unbelievable how not-smooth android is. Hopefully Froyo changes this so maybe when iPhone 5 comes out I'll actually get to CHOOSE a phone -instead of just getting another iPhone b/c nothing else is as good

[SEscobedo Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:26PM]

@berkleyberkley2010

Are you talking about the Kin? Cuz you just failed if you was.

[A Brown Kid Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:29PM]

@rand0 No one's said this before, but
WIN

[ebon Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:32PM]

@hungarianhc

The iOS UI is so smooth because it's created with specific hardware in mind, like a game console. As opposed to some shotgun-splattering across all sorts of different spec phones then hoping for the best...like Android.

[MikeUK Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:44PM]

@Cg006

We were talking specifically about the number of people who have preordered iphone 4. The official figure is around the 600,000 mark.

[Moisture Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:44PM]

@angermeans
Why dont you read these two articles and then tell me again how smooth the Incredible and Evo are!

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/14/htc-evo-4g-and-droid-incredible-suffering-from-unresponsive-scre/

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/13/htc-evo-suffering-from-glass-separation-issues/

[ebon Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:50PM]

Can we not have just one single article about the iPhone where I don't have to read about the EVO or some other shitty, half-ass wanna be android device?

[naashak Posted Jun 17th 2010 5:58PM]

@rand0

Notice how Apple says "Half a Gig of Memory" NOT 512 MB memory. To the Joe 6-pack consume, it sounds much more impressive - just like "Retina Display". Apple is all about marketing - I really think other folks who make more solid products but are more modest in extolling virtues of their products (Nokia, yes I am looking at you) need to take a leaf out of Apple's marketing book.

[dtg755 Posted Jun 17th 2010 6:25PM]

@Moisture
What you just linked had absolutely nothing to do with smooth scrolling in any way shape or form. I'm not defending any phone but at least make an argument instead of linking 2 completely unrelated articles because they happen to be issues with those particular phones.

[Simba501 Posted Jun 17th 2010 6:32PM]

@Cg006 Yup :)

[Makali Posted Jun 17th 2010 6:34PM]

@Oghowie
IPhone is the child of iPad so u get the same crap

[spartandre217 Posted Jun 17th 2010 6:35PM]

@James T Kirk
The Ipad had that problem really badly because of the increase in screen resolution. They need the bump in RAM for the increase on the iphone 4 and in order to support multitasking of ANY sort.

[Makali Posted Jun 17th 2010 6:47PM]

@dharmarules
IPhone browser sucks to EVO Droid browser what kool aid
r u drinking

[That guy 2 Posted Jun 17th 2010 6:54PM]

@Plazmic Flame It was smooth on 256, ram doesn't have much to do with speed or smoothness, more about how many apps can be used at the same time, how many webpages can be open similtaneously, but with more ram, it takes more apps/webpages to slow the ui and phone down

[darex Posted Jun 17th 2010 6:56PM]

@kamenwati I guess it isn't quite as easy to copy and duplicate others' ideas as it had seemed.