Database Users

NOT 384MB ram, It is 256MB!

Hello everyone,
I have got the xperia but I was just as you confused about whether the it had got 256 or 384mb ram, so I decided to call the special x1 support to get my question solved.
The guy seemed very educated on the phone, as he answered my question without hesitation.
Apparently that guy who said there were going to be 384mb ram, was wrong. It IS 256mb. I was told that he had mixed up internal memory and RAM.
This was really dissapointing to hear as I cannot get how a senior product manager can repetetly make the same miss saying over and over again without ever publicly say that this was a miss saying.
None the less, I am keeping my phone. Its great still.

Apparently that guy who said there were going to be 384mb ram, was wrong
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do you know who is 'that guy' to whom you refer to?
*edit* didn't see you already know who he is
TBH I can't believe it

No, Xperia get 384 Mb.
There is explanation about that.
From
http://www.tracyandmatt.co.uk/blogs/index.php/2008/10/13/sony-ericsson-xperia-x1-answers
Q&A
What is the actual RAM in the device?
The X1 has 384 MB RAM but you'll note that the device information screen says 256MB. This is because the X1 also has an additional 128MB RAM that's only accessible to the CPU/3D chip.

I am aware of this explanation but this guy really seemed sure about that it was a miss saying. He said that there is, ONLY 256mb ram.
edit: Where does this rumor come from anyway? That there is 128mb on cpu/gpu ram?

Agaas said:
Hello everyone,
I have got the xperia but I was just as you confused about whether the it had got 256 or 384mb ram, so I decided to call the special x1 support to get my question solved.
The guy seemed very educated on the phone, as he answered my question without hesitation.
Apparently that guy who said there were going to be 384mb ram, was wrong. It IS 256mb. I was told that he had mixed up internal memory and RAM.
This was really dissapointing to hear as I cannot get how a senior product manager can repetetly make the same miss saying over and over again without ever publicly say that this was a miss saying.
None the less, I am keeping my phone. Its great still.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm... could you ask him again quoting what Matt said at Tracy & Matt? Or rather, simply just ask him how much memory is dedicated to the 3D Chip.

msalmank said:
Hmmm... could you ask him again quoting what Matt said at Tracy & Matt? Or rather, simply just ask him how much memory is dedicated to the 3D Chip.
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Click to collapse
Okey, I will. But later when Ive got time to

inuka said:
No, Xperia get 384 Mb.
There is explanation about that.
From
http://www.tracyandmatt.co.uk/blogs/index.php/2008/10/13/sony-ericsson-xperia-x1-answers
Q&A
What is the actual RAM in the device?
The X1 has 384 MB RAM but you'll note that the device information screen says 256MB. This is because the X1 also has an additional 128MB RAM that's only accessible to the CPU/3D chip.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think X1's RAM is 256MB at present.
Why Matt can say "128MB RAM for CPU/3D"? I don’t think Matt can know this (128MB RAM for CPU/3D) by the normal review.

ahyi said:
I think X1's RAM is 256MB at present.
Why Matt can say "128MB RAM for CPU/3D"? I don’t think Matt can know this (128MB RAM for CPU/3D) by the normal review.
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He got a PRESS release, and i'm pretty much positive that they get a detailed spec sheet or something with that. He wouldn't have said it on his own, of that i am sure.

Pardon my ignorance. Who are Matt and Tracy? I've been on their site but it doesn't have anything about them on there? I presume its a London based site given the 0208 number on their 'Contact' page
Have they either
a) been involved in the design/manafacturing process of the X1 or
b) actually opened up the device and seen for themselves?

Maby someone with a bit of knowledge behind circuits on phones could have a look at this and tell us if there infact is 384mb or not:
http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/forms/blobs/retrieve.cgi?attachment_id=1011334&native_or_pdf=pdf
This shows images on the xperias internal parts.
(found the link in this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=434895&highlight=inside+xperia)

Ask Tracy and Matt where that information came from... OH YEAH, assumption because Xperiancers said 384 and the device shows 256 RAM. There's no way to prove there's 128 dedicated to graphics when you have the device, there's no spec that shows it. They know as little as we do and assumed.

Agaas said:
Hello everyone,
I have got the xperia but I was just as you confused about whether the it had got 256 or 384mb ram, so I decided to call the special x1 support to get my question solved.
The guy seemed very educated on the phone, as he answered my question without hesitation.
Apparently that guy who said there were going to be 384mb ram, was wrong. It IS 256mb. I was told that he had mixed up internal memory and RAM.
This was really dissapointing to hear as I cannot get how a senior product manager can repetetly make the same miss saying over and over again without ever publicly say that this was a miss saying.
None the less, I am keeping my phone. Its great still.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 'guy" MAGNUS the MORON

Hi all. I was the one who was sherlocking the internals of the prototype tested by the FCC, I would regard the one tested by the commission as being the final version. The part number 8MA98jq257 xv99 is security badged with a unique part number manufactured by a semiconductor company called
Micron Technology Inc, They specialise in mobile ram of many variants.
and 128Mb is not out of the question since they have sizes up to a 1Gb,
The recent news of the storm successor which is in works now has alledgely 1Gb of Ram, So it's not totally out of the question.
Thanks all....time to do some IC Sherlocking, Any new information I will keep you informed.

