Samsung Left This Setting Enabled, But You Should Disable It! (RAM Plus)
RAM Plus.. what is it, do you need it? Let's find out
Tired of expensive phone bills? Check out my channel partner Mint Mobile for some amazing plans! mintmobile.com/avoloshin
➤ MY YT GEAR
Camera: amzn.to/3te4W8X
Lens: amzn.to/3GPgDIJ
Lens 2: amzn.to/38LVcf4
Microphone: amzn.to/3GNnDG0
Mic Stand: amzn.to/3xc4Sc9
MacBook Pro: amzn.to/3mdGwss
Light: amzn.to/3zh4Fpq
Softbox: amzn.to/3Mfc7o8
➤ MY DESK SETUP
Best Standing Desk: motiongrey.com/r?id=hqoria (Code 'TLDR' for 10% discount)
Keyboard: amzn.to/3SfKKgG
Mouse: amzn.to/3COcN0L
Headphones: amzn.to/3VERyHz
Storage: amzn.to/3s8UZZy
➤ My EDC:
Slim wallet: shop.ekster.com/TLDReviews (Discount Code: TLDREVIEWS)
Phone: amzn.to/3KP4c3I
Favorite case: amzn.to/3Zt9Qx1
Laptop: amzn.to/3Zu8GAL
External SSD: amzn.to/3J37kaN
*****
Join my Patreon for exclusive behind the scenes videos where I cover my earnings, business strategies and answer ANY of your questions: / alexvoloshin
Enjoying my content and want to show some love? Buy me a coffee!: ko-fi.com/avoloshin
*****
➤ CONNECT WITH ME
Business email - alxvlsyt@gmail.com
Instagram - / _technicallyalex
➤ CHAPTERS
00:00 | RAM Plus
00:57 | What is it
04:38 | Secret setting to fix your slow phone
#samsung #s23 #ramplus
Affiliate shopping links within the description of this video are added for your convenience and generate me a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Was RAM Plus enabled for you too? Hope this video was helpful!
mine was too
Yes , I just checked it , enabled by default.
This is a non issue imo. We’re well past the days where we have to worry about read/write wear on flash storage. Unless youre keeping your phone for 10+ years youre never going to have to worry about it. Desktop systems have had this for decades(?) and its never been an issue.
Yep Alex is was enabled just received the S23 plus last week definitely factory enabled, Thx Alex for the great tips.
Mine was enabled from the factory. I called Samsung customer service direct and they said to turn it off cause it will slow down the phone somehow. What's the point of having it on the from the factory then lol?
Repeat after me - I should never ever give technology advice when I don't know much on the topic. It doesn't work like actual RAM, it swaps pages of RAM to the UFS (which is not going to wear like an SD card) and it saves the state of the app. The alternative is to kill the app and reload it, which in most cases will be SLOWER..
Funny that you make the comparison to SD flash memory... Do you know the actual specs of the used UFS NAND? The S23 series is known to have some inferior design mistakes (or decisions) related to the optics and such, which Samsung likes to put off as "characteristics of the hardware". Who knows Samsung skimped out on the used NAND flash storage. I've heard enough stories about problems with their SSD lineup and their Exynos SoC's. It wouldn't surprise me if RAM Plus causes problems sooner or later...
@@LockedOutBy2FAso basically you're just using your hypotheticals. As if they are true
RAM-cache amortizes (or even obliterates) such problems. I have 4GB and I usually have enough free-mem to allow cache to exist. RAM+ would give too much freedom to background apps
@jalanidamu5774 NAND storage is NAND, and it has a limited amount of writes. Using Ram plus, will reduce the lifespan of the storage on the device. Will it be enough to matter is hard to say as it's use case specific. But it's important to factor if you tend to keep phones for an extended time.
@@Brainy1422so should I turn mine off or to a certain setting?
When the ram of your pc or phone is full, the device uses the HDD, SSD or UFS storage as virtual memory. In the case of the Galaxy S23 it uses UFS 4.0 (not SSD). This process is known as paging or swapping and it moves the least used data from ram to the HDD, SSD or UFS storage to prevent the system from crashing or data loss due to lack of memory. Although enabling virtual ram may cause additional wear on your storage, modern SSDs and UFS storage have made significant improvements in terms of their limitations in write/erase cycles (their lifespan). Additionally, virtual ram is rarely used by the operating system anyway, so there is no need to worry about this setting. The benefits outweigh any minimal increase in wear and tear. Furthermore, operating systems like Windows, MacOS, and most Linux distributions have virtual ram enabled by default. However the background process setting is a helpful trick for any device that experiences performance or battery life issues.
Have they? manufacturer's seemed to have halted their write endurance by cheaping out and going with TLC and qlc drives. My old ass sata ssd has the exact endurance per gigabyte as samsungs current flagship drive and samsung the old pro line actually had double the endurance of their current best.
exactly this video is straight up paranoia
@@ethearnos6397 nope
@@Frozoken That's incorrect. Today's gen4 and gen5 ssd's have vastly superior write endurance compared to older generations. In fact, the gap is often so big that even low end dodgy gen4 ssd's tend to have a guaranteed endurance rating that is almost double that of even the most premium gen3 ssd's. The only type of drives that "technically" get close to this are very old slc's, but in reality that is not old slc or tlc ever produced that can match the longevity of modern ssd's. The first reason for this is because of capacity. The more capacity you have in an ssd, the less kilobytes are written to a drive which means it lasts longer. This means that writing 50GB of data to a 120GB SSD will have exponentially more wear than writing the same 50GB to a 4TB ssd. This remains true even if the 120GB ssd is an slc drive while the 4TB is a QLC drive. The second reason is that old slc only have slc nand, while the modern drives are qlc but they have a small part that is an slc that is made specifically for abusive situations (constant copying and modification made by operating systems or by professional users at work. All of these tricks combine to make modern ssd's vastly superior to old drives. Even if you want to compare speed, the modern QLC drives are still faster. Even though QLC is technically a slower nand, modern drives now come with there own high speed ram (gen4 comes with ddr4 ram) that blow away any tlc and slc drive in raw performance. and in rare cases where you are transferring a single file that exceeds that capacity of the ssd ram, it will combine the ram with the drives slc chip to accommodate the file size and still maintain performance that is faster than old drives.
