There appears to be a small movement underway in the Android smartphone market, which will hopefully grow large enough for Google to notice. It all started with OPPO and Vivo, and now it’s Xiaomi’s turn. With the latest update to one of its mid-range Galaxy A series phones, it appears that Samsung is joining the bandwagon as well. With the addition of Samsung’s new RAM Plus feature to the Galaxy A52, virtual memory could become the next big thing in Android phones.
The Galaxy A52 isn’t particularly noteworthy, especially compared to the Galaxy A52s and Galaxy A52 5G, which support networks beyond LTE. The Snapdragon 720G isn’t 5G, and the mid-range phone only has 4GB, 6GB, or 8GB of RAM. That, on the other hand, makes it an ideal candidate for Samsung’s latest update.
The phone’s October 2021 update included more than just security fixes. It also included RAM Plus, which gave the phone an extra 4GB of RAM. Of course, this comes at a cost to internal storage, but the phone still has a microSD card slot, which is a welcome addition.
Virtual RAM is an old technology that has been used on desktop operating systems for almost two decades and is now making its way to mobile devices. It uses a portion of internal storage as a RAM backup, giving the operating system more room for apps, especially for multitasking. Virtual RAM or swap is always slower than hardware RAM due to the differences in RAM and flash storage technologies, but it provides a necessary buffer.
This feature can be implemented at the OEM level, as manufacturers can fine-tune the user experience. However, this should ideally be done at a deeper level to be used by all Android devices. With Samsung pushing RAM Plus onto more phones, it may become popular enough for Google to release a standard Android implementation.
Source: sammobile
