I wonder if it would make sense to invest in the 8GB variant or if 6GB would also suffice. It’s not about the here and now, as the 6GB is certainly enough if you don’t play memory-intensive games right now. It’s about future-proofing. Has the memory requirement of Android and the apps increased so much in the past that an extrapolation into the future (let’s say 5 years) shows that 8GB are necessary? The storage capacity of the internal memory would not be that important to me, I am concerned about the RAM.
Can anyone say something about this technically?
(I’ve searched too, if there’s a thread on this that I’ve seen about, feel free to point me there of course!)
My five cents’ worth: Nothing is future proof. The question is what you expect to be doing with the device, how long you expect to be using it and how much you can afford to pay.
Given that an important point of FP is to retain them in service for as long as possible, principally for environmental reasons, (but also financial reasons in the long term) it makes sense to get the highest specification available. I would therefore advise 8 GB.
Logically …
Future-proof is an absolute term, but the future is not known. Relatively, more should be more future-proof in this case. Just think the other way around: Is there a scenario in which less RAM would be more future-proof? Fairphone have this option to have a reduced price point on offer, I guess.
Psychologically …
You wonder about this now. The question is there and won’t go away from you unless you go for the 8 GB option, even if there might be reasons in favour of 6 GB. Again, the future is not known.
Else … since you know yourself best … How much or deeply would you regret having chosen 6 GB when it turns out in the future 8 GB would have been better?
That’s why I asked about extrapolation. Of course that wouldn’t give a guarantee, but it could give hints.
This is probably the decisive point, even if it initially seems absurd from the point of view of sustainability (less storage = fewer raw materials used?). If I keep the phone for a year longer (not can keep it, but really keep it), it will have paid off from an environmental point of view.
Hmm. Thinking about future-proofing… I would like to see the possibility to swap out memory modules, should the owner decide to invest extra. If possible, and speaking fully hypothetically, I’d have a 16 GB kit ready for my new phone on day one.
Are the memory chips soldered to the board?
Anyhow, the moral is: for true sustainability, a user should be also able to swap their RAM kit. That way it wouldn’t matter if the phone came in with 6 GB. If you need more, you get an 8 GB kit, and flip your 6 GB kit on the market or even through the official store.
Yes, and I think the second part is more important as I assume additional material for 8GB compared to 6GB is nothing compared to a completely new device.
I believe Fairphone would again be the first in market doing this trick let alone a cpu/soc on socket. For Fairphone I would believe they would do it if it was that easy and parts were available. Elon isn’t active in this market, as he’s the guy to force fiction into reality.
Maybe it’s just what many manufacturers still don’t want, customers that can swap parts to use a device for longer…that could be one reason why manufacturers like Asus simply solder all memory onboard.
And wasn’t there someone stating 640Kb of memory would be sufficient forever?
The minimum ram requirement for Windows 11 are 4Gb.
No one makes socketed ARM chips of this type anymore that Fairphone could use. The main reason is that the circuits involved need to be very low resistance and short, due to the speeds and low power involved.
If you look at the headlines, Samsung just made LPDDR5X. Very fast and low latency RAM for phones that is faster than the DDR5 for PCs that was just released.
DDR5 has the capability to eventually reach almost 5Gbps, but LPDDR5X is going to be in phones very soon and can do up to 8.5Gpbs.
How? Part of the reason is that the PCB traces involved are very short and low resistance. It may be possible to do this with tiny socketed chips, but no chip manufacturer is willing to try for a potential small return or nothing.
Hi Juri, I have taken the same wondering here… Finally, I have chosen for 6Gb (because I just want to spend so much on a phone and I am not doing any memory eating activities on my phone).
My thoughts are that Android is the big spoiler when it comes to memory use (if you don’t do gaming). My current phone is 5 years old now, and it has 3Gb memory (it was from the spanish brand bq). It is still running on Android 7. I find no problems with this version of Android at all, and also no nameable issues with performance. I believe that I have lost one app over the course of 5 years, because it didn’t function on Android 7 anymore. I have caught safety issues with a virusprotector and VPN.
Before this I purchased the FP 3+ two times and returned it twice, because the problems were endless (like the camera not working properly, phone dying under a conversation and lots of connectivity issues). I cannot prove it, but I have the feeling that most issues had to do with Android 10 on a native Android 9 device.
So, my advice would be: if you want to buy 6Gb, just don’t update the device to a newer Android version. And since Android 11 just appeared, I feel that you can save yourself at least a year before you HAVE to update to a newer Android version.
I hope this helps a bit with taking the right decision for you.
I’m wondering about this issue too and generally I would agree that the 8 GB version is more likely to be future-proof.
Another aspect that one apparently needs to consider is that 8 GB could use up more battery (even if they’re not used), thus shrinking the time until you have to charge again. Does anybody know how significant this is?
Even if that is really true, compared to the consumption of the display, WiFi, mobile radio, it would be a rather theoretical difference in battery life.
be sure. most of the battery is used by your google services and trackers.
Throw all that crap down and you don’t have to worry about the 1 per mille battery consumption because of 8GB RAM anymore
Of course I just noted that the 8GB Ram version also has twice the internal storage at 256GB.
That would make a big difference to those who may like to use an SD card to extend and then get into troubles with formatting.
@holzfaeller15 So regarding the extra power consumption it’s not just the RAM but resources have to be used to access more memory, but I’m pretty sure that’s incredibly little and only used when accessing etc. However the larger the memory the longer it takes to find a section to write to or to delete, but unless the memory is nearly full that time is hardly likely to be noticeable any more that any extra power drain
Hi, i am about to buy a FP4 and i am wondering whether there might be any limits on futureproofness if i choose the 6GB RAM version?
I have no hardcore usecases like games in mind, i just want to use chat,browser,bankingapps,camera,mail stuff.
I am thinking if any Android updates might not be deployed by the FP coorp just because there is less RAM ? Or any other features are not deployed for this reason?
Do you have any opinion on this ?
What is your average RAM usage on the FP4 on stock rom / degoogled approaches ?
