The Pixel 11 Could Be the Next Victim of the RAM Shortage (theverge.com) 36
Google's Pixel 11 lineup could see RAM cuts or lower starting configurations because of the global memory shortage, with leaks suggesting the base model may drop from 12GB to 8GB while Pro models could add 12GB versions below the current 16GB tier. The Verge reports: There will be 16GB configurations available for each, but adding a lower-spec model could mean the 16GB version is getting a price hike. However, the silver lining is that the specs from MysticLeaks also include camera upgrades and brighter displays for the Pro models. The RAM shortage is pushing other phone makers, including Samsung, to raise prices, too.
How much RAM? (Score:3)
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4 layers of abstraction to turn on the camera led.
Re:How much RAM? (Score:4, Funny)
F**k it, we're doing 5 layers!
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Crank it up to 11!
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AI. They want the agent in memory all the time so that it can respond faster. The same as the camera app is in memory all the time, so it opens instantly.
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Why not push the Gemini button and ask the LLM to answer that for you?
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Have you not seen the vibe-coded mess that apps are these days?
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What the hell are people running that needs 16GB RAM? Win11??
All the AI garbage that's shoehorned in and can't be turned off wants system resources too.
Re: How much RAM? (Score:2)
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People? It's not people running things. It's Google, Meta, etc. running locally their AI engines to suck and analyze your data. You know, these models require a bunch of RAM.
Hey, Google! Here's an alternate idea (Score:3)
I know it would be against your business model, but how about reinstating support for your older phones so people can keep the ones they have longer? My Pixel 5a still works great. And while it doesn't get OS/Security updates anymore, I'm planning to keep it as long as it's working and supported on my network (Ting/T-Mobile) and the Play Store - like I did with my my previous phone, a Kyocera HydroVibe (2015 to 2021).
Re:Hey, Google! Here's an alternate idea (Score:5, Insightful)
no no... please buy a new pixel 9/10/11.
it takes slightly better pictures and it only weighs 50% more than your current one. oh did we mention it gets a full day of battery... yeah, apparently that's notable again as it was 15 years ago.
the in-screen fingerprint sensor kinda sucks, but don't worry, you'll eventually forget the rear sensor was flawless for years.
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I'm on an 8 Pro, but my next phone will probably not be a Pixel. Google has fallen behind with camera tech. The sensors and optics haven't been upgraded enough, and the software is at its limits.
Honor seem to be the leaders at the moment, although Xiaomi are very competitive too. Bigger sensors, better optics, and software that is well tuned.
On the bright side (Score:4, Insightful)
Pressure to reduce RAM in a device due to cost could drive engineering to make phones be more efficient and utilize LESS RAM. Linux/Android does NOT need to be a pig. It's a pig because device vendors/OS engineers/app makers get lazy.
Sadly running AI native on your phone could as a result be less than useful but that's a good thing isn't it?
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Not if it means your private information gets shuffled off to a cloud server to perform the AI job rather than running it locally on your device privately.
Re: On the bright side (Score:5, Insightful)
My first computer had 64kB, second one 512kB, and that was what we now call 'unified memory', shared between the cpu and the video encoding chip (no gpu back then). These machines did not have virtual memory either to overflow to disk. I had to be very mindful of memory usage when writing code or we would simply crash by running out of memory, no forgiveness.
I've worked in Silicon Valley for my entire career and I was surprised at how little attention most 'software engineers' paid to ram and cpu optimization. You would expect that from scripters, folks that write Bash or Python code, but I saw that a lot with Java developers as well. It was especially bad when the devs could ask the OPS team for a machine with more RAM as their first instinct rather than consider any optimizations, after all it would come from some other team budget, and that same OPS team would get blamed for going over budget, not the Devs.
So yeah in a way, a good RAM shortage for a while might help bring back some discipline. Unfortunately the vast majority of AI training is done on code that does not care about optimizing RAM consumption.
It is not just RAM consumption, but storage as well. My son got a second hand Nintendo Switch OLED yesterday, the prior owner had 2 games installed leaving 6GB out of the 64GB free. One game was downloaded, the other one still required the cartridge and used 26GB of storage. That's rather insane.
Meanwhile you can get a generic retro gaming device for $50 with thousands of classic games on a 64 GB SDCard. I'm pretty sure a lot of that space could be better optimized, but there is little incentive for that these days.
Re: On the bright side (Score:2)
Nope, but very close machines.
Thomson T07-70 then Atari 520ST. It was in France where these computers were popular at the time.
I learned some 68k assembly on the Atari. When I later attempted to code on x86 which swaps the bytes orders of integers over 8bits and had to deal with memory pagination ... I found it horrendous and completely backwards. On the other hand it was hard to argue with the raw floating point performance of the 486 cpu when doing ray tracing. One 320x200 image could render in minutes vs
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I think most agree with what you're saying, especially the first part.
The problem is modern software development, especially with "Agile" - in the real-world - means sacrificing quality over speed of delivery. Sadly most organisations don't care about code quality (thus cheap offshore devs), or the hardware required to run it. In fact, hardware is rather cheap compared to a developer's time, even with such high memory costs.
As for the second part - the reason modern games require massive amounts of storage
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Your early computers had substantial ROMs though. For 8 bit machines, the ROM typically had BASIC and some utility functions to load stuff from tape. For 16 bit machines, the ROM was anything from the BIOS to most of the graphical operating system (Amiga).
Always available, instant access as fast as having the code in RAM. And that's why phones need more RAM - they keep core parts of the OS, and some key apps, in RAM. Pixel's started keeping the camera app in RAM many years ago, so if you double tap the powe
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Your early computers had substantial ROMs though
Yes, but still not that large even by the standards of the day. Amigas for example had 256kB in A1000, 512kB in most OCS Amigas (1MB for 2.x) and later Amigas had 1MB (2.x) or 2MB (3.x). Plus, the newer your OS, the more routines you were patching and not actually using the versions in ROM.
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It seems to be more the applications than the OS. Looking at some people's phones is scary, the amount of crap they have loaded on there. The majority of it never being used, they just got pushed into "try our app today!" - over, and over, and over.
My Android phone is showing "average memory use" at 3.1 GB (of 3.8 GB) so there isn't any headroom, but 4 GB has been enough for me. Apps I run on it daily - Firefox, VLC, Soundcloud, a couple messaging apps, a few authenticators, Google Maps, Ventusky, maybe You
High performance phones are mere toys. (Score:2)
Nothing of value is lost if they're not provided with ever-increasing amounts of RAM.
It's been scaled back to (Score:1)
Pixel 7
Ugly and beautiful (Score:2)
On the one hand, such downgrades are ugly and anti-consumer.
On the other hand, however, Google may actually invest in making Android more efficient and optimized, as later versions have become resource hogs.
For example, my Android 16 uses 8 GB of RAM after a reboot. Yes, I have a couple of apps that start automatically, but nothing too excessive: Telegram, WhatsApp, IMO, Thunderbird and ProtonMail. That's it.
Way better idea (Score:2)