Phones are developed to store as much in RAM as possible. Storage is slow, and users are expected to switch between apps constantly. It’s not uncommon for hundreds of apps to be loaded, including their state, at the same time. Apps that don’t fit into memory are saved to storage, but the most common apps and services are kept around.

Common files are also cached in memory for performance reasons. If you don’t have any RAM available, browsing files or photos would be terribly slow.

The GPU shares RAM on many devices, and that’ll take a significant chunk out of your system memory. Rendering 60 frames per second on a 1440p screen isn’t cheap, especially if you have ten different apps ready to render full screen at all times.

My phone has about 4½GB assigned to applications, the rest is cache. I’d say phones with less than 6GB of RAM would work, but not very smoothly.

The more RAM, the easier switching between apps becomes. Websites and apps have become huge, not only because of inefficiencies but also because of how huge the graphics they need to render have become, and the expectation that everything works with a smooth 60-90-120Hz all the time. Do you need 12GB? Hard for me to tell. I can tell that my phone’s 6GB struggles when Firefox is open while Youtube is playing and I need to switch to my password manager. It’ll hold out, but only just, one more app and Firefox gets unloaded. Then again, my password manager seems to be suffering from some kind of memory leak, because there’s no reason it would need this much RAM.

I don’t know what Macbook you have, but if someone is buying a laptop these days, I wouldn’t recommend getting anything with less than 16GB of RAM or an upgrade slot. Web browsers have become operating systems of their own and buying 8GB laptops now will make your device last less than five years, at least comfortably. I would personally advocate for 32GB or more if you’re planning on using your laptop for ten years, based on current trends.

Even still, many people can and do use phones the wag they did desktops ten years ago. It’s not surprise to me that phones have grown to have desktop class RAM specs. Many people don’t know about it, but you van hook up a Samsung phone to a monitor and have a fully featured desktop right there waiting for you in DeX, you just need a Bluetooth keyboard+mouse to control it. I bet my parents could use a phone as a desktop without ever running into any trouble, partially because of how much RAM those phones sport.

If all you need is basic browsing and social media, you can go with 6GB of RAM, or even less. As time goes on, your phone will start to struggle with the ever growing websites and apps, but it’ll keep doing what it always did, you just see a few more loading screens when switching between apps. Any €350 phone will do fine for most people these days, I don’t get why people spend three or four times that on a phone if all they do on it is browse social media.

Because Android multitasking is inefficient with memory use.

My Palm Pilot had 512 kB of RAM and it could multi-task properly. When I re-open an app on Palm, I could always get back to EXACTLY where it was left off. Palm OS saves the app state before swapping it out of the RAM.

Android apps have to completely restart from fresh after being closed. It multi-tasks by keeping apps running in memory. But you are never going to have enough RAM for the apps if you use a variety of apps.

Samsung’s RAM Plus does something similar, but the apps are not designed to be efficient for virtual memory.

My Pixel 6a has 6GB.

I’m very happy with it.

I think 4GB is ok but on the lower end.

8GB is plenty.

Because software bloat grows faster than storage and RAM sizes. Remember when Android phones had 1GB RAM and felt fast? Roughly 12 years ago. For what most people use their phones for, those old phones would still be perfectly usable, but gotta bloat the software because fuck you

Well, Android runs over JVM which runs over Linux. There’s overhead and Android needs to compensate. Add in poor memory management and OEMs that happily kill apps in the background for no good reason (even if you tell them not too), and marketing guys trying to out RAM competitors just so they can release a phone with an “upgrade” every year, you get current Android RAMathon.

Because modern apps are heavily bloated. Just look at the apk size of some of the most popular apps: facebook, its messenger or other apps, microsoft’s outlook, etc… The two are not necessarily connected, the apk size can be big without consuming a lot of ram, but often it is connected showing the negligence if these app’s developers, that the only goal is to churn out features and vacuum up your data at every moment possible, and saving on your resources is not at all a priority.

Your wife’s macbook and your desktop rely on swap space under pressure while your android will start killing apps.

As for your question

How much ram is needed if you’re not gaming or video editing?

The answer will vary depending on your use case and how long you intend to use your current smartphone and if it will receive future OS upgrades. If you plan to keep the smartphone for longer than 2 years get the higher ram variant with more storage.

In my case, it’s a very occasional picture or video recorded and then just social media apps and web

Get at least 8gb of ram smartphone for smooth operation. 6gb is serviceable but it will be a bottleneck down the line in a few years. You don’t necessarily need 12gb of ram. It’s just nice and makes things smooth overall. You have budget smartphones with 12gigs of ram. If the price is not high get it. Otherwise, you should be fine.

RAM chips are dirt cheap these days, and uninformed consumers will gravitate towards the bigger number even if it doesn’t have a real impact

My phone as 3gb of ram… I’m not sure what you think is a lot but most devices have around 16gb.

A gaming phone will obviously need more RAM, that’s why ROG phones etc. have 12 GB or more. I currently have 8 GB, which is definitely more than enough for “normal” gaming, with spotify open in the BG. My old phone had 3 GB, which was OK for gaming, and perfect for other tasks. With newer Android versions and newer system apps that would be different tho. In general, all manufacturers will deliver enough RAM, so you can just ignore that specification in your use case, and focus on support length, size and camera quality.