What is extended RAM?

We’ve all been conditioned to think that if a phone comes with a certain amount of RAM, it’s set in stone. While that’s still true from a technical perspective, there’s something called “Extended RAM” that hit the market not too long ago for smartphones. But, what is Extended RAM, how does it help, and is it better than the hardware solutions?

In this piece, we’ll answer these questions. If you’re looking for an explanation of what RAM is, you should follow the link below. It will go through some of the finer points about RAM and what the “LPDDR” means in LPDDR5 RAM.

What is RAM?

What is extended RAM?

So, let’s start off with what this term means. If you don’t know what RAM means, you should read the link above. RAM is what holds everything you have going on your computer at the moment. All of the programs you have open and other functions eat up the RAM. So, the more RAM you have, the more you can have going on.

Electronic devices come with physical RAM chips, and their capacities are set in stone. So, if your phone comes with 8GB of RAM, then that’s it. You can’t swap out the RAM chips like you can on a computer. However, phones started using extended RAM relatively recently. The name sounds like an affront to the laws of physics, but it’s an actual thing.

Extended RAM actually uses some of the phone’s storage to augment the physical RAM. So, if the phone has 8GB of RAM, which is still a decent amount of RAM to start with, it can actually borrow some of the phone’s storage and temporarily store data there. So, the space that would be used to store files or programs is used to store the active programs and activities.

It can give phones insane numbers

This is something that many companies have been using to their advantage. We’ve seen devices come with 8GB of RAM and increase it to 12GB. This kicks a phone from a premium mid-ranger to a flagship phone. In fact, phones like the Infinix Note 30 Pro actually come with 8GB of RAM and borrow another 8GB from the storage to make a whopping 16GB of RAM.

While this technology didn’t really pick up with phones until recently, it has been used in computers for years before it hit phones.

Same technology, different names

There are different names for extended RAM, and they depend on which company is using it. Several companies might not give it a name; they may just tell you the full amount of RAM and give you the numbers below. Something like “16GB of RAM* (8GB + 8GB)”

However, some companies do give the technology a name. For example, iQoo calls the technology “Extended RAM”, while Vivo calls it “Virtual RAM”. For another example, RealMe calls it “Dynamic RAM”. All terms make sense, so you won’t be wrong in calling it any one of those names.

How is it helpful?

There are some benefits to this method, as you can imagine. For starters, it’s just a simple way of adding more RAM to your phone. It’s always frustrating when your phone has to close apps in the background when you still want to use them. This is a way to provide more RAM to phones that don’t have the best specs. It adds more usability to the devices that we use and love.

Also, adding more physical RAM to a device makes the manufacturing costs go up. Thus, the jump in manufacturing costs could make the phone more expensive for customers. Simply using some of the storage can give users more RAM without increasing the price of the phone.

With this, a phone as inexpensive as the aforementioned Infinix Note 30 Pro (it retails for around $270) can have a flagship level of RAM.

Okay, but what’s the catch?

It seems that extended RAM is a useful technology, but it’s not quite as useful as it sounds on paper. The reason has to do with the difference between RAM and storage.

Both are reservoirs that store binary code, but they both serve two completely different purposes. Storage doesn’t particularly need to be speedy because the data stored doesn’t really need to be accessed at a constant rate. Files are stored and left alone.

RAM, on the other hand, needs to be speedy. It’s as dynamic as a river, as all the processes going on in your computer are being handled by the RAM. The programs you’re using, the background processes, etc. are loaded onto the RAM. All of its information needs to be accessed randomly and at a moment’s notice.

Thus, RAM is actually quite a bit faster than storage is. What does this have to do with extended RAM? Well, since storage is slower than RAM, the section of storage used for RAM can’t do exactly what native RAM can.

Two types

There are different types of apps that are held in the RAM. There are apps that are performing tasks and those that are inactive. Active apps will be like music streaming apps or apps monitoring your system. They’re doing an actual user-facing task in the background. However, inactive apps don’t do any background functions. This means their functionality stops the moment they exit the foreground.

Well, since storage is slower than RAM, the active apps can’t be sent to the storage. It’s not fast enough to support the tasks that the apps are doing. Only inactive apps can be loaded into the storage. So, if all you have open are active apps, then the phone will start closing them when it runs out of RAM. This also goes for games.

This, of course, isn’t something that OEMs tell its users. This is why it’s still important to watch what apps you have open in the background. If you’re torn between picking up a phone with extended RAM and a phone that just has more native RAM, you’ll need to keep that in mind.

In all honesty, a phone with 16GB of native RAM is technically better than a phone with 8GB of RAM extended to 16GB of RAM.