ugh, this is likely a bad news
I've inspected this link http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/forms/blobs/retrieve.cgi?attachment_id=1011334&native_or_pdf=pdf
and compared it to the micron mobile ram database from the official website, here is my thoughts :
1. so far the evidence suggest that there is only 1 RAM chip in X1, the one that has 8MA898 JQ257 written on it.
2. there are no 384 RAM module in this world AFAIK.
3. so the best guess would be that RAM chip is the one with 256MB, if it a 512MB chip then it won't make sense, and it's more expensive.
4. and sadly, there is a big probability that there are actually no RAM dedicated for the GPU, because there are no other RAM chip there so far.
5. if we speculate that THAT is the VRAM, then where is the system RAM? That is the only RAM chip! Except if there are more RAM chip, that is could be the one covered with heatsink but I doubt it.

nap007 said:
ugh, this is likely a bad news
I've inspected this link http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/forms/blobs/retrieve.cgi?attachment_id=1011334&native_or_pdf=pdf
and compared it to the micron mobile ram database from the official website, here is my thoughts :
1. so far the evidence suggest that there is only 1 RAM chip in X1, the one that has 8MA898 JQ257 written on it.
2. there are no 384 RAM module in this world AFAIK.
3. so the best guess would be that RAM chip is the one with 256MB, if it a 512MB chip then it won't make sense, and it's more expensive.
4. and sadly, there is a big probability that there are actually no RAM dedicated for the GPU, because there are no other RAM chip there so far.
5. if we speculate that THAT is the VRAM, then where is the system RAM? That is the only RAM chip! Except if there are more RAM chip, that is could be the one covered with heatsink but I doubt it.
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Need i point out that this document was created on the 10th of the last month, a few days after the announcement was spread about 384 MB RAM... so has shots of a proto, definitely. Even the people who got their hands on an Xperia by the end of the month identified it as a proto.
Anyways... Just leave this discussion. What's the use? It could be this or it could be that. SE sucks in their marketing - kudos to them on that - but i am certain that Xperia will be one hell of a phone. It does have a 3d Chip with dedicated RAM... but how much? that we can only assume to be 128 as that would bring the overall total to 384... but let's just wait and see.
I almost gave up on the set. My brother is in Dubai and i gave him the ok to purchase a Touch Pro for me, 'cos i could not wait for Xperia any more, but then i played with the Touch Pro here at a local shop and i changed my mind again. The Panels interface has much more to offer than the beatifully done TF3D... And considering that there actually turns out to be dedicated memory for the 3D chip on the Xperia, any lag will probably be overtaken with updates and so. (my cousin's Touch Diamond was extremely slow unless he applied an update last month to it, why can't Se do the same?)

I don't get why there's such a huge argument about specs, it's STILL slow in panel mode, so what does it matter? As the person who has his said, it's not "dog slow", but it's noticeably slower than he expected. That tells me that it doesn't matter how much RAM it has, it could have 4 gigs, if it doesn't perform up to expectations it's not enough.

Black93300ZX said:
I don't get why there's such a huge argument about specs, it's STILL slow in panel mode, so what does it matter? As the person who has his said, it's not "dog slow", but it's noticeably slower than he expected. That tells me that it doesn't matter how much RAM it has, it could have 4 gigs, if it doesn't perform up to expectations it's not enough.
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TF3D on Touch Diamond was damn slow and buggy at times, it sometimes still is slow in refreshing when you switch through the tabs. the Diamond's update resolved a lot of issues on TF3D performance... so is an update not possible by SE to improve their Panels further?
From the latest vids seen of Xperia, the panels are not slow. The only panel that has been noted to be slow is the Xperia Panel by SE which takes a second or two to refresh it's shortcuts... but overall there is no major difference neither is there any lag.
Furthermore, the guy said that it is slow SOMETIMES, not always.

msalmank said:
TF3D on Touch Diamond was damn slow and buggy at times, it sometimes still is slow in refreshing when you switch through the tabs. the Diamond's update resolved a lot of issues on TF3D performance... so is an update not possible by SE to improve their Panels further?
From the latest vids seen of Xperia, the panels are not slow. The only panel that has been noted to be slow is the Xperia Panel by SE which takes a second or two to refresh it's shortcuts... but overall there is no major difference neither is there any lag.
Furthermore, the guy said that it is slow SOMETIMES, not always.
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Ya know what? I give up. You're the definition of fanboy, anything bad that's said about this phone is wrong because you say it is and you've decided it will be amazing. I think it's a good phone, but what do numbers matter if you see the performance is slow "sometimes" anyways? 384, 256, you realize that doesn't mean a damn thing right? As for the panels not being slow, HA. I've seen plenty of videos since the release and they're noticeably laggy for certain panels. Can they improve it? Sure. Are we judging future improvements? Well, that depends, when the Diamond came out did people say "it has potential to be fast"? No, they said it's slow, call it how it is.

