If you are familiar with tinkering and tweaking with your PC, you likely already know what RAMDISK (also known as RAM drive) is. Or at least you have an idea. In which case, most of what this article says is not new to you. If you don’t, this article will inform you about Virtual RAM for Android phones, how it works, what benefits it adds, and which virtual RAM Android phones to look for.
Table of Contents
What is Virtual RAM for Android?
RAMDisk is a segment or portion of system memory on your PC or Android phone that is used as a temporary memory to improve the performance of running software and apps. In essence, it is a virtual storage, created by software, from your device’s hard drive. In Android phones, it is called Virtual RAM, or Extended RAM.
How does Virtual RAM work?
Your Android phone has two types of memories – RAM and storage. RAM is for running apps, while storage memory is self-explanatory: it is used for storing files. The thing is that RAM is a much faster type of memory (which explains in part why it is so expensive and comes in smaller chunks than storage memory).
Virtual RAM for Android phones is created by apportioning a part of your gadget’s built-in storage as a hard drive. The concept of Virtual RAM for Android phones is new because we now have large capacity storage on phones available. Some of that capacity is portioned into Virtual RAM for use during intense gaming or other high intensity activity like video and graphics editing.
What are the Benefits of Virtual RAM for Android phones?
The key benefit of having Virtual RAM is that it boosts the performance of the particular app or game you are using per time. As already mentioned above, RAM is much faster than storage memory. By using a part of your device’s storage as RAM, you experience slightly faster performance.
So, mobile phone gamers, as well as people who do video/graphics editing on their cell phones, can now enjoy a boost in performance while using those apps. Don’t expect anything fantastic. It isn’t a great boost, but seeing as cell phones have limited resources, any improvement in performance, no matter how small, is welcome. Virtual RAM provides such a small boost. Perhaps in the future, the technology will improve enough to provide more exciting performance improvements.
Virtual RAM phone list: Which Android Phones have it?
Xiaomi is the first cell phone manufacturer to introduce Virtual RAM for Android phones technology for smartphones. The first phone to be so equipped is Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra. This is a 2020 model with a 16GB LPDDR5 RAM chip and 512 GB built-in storage. The company has introduced a RAMDisk Trial Mode for users to experience the benefits of Virtual RAM on the phone.
For now, the Mi 10 Ultra is the only smartphone with Virtual RAM for Android phones. However, this is expected to catch on, as more and more cell phone manufacturers are producing gaming-centric smartphones. At the very worst, if no-one adopts the technology, we will see more Xiaomi phones with the feature in the near future.
Virtual RAM for Android Phones goes mainstream
2022 update: Android smartphone manufacturers have implemented the concept of Virtual RAM for Android phones across board, and it is also called Extended RAM. There are now scores of Virtual RAM Android phones available from other manufacturers, including Samsung, OnePlus, TECNO, Infinix, Realme, among others.
You didn’t mention the game deletes once the phone is restarted, that’s a very important con… Tho can me mitigated by transferring the game from ram disk beforehand.
Nice innovation, can’t wait. I’m imagining playing codm and epes loaded on super fast ram disk, uhlala