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.

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

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

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.

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- replied to this.

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

    4 days later

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

    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.

      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?

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

      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.

      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.

        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 replied to this.
        • Sid likes this.
          a month later

          @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?

          Merged 1 post from RAM BOOSTER .
          8 days later

          Hey guys, I just get the phone 2a bought at Amazon for several days and remarked that RAM shows in the phone 12G + 2G given by the system (showed in the screenshot) while it refers on Nothing’s website the RAM booster 12G + 8G, could anyone tell me is the 2G given by the system part of the 8G Ram booster, please? If yes, why it is not 8G indicated in the phone ? if not, what is their difference ? where could we check the RAM booster 12G + 8G ? Thanks in advance for helping me in comprehending this topic.

          Hey
          Go in Settings->System->Ram Booster to change the space allocated to the additional ram.

          Merged 2 posts from Nothing Phone 2a RAM booster.