Black93300ZX said:
Ya know what? I give up. You're the definition of fanboy, anything bad that's said about this phone is wrong because you say it is and you've decided it will be amazing. I think it's a good phone, but what do numbers matter if you see the performance is slow "sometimes" anyways? 384, 256, you realize that doesn't mean a damn thing right? As for the panels not being slow, HA. I've seen plenty of videos since the release and they're noticeably laggy for certain panels. Can they improve it? Sure. Are we judging future improvements? Well, that depends, when the Diamond came out did people say "it has potential to be fast"? No, they said it's slow, call it how it is.
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I don´t give a f**K about how much ram there is The one thing I care about are speed and stability and this phone is the best WM device ever that I have used and I have owned a bunch. The ordinary WM OS interface flies on the phone and it is totally untweaked. Ok the panels a bit slow sometimes, it takes some second to change from one to another. But I seldom uses them - just uses the ordinary Windows todayscreen with Mobileshell, uses the mediapanel and radiopanel sometimes but none of the other. And the battery seems very good, played with all day yesterday and still got 40% when arriving home, my Diamond was dead after the same use and even the Touch Pro was near death

Black93300ZX said:
Ya know what? I give up. You're the definition of fanboy, anything bad that's said about this phone is wrong because you say it is and you've decided it will be amazing. I think it's a good phone, but what do numbers matter if you see the performance is slow "sometimes" anyways? 384, 256, you realize that doesn't mean a damn thing right? As for the panels not being slow, HA. I've seen plenty of videos since the release and they're noticeably laggy for certain panels. Can they improve it? Sure. Are we judging future improvements? Well, that depends, when the Diamond came out did people say "it has potential to be fast"? No, they said it's slow, call it how it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason i don't call it as i see it, is because no one has done a full fledge review yet, so i can't say for sure. And most videos i have seen so far have been fast. Yes panels are slow at times in switching or refreshing, but in the latest reviews, most of them are simply awesome.
Fanboy? i've only owned one SE set in my entire life and the best thing i liked about it was its headphones. I call this phone amazing, 'cos i see it to be one, not because i'm being a fan of a brand. I stand by my statement that Panels have more potential than TF3D, and i beleive that it is a huge concern that they said 384 MB and then it turns out to be 256 MB... but excuse me for being an optimist and assuming that they most likely have 128 MB dedicated to the 3D Chip. Sure we don't have any hard-proof that it has 128 MB dedicated RAM to the 3D chip, but we don't have any hard-proof otherwise either.
As for the "sometimes" slow performance, i only said that the guys who already have an Xperia in their hands are saying that it is slow in Panel switching but only at times. I agree that the Xperia Panel (SE default Panel) is slow, because i've seen it to be even in the latest videos, but as for the other panels, they are fast and smooth.
In short... to each their own opinion. But don't insult me by labelling me a fanboy making my opinion biased. To me, apart from the missing Accelerometer, Xperia seems to be the best Windows mobile device out there, and that has nothing to do with the Brand.
Take a look at these... and then tell me, are the panels not fast? Like i said, the Xperia X1 Panel is slow in refreshing its icons, but the others are fast and smooth. And not just the panels... switching from landscape to portrait and so on...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnnDosWiuY
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hjatGzL-QRA
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iTfVYd0fwYQ
Another one: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3X824_dDgms
This one though is stretched wide, but still worth looking at.

Xperia Review by the Unoffical SE Blog - 384 MB RAM Confirmed...

Hi,
Finally a really in-depth review - really! And like i pointed in the title:
"The X1 comes with a total of 384 megabytes of RAM memory. Only 256 megabytes is visible in the system, but this is because these 256 megabytes is strictly for applications. At boot there’s about 152 megabytes free.
The remaining 128 megabytes of RAM memory is used for both the video graphics and CPU. According to the MSM7200A datasheet, the graphics part of the chipset (presumably the ATI Imageon 2300 or 2700G chip) is capable of delivering up to 4 million 3D triangles per second, and 133 million 3D textured pixels per second fill rate. Furthermore, it supports OpenGL ES - link that up with the large amount of dedicated video memory, and you’ve got an awesome power horse or gaming machine."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Best Regards.

Old news bro.

xmoo said:
Old news bro.
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new news for me though. I know at the system memory it only shows 256MB of RAM, but I didn't know there's 128MB of hidden memory for GPU, etc. In that case, I wonder if it's the same for other HTC device like HTC Touch Pro, or is this an unique architecture for Xperia?
I did observed that the memory after bootup, is much more for Xperia than HTC Touch Pro, maybe that 128MB of hidden memory is making that difference.

zenkinz said:
new news for me though. I know at the system memory it only shows 256MB of RAM, but I didn't know there's 128MB of hidden memory for GPU, etc. In that case, I wonder if it's the same for other HTC device like HTC Touch Pro, or is this an unique architecture for Xperia?
I did observed that the memory after bootup, is much more for Xperia than HTC Touch Pro, maybe that 128MB of hidden memory is making that difference.
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Click to collapse
Yes, it is new to me too as it only states that X1 has 256MB Ram so it has the extra of 128MB memory hidden, no wonder it is faster compared to my previous Touch Pro.
Good Job, SonyEricsson!

xmoo said:
Old news bro.
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Click to collapse
Sorry bro. Been out of the scene lately, and having seen this today was new to me.

That's no proof at all. We already knew that the Qualcomm chip has hardware acceleration capabilities. Even the Diamond and Touch Pro has it but there is a rumor that it isn't utilized because HTC didn't buy the license for it.
Until someone opens up the X1 and spots the exact 128MB memory chip (only the flash memory and the 256MB RAM chip have been spotted as of now) I won't believe anything. Information is rather dubious it needs to be cleared out by facts (and hardware pictures).
Also the source is rather biased too. The "unofficial SE Blog" as they call it, is SE friendly and will write anything will come to their mind to help SE image and sales. I've read the review and while I think it is overall detailed, on some points their objectivity is quite questionable.