Used paging and increased virt mem to 4GB on my Steam Deck to increase bandwidth of memory for my games. Valve had virt mem set to 1GB with no paging setup at all.
Virtual ram is only used for low end process like it states on the discritpion on it. Its to keep stuff running in the background, like when you dont fully close out of a game or just switching between apps, it keeps a still image of the last thing you were doing. Turning it off, you wont see a difference as your actual ram will do the same thing. It allows your ram more room to do other things. So unless if you have little to no storage, leave it enabled. The wear and tear doesnt change from using it.
thanks for the tip! but i'm good with that one enabled on my S23 ultra for now.. this is like having paging file size set in Windows
Thank you for sharing this. There was an immediate increase in speed of operations after making this change in S20 FE 5g phone. Thanks again.
Thats the phone I have 😮
I think the biggest concern is the flash memory lifespan. Even any extra chance to cause the loss of my data would be extremely frustrating.
this is absolutely impossible man lol
This is why i have my stuff on pc an older phone and i will buy external ssd. Lost my data once. 5 TERABYTE. 5. Yeah it's a lot of data.
@@iAmNothingness I just use one of those Samsung T7 shields for backing up my phone. Hopefully it lasts, I guess one backup is better than none though.
it would go in to read only mode if it is worn-out it's extremely rare that it fails in a way that loses all of your data and if it happens that's what a backup is for
You are right. Mine an S23 ultra 1TB was enabled, thank you for the information.
How about showing comparison for On and OFF settings ?
Yeah, that would be helpful to determine the facts.
I want to enable 512GB of RAM Plus! But on a serious note...it will take a lot of write cycles to wear out the UFS storage on the phone for like 5 years if you really abuse it, your more likely to have battery issues long term. On top of that you will only kill about a few cells of storage and hardly noticeable and degradation is slow. By the time you notice it you are more likely already have a new phone anyways so it does not really matter.
On Windows you can customize the amount of storage dedicated to virtual memory. If you have enough storage space you could technically dedicated a terabyte or more. 😅
But why kill ANY of your storage if you don't need to? Also, if your storage is fairly full the wear occurs at a faster pace due to the same cells being written to over and over again. What if you run into financial hardship in the future and need to keep the phone longer? Why not take care of it ehh?
@@mrdumbfellow927 Even if you run into financial hardship you will still be using a different phone. I don't think you fully understand how long 5 years actually is. The number "5" seems small when typed on a peace of paper, but 5 years is enough for a teenager to go from last year of highschool and into a big time company CEO. 5 years is long enough for that kid little kid in your nighborhood to become as tall as you with a beard and a deep voice. 5 years is long enough for your brand new car to become old and constantly braking down. 5 years is long enough to have your whole family and friends with you and then only half are left in the world. Brother, I can assure you... as long as you are still alive after 5 years, you will not have the same phone. You will have most likely given it to other family members or you will have destroyed the phone by letting it fall into water or fall on the ground and crack the screen, or it will have gotten stolen or lost.
@angrysocialjusticewarrior to be fare, I had my last phone from the time it came out in 2017 until 2023. 6 years lol. Sometimes the thing just lasts that long.
Fair**
My OnePlus 7 Pro had that too after receiving Android 12 but, at the moment, what is important is to do videos from anything related to Samsung (even "things" that happen with other brands/models)...
Good info, mine was on. Thanks for the tip!
Just found this channel, it's a good channel and easy to understand. Earned a sub
Right 4gb is the way to go, the way they set it, that's what i would say, I've tried every other setting to see differences, 4 or default seems to be accurate in efficiency. S22u sd version. S23 ultra super users let us know.
Be careful with limiting background processes cause there are apps that rely on other app provided services and you will most likely run into problems. It is ideal for gaming but not much in the way of multitasking.
I did that on my Note 9 and used it for almost 2 years without any issue.
On my Samsung a 13 I I switched the Ram from 4 to 2 and now my KZhead videos keep stuttering anything to do with music pretty-much
@Tu.Mama.Perro. That has to do with all the bloatware and the crap processor that the a13 have. That is a budget phone. Don't expect too much. Not hating on budget phones or ppl who by them. I'm running a galaxy a51 5g. So yeah we all like what we like.
Only if you're running out of space
He said that.
Thank you so much. I almost give up on my Samsung A54 5g for fast battery draining. I turn off Ram plus and it works! ❤
Excellent, thanks, I had no idea this setting was enabled/existed.
Nice Video!! Although i do play a lot of pokemon GO and CALL OF DUTY while watching youtube or being on instagram but my s23 ultra with 12gb ram does INSANE with the ram plus enable running all those at the same time
Hmm .. Physical RAM vs Virtual RAM aka RAM Plus ... Thanks for distinguishing the differences + pros n cons. My phone's battery life has improved with fast startup. 😊
RAM Plus is a fancy name for the pagefile. It does NOT kill your storage. It actually saves you battery, because an app that hasn't been used for a long time isn't sitting in RAM consuming power for no reason.
Thank you a lot man!!! My phone(S23+) was overheating and i didn't knew why, until i watched this video
Was enabled on mine, also 8GB like you. Thanks for this video mate!
Glad to help!
@@TechnicallyAlex what about the battery? Does this feature consume battery power when it's on?
@@amirpaha8561 yes just disable if you want more battery
thanks for explaning this to people like me who dont know these things, and that last tip was awesome, thanks again!
Cheers so much, learning how to get the most and longer lasting out of mine, thanks to people like yourself 👍🏼👍👌❤️
I have a question. I have heard it is generally a bad idea to constantly close out open programs in the background that youre not using? Ideally you can keep things open as you use your device throughout the day, and then hit the close all button at the end of the day, just before you turn your unit off for the night? And the reason is because the ram actually uses more energy to continue reopening apps from zero, rather than bring them to the forefront as needed. And doing so can unnecessarily place extra stress upon it.
