iPhone 2014: It's time.

[Eug]

Hmmm... How feasible is 1.5 GB in dual channel? Wouldn't that get messy in a phone?

Also I'm assuming they're not going triple channel.

So I would have guessed 1 GB or 2 GB but nothing in between, even though 1.5 GB might be sufficient otherwise.

How is the 3 GB implemented in the Note 3?

Edit:

It looks like the Note 3 is dual channel.

To be honest if Apple did 1.5 GB, I'd be satisfied. However they historically only ever double RAM so I don't think they'd go with 1.5 GB.

 

[MotionMan]

Don't be jealous, but I already got the new, BIGGER, iPhone 6!!!

MotionMan

 

[Spineshank]

I dont see why everyone is up in arms over the ram amount. Apple has proven with their development that the tight integration is what is really important. I dont give a shit what its running as long as it runs well.

 

[Eug]

I dont see why everyone is up in arms over the ram amount. Apple has proven with their development that the tight integration is what is really important. I dont give a shit what its running as long as it runs well.

That's the problem. It doesn't run well all of the time, and many people think the RAM is the culprit. This was mentioned in Anand's review of the original iPad Air.

 

[Spineshank]

That's the problem. It doesn't run well all of the time, and many people think the RAM is the culprit. This was mentioned in Anand's review of the original iPad Air.

Honestly, it runs fine for me. So I guess I have never experienced it.

 

[Eug]

Try this some time:

Load up Safari. Then load up 5 or more tabs. Surf on one tab for 15 minutes.

Go back to the other 4 tabs after that 15 minutes, and see what happens. For many of us, some of those tabs will reload when you switch to them.

This I find is extremely irritating, but shouldn't happen if there was sufficient RAM.

 

[mmntech]

Apple has been very tight lipped over the recent iCloud hack. Wonder if it will have any impact on next week's events. I'm guessing probably not, but the ball was definitely dropped.

 

[Eug]

Apple has been very tight lipped over the recent iCloud hack. Wonder if it will have any impact on next week's events. I'm guessing probably not, but the ball was definitely dropped.

One of my pet peeves with Apple iPhones is backup. It should be dead simple, but Apple's oversimplification of it makes it confusing, paradoxically.

Why the hell does iTunes not have an optional setting to back up photos and videos locally that's easily accessible? You don't even have to do it with every sync.

And why can't you set up iTunes to automatically backup locally everything AND back up a limited set of stuff to iCloud?

I also have another whole thread about the problems with Apple's integration of SMS/MMS with iMessage. Its implementation is totally braindead IMO. They tried to make it work but it has failed miserably, and has just led to serious real world usage issues. They should have found a solution to this in the first year after iMessage was launched, but here we are 3 years later with the exact same problems, and they're just as bad as they were back then, if not worse.

Perhaps they should just bite the bullet and separate out SMS/MMS from iMessage, like on other platforms. Instant messaging is instant messaging and iMessage is iMessage. Keep them separate and avoid all these issues altogether.

I'm just hoping iOS 8's support for SMS/MMS on computers and tablets (routed via an iPhone) works well, independent of iMessage, but I'm not optimistic.

 

[Childs]

This I find is extremely irritating, but shouldn't happen if there was sufficient RAM.

Are you sure this is actually a RAM issue and not Safari on IOS? For the most part I don't care what IOS does, but I do know IOS is aggressive in sleeping background processes. They do it in Mac OS as well. Maybe Safari on IOS treats the tabs like background processes after its been in the background for so long. You should be able to test it closing all apps except Safari, then do your tab test. RAM shouldn't be an issue at that point. I would think its either by design, or simply a memory leak/bug in Safari.

 

[Eug]

Are you sure this is actually a RAM issue and not Safari on IOS? For the most part I don't care what IOS does, but I do know IOS is aggressive in sleeping background processes. They do it in Mac OS as well. Maybe Safari on IOS treats the tabs like background processes after its been in the background for so long. You should be able to test it closing all apps except Safari, then do your tab test. RAM shouldn't be an issue at that point. I would think its either by design, or simply a memory leak/bug in Safari.