Sounds good, but if Sony cant even get the freaking panels to work smoothly with low res screenshots, i doubt any other software will ever use this.
No game developer will limit his games to one phone, so they come up with rather simple games without 3d stuff...its not like with the iphone where millions of people have the same phone with the same hardware/software base...because of that, they have alot of great games that utilize the 3d hardware but i dont see that happening for any WinMo device.
There might an optimzed version of coreplayer or that PS1 Emu, well might.

XavierGr said:
That's no proof at all. We already knew that the Qualcomm chip has hardware acceleration capabilities. Even the Diamond and Touch Pro has it but there is a rumor that it isn't utilized because HTC didn't buy the license for it.
Until someone opens up the X1 and spots the exact 128MB memory chip (only the flash memory and the 256MB RAM chip have been spotted as of now) I won't believe anything. Information is rather dubious it needs to be cleared out by facts (and hardware pictures).
Also the source is rather biased too. The "unofficial SE Blog" as they call it, is SE friendly and will write anything will come to their mind to help SE image and sales. I've read the review and while I think it is overall detailed, on some points their objectivity is quite questionable.
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damn true, we have nothing but words.

Also, think about it. A whopping 128MB VRAM for WVGA resolution? A desktop PC with 128MB VRAM on it's GPU could play full on 3D games at SXGA resolution easily. Doesn't sound logical to me at all if they put that much VRAM on this tiny device. Way too generous for HTC. 16MB or even 32MB sounds a lot more reasonable and realistic.

^ yep, I've also said that a few times here.....
so in the end I for one, can call SE is a liar here.

326MB of RAM?

Just got a Samsung Vibrant.
I noticed the phone says I only have 326MB of total RAM. I thought this phone was suppose to have 512MB of RAM? Is 326MB normal or did I get an odd phone?

No that's right. It's all the kernel will allow us to use. Even with the unofficial froyo roms out, we only get 341mb.
Friends don't let friends flash drunk...

Cool. Thank you for the information.

Ravynmagi said:
Hmm... Seems strange they make Android phones with 512 and 768MB of RAM. Will the official Froyo be able to access more RAM?
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It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"

jrizk07 said:
It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"
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I would say it is more like on your PC. You may have 4 GB installed, but when you look at it it will tell you you have only access to 3.5 GB because other hardware is using the memory, like a shared GPU etc.

jrizk07 said:
It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm getting tired of people making these retarded f****ng comparisons. Hard Drive capacities go down due to formating. Also, a 1 byte file takes up the smallest allocation unit on the drive, so space is wasted there as well. Better file systems are better about it, but unless you're writing raw data to the hard drive there's no way to avoid formatting it and losing space or writing data to it and losing space due to allocation boundaries. I've never heard of anyone Formatting RAM, have you? If the smallest allocation unit on the HDD is 4KB, then a 1Byte file will really take up 4KB on the drive's FS.
RAM is totally different. If there is 512 RAM there's 512 RAM. The only time you will see less than your amount of RAM on a computer is if the computer is allocatting a certain amount of RAM for use by an integrated graphics card (or something else).
Problem with our phones is that they're set up like the latter.
We don't have 512 RAM. We never have, and we never will. We haev 340'ish and the rest is GPU RAM. You're never going to run general applications on that RAM.

Oh. I had edited my reply because I had assumed I found my answer from this...
developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html
"HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB"
I had assumed that mean the official Froyo when we got it would have 512MB available.
So I guess I misunderstood their meaning there. So the 326MB is pretty much the max my applications will have to work with on this phone?
I guess I'm puzzled because I was in T-Mobile a couple days ago and I was going back and forth between getting this Vibrant and the MyTouch 4G. The MyTouch 4G advertises 768MB of RAM, while the Vibrant advertises 512MB of RAM.
So now I'm back to my original confusion. Why would HTC put 768MB of RAM in the MyTouch 4G if Android can't even use 512MB? *confused*
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
This is my first Android device, so I'm still trying to figure out these things. Sorry for the dumb questions.

Ravynmagi said:
Oh. I had edited my reply because I had assumed I found my answer from this...
developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html
"HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB"
I had assumed that mean the official Froyo when we got it would have 512MB available.
So I guess I misunderstood their meaning there. So the 326MB is pretty much the max my applications will have to work with on this phone?
I guess I'm puzzled because I was in T-Mobile a couple days ago and I was going back and forth between getting this Vibrant and the MyTouch 4G. The MyTouch 4G advertises 768MB of RAM, while the Vibrant advertises 512MB of RAM.
So now I'm back to my original confusion. Why would HTC put 768MB of RAM in the MyTouch 4G if Android can't even use 512MB? *confused*
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
This is my first Android device, so I'm still trying to figure out these things. Sorry for the dumb questions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all. There are no dumb question. Second. Android uses all of the RAM. But as the phone reserves memory for hardware and other system essential services, you will only be able to use a certain amount of the memory. In this case around 345 out of the 512. The rest is put away so that the OS can run stable etc.
So for the MyTouch 4G it says that there is 768 MB installed, but you won't see all of that. The phone will reserve certain amount for it's hardware and you will never be able to free it unless you know how to change the kernel.
Hope this clears any confusion up.

