• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    6520 days ago

    How did google manage to make a version of linux more bloated than windows? It’s almost impressive.

    • Skull giver
      link
      fedilink
      English
      2619 days ago

      For the same reason turning off a screen in Android works in less than a second and doesn’t drain your battery in half an hour while modern standby still barely works in Linux: optimisations.

      Android is made to cache and freeze processes when switching apps. The more RAM you have, the more apps can have ready to go in an instant. When an app gets swapped out to storage, it’s very clearly noticeable, and many apps don’t bother to store state either. The Android approach to slick multitasking is to open as many applications as can fit in RAM, which is why apps launch faster than many Linux applications, even on much faster SSDs.

      RAM really isn’t that expensive, and the power savings of rarely ever initialising applications is worth it.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        819 days ago

        while modern standby still barely works in Linux: optimisations.

        Steam Deck likes to have a word

        • Skull giver
          link
          fedilink
          English
          1618 days ago

          The Steam Deck does sleep very well, but as far as I know, it doesn’t do low-power background stuff while in sleep mode (Android does this for notifications, Windows will try to download updates, etc.).

          I think the Deck uses classic S3 sleep rather than S0ix sleep.

    • AItoothbrush
      link
      fedilink
      English
      519 days ago

      Tbf the high ram usage wouldnt be a problem if it cached processes in it and used it to save battery but its just pure bloat. I think phones should have a coprocessor that handles notifications like what smartwatches do and that basically free battery. But android is also bloated because apps take a very long time to launch because of the jvm and java (thats what i heard at least, idk if this is actually why its slow) so everything is just left active. Also i think android strayed too far from linux, its basically just a worse version with a mobile ui and the support of a country sized company.

    • @halcyoncmdr
      link
      English
      6720 days ago

      They have 16GB of RAM physically, 3GB is reserved for AI. So yeah, only 13GB is usable by regular apps, even if you don’t care about any of the AI stuff.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          3220 days ago

          So then why does it have 16GB?

          Have you noticed how expensive these things have gotten? Doesn’t it seems like charging you for more RAM than it necessary and then locking 20% of it away for “features” no one wants is a bad thing?

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            1720 days ago

            What if we use graphene OS I would guess that RAM would not be longer use and you can use the full 16GB.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              719 days ago

              I think it’s likely you would have access to all of it because the testing in the article clearly shows the kernel can see the memory. Thus, the graphene kernel should be able to use it.

        • @halcyoncmdr
          link
          English
          2320 days ago

          It’s not about a single app, it’s about multitasking without having to reload apps.

          At various times I’ve juggled between 4 apps at once on my phone. Say something like Messaging, Firefox, maybe a lemmy app, and Bitwarden for logging into something.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          1920 days ago

          Adding to what others said it is beneficial to load an app from RAM.

          1. Loads faster for user convenience
          2. Lower power usage so you’ll have better battery life
          3. More RAM reduces disk writes for cache / temporary files / from cold started apps that could write to storage.
          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            620 days ago

            Yeah but… I have a Pixel 6 with 8gb RAM. I just checked the memory usage. Over the past day, average usage has been about 4gb. And the biggest user is Android itself at 1.8gb. The next biggest is Instagram at 285mb, and that’s with me scrolling videos when I’m bored.

            Adding hardware just for the sake of it just means it’s costing people for features they almost certainly won’t use.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            519 days ago

            When Android uses this larger page size, we observe an overall performance boost of 5-10% while using ~9% additional memory.

            From the linked article. So I doubt that the larger page size is the (only) reason for 16G ram. AI is the more likely reason.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              219 days ago

              Ooh I understand that it’s for AI, I just meant that more RAM would certainly help in this case.

    • slazer2au
      link
      English
      320 days ago

      I assume 13GB shared with all active apps and not 13 per app.

  • SagXD
    link
    fedilink
    English
    26
    edit-2
    19 days ago

    Only? I have just 8 GB RAM on My PC.

    And Android device which I am using to comment this have just 2GB RAM.