Anand stated that the log messages generated in this situation indicate a low memory scenario.

Error or not, it's still an issue with iOS 7.1.2. The only difference is that with iOS 7.0, Safari would reload those tabs, but also used to occasionally crash. Now with iOS 7.1.2, it doesn't crash, but you still get the irritating Safari tab reloads.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/9

The move to a 64-bit platform however does complicate things a bit. Moving to a larger memory address space increases the size of pointers, which in turn can increase the footprint of 64-bit applications compared to their 32-bit counterparts. So although there’s clearly a performance uplift from app developers recompiling in 64-bit mode (more registers, access to new instructions), there’s also an associated memory footprint penalty. Since the iPad Air and iPhone 5s don’t feature a corresponding increase in memory capacity, I wondered if this might be a problem going forward.

To find out I monitored total platform memory usage in a couple of scenarios. Before measuring I always manually quit all open apps and performed a hard reset on the device. Note that the data below is reporting both clean and dirty memory, so it’s possible that some of the memory space could be recovered in the event that another process needed it. I hoped to minimize the impact by always working on a cleanly reset platform and only testing one app at a time.

I looked at memory usage under the following scenarios:

1) A clean boot with no additional apps open
2) Running Mobile Safari with 4 tabs open (two AnandTech.com tabs, two Apple.com tabs, all showing the same content)
3) Infinity Blade 3 (64-bit enabled) sitting at the very first scene once you start the game
4) iOS Maps in hybrid view with 3D mode enabled, with a WiFi assisted GPS lock on my physical location
5) Google Maps in the same view, under the same conditions. I threw in this one to have a 32-bit app reference point.

In general you’re looking at a 20 - 30% increase in memory footprint when dealing with an all 64-bit environment. At worst, the device’s total memory usage never exceeded 60% of what ships with the platform but these are admittedly fairly light use cases. With more apps open, including some doing work in the background, I do see relatively aggressive eviction of apps from memory. The most visible case is when Safari tabs have to be reloaded upon switching to them. Applications being evicted from memory don’t tend to be a huge problem since the A7 can reload them quickly.

The tricky part is you don’t really need all that much more memory. Unfortunately as with any dual-channel memory architecture, you’re fairly limited in how you can increase memory capacity and still get peak performance. Apple’s only move here would be to go to 2GB, which understandably comes with both power and financial costs. The former is a bigger concern for the iPhone 5s, but on the iPad Air I would’ve expected a transition sooner rather than later.

Although things seem to have improved with iOS 7.0.3, the 64-bit builds of the OS still seem to run into stability issues more frequently than their 32-bit counterparts. I still see low memory errors associated with any crashes. It could just be that the move to 64-bit applications (and associated memory pressure) is putting more stress on iOS’ memory management routines, which in turn exposes some weaknesses. The iPad Air crashed a couple of times on me (3 times total during the past week), but no where near as much as earlier devices running iOS 7.0.1.

 

[Childs]

Anand stated that the log messages generated in this situation indicate a low memory scenario.

Error or not, it's still an issue with iOS 7.1.2. The only difference is that with iOS 7.0, Safari would reload those tabs, but also used to occasionally crash. Now with iOS 7.1.2, it doesn't crash, but you still get the irritating Safari tab reloads.

I still see some tabs reload with just Safari (5 tabs) , Podcasts, Music, and clock running. I didn't do a full reset since I'm using the timers at the moment. If Safari is the only place you see it, I would think its probably specific to Safari or IOS's memory/process management. 2GB would probably just delay the issue. It would definitely be a marketing point, but if the 5/5s was memory constrained, I doubt they would keep it the same for the 6.

Have you played around with IOS 8? I would curious to know if the behavior was different on the same hardware.