Ravynmagi said:
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for xp, the memory limitation is due to 32bit memory addressing. 32bits can address a theoretical 4gb, however due to also addressing gpu memory and probably some other reasons xp can't address the entire 4gb and so you see 3.xGB.
i can't really speak to android or the vibrant, but i'm guessing (like others have said) we are losing some of our ram in a share with the gpu.

I think most people are missing the issue here.
The phones are advertised as having 512 MB RAM.
When you buy a computer, and it says 512, it comes with 512 (only exception is the one I stated - integrated graphics cards sharing system RAM - but that is usually listed on the Computer Spec sheet).
So, when they get a phone and it says 512 MB RAM, they expect for there to be 512 Application-accessible RAM on the device.
HTC adds more RAM to put the user closer to the advertised specs. Most other manufacturers do not.
So users end up with 326 MB RAM wondering if they got what they paid for.
Which... they really didn't if you use you common sense, but companies will always use technicalities tand semantics o defend their decisions and/or actions.

N8ter said:
I think most people are missing the issue here.
The phones are advertised as having 512 MB RAM.
When you buy a computer, and it says 512, it comes with 512 (only exception is the one I stated - integrated graphics cards sharing system RAM - but that is usually listed on the Computer Spec sheet).
So, when they get a phone and it says 512 MB RAM, they expect for there to be 512 Application-accessible RAM on the device.
HTC adds more RAM to put the user closer to the advertised specs. Most other manufacturers do not.
So users end up with 326 MB RAM wondering if they got what they paid for.
Which... they really didn't if you use you common sense, but companies will always use technicalities tand semantics o defend their decisions and/or actions.
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Click to collapse
I completely agree with you. In fact some of us in xda have discovered that sgs indeed has less than 512MB of RAM. We are still somehow trying to defend Samsung by say Galaxy TAB has more RAM (when Samsung advertise 512MB only for TAB)!
On a side note - Hard Drive capacity is measured in millions of bytes hence 500,000millionbytes
will be around 465GB only (unformated)!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I doubt ~170 mb is being allocated for the radio and for hardware addressing space. It's my opinion that the phone actually only comes with 384mb ram.

raduque said:
I doubt ~170 mb is being allocated for the radio and for hardware addressing space. It's my opinion that the phone actually only comes with 384mb ram.
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no.
10ch

Prankey said:
I completely agree with you. In fact some of us in xda have discovered that sgs indeed has less than 512MB of RAM. We are still somehow trying to defend Samsung by say Galaxy TAB has more RAM (when Samsung advertise 512MB only for TAB)!
On a side note - Hard Drive capacity is measured in millions of bytes hence 500,000millionbytes
will be around 465GB only (unformated)!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Many do list that but what makes the drives smaller is formatting. The raw size is what it is, but the formatted capacity is much less. You can ser this on sf cards easily. Format it as fat32 then ntfs, and the end (formatted) capacities will be different. Then play with allocation sizes as well ;p
If you have hordes of small files it can really eat inyo the space on ut hard drive, as well, since a file can only be as small as the smallest cluster size in the filesystem.
Even if they made the drive 1024mb x however many gb they say it is, that will be instantly cut fown tje minute you format a fs onto the drive. There is also space the fs reserves for system use, as well. Mft and such.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

anthonys2r said:
no.
10ch
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Click to collapse
He's right hardware addrrssimg shouldn't need that much, and graphics in a phone shouldn't need that much either. Maybe so,eone should sue Samsumg for false advertisement and see what they say.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

anthonys2r said:
no.
10ch
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You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.

raduque said:
You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.
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I agree just checked and vibrant shows similar ram to htc aria, which has 384mb ram stock.
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raduque said:
You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.
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Click to collapse
There is a thread in the i9k forum that details the amounts of ram reserved in the kernel source. Just about every feature on the phone has dedicated ram, weather or not it's currently in use. That plus what the kernel shows as available adds up to 512mb. It's stupid, but that's how it is. Poor and lazy software engineering, IMO. Unfortunately, doing the allocation in a sane way and having it work in android properly is very difficult without all of the source, which we will probably never have.
It's not really any better with other manufacturers. They all do it. I think they ought to be required to disclose user available ram amounts, but nobody cares what I think.

N8ter said:
I'm getting tired of people making these retarded f****ng comparisons. Hard Drive capacities go down due to formating. Also, a 1 byte file takes up the smallest allocation unit on the drive, so space is wasted there as well. Better file systems are better about it, but unless you're writing raw data to the hard drive there's no way to avoid formatting it and losing space or writing data to it and losing space due to allocation boundaries. I've never heard of anyone Formatting RAM, have you? If the smallest allocation unit on the HDD is 4KB, then a 1Byte file will really take up 4KB on the drive's FS.
RAM is totally different. If there is 512 RAM there's 512 RAM. The only time you will see less than your amount of RAM on a computer is if the computer is allocatting a certain amount of RAM for use by an integrated graphics card (or something else).
Problem with our phones is that they're set up like the latter.
We don't have 512 RAM. We never have, and we never will. We haev 340'ish and the rest is GPU RAM. You're never going to run general applications on that RAM.
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I had 326 RAM .After installation of FROYO 2.2,my Galaxy can see only 304 RAm.Why?I expected to get more RAM with FROYO 2.2 Why did this happened?

N8ter said:
He's right hardware addrrssimg shouldn't need that much, and graphics in a phone shouldn't need that much either. Maybe so,eone should sue Samsumg for false advertisement and see what they say.
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you should do it. You know, since you know exactly what you're talking about.

