Samsung Epic 4G and the "SGH-i897"

No, the EVO 4G has 512 megs of RAM, 1 GB of internal storage.

RAM is memory, internal storage is where current installed Android applications are saved.. Please don't confuse the two, people.

The Samsung Epic 4G, and likely the SGH-i897 will both also share approximately 512 megs of RAM. Not all of it will be usable within Android as usually a few megs are reserved, though I can't remember what for at the moment. Epic 4G, as we know, will have 8 and 16 GB internal storage variants, and supposedly this SGH-i897 (per this rumor) will feature only 2 GB.

Regardless, Android 2.2 FroYo will remove the requirement of installing apps to ROM, and will allow apps to be saved to a removeable SD card, but IIRC it's an option that has to be supported by the application. This should allow more flexibility in future applications by allowing users to save them onto removable memory (without rooting the device as is currently required to run applications not saved to internal flash).

Whomever started this trend of calling non-volatile storage mediums "memory" needs to be beaten. IMO, memory is volatile (is wiped when power is removed) and storage is non-volatile (saves information even without power).

/end rant

EDIT - Removed reference to ROM as well. Not really an accurate term either, as internal storage is not "Read Only Memory".

I think it's been shown that memory over 512 megs is virtually pointless currently for mobile applications. We're used to believing that more memory is always better, simply because we're used to computers running multiple applications that can routinely fill RAM and spill over into a slow and inefficient page file.

What's REALLY important that we hardly ever get to hear about these days in mobile devices is what SPEED of RAM is being used. In current smartphones, the biggest bottleneck is memory bandwidth.

Most (nearly all) smartphone SoCs have only a single-channel memory controller, and are usually using LP (Low Profile) DDR1 memory (typically at 200 MHz from what I've seen). Some (and I suspect the Epic 4G is one of them) use LPDDR2 memory for higher bandwidth (clocked up to 533 MHz). I also suspect that some are using high-performance memory for their GPU cache to allow for some of the rather unbelievable GPU performance figures (90 Mtps Samsung claims with the Epic 4G) that are, as far as I'm aware, unattainable even with LPDDR2 memory and a dual-channel memory controller.

So we really need to stop worrying about how much there is; it's a moot point because we're going to see other bottlenecks come up well before RAM size becomes an issue, and ultimately RAM bandwidth is where we should be focusing. It's no surprise manufacturers are so tight-lipped about it...

[Chopped out some of the nested quotes to keep this readable]


I've seen some performance figures that show virtually no gain. Not sure where I read it so I don't have a link to offer you. Gotta be up in 6 hours for work so I'm not going to look now, but I'll see if I can dig it up tomorrow.

Potentially in the future, it could make a difference. But my understanding is that the way current Android apps are coded, and given the rather small texture size of images coded for mobile devices (and remember, they're not all coded for huge high-resolution displays, they're usually coded to run well on smaller, weaker devices as well), it's just not a major issue currently.

As we see significantly more complex applications (specifically 3D ones with more complex and textures and physics processing) we could see the demand on RAM rise.

Anyone actually have an Android phone and can share with me how much memory gets regularly used during a graphics-intensive application? Yes, it's true, I don't have one of my own (yet) :-p

Here's a link to a official Samsung page.  Note that it refers to 2GB of internal memory and also 16/8GB of Nand memory.  Although this is not the page i saw before this may be a source to what I read.  However this is in reference to the Epic 4G and not the i897.
http://www.samsung.com/sg/consumer/mobile-phone/mobile-phone/style/GT-I9000HKAXSO/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail&tab=specification
Please let me know what you think.

Well, I'm glad we got that cleared up.