 

[Eug]

I do not have the paid developer membership, so technically I shouldn't have access to iOS 8.

However, my friend is a paid iOS developer and did install iOS 8. Last I asked he said iOS 8 was still pretty buggy, so I didn't want it anyway.

Also, I don't think Apple will mention RAM, even when it does go to 2 GB. Apple simply hasn't mentioned RAM, ever, for iOS devices AFAIK. So, 2 GB will not be a marketing point. The people who will know about it are us geeks who read tear down summary articles and in-depth hardware tech reviews.

 

[TreVader]

I've run into RAM limits on my 5s many times but I'm not the average user. For most people, on a 326ppi screen, 1GB is plenty.


The problem is when you go to a 4.7 or 5.5" screen with higher resolutions you NEED the extra RAM.



I'm 100% sure apple will deliver more than just 1GB on it's 4.7 inch model.

 

[vi edit]

A lot of stuff over on MacRumors is pointing back to 1 gig RAM and 16gb flash memory.

If so...interest is wavering.

Guess they need to keep those aces up the sleeve for the 6s.

 

[mmntech]

One of my pet peeves with Apple iPhones is backup. It should be dead simple, but Apple's oversimplification of it makes it confusing, paradoxically.

Why the hell does iTunes not have an optional setting to back up photos and videos locally that's easily accessible? You don't even have to do it with every sync.

And why can't you set up iTunes to automatically backup locally everything AND back up a limited set of stuff to iCloud?

Honestly, I don't think most iOS users even look at the settings menu. A lot of these people probably weren't even aware that their phone was uploading EVERYTHING to the cloud. Either that or they set it up once and forget about it. Now if I were designing it, I'd have photos, then photo stream kept separately. You'd have to specify what you'd want uploaded instead of iCloud just taking an all-or-none approach.

With the sheer amount of security issues happening lately, it's really pushing the need for tech companies to have full time white hats constantly probing for vulnerabilities. Especially if some script kid can just brute force his way into all your personal data. Dick pics would be the least of my worries. Imagine the damage it could do if someone got a hold of your contacts, calendar, or maps information. They'd know your phone number, your friends numbers, where you go, and everything you do. Scary. Local offline backup FTW.

 

[TreVader]

Every iOS user looks at the settings menu. It's part of their phone and unlike android users, iOS users actually use their phones.




Look I'm not sure why you're in this thread. Apple has never failed to deliver on an iPhone, they've always been products people line up to buy for MILES. How many android phones have a line at all? And why should i boycott SiriusXM? I love Howard.


As far as the 16GB flash, if true I am very disappointed. If they actually come out with an iPhone 6 that has 16GB flash AND 1GB ram, I will keep my 5s until the 6s or 7. The ram isn't an issue, Apple will make it run 10x better than the best 3GB flagship android phone on 1GB. Remember that apple could release the phone with 4GB, and android can't even address that kind of space LOL.

 

[TreVader]

Hmmm... How feasible is 1.5 GB in dual channel? Wouldn't that get messy in a phone?

Also I'm assuming they're not going triple channel.

So I would have guessed 1 GB or 2 GB but nothing in between, even though 1.5 GB might be sufficient otherwise.

How is the 3 GB implemented in the Note 3?

Edit:

It looks like the Note 3 is dual channel.

To be honest if Apple did 1.5 GB, I'd be satisfied. However they historically only ever double RAM so I don't think they'd go with 1.5 GB.

768MB per channel would make 1.5GB doable.


I really think the 4.7 will have 1.5 or 2GB. the 5.5" has to have 2GB.




The iPad Air should've had 2GB to start with.

 

[Red Storm]

Honestly, I don't think most iOS users even look at the settings menu. A lot of these people probably weren't even aware that their phone was uploading EVERYTHING to the cloud. Either that or they set it up once and forget about it. Now if I were designing it, I'd have photos, then photo stream kept separately. You'd have to specify what you'd want uploaded instead of iCloud just taking an all-or-none approach.

