It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

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Rudi
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It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

Post by Rudi »

I never thought I'd ever hear this statement! "It’s good that your device’s RAM is full"...

The apps you see in your list of recent apps aren’t actually using processing power. They are consuming RAM, or working memory — but that’s a good thing.

As we’ve explained before, it’s good that your device’s RAM is full.
There’s no downside to having your RAM filled up. iOS can and will remove an app from memory if you haven’t used it in a while and you need more memory for something else. It’s best to let iOS manage this on its own. There’s no reason you’d want to have completely empty memory, as that would just slow everything down.

Believe it or not, removing apps from memory using the multitasking interface could actually lead to less battery life in the long run. When you re-open such an app, your phone will have to read its data into RAM from your device’s storage and re-launch the app. This takes longer and uses more power than if you had just let the app suspend peacefully in the background.

Full How-To Geek article here...
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Rudi

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John Gray
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Re: It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

Post by John Gray »

Does this hold true for proper operating systems, also?!
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HansV
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Re: It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

Post by HansV »

If you consider Windows to be a proper operating system, yes. See Why Memory Optimizers and RAM Boosters Are Worse Than Useless or The Memory-Optimization Hoax, the latter by Mark Russinovich of SysInternals fame.
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Hans

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Rudi
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Re: It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

Post by Rudi »

John Gray wrote:Does this hold true for proper operating systems, also?!
The article says this about Desktop OS's:
When you use an application on your desktop PC — Windows, Mac, or Linux — or open a web page in your web browser, that code continues running in the background. You may want to close desktop programs and browser tabs you’re not using, but this doesn’t apply to iOS apps.
I've always made a habit of closing unused apps on a laptop as laptop RAM is usually less than desktop PC's.
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Rudi

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BobH
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Re: It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

Post by BobH »

Hmmm . . .

Does that mean that less RAM is more?
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HansV
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Re: It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

Post by HansV »

Of course not...
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Re: It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

Post by PJ_in_FL »

Any comparison to other mobile OS's like Android?
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Re: It’s good that your device’s RAM is full

Post by HansV »

It holds for Android too - in fact for all modern OSes - see Why It’s Good That Your Computer’s RAM Is Full.
Best wishes,
Hans