I think Ram Plus, is mainly expected to be used while you are in Dex mode, and are using your phone like a desktop pc (often connected to am monitor, or tv...I tend to use hotel tv's when traveling), something I like to do when traveling, because I can fit my folding blutooth keyboard and portable mouse, and the Dex connecter in a small go-pro bag. Not everyone is going to use Dex mode, it's more for power users who use their phones on the go as pc's, and since there are apps that let you pull up your home pc screen while you're using Dex so you can use your home pc, so long as its powered on, anywhere you have phone set up in Dex mode, I can easily see it using more ram than regular phone use. I've streamed movies from my laptop while working on work projects at a hotel, since Dex mode lets you open up a bunch of windows just like you could on a windows based pc. I've never bothered to look at how much ram I'm using, but now I'm curious.
For those not familiar with Dex mode at all, I found this video that might peek your interest in using it. kzhead.info/sun/Y6qfeJlpr5mHd40/bejne.html
Imo nah, bcs galaxy phones w.o a dex mode still got the ram plus 😊
@@087_anggerpribadiwibowo5 I'm pretty sure every galaxy phone since the s8, including the fold series, and the galaxy tabs, all have dex mode (Edit. After doing some digging. Not every galaxy phone has Dex. The main phones and flag ship phones and tablets have it, but the more affordable phones like the A13 and A51 didn't start with it, although they've been rolling it out with their 4.1 UI on some phones that previously didn't have dex, such as the A51, and may roll it out on other phones also strong enough to support it in future updates.) The operating system is designed for phones having dex mode (since it's the standard for the primary featured Samsung phones and tablets now) so if you have an older phone than that, if it gets system updates the ram plus feature probably got added (Ram Plus was first added in 2021, and has been getting added during system updates to phones that have the 4.1 ui as part of their OS update) as a samsung standard. I keep all my of phones, and I know my old s10 got ram plus on it after updating it as well. If you have a phone older than the s8, I'm surprised it's battery hasn't started to swell yet, cause wow that would put you at an s7 from 2015 or older, that's a long time to have the same phone and most apps probably aren't compatible anymore on the play store. If you have a featured samsung phone after the s8, you probably have dex on your phone, never used it if it wasn't an original feature, and haven't added the dex mode notification tab to your notification bar tab list.
@@Shenvalleyboi Also the most budget phones from Samsung( M line ) doesn't have DEX mode. I have m21
@@Bartekwis True. They disable features of the One UI on phones that aren't strong enough to rub those features. The one ui is the sane but singer phones just get featured blocked out, but the ui itself is designed to run with all it's features, so unless you have a phone incapable of using Ram plus, it won't be blocked out along with dex mode.
Exactly, as you said the virtual kicks in after the regular ram is used. So app loading would be definitely faster from loading from virtual ram vs total reboot. Hence the argument that phone will be slower if using virtual Ram isn't accurate
Phone will be slower as virtual memory fill up as phone have to search the particular app to load from that storage. It will be slower than physical ram and it may get even slower as continuous swapping of data is done when used as ram.
@@eldhosepeter6894 you've not understood my point.. Loading from storage directly or from virtual Ram which is faster? Clearly virtual.. That's my whole point.
@roger22fed I understand your point. Virtual is the storage man and constant swapping is done it becomes slower. Virtual is not real as it make you to feel that. I know this because I do heavy compilation in my 64 gb ddr5 computer. And after it fills I experience slow down when the tasks runs. I experienced it and that's why I commented.
@@eldhosepeter6894 well tell that to your PC because it relies highly on the same system. You will never fill up the full virtual memory, so will never have a hugh impact. For gaming and mutitasking without virual memory your phone will not only run slower but run hotter and could even lead to shorter battery life. Heat is what wreaks these batteries. The normal person's phone will never have that many apps running so will never need to touch the virtual ram setting so wont effect your phones preformance or battery as its never used unless it has to. Your PC has since its invention used physical ram as virtual memory, no big deal for android users either. Apps are increasing in size, especially gaming and needs the virual ram for maxium preformance
@denodan first of all virtual ram is not physical ram memory. It is a part of storage. And yes I fill up my ram easily. And yes virtual memory access is slower than physical ram memory. And if you are using virtual ram constant swapping makes it slower . I don't know what you are talking about?. I use physical ram as virtual memory? 😂Lol I don't understand 🙃 you.
In the video, I hear only assumptions, not something practical, there are no measurements and comparisons, only talking.
You have to search more about how RAM (DDR) and flash storage works, and how they differ.
@@johnarlycapulong3035 No, I totally have not to, cause the video talks about some kinda assumptions. Here we're speaking about THE video, man. So, you have to go.
@@artybell1990 doesn't change the fact it's true 🤣 other phones have the same problem 🤣
@@artybell1990 did you turn it off?
@@sokol7215 if i had 100 windows open id like for it to slow down so i can close them because i forgot. it could save battery like that also.
thanks so much for explaning this to people like me who dont know these things , mine was enabled too.. and that last tip was awesome, thanks so much
Take no notice of what he is saying he doesn't know what he is talking about. I have had it on my 5 year old note 10 plus with no problems so take no notice of what he is saying.
I see that your battery is at 90% that means you didnt use the safe battery function. So how much can the battery lifespan be extended if we use the safe battery function which limit the charge to 85% as compared to 100%
Correct, I do not use it, I just showed that it exists to those that may want to consider it.. To properly test it, you would need someone to keep it enabled for years, and compare it to someone else who didn't use it.. so unfortunately I cannot just give you a definitive answer without speculation as I do not have the years and years of data at my disposal. I am sure Samsung or some other big corporations can garner this information.
@@TechnicallyAlex its a myth not to charge to 100%, as it wont stay long enough at 100% to hurt your battery. Its bad for a battery to be stored and not used at 100% as the phone is used does not matter. Its only if you intend say keeping it at 100% when you get your phone its never charged to 100% but maybe around 50 to 60% as its sitting there doing nothing and 100% then would be bad. Howevery, what is not a myth is charging over night and remains for the night at 100%, in this case as its hours being at this, then it's not good for your battery
@@TechnicallyAlex am sure technically there is a reason why the function is there... well thanks for the advice and great job you are doing here... keep up the good work.