With the sheer amount of security issues happening lately, it's really pushing the need for tech companies to have full time white hats constantly probing for vulnerabilities. Especially if some script kid can just brute force his way into all your personal data. Dick pics would be the least of my worries. Imagine the damage it could do if someone got a hold of your contacts, calendar, or maps information. They'd know your phone number, your friends numbers, where you go, and everything you do. Scary. Local offline backup FTW.

Every iOS user looks at the settings menu. It's part of their phone and unlike android users, iOS users actually use their phones.

I can confirm that neither my wife nor my mom bothered to go through the settings menu on their iPhones, I had to do it for them.

 

[Eug]

768MB per channel would make 1.5GB doable.

Yeah, but doesn't that get a bit messy in terms of logic board real estate?

I can confirm that neither my wife nor my mom bothered to go through the settings menu on their iPhones, I had to do it for them.

Same for my wife and mother-in-law. Heck, my MIL still can barely use the iPhone because she finds it too complicated.

 

[CZroe]

Yeah, but doesn't that get a bit messy in terms of logic board real estate?


Same for my wife and mother-in-law. Heck, my MIL still can barely use the iPhone because she finds it too complicated.

It could even be layered, almost like cache memory. External and internal memory with one type being faster and lower-latency while the OS intelligently manages it.

1GB on the SOC package, 1GB external.

 

[TreVader]

Yeah, but doesn't that get a bit messy in terms of logic board real estate?


Same for my wife and mother-in-law. Heck, my MIL still can barely use the iPhone because she finds it too complicated.

It adds complexity but Apple SHOULD know that all the tech sites would focus on 1GB ram. And they should to some degree, although iOS overhead is a fraction of androids.

 

[ponyo]

I can confirm that neither my wife nor my mom bothered to go through the settings menu on their iPhones, I had to do it for them.

I didn't even know I had Photostream turned on in iCloud. I never wanted that option on. I guess I missed it or didn't understand the terminology during the phone initial setup. I only bothered to check after the iCloud hacking photo blowup brought it to my attention.

 

[Eug]

Hey! It's already on sale!

http://www DOT focal price DOT com/MK0283Y/I6_4.7_3G_Smartphone_with_Capacitive_Single_Layer_Glass_IPS_Touch_Screen.html?SSAID=110786

And here are the specs:

High performance Android 4.3 Quad Core MTK6582 1.3GHz CPU
Supports fingerprint lock
4.7" capacitive IPS single-layer glass touch screen with 960x540 resolution
Built-in GPS/A-GPS
Comes with flashlight
Supports G-sensor and proximity sensor
Equipped with dual cameras (Front: 0.2 mega pixel, Rear: 5.0 mega pixels)

 

[Essence_of_War]

Every iOS user looks at the settings menu. It's part of their phone and unlike android users, iOS users actually use their phones.

There are at least ~5 million iphone users in the US alone, generalizations about a population that large other than trivial ones like "they all have an iphone" are dubious.

I can confirm that neither my wife nor my mom bothered to go through the settings menu on their iPhones, I had to do it for them.

Also true of my mother, my future-mother-in-law, and both of my brothers.

 

[CZroe]

Hey! It's already on sale!

http://www DOT focal price DOT com/MK0283Y/I6_4.7_3G_Smartphone_with_Capacitive_Single_Layer_Glass_IPS_Touch_Screen.html?SSAID=110786

And here are the specs:

High performance Android 4.3 Quad Core MTK6582 1.3GHz CPU
Supports fingerprint lock
4.7" capacitive IPS single-layer glass touch screen with 960x540 resolution
Built-in GPS/A-GPS
Comes with flashlight
Supports G-sensor and proximity sensor
Equipped with dual cameras (Front: 0.2 mega pixel, Rear: 5.0 mega pixels)

I believe we already mentioned that here somewhere. TMZ got their hands on one weeks ago and thought it was a real iPhone 6!