    • AItoothbrush
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1119 days ago

      Chrome casually using 8gbs with a few tabs open. Also windows 11. I got a school laptop and windows uses 5gb out of the box💀. Linux supremacy.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1119 days ago

        Chrome using 8gbs ram is not necessarily a bad thing

        Usually browsers use a lot because nothing else is using the ram. If you had a separate program running, the browser would stop using as much.

        • @linearchaos
          link
          English
          518 days ago

          Shhh if you take away their illogical reasons to b**** about stupid things they’ll find more annoying things to b**** about. Just nod and say yeah buddy too bad about that ram somebody should do something about that, and back away slowly.

      • MaggiWuerze
        link
        fedilink
        English
        317 days ago

        Your OS is not necessarily using those 8gb, it just reserved them, meaning other apps can still use it

        • AItoothbrush
          link
          fedilink
          English
          017 days ago

          No thats virtual ram that works differently. Virtual ram is usually much more than 8gb.

  • @auzy
    link
    English
    26
    edit-2
    18 days ago

    Not a big deal.

    Wait until you find out how much ram gets wasted in caching and algorithms designed to run faster on computers or improve productivity. Even things like indexing to speed up search or icon caching

    It’s a mobile phone. 13gb is lots, and I’d be curious to see the extent that ai improves productivity.

    The headline is designed explicitly to bait arguments

    • @Telodzrum
      link
      English
      518 days ago

      The problem is Android is fuckterrible at using RAM properly.

  • @[email protected]M
    link
    fedilink
    English
    620 days ago

    16GB of RAM sounded too good to be true. Granted 13GB is nothing for sneeze at still. Hopefully, they can provide an option to toggle it off. Sounds wasteful for people who would use it once a while.

    • Skull giver
      link
      fedilink
      English
      219 days ago

      It does have 16GB of RAM, though, it just reserves 3GB of it for AI stuff. I don’t know what kind of AI stuff needs to be loaded in the background continuously, but running the same apps on other phones will also drain 3GB out of the embedded 16GB of RAM.

      I can’t really think of a reason why someone would buy the most expensive “AI phone” and then never use AI. The other Pixel models don’t have this stuff, so people who won’t use AI should probably just get a cheaper phone.

      • Phuntis
        link
        fedilink
        English
        218 days ago

        I bought it cause I wanted pink and I like larger phones smaller phones feel uncomfortable to hold I wish the AI stuff would get lost it’s all nonsense that does nothing to improve anything and only slows you down and is an excuse for more spyware

      • @[email protected]M
        link
        fedilink
        English
        119 days ago

        Just getting the 3GB of RAM used is not the issue. There are apps which can use even more. The issue is its reserved meaning its not available to your other apps.

        An option to remove the lock while still being able to utilize the RAM (should the need arise) and AI features should be provided for flexibility should one desire.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    619 days ago

    At least the OS seems to know that the additional memory is there. This means root apps or custom ROMs should be able to use all 16GB.

  • @ByteMe
    link
    English
    220 days ago

    What about the regular 9?

    • JackGreenEarth
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1120 days ago

      They only have a few MB reserved for Google’s AI, most of the 12GB is free for all apps on other models.

    • @baatliwalaOP
      link
      English
      6
      edit-2
      20 days ago

      On the Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 9, we note just 0.26GB (275,336KiB) of locked RAM […], a very small amount most likely used for some background tasks in the OS. However, on the Pixel 9 Pro XL, this leaps to 2.91GB (3,051,936KiB) of Unevictable and Mlocked RAM. Subtract out the Unevictable RAM from the Pixel 9, and there’s an extra 2.64GB (2,776,603KiB) reserved on the Pro models.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        120 days ago

        Really interesting. I wonder what features the Pro XL has that the Pro version doesn’t to use over 10 times more RAM.

        • @baatliwalaOP
          link
          English
          1
          edit-2
          19 days ago

          I think when they mean “extra reserved on the Pro models”, the mean both “Pro and Pro XL” and not “Pro XL only not Pro”. It’s written a bit weirdly.