Nexus S 328 MB of RAM? ?

The Nexus S details are a little more enlightening. Keep in mind the original version might have been scrapped, so these leaked specs are subject to change:
ArmV7 CPU Open GL ES Supported
~328 MB Ram
1 GB Internal Memory
800×480 Resolution 4″ Super Amoled (2?)
Screen 720p Video Recording
T-Mobile (at least this one)
Source: androidandme.com
I really do hope these specs are wrong. I was going to buy this phone for sure. I really was. Despite how everyone has been hating it for being by Samsung and being plastic. I was still going to get it. But now? Forget it. I don’t care if it has a dual code processor and great screen. It needs to have 1 GB of RAM or 768 MB at least. This phone may be ugly but it needs to have amazing specs and no GPS problems or any lag problems. Otherwise I will stick with my nexus one.

I will believe it comes with only 328MB RAM when I see it in front of me.
I'd say its a typo.

ksc6000 said:
words...
I don’t care if it has a dual code processor and great screen. It needs to have 1 GB of RAM or 768 MB at least.
...more words...
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dual core ? oh, okay dokay.
see, typos aren't targeting creatures. they can strike anyone, anytime. obviously it was meant to say 328Gb, and 1Tb on the not-here-yet S.
just wait.

The Nexus S probably only showed 328 MB FREE, if I remember correctly the GPU in the Hummingbird dedicates a ton of RAM to itself. This phone definitely needs at least 768 MB leaving 5xx MB free.
If it's 512MB (which it currently looks like), 1GB of ROM and the same Hummingbird, I'll pass. I'll just wait for CM to port 2.3 to the EVO and wait for the HTC dual cores.

id hope it doesn't have 328 mb ram

Just sounds like a Galaxy S then really.

All the people whining about lack of RAM - did you ever bother to check the amount of free RAM at any given time on Nexus One since Froyo?
Well, I guess you didn't, since Nexus doesn't go below 160MB free RAM, and you need to work hard to make it go below 200MB - which is a HUGE waste. You want to waste even more? 1GB of RAM? Really? Did you see applications that can use 1/10 of it?
328MB RAM can't come with the phone, because 99% of the time RAM comes in powers of 2, and very rarely there are 3 banks used, making the last multiplier 3 instead of 2. 328MB doesn't fit anywhere, so it's not a real number.

Jack_R1 said:
All the people whining about lack of RAM - did you ever bother to check the amount of free RAM at any given time on Nexus One since Froyo?
Well, I guess you didn't, since Nexus doesn't go below 160MB free RAM, and you need to work hard to make it go below 200MB - which is a HUGE waste. You want to waste even more? 1GB of RAM? Really? Did you see applications that can use 1/10 of it?
328MB RAM can't come with the phone, because 99% of the time RAM comes in powers of 2, and very rarely there are 3 banks used, making the last multiplier 3 instead of 2. 328MB doesn't fit anywhere, so it's not a real number.
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Click to collapse
As I stated earlier, it's probably 512 MB but the GPU in the Hummingbird dedicates a huge chunk of it for itself. The Adreno 200 GPU in the Nexus One still leaves over 500 MB free -- 5xx MB vs 328 MB is a HUGE difference. So that considered, it'd be a huge step down from the Nexus One if it doesn't at least have 768 MB to even things out.

Jack_R1 said:
All the people whining about lack of RAM - did you ever bother to check the amount of free RAM at any given time on Nexus One since Froyo?
Well, I guess you didn't, since Nexus doesn't go below 160MB free RAM, and you need to work hard to make it go below 200MB - which is a HUGE waste. You want to waste even more? 1GB of RAM? Really? Did you see applications that can use 1/10 of it?
328MB RAM can't come with the phone, because 99% of the time RAM comes in powers of 2, and very rarely there are 3 banks used, making the last multiplier 3 instead of 2. 328MB doesn't fit anywhere, so it's not a real number.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess you have never owned a galaxy s either then which lags terribly when it's used pretty much all of its paltry sum of ram?
Trust me if this doesn't at least have double the amount of ram that this article says it has then that is a major mistake imo. Time will tell though.

512MB of RAM should be more than sufficient. Here is a quote from Dianne Hackborn, Android Framework Engineer
The Nexus One has 512MB of RAM and honestly that is really more than we know what to do with. It is great. I ended up putting some code into the
activity manager to put a hard limit on the number of processes we would
keep around, because there was so much memory we had often could keep way
more processes than was useful. That was never an issue on Droid.
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Click to collapse
From http://groups.google.com/group/android-porting/msg/d4f60db2793f23d2

bgoldie said:
512MB of RAM should be more than sufficient. Here is a quote from Dianne Hackborn, Android Framework Engineer
From http://groups.google.com/group/android-porting/msg/d4f60db2793f23d2
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Click to collapse
The Nexus != SGS/Nexus S
Again, you're forgetting about the available RAM. I just checked my EVO (very similar CPU/GPU) running CM6.1 and I was wrong about the 5xx figure, it actually has 424 MB to use. That's almost a 100 MB difference. And what if apps get more complex/heavy? Dual cores are around the corner so why not?

