RAM Booster - Explained

Justin · 2024-05-22T11:40:00+00:00

Hi everyone! I’m Justin and work in the Product Marketing team at Nothing, looking after hardware product marketing across smartphone and audio. When I’m n...

Nihal

Instead of focusing on these unnecessary gimmicky features usually marketed with cheap low-end phones, focus on the actual issues like RAM management and camera quality. The current RAM management and camera quality are the worst in Nothing Phone 2.

Coming to current state of RAM management, if I have opened say checkout page of ecommerce app/website and switch to a payment app or messages app for OTP and come back again to checkout page, most of the times it’ll reload the ecommerce app/website closing the active payment session. I have to again go through the checkout flow from scratch. I have faced this kind of issue so many times with most of the apps and is happening on 8/128 GB of Nothing Phone 2. I have not faced similar issues in the past with upper mid-range or high-end phones with >6GB of RAM. I don’t think 8 GB of RAM is too less to have at present times which can’t hold 2 basic apps in memory.

iambhuvan

Hi Justin,

Thanks for putting it out in very easy to understand. I myself have gotten confused these terms at often times but I am sure I’ll remember it for longer after this.

I am not a heavy user of the phone, I purely have 4-5 apps that I use often, otherwise WhatsApp, Spotify and YouTube are the primary contenders for that RAM space.

I am still going to see and enable RAM booster and let’s see what value it adds.

Cheers!

ashutoshkumar_sg2

I was trying the ram booster on my phone 2 and it made some of my less used apps stutter while opening. Without it on, the apps open perfectly.

I can’t imagine how much it would lag on Phone 2a. If people see actual degradation in performance with it enabled, it’s functionality doesn’t matter. Sure, with it on there will be more ram free, but if the device itself feels sluggish I don’t think the overall user experience is gonna get better.

chetankhajuria

Justin it’s laggy make the phone jitter

SrsThewrongguy

Thanks for sharing the information.

But I guess 12 gb RAM is enough for day to day usage. It’s better to focus on better RAM management. Coz within a few minutes, the Apps are restarting.

mhdfirmus

After trying to use the RAM booster on my Nothing Phone 2a, I found it better to turn it off. The apps and device settings were stuttering, but after turning it off, my phone felt smoother.

maulikrakholiya

JosephStormJr_ I also experience the same.

With Ram Booster: It feels like the phone is not working smoothly.

GilesDelafeld

Great post Justin. I’d love the idea of you unpacking features like this 🚀

_lvaroC

I activated yesterday the ram expansion to 2GB, then one hour later the settings app crashed. I deactivated the RAM expansion and now no crashes. I think this is not working properly.

EDIT:

My phone is phone (2) 256GB/12GB RAM

-m1-

Hello, in general this is a very good topic and helps the community understand things. However, I have to agree with many people that turning off the boost improves performance.

NexPG

I’m confused, there are so many opinions. Do I need to enable this setting for system stability? Or if I need stability, should I disable this feature?

-m1-

NexPG Generally activate. However, the current situation is that for many users the stability is better when it is deactivated.

SRM_008

But in 2a ram booster degrades the functionality. Is this tech tested properly?

Zaaruk

It’s interesting how people get upset about this feature. Is it perfect? no. Does it the job it’s supposed to do? yes. your internal storage is ALWAYS slower than your RAM. This Feature uses some of it to store low priority Programs in it.

SRM_008

Zaaruk it’s a feature so it should either enhance the experience or at least keep it same but enabling this feature degrades the overall performance, so what’ the point of the additional feature if it’s not able to keep it at least neutral?

DevaDcruz

Is it safe to use ram booster?…does it damages the internal components or make battery drain so much?

mk96ix

Thanks for the article sir! You helped me understand what a RAM booster is correctly. I have a Phone 1 with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, while it’s enough for everyday use, I turn on the RAM booster because of Asphalt 9 Legends. I play it daily with 120Hz and high-quality settings, sometimes even on mobile data. So far, everything works smoothly without any crashes, and the phone never gets too hot.

Tino

This article states that there are two aspects to the RAM Booster feature: RAM expansion and “memory guardianship”. If this is the case, why can we only control the former and not the latter? Shouldn’t we be able to turn the feature on, so that we get just the intelligent RAM management, without selecting any additional memory expansion? The fact that this isn’t an option—that is, that the only option is how much memory to expand—makes me question whether this article is fully truthful. (And besides, isn’t Android already built to manage RAM intelligently in these ways?) Also, it’s really not cool that this new feature was added and auto-enabled on the sly. I wouldn’t have known about it if I wasn’t randomly poking around in Settings, manually checking for an update. Adding new features that may affect device performance is great—but they should be opted into, not forced on the (unaware) user.

Jean

Tino This article states that there are two aspects to the RAM Booster feature: RAM expansion and “memory guardianship”. If this is the case, why can we only control the former and not the latter? Shouldn’t we be able to turn the feature on, so that we get just the intelligent RAM management, without selecting any additional memory expansion?

Memory Guardian is what helps RAM Booster to decide if it shifts some apps from the physical RAM to the device’s storage-based virtual RAM. So there is zero logic in enabling Memory Guardian while disabling RAM Booster since both are part of the same process.

If your question is whether there is some kind of intelligent RAM management system while having RAM Booster disabled, of course, like on any smartphone.

Tino

Jean Gotcha. Makes sense. Thanks.

VeeraMuthuSelvanT

@Justin Hi Sir. I’m Veera Muthu Selvan. i recently bought NOTHING 2a phone and Felt good while using it. I accidentally turned on RAM BOOSTER (12+8) and my phone rebooted. Then Immediately I turned off because I don’t need of using that. Is turning on and turning off the RAM BOOSTER will affect my phone? Or whether my phone will slow down?

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