@The KZheadr It's known to make the battery have a longer life, goes for any lipo battery. They have this option on many laptops today. I use it, but one thing is, don't store lipo batteries at 100% if fully charging, be sure to use that charge asap.
hahaha saving 20-25% battary & garner modest data lol you won't be using the damn device that long
RAMplus is actually the swap space. Regardless of whether you turn on the RAMplus function or not, the OneUI system has already preset 3GB of swap space. When you turn on RAMplus and set the size, the size of the swap space will follow your setting, but when you turn off RAMplus, the size of the swap space will return to 3GB. So regardless of whether you turn on RAMplus or not, it is actually always on, and you only have the privilege to set the size.
this was great, thanks for looking into this and explaining it to us
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Watching this informative video has been well worth my time. Thanks again.
Thanks man.❤ I have an s10+, I noticed that it slowed down and wasn't sure the reason why . The RAM plus uses 4gb of the 8gb available. As there is no disable button I switch it to 2gb ..and it make a massive difference . Glad I came across this video by chance.😊
It is a way to disable it after the update
You can disable RAM Plus completely, but you need to do so with ADB commands via USB.
@@Disdaine82 how? Pls tell me
I have a budget Samsung Galaxy, so I decided to experiment. I used it for a while using 2GB of Ram Plus, then turned it off and tried doing the same chores on it. It's definitely slower with Ram Plus (virtual memory) off. I wasn't trying to play games on it, just common everday cell use. I am convinced that, at least for budget phones with limited RAM, you should use Ram Plus. Just my two cents worth. Thanks for the video.
I need to test that but i have only midrange phones
agree. i also use a budget phone (galaxy ao2) and i cant imagine not using ram plus 😅
It works, I have subscribed, that info was priceless thank you 🙏
My galaxy tab A will probably benefit from this as well as my brand new 23 ultra. Thank you so much❤️
After turning off all the window, transition & animation scale my phone just boost up.. Thanks dude I found that option because of you.❤
What you fail to release is the CPU uses Chace memory, so does not always need to address the Vram. Vram as phones are now able to do multitasking this Vram will become more important for gaming and mutitasking as eventually as the programs get bigger your going to need that Vram, so its future proofing your phone. So this extra ram, it puts the lower smaller apps into it and has the more important Apps in the ram, and VRAM is chaced so not always needed to be access as its chaed in the CPU, so its not writing everytime to ram and this is whats causing you guys confunsion and think its slowing your phone do, which will hardly be every enough to notice anyway. The VRam makes use of the chaced memory in the CPU and if nothing has changed just use the Chace memory which is the fastest memory you have on your phone
Cache*
The hell is Chace memory
Also to correct a bit: The "Virtual RAM" is called SWAP on Linux-oide systems, and used to move unused or not frequently used memory from the physical RAM in the "virtual RAM" (swap), to get more physical RAM back in return. So it's wrong that it puts smaller apps in the swap. Also, it is not cached in the CPU as the CPU cache is just 8 MB of size and needs to be used for more important stuff to remain efficient - it doesn't cache entire apps. The VRAM/SWAP lives on the storage chip of the phone. And I think you're referring to closing apps being bad? This is true. It's not recommended to force-close apps if you don't need to. When you again open the app, the entire app needs to be re-initialized, requiring CPU resources and moved into RAM. This effectively takes more energy than leaving the app "running" and let the Linux kernel on the phone do its job.
bruh wtf is "chace" you mean cache?? and btw all CPUs have onboard Cache
@@Razzbowso you are aware it is actually Cache Data(also known as temporary files)
Thank you. This video really helped me. U took us step by step😊
Thank you for this important information. I just bought my S23 ultra and didn't know about this issue. You got yourself a new subscriber 😊😊
I have to give you a huge thanks. I have an s21 ultra. I love this phone. But after the new software download. I had enabled the ram plus. Well, soon after, it started wreaking havoc on my phone. It would freeze and restart. It started having hour long sessions of freezing and restarting. The phone became unusable. I found your video and removed the ram plus option. I also set up the developer options and limited background apps running. It's now working like new again with no issues at all. I thought I was going to have to get a new phone. And the s21 ultra's are very expensive. But this solved all issues. Again thank you!!
A KZhead expert speaking for a Samsung engineer is one to listen too.👌
They need to sell you anew phone eventually so how do we kill the one you have now faster? Wear out the storage
Muchas gracias amigo tengo tengo 7 meses con el s23 y no me habia fijado que lo tenía activado ahora el TLF va un poco más fluido 👍
OMG Alex i cant thank you enough for this video. I have a 2 year old Samsung Tab A7 that i was highly considering to replace as it has become super sluggish, and quite embarrassing especially when I'm presenting something during meetings. I changed the background process to 4 as per your advice, and the tab is blazing fast now! This is a life saver, thank you so much! P/S: I dont use the tab much, only during client meetings so i dont need that many apps to run in the background at all times.
That's amazing, I'm glad the process limit works!!
Dd you let your VRAM at 2 Gb or 4 GB?
@TechnicallyAlex there's also something I wanted to say about virtual RAM, it cannot be deactivated on Android 12/one UI 4 and since my galaxy a12 doesn't get software updates, I'm stuck with one UI 4 but here's the thing, I don't run many apps on it, so there's something like 1.8 gb of physical ram left, so I think RAM plus won't impact my device at all.
i should put a limit on my Tab 2 (i put LineAgeOS on it)
@@TechnicallyAlex And for the person with Galaxy 7 perx And no RAM PLUS option is there... What then?
I already did it by my own, exploring my settings when I purchased my new S23 back on 4th of Feb. Great video and useful for others!
Good information. I have a Galaxy Note 8 and the Galaxy S23 Ultra. On my S23 Ultra, Ram plus was enabled.