It sounds like a great phone but no better than my vibrant. Its the new generation of android so I would expect new gen hardware like high Res screen, 1080p and all those other great things. The vibrant has amazing hardware so the next generation will be mind blowing, to me anyway. I see no reason to move to the nexus s. I have a nexus one so ill get gingerbread and the S is not better enough to upgrade from a nexus one or vibrant. I understand that they just want a phone on which to release gingerbread but it seems a bit thrown together last minute, not a lot of effort, which is fine but I don't want to have to hear stupid things about Google phones not selling well, as if that's some sort of negative for android generally. I would expect that by now people that want a nexus one or vibrant type hardware already have it so this phone may not sell well. Plus people that know anything are going to be waiting to hear about the next stage of hardware. Definitely not worth jumping on unless you are coming from a lesser phone than the nexus or galaxy s, hardware-wise. On second thought if the GPS works like it does on the nexus one I'd seriously consider selling my vibrant for it. I'm appauled that the vibrants GPS still doesn't work, the most frustration I've experienced with android since its 2008 release is when in the middle of a navigation the screen starts spinning and doesn't regain its composure, happens literally every time. Hell now I think I'm pumped about this phone, I can stop carrying my damn nexus just for the GPS. Its no way to live.

Jack_R1 said:
328MB RAM can't come with the phone, because 99% of the time RAM comes in powers of 2, and very rarely there are 3 banks used, making the last multiplier 3 instead of 2. 328MB doesn't fit anywhere, so it's not a real number.
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Click to collapse
It could be a typo. 328 doesnt fit but 320 does. I think its going to be 512 minimum personally.

Mystery (probably) solved; how Samsung pulls off its GPU magic.

Edit: TL;DR VERSION: 128 of that 512 megs of RAM in ur Epic is leet special-sawce Samsung RAM that pwns other RAMs, and makes ur GPU make moar trianglez in ur gamez.
Forgive me folks, I'm lazy, so I'm posting this more or less verbatim from what I posted in my blog, with a few minor tweaks. It's long and probably boring, so you have my apologies in advance.
Despite my efforts to pull myself away from ARM architecture, Android, and specifically, the mysteries surrounding the Hummingbird processor, I can never really extract myself. One of these days I'll get around to obsessing over something else (hopefully career-related) but until then, I'll let you know what I think I've uncovered as the solution to how Samsung solved the GPU bandwidth issue (which I puzzled over in my original Hummingbird vs. Snapdragon article.)
There have been a few opportunities where I've had to step in and correct people when they post that a Galaxy S phone has only ~320 megs of RAM. It's an error I see made frequently when people use Android system info applications that can only see the 320 megs of volatile memory, despite the fact that the phone does actually contain 512 megs of RAM. We see it happen every time a new Galaxy S phone is leaked, even the Nexus S.
The explanation for this has always been that a certain amount of memory have been "reserved" by Samsung for the Android OS, and that memory is not visible nor available to applications. Despite this, I've never been able to figure out exactly how the system provides the 12.6 GB/sec of memory bandwidth it (theoretically) needs to push out 90 million triangles/sec with the PowerVR SGX540 GPU.
I'm not quite sure how it happened, but in my meanderings across the interwebs, I ran across the following image on ODROID.com of the block diagram of the S5PC110 that they use for their developer board.
(Edit: Image-Shacked... ODROID didn't appreciate me hot-linking their image. Whoops. Use the ODROID.com link above to see the original.)
Careful observation of the POP (Package-On-Package, or "Stacked" circuits) module on the left-hand side shows 384 MB of LPDDR1 and 128MB of OneDRAM, a term I'd noticed on S5PC110 documentation on the list of supported technologies. I'd assumed that it wasn't used. I'd already determined that even though the Hummingbird supports LPDDR2, it only supports it at 400 Mbps transfer rate (which LPDDR1 is capable of) and, with an x32 bus, only allows for 1.6 GBps data bandwidth, a far cry from the 12.6 GBps needed.
So what is this OneDRAM? According to Samsung, "OneDRAM is a fusion memory chip that, can significantly increase the data processing speed between a communications processor and a media processor in mobile devices," and, "...this results resulting in a five-fold increase in the speed of cellular phone and gaming console operations, longer battery life and slimmer handset designs." (Sic.)
Hear hear! 5 times 1.6 GBps still doesn't equal 12.6, but the 12.6 number is a something I arrived at using a lot of assumptions (4.2 GBps bandwidth needed by the PowerVR SGX540 to perform 28 million triangles per second, multiplied times 3 to make ~90 million triangles per second). I'm satisfied that the OneDRAM is that holy grail memory I've been looking for.
Now, how to prove that it actually exists inside my Epic 4G? Remember, the S5PC110 Hummingbird doesn't come with memory built-in; that's something that gets stacked on when the phone is built. The ODROID guys could very well be using a completely different configuration; though that ~320 megs showing up over and over in Android system info apps hardly seems like a coincidence, assuming the difference between 384 and 320 is actually reserved memory for the OS' own system applications. The OneDRAM on the other hand would be reserved primarily for hardware use, such as the GPU as Samsung earlier suggested.
I turned to one of my Android developer acquaintences, noobnl of xda-developers.com. When I showed him what I've run across, (hoping to see if he'd heard of this before, as he has a good handle on Epic hardware) he told me that I had made a good find. He also pasted some kernel code that clearly referenced OneDRAM, proving that the Epic 4G contains this technology.
So there you go folks. The secret is out. The Galaxy S phones are likely able to achieve such amazing graphics performance via a 128 MB Samsung-proprietary high-speed hybrid memory solution. The remaining 384 megs of memory is plain-jane LPDDR1. The total is the promised 512 megs, and honestly, I wouldn't trade the OneDRAM for 128 megs more of LPDDR1 available application memory, but it's interesting how Samsung has kept the OneDRAM solution so quiet. It's likely enjoying the current GPU supremacy of the Galaxy S phones, unfortunately come Cortex-A9, LPDDR2 memory (> 400 Mbps), and dual-channel memory controllers, they will be back on a level playing field. Who could blame them for setting aside Orion and picking up NVIDIA's Tegra 2 SoCs for their next-gen smartphones? It's a fast-moving industry out there, particularly when you don't have Intrinsity any longer as your ace-in-the-hole. Curse you, Apple.
PS - Some of you guys on here know more about this **** than I do. Please feel free to offer suggestions, corrections, and jeers. Though I'm hoping for less of the latter.

