Expandable Virtual RAM – Know the Advantages and Disadvantages

Expandable Virtual RAM Pros and Cons

Tuesday, 7th September 2021

Virtual RAM is a term you may have come across in the past few months if you have stalked smartphone launches in India. While RAM is something every smartphone comes with, virtual or extended RAM is a relatively new concept.

Moreover, Virtual RAM is now a feature that can be found in budget phones like the Redmi 10 Prime as well as premium models like the Vivo X60 series. Earlier it was a concept that only users of mid-range smartphones were familiar with.

Here’s how exactly this feature works and whether you should really care about it.

How does Expandable Virtual RAM work?

Expandable Random Access Memory on a smartphone is a reserved internal storage space that will help move temporary files here when you have already depleted a large chunk of your RAM. This will help create space in the actual physical RAM of the smartphone where you can load more apps. Moreover, whenever you wish to switch back to the old apps and use them, the files will be brought back from the phone’s internal storage back to the RAM.

Also Read: Xiaomi’sRedmi 10 Prime to Launch in India Today, Specs and Features.

How does the expandable RAM compare with the physical RAM?

Physical RAM continues to be more reliable and faster than its recent counterpart as RAM speeds always beat the internal storage speeds.

The expandable virtual RAM is in fact more of an emergency reserve of RAM, as and when the user feels the need for it and not a complete replacement of a RAM.

To put it simply, a phone that comes with 8 GB RAM will always be a better and faster performer than one that comes with 6 GB dedicated RAM along with 2 GB expandable RAM.

Some advantages

• The Cost factor. Being a software feature rather than a hardware component, users are likely to glean more performance out of them without having to pay for extra physical RAM
• These smartphones will offer better RAM management than other smartphones that come without the feature

Some disadvantages

• The feature triggers only when you have surplus internal storage to spare
• If you use a third-party custom ROM on your device instead of the official firmware, you will not be able to use this feature as it is a software feature.

The News Talkie Bureau

Source:

Indianexpress