Hello Alex, Jose from Puerto Rico. Great tip my friend! I have a Galaxy S23 Ultra and I checked and yes, it did have this option on. I followed your recommendation and turned it off. Thanks for the info.
Moving things to and from swap space requires additional cpu cycles, so it will slow down your cpu and use up battery. This is why it's slower more so than storage being slower than ssd as you say. You might think it will only be used after ram is full so it's fine, but it's not gonna wait until the last second but start offloading to swap space much earlier to keep some ram empty. You don't wanna use it unless you know you'll use up your entire ram.
Unless you're on an old phone (before 2012ish), the transfer will happen under a seperate thread. Slowdown won't be an issue. however, you're correct about the battery usage.
@@ArcaneTurbulence what? Newer phones can't use multithreading?
@@shadmansudipto7287 Yes they can. That's why I said "Unless you're on an older phone" It will use a separate thread. Older phones don't have multi-threading capabilities.
So if virtual RAM is only utilized when you completely deplete your physical RAM and if you have 8 gigs or more of physical RAM which you will never deplete, does that mean your phone will never actually use virtual RAM? And if so does it make a difference whether it's on or off for those that have 8 gigs or more?
Correct, you phone will not use virtual ram unless physical ram is maxed out, it's kind of like "swap memory" on windows.
Personally I've found it slower when enabled and more prone to system UI hiccups. I disabled it first thing when Samsung introduced it many months ago.
@@Joeeye123 I haven't had any performance issues and I just left it enabled. On my OnePlus 8T, Android 13 has the same option and I couldn't see any different in performance wether I leave it on or off and it also has 12gb of RAM.
@@jeffmenace91 yes, so other than wasted reserved space, it offers no benefits one can actually identify. The reason I disable it.
@@TechnicallyAlex you're so wrong. Android has a thing called "swapiness" which is the % of ram used that has to be used to move newer app data to the swap partition. If the swapiness is set to 100%, swap wo start when 50% of ram is used. If swapiness is set to 70, when 80% of physical ram is used, the system will automatically use swap. In my experience Samsung uses 80% swapiness and xiaomi uses 90%, therefore, the limits of both are when 50-70% of ram is used, they'll swap no matter what. Do better research next time.
Useful advice for me. Thank you!
RAM Plus is just swap space. What's not true is what you said about it only being used when you run out of memory. It can be useful for lower priority background tasks and luckily you can set your most frequently used apps to not use RAM Plus. I have it set to 2GB of it and set all my frequently used apps to not use it. The fact that the storage is now UFS 4.0 it is almost just as fast as the previous gen ram. Obviously not as fast as LPDDR5.
Enabling vram on Samsung S21+ destroyed lagless experience for me. I had lags almost everywhere, thought about selling device but then i found one thread about vram. One guy advised that vram can be problematic. I disabled it and for last 2 months NO LAGS whatsoever. Since then i advise everyone to DISABLE it forever. Peace.
There's another issue because the storage chips will be degraded over writes if the ram extends to storage it will degrade the chips even faster by random writes into storage chips and the writings are limited by the storage size, the larger the storage the larger the capacity of writes which means life of the chips as well
These devices have UFS 3.x type of storages which takes way much longer to degrade over time even with so much random writes (the same with Windows pagefile virtual ram)
This Channel is awesome. I've spent a lot of time today configuring my phone against all your tips and tricks... superb mate. Cheers.
Glad to help!
Thanks for the video man I disabled mine for now
Put it this way 8gb maybe fine now and vram not needed, but in 2 years that may well be needed as ram is increasing, used to be 4gb standard then 6gb, now 8gb, so in effect are future proofing your phone. If you keep your phone for 2 to 4 years then vram may well be needed and without it your phone will slow down. The 256gb has the standard 8gb, which in 2 years maybe enough. If you have the 1tb or 512gb with 12gb of ram you will be fine
True Fact-I myself I ONLY change my Smartphone once every 6 years
Virtual Memory has been a thing on windows for ages. I have gone from xp to 11 without my storage crapping out on me. While this can be a nice to know feature, I do not see any short term effect on disabling it. On the contrary, I have been looking for phones with this feature as it can give an extra oomph since phone memory cannot be upgraded, even when compared to laptops.
Reduced cpu usage, it's using your storage as ram and constantly switching between them which tanks cpu performance
Not needed for 12 gb ram
Virtual ram has been about for decades! I remember having 32mb virtual ram or something silly. I needed it to run the original Photoshop software back in the 90s or it would graphic glitch (onboard gpu) that had about 64mb if that 😂
If you phone is constantly running the OS, apps, and having to switch from its on board and virtual ram it's using more battery, cpu is working harder, and having to switch between both ram types is actually using more ram. So if you turn it off your phone does actually run better, and way less battery consumption.
Came looking for this. Haha. Good ol' days.
I just activated my new S23, glad I stumbled on this video. Very well done!
Remembering the good old 2003s when played call of duty played with virtual ram on windows pc. 512 mb DDR2 ram costed so much back in the days.
Speaking of ram I'm shocked they only gave certain ones 12 gb but 8gb is smooth
I have a theory. The reason that it is on is, RAM Plus memory is being used Samsung apps integrated into One Ul and for One UI OS. The 12GB of RAM is managing Android OS, core apps and device essentials. My Fold 4 has been optimizing since October with 8GB RAM Plus on. Google's performance and power management algorithm looks are all this stuff to get the most out of the device. Consider this. Maybe turning it off now screws up what the A.I. is doing. The device has been optimizing performance out of the box and has gotten rave reviews with this on by default. Turning it off is like to screw up the A.I. optimizations it made from machine learning. RAM Plus was on by default in my Fold 4 too. When I turned off RAM Plus, it made my animations choppy and slowed the launch of some apps. I turned this over and over again to see how the device manages RAM. My device has never used up the 12GB of RAM, even when I opened 14 apps (3 split screen and 9 floating icons and 2 popup windows). So I only surmise that RAM Plus is on by default to help manage One UI. Android is just a component, the foundation. One UI has become a complex OS that can be customized into a completely different OS from traditional Android. This is why the OS memory is so large.