Dude what?
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Mannnnnnn ....I had a hunch it worked like that
thanks for clearing this up Im glad im not the only one that figured this out!

Are you not compensating for TBDR memory efficiency?

Interesting. Could also complicate porting newer Android versions, at least wih the same efficiency.

I pretend I understood all that you said..and say...Voila..FINALLY!

Yeah I've seen documentation saying the Galaxy S phones have 4Gb of RAM. 1Gb of which is OneDRAM and 3Gb is LPDDR (Idk version). Now, tell us why ODROID and the block diagram can do 1080p and we can't.
EDIT:

thephawx said:
Are you not compensating for TBDR memory efficiency?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just pulled my information from some raw data about the Intel GMA500 (which is an SGX540 disguised as Intel) running at 200 MHz. I would assume the 4.2 GB/s bandwidth needed assumes TBDR is being used.
It's a shaky line of reasoning though. Wish I had some more hard data on the SGX540, and more specifically, the clock rate it runs at in the Epic.
arashed31 said:
Yeah I've seen documentation saying the Galaxy S phones have 4Gb of RAM. 1Gb of which is OneDRAM and 3Gb is LPDDR (Idk version). Now, tell us why ODROID and the block diagram can do 1080p and we can't.
EDIT:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I could swear I've seen those numbers somewhere but I can't for the life of me find it.
As for the 1080p, that's a good catch; interesting. And, now that I look closer, WiFi doesn't have N support, though I suppose it's possible they used a different WiFi chip.

delete, double post.

Interesting...I guess it makes sense somewhat...though with that much processing why would they then set an FPS limit? is it suppose to be their way of saving energy?
As for 1080p..we have specifications for it..If i were to guess we just don't have the proper drivers...video decoding is done via the ARM Neon..so if anything 1080p would play slow..but it doesn't play at all...so its either locked out intentionally..or the driver is not configured to...I mean it can handle 720p at [email protected] reason why it can't handle 1080p at lower settings...

Wow.. My brains are like oh my gawds!
Interesting tho
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Another thing. If you look at the Bluetooth certification site you'll see the Samsung Epic is certified for Bluetooth 3.0. Even though the chip in there is a Broadcomm chip that only supports Wireless N and Bluetooth 3.0.
gTen said:
Interesting...I guess it makes sense somewhat...though with that much processing why would they then set an FPS limit? is it suppose to be their way of saving energy?
As for 1080p..we have specifications for it..If i were to guess we just don't have the proper drivers...video decoding is done via the ARM Neon..so if anything 1080p would play slow..but it doesn't play at all...so its either locked out intentionally..or the driver is not configured to...I mean it can handle 720p at [email protected] reason why it can't handle 1080p at lower settings...
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Click to collapse
Video decoding is on the processor? WHAT. THE. HELL. SAMSUNG.

Sounds like you did your homework, i'll buy it. Thanks for sharing. I'll take the fast vid over ram too

tmuka said:
Sounds like you did your homework, i'll buy it. Thanks for sharing. I'll take the fast vid over ram too
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Click to collapse
Homework, yes... but I'd really like to see an ARM engineer affirm it.
gTen said:
Interesting...I guess it makes sense somewhat...though with that much processing why would they then set an FPS limit? is it suppose to be their way of saving energy?
As for 1080p..we have specifications for it..If i were to guess we just don't have the proper drivers...video decoding is done via the ARM Neon..so if anything 1080p would play slow..but it doesn't play at all...so its either locked out intentionally..or the driver is not configured to...I mean it can handle 720p at [email protected] reason why it can't handle 1080p at lower settings...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I just actually took a look at the S5PC110 User Manual and sure enough, 1080p encoding / decoding at 30 FPS is showing supported on the block diagram:
"1080p 30 fps MFC
Codec H.263/H.264/MPEG4
Decoder MPEG2/VC-1/Divx"
But then, directly below the block diagram, the following is shown:
"Multi Format Codec provides encoding and decoding of MPEG-4/H.263/H.264 up to [email protected] and
decoding of MPEG-2/VC1/Divx video up to [email protected] fps"
That's an odd discrepancy, particularly for an official Samsung processor owner's manual.
Also worth mentioning is that that manual makes no mention of OneDRAM in the memory subsystem breakdown where OneNAND, LPDDR1, LPDDR2, and DDR2 support are outlined, however, it's clearly listed as a supported memory type in the block diagram, and later throughout the manual. Hmm.
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