Where am I 👶
I love your theory. Based on how youve said the extra virtual ram is managing for one ui os is pretty legit. Because im using a slower tab galaxy a7 lite. So when i turn ram plus off , it becomes so sluggish to even navigate. To be honest it should be left untouched
Yeah i noticed some lags / choppy performance after i turned it off but battery life improved by a lot after turning it off
@@revanchdg I admit that sounds strange. With everything I know about mobile operating systems, I don't know of any reason making more RAM available would impact the battery. 8 months in with the Fold 4. The battery life has been incrementally improved because of Android power management and optimization. Screen On Time has reached 8-9 hours and 18-22 hours total. I'm a power user. So I don't dial back performance or do any battery saving tricks. Pretty happy with it so far.
You have no idea what you are talking about 🤣
Great information. Fortunately for me, I don't use my phone every minute of the day so the factory settings work just fine for me.
Oh well ... Conceptually this is anything but new - mainframe computers introduced it in the 1970 (e.g IBM S/370) - basically it tries to temporarily free up some less used memory by storing it on "disk," so that the apps that need memory urgently now can run. But the problem starts whe the apps whose memory was "stored away" also needs to run. Then a fight for memory starts between apps and the processor(s) spend more time swapping memory contents in and out rather than getting work done. We used to say that our computer was now "thrashing." Mainframes today can still do that but they usually come with so much memory that they don't really need to get into "thrashing mode." Windows and Linux also have the capability (I don't know about Macs, actually, but I would expect they do, too.) And now Android, too. Of course with the advent of solid state storage devices ("SSD drives" in computer terminology, "storage" on the phones) with their originally very limited number of write cycles there is an additional worry about this ability to "thrash" around memory contents. The basic fact about it really is that a happy computing device (including phones) is one that has enough memory for what it is doing. If there are a few apps idling around in the background not reallys accessing their memory most of the time, their data being saved to storage won't hurt performance much. But once your usage is seriously trying to exceed the memory your device came with - that's when "thrashing" sets in - nobody is getting happy and letting the device try to deal with the shortage is seriously counterproductive. And let's remember: If I am looking at an industry standard computing device (such as servers or personal computers) I can usually just open the box and install some more memory modules - unless I've already maxed out that specific device. I haven't heard of a phone where you can do that- more storage (SD-card) yes, bur processor memory NO! On the other hand, only serious gamers should be running short of memory under normal circumstances (I know that I am now talking like Bill Gates about the famous 640kb on the original IBM PC ...) Android also has a feature that terminates apps that are occupying memory but not doing any work - that sounds liek a better option to me.
If you've ever switched to a recently open app and the app has reloaded instead of just being open in the same state as before, RAM Plus would have helped. Windows, Linux, and even iOS, all have page/swap files to keep more programs in memory than will actually fit in physical RAM. The wear on storage is not going to be of any problem to anyone as shown by every other device doing the same thing with no issues. It should even improve battery life by keeping more apps open instead of having to use processing time to start the app from scratch (the same reason why closing all recent apps is actually bad for battery).
I really can't understand, for the life of me, why closing all apps can be "bad for the battery", at least for my usage...
@@conan5885 Because it takes less energy the next time you want to use the app.
@@Xenon0000000000001 I understand that concept, but that's why i said "for my use". I don't have 30 apps open on my phone at once, don't need to multitask on a regular basis, and if so i'll have 2 or 3 apps open, max. Don't stream or do social networking or gaming either. I'll probably have my music app on, and browse something on line. I also doesn't need to be opening and closing (or alternating between) dozens of apps every 5 min. I have 4GB, and for the most part it can be enough. Virtual ram may be beneficiary however if i use my virtual instruments apps that rely on samples to play, as it has to load on ram. I think i'll just test both options for a few days and see what suits me best
@@laxmanndhotre Well.... it kind of does... at least in my case, as i restrict about 90% of my apps from running in the background in settings. apart from some system apps i only have 1 app running permanently in background and my local music player app with no restrictions to run in the background. Pretty much everything else is severely limited. I also have every data connections turned off at all times, only turn it on when i need a data connection.
On PC you can swap storage if it fails.
Also it's inefficient by it's usable ratio. The rule of thumb on Windows was to get 128MiB of usable virtual memory you need a total of 1GiB of physical space, so there's huge overhead for the OS to handle a rather small amount of additional memory. Don't know if it got more efficient over time, but a similar rule should also apply here anyways.
You mean Megabytes
@@stephensnell5707 Nope. The overhead used to be 8:1 and thus it needed 1.0 GiB/1024 MiB of storage space to get 128 MiB of virtual memory.
Hello Mr Alex, really really I am very surprised. After I deactivated Ram plus, I got 2 GB of real physical RAM, and the phone’s becom very fast any were and the boot speed became very fast...so I am very grateful and thank you very very much😊😊😊😊
Ive done that few years ago. It may seem like a refresh state for a phone but it's not. Leaving a 4 only background processes makes your phone into trouble. Apps are having a hard time to load and work properly like something is always disrupting it to do its task. It's a headache right at the start. I will not recommend it. Dont mess the background processes. Smartphones need it's standard limit to work properly and efficiently.
More great tips, Alex. Thank you. 👍
I wonder HOW MUCH slower ufs 4.0 is than the lpddr5x ram when used as virtual ram
Ram is way faster. Its not even close.
RAM Plus is on by default but not used (storage size is the same as turned off) when you have RAM. RAM+ is faster than swap when low on RAM.
on my s20plus with 12gb i use 4gb ram plus.. because i keep alot of tabs open in browser and over 12 apps open at sometimes.. also some 3d anatomy apps for some of my med studies.. im a pretty heavy user and i casually have my ram at over 9-11gb used. Never had a program reload with ram plus.. with it off it closes heavy apps frequently.. Its pretty useful and depends on the user..
I mean I have 512gb of space and phone is lightning fast. So I'm good.
Exactly I have s23 ultra 512GB
@@RANDOM-Moments200 same. I have question. Does your fingerprint sensor suddenly disappear from the lockscreen. Mine did that one time not sure what that is.
@pasindunimshan3708 mine disappears after. It's supposed to. If not then you would have a print that remains on your screen.
So the 1tb wasn't worth the extra $240 😬
@deputydan2226 1 tb for a phone right now isn't needed unless you use that kind of space.
Does this actually affect battery life? Is it not the same function as Window's virtual memory?
Yes, your cpu needs to be used a good amount every time it's switched from real ram to virtual, obv requiring more power to do so in the process.
All OS having being doing this for ages Windows, Linux, Mac. There is no reason to panic
My phone booted up damn near instant once I turned it off and I noticed how smooth apps run that's crazy it's a noticeable difference
My advice is, just use the phone as intended to use. If the feature was bad, why implementing these feature? Also this feature is common for operating system, like windows, linux, mac.. and then here we are (smartphone) this feature helps a lot android by using your storage as temporary ram. By "swap"ping or store the state of apps that running in background when the ram is full. Instead of chopdown the apss or force close the other apps, the system is storing apps that haven't been used yet and you haven't close these apps! and then when you open again the system is swapping the memory. The speed of swapping depends on the storage technology and most modern smartphone (esp flagship) is fast enough that you don't notice the differences. (Speed of RAM and OS is also to be considered) and if you are sceptical enough, remember iPhone uses this too which they called "Virtual Memory" and you can't turn this off nor view it through out the iOS (It's enabled by default) Don't worry about the lifespan of your storage. As long as you are not 100% full of storage, it won't harm. Just leave it to be or just turn on if you are experiencing a bad memory management.
Android already implements Linux swap-mem. RAM+ is a very different thing. Having 2 swaps is worse than 1
This setting was on by default when I got my S21fe last year. It could not be turned off until the One UI 5.0 Android 13 update last December. The ability to disable it arrived with One UI 5.0. I was very happy when the ability to disable it became available because I was already familiar with virtual memory from Windows PC. It does drain battery/use power when activated even if it isn't being utilized, and it does slow down the system because the system keeps checking it even when it's not being utilized. I have the 256GB version of the S21fe that has 8GB of RAM, so I immediately disable RAM Plus when the setting toggle became available. In all honesty I don't think even 6GB RAM phones really need RAM Plus yet. 4GB phones definitely do though. 6GB phones may need it with Android 14/One UI 6.0 though. We will see.
Thank You so much!
Thank You so much ❤
This is BAD advice. Don't do this. This guy doesn't have an understanding of what he's trying to explain to you.
Then what's your advice and why
It's one of the best pieces of advice for extending phone lifespan, literally...
no this is old trick...im using it from android 4.4 on my cheap phone..no issues
Maybe you were using cheap buget phones due to which you didnt care? Remember, S23U costs a lot. And honestly, I personally know what difference it makes. I have S23U and Galaxy F15 5G. By default, it was enabled on F15. Since I disabled, apparently my phone worked faster than usual. No frame drops, or neither process lags.
I have it on my note 10 plus with 4 different amounts of ram to use. No option to turn it off so its been on constantly for the last 5 years with no obvious problems.
I have the feature on and I haven't noticed anything being slower. If it only kicks in once we've used our full physical RAM then doesn't that mean nothing would be affected until it actually kicks in? 🤔
Using with UFS 3.1 memory and above, there is no harm to use it most especially if you do multi taskings and not to get disappoint when you back to app that is closed.
It requires cpu resources to do so there absolutely is. Unless you consider higher battery drain, higher temperatures, and worse performance, "no harm"
Very informative video. Thank you 👍
I had never realized that I had RAM Plus enabled by default on my Galaxy S20 FE 5G with 8 GB of physical RAM. Therefore, it was very useful to know how to disable this feature, as it may be one of the reasons why battery life has been draining since RAM Plus was added after Software Update. Thanks for the clear explanation in this very useful video. You have gained another follower! Keep up the excellent work!😎👍
Idk. For the past few weeks the lag has been unbearable on my phone. Not sure it's bc I maxed out RAM plus when I first had it
@@the_garniiics I'm on a budget phone with vram maxed out at 6gb. My phone still operates just as fast as when I bought it. Plus gameplay is Much smoother
Did battery life get better with it off? I have an exynos version so its even worse 😭
@@oremarinkovic7925 I have the Snapdragon version and the battery life it's pretty much the same. Even with RamPlus off.
I subbed to 👍
Had this enabled on my s23 ultra as well. Let's see how the phone performs with it disabled.
I doubt you will notice any difference, your phone wont even touch virtual ram until physical ram is exhausted. Really no need to even have it enabled on phones like the ultra since it has so much physicals ram
@@TechnicallyAlex I must thank you though cause I've literally went through the entire settings menu since I got the phone and I never stumbled upon this setting. Makes me wonder what other hidden settings might still be tucked away deep in the settings menu 😅
haha yea, glad to help!
So, I am glad I clicked on your video. Hopefully you can answer my question. I have several samsung galaxy phones. The ones that aren't my main phone I use as just devices for multi tasking. My galaxy s5 has become something I've never seen before. One day the phone has no record of "External Storage/sd card." vanished..disappeared..gone!! As if it never had one. Those words cannot be found anywhere. The only option is "Inturnal Storage". And it's running very sluggish. It has only 2 apps that I installed..HBO MAX and Prime video..There's a couple hundred photos..No games, and looking through "my files" it appears as mostly empty files. It has 16 GB and only 1.28 remains. Have you ever dealt with this type of issue?? I've been trying to find a solution for months. Could you give me any suggestions or remedy other than use a big Hammer 🔨 😮 Thank You 🙏
HP and possibly others have been doing this with their computers for years...I checked my phone and it doesn't have an OFF switch for RAM plus, but it has options for 2,4,6 and 8GB...The phone, a Note 10+ has 12GB of real RAM, so I chose 2 as the default setting, it was on 4...
Having Vram to 8GB for me on my S21 allows me to play ram hungry games like fortnite, ZOZ, and other AAA game titles without bottlenecks or horrible load times. Typically use 5.1 to 6.4 GB of ram gaming but then Vram allows me to not worry. So Vram is good for gaming but not so much for standard applications.
AAA phone games ?
@@bakaneko6639 yes, they have triple A (AAA) games for mobile devices. Seeing how mobile gaming is actually a thing.
Sorry bro but I disagree with this. As a pro player, selecting 8ramplus is the WORSE THING you ever have in terms of gaming. You gain a lot of latency out there. Playing Fortnite? Bro you kidding me? RamPlus would cause your game to run faster I know it is smooth but you didn't even notice that your game fast-forwarded? You can't even keep up your aim by tracking players who have movement because they are so fast to move. Most of the time ramplus triggers lag spikes. Doesnt give you a precise and consistent framerate. Also, it makes your phone hot faster. The framerate you gain in Ramplus is not normal bro. The effect of Ramplus was like overclocking your device same as in a PC if you use an afterburner. Do this for you to understand. Install cod and play with it. Notice the movement of the enemy to your device and compare their speed here you'll see here on youtube(search codm big streamers) you'll notice the difference. If you search Paging file cause on youtube you'll see how much worse it would do to your device. Tweaking in pc could decrease the lifespan of your hard drive. The same effect on the phone because the process is not normal and other system components of the device would not match to speed that had been set already to them kind of miss matching that's why high latency existed. Using afterburner also you need to match the framerate to your monitor right? What if your monitor only renders 60hz but you overclocking it to your desired 120hz? Yeah, you notice that smooth but the working process from memory swapping to acting as a ram is unusual that causes errors and crashes to some systems because of the unstable process and workload it occurs errors and corrupts files. So the hard drive would be slower until it broke. It took me 2 hard drives to stop tweaking the paging file and refuse to use afterburner. There's no point in swapping memory to ram. It's a disaster! The same effect on Your phone memory would damage also if you use Vram. if you don't want to kill your please turn off the ram plus. N
I'm confused. If my phone has 12 GBs of RAM, and RAM Plus becomes active only when data exceeds 12 GBs, then what harm is RAM Plus causing other than draining a few percentage points of battery power by remaining enabled and ready?
Nothing hes just speaking nonesense
It slows down ur phone
@@harshithsuvarna2004 I use 6gb Vram and my phone is Still as fast as when I first bought it. Vram will only be used if the physical ram is depleted which is unlikely unless you're on a 4gb physical ram or lower
So are you saying that secure file shredders that run military grade agorithyms to delete things and overwrite freespace 7-50x... that wears on your storage more? I didnt know storage gets "worn"
Thanks for the information
One question, should ram plus be enabled for a Samsung tablet with with 4 gb of ram or no?
Don't touch it I got 4gb on my S22ultra keep it that way
even if you turn that off, there is still a Z-RAM partition (the virtual RAM partition) that is 4GB. so it will still affect the storage. all android phones have that Z-RAM partition just like in windows' virtual RAM. also, processing are taking place within the physical RAM, the only time that it will use the virtual RAM is if the physical RAM is almost or full
VRAM is used for advertising cheaper phones, some phones with only 4 GB of ram are advertised as 4+4 GB RAM with the +4 being the VRAM
when the first time android introduce RAM+ (whatever you called it on other brand of android phone), i directly assume that since android using linux kernel, this feature work similiar to "swap space". Thats it.
Ram plus is useful for heavy gaming and heavy users. So I'll keep it on. You get like 20 GB Ram!
What phone do you have and whats your physical ram? Do you really feel a difference with RAM plus enabled vs disabled?
no android or mobile game will consume or use 20GB of RAM. Have you seen how super smooth heavy 3D games like genshin impact runs at steady 60FPS on Iphones and iPads with only 3, 4 or 6GB of RAM?
@@Bangbangboom51 only in ipad ..genshin dosent run smoothly on 3 gb iphones.. isheep
@SAIYAN PLAYS lol, thanks peasant.🤣
@@TechnicallyAlex My old phone was S10 plus it crashed the game and other apps many times crossing beyond the ram limit. But now upgraded to S23 Ultra 1TB 12gb Ram. So far didn't notice much difference probably didn't reach beyond 12gb Ram yet...I was playing Cod mobile it runs fast and smoothly 👌🏻
Thanks for the info but I think I will keep mine enabled if it doesn't kick in until real RAM is maxed out
@Hewhoremains doesn't matter either way.
Thanks Alex
Windows does it, they call it a page file and it's kinda 100% needed, you will stuff a decrease in productivity if you disengage it. And if it's not getting written to its not going to wear it out.
This guy is making this out to be a big problem when it isn't. Most Operating Systems use a page file or virtual ram. And they have done so since the late 80's. Yes non-volatile storage is slower, but it allows more programs to run and prevents them from having to reload! A program having to reload every time due to less RAM will actually end up taking MORE OF YOUR TIME! Since it has to reload every time you switch apps. He also contradicts himself too, he says correctly that VRAM only gets used when devices run out of RAM. But he also says that some devices have allot of RAM. His logic is flawed as those devices will barely use the paging file and not cause the detriments that he's mentioning. The battery implications would actually be worse when you have to reload applications every-time. As app reloads are often way more CPU intensive than VRAM retrieval. Most commonly with power users, performance would actually be far better with VRAM as most people do not simply use their devices for only SMS and calling unlike the elderly and luddites. The only real downside to VRAM is the tiny amount of premature wearing to your NAND storage. To reiterate: We've all been using VRAM on our windows/linux/mac desktop devices for decades. It really isnt a big issue. Especially if you don't plan to keep your device for over half a decade. Which is when the storage will more than likely START to fail.
QUOTE: ..."The battery implications would actually be worse when you have to reload applications every-time. As app reloads are often way more CPU intensive than VRAM retrieval." I keep listening to that argument frequently.... Can you please elaborate on what you consider as "reload applications every-time"...? What is, and how frequently is "every-time" to you? from 5 to 5 min, from 1 to 1H, twice a day....?