I don't know if you have found a problem, in the 2021 mobile phone market, there are fewer and fewer mobile phones with 16G running memory (hereinafter referred to as "storage"). You know that in 2020, the mobile phone storage without a 16G version is embarrassed to call itself an Android flagship machine, which I estimate is stronger than the computer in most readers' homes.
But is the 16G storage on the phone really worth the money we spend? The mobile phone market in 2021 seems to have given the answer. And Lei Jun has also launched a survey on Weibo before, asking consumers which specifications of memory configuration they think will be more popular with them, and from the results, the 8+256G version and the 12+256G version are the most popular.
Just two days ago, a foreign blogger came to a conclusion after a series of tests: 6G storage is the minimum standard for Android mobile phone operation, and then a little lower will appear serious caton, 8G storage is a decent level, 12G storage is the most perfect, almost do not have to worry about the phenomenon of stuttering and killing the background after opening too many applications, as for 16G storage, his view is not too necessary.
Combined with these conclusions, can we think that the 16G storage on the Android mobile phone is just a gimmick, and whether the 12G storage Android mobile phone is really enough to use?
16G storage mobile phone is not welcomed?
What is the advantage of dayun storage, I believe that the first reaction of most readers is "can make the mobile phone run more smoothly", "will not kill the background frequently" and so on. Indeed, if the phone is running too small memory, the phone will indeed kill the background application frequently, and it will take more time for the user to open the application again, which will greatly affect the user experience. For example, even if iOS is very well optimized, after opening the default camera software, it will "kill" some applications in the background to ensure that the camera can run normally.
That is to say, the advantages of the big storage are mainly two, one is that it allows the mobile phone to run some super large applications (such as the original god magic tower, which can squeeze out the performance of the mobile phone), and second, it can also allow the mobile phone to retain more application processes in the background to ensure the user's basic experience.
Isn't that the bigger the memory, the better? In theory, this is true, but in fact, there are very few applications that can really make the mobile phone run at full speed load, take the original god as an example, it will probably only account for about 2G of storage when it is running, as long as it does not open other large applications, the 6G storage of the mobile phone can also ensure smooth operation (single finger does not kill the background).
And the second case - more applications, more applications and more open quantities are indeed one of the main advantages of large storage, but the actual use is not big at all, to @ Xiaobai evaluation database data show that the 8G storage of Redmi K40 Pro has been enough to support 20 applications resident background, 12G storage not to mention. For ordinary users, this is completely enough, 16G or 20G storage to bring about experience improvement will gradually decrease due to the existence of marginal effects, the actual experience and 12G storage basically can not be separated from too much difference.
If an application killed by the system has been opened long enough, the user will not even notice that the application has been killed. At this time, the increase in memory only increases the cost of the device, and the improvement of the user experience is already very small, even if the user is given 16G or even 22G storage, it is only the icing on the cake.
After talking about the necessity, Xiao Lei believes that the biggest reason why mobile phone manufacturers are no longer obsessed with launching the 16G storage version may be because the target population is small, and how many mobile phones equipped with 16G storage on the market are equipped with 512G or even 1T storage, which also further increases the price of 16G storage mobile phones in disguise.
Take the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra released in 2020 as an example, the price of the 12+256G version is 5999 yuan, and the price of the 16+512G version is 6999 yuan, which is 1000 yuan more. Although this 1,000 yuan also contains 256G of storage memory, this real 1,000 yuan gap will indeed dissuade many users, including Xiao Lei.
In addition, since Android 6.0, the Android system has its own Doze mode, which will process processes that are not frequently used in the background in the state of the information screen, and will kill some of the infrequently used background programs to keep the phone continuously smooth and reduce power consumption. And today's system manufacturers in order to make the mobile phone have better battery life performance, will also establish a more stringent background optimization mechanism, some times maybe your storage remaining a lot, the system will still destroy some application processes to release the storage, keep the front desk should have enough space, so, no matter how big your storage is, the application is more open, the background process should be killed or killed.
For various reasons, the mobile phone has not been recognized by the market and consumers as soon as it is launched as the mobile phone manufacturers imagined. We can also think of this as a small setback in the history of mobile phone development.
Enhanced vendor optimization capabilities
Of course, Xiao Lei is not completely negating the progress of mobile phone manufacturers in this regard, after all, in the early Days, Android mobile phones were synonymous with "two years on the card". This is because the Android system in the past few years is in its infancy, lacking a lot of features, as mobile phone manufacturers continue to add some new features to make an Android system more and more "bloated", but also more and more performance.
In addition, most manufacturers will customize the native Android system privately, and domestic manufacturers will install a family bucket on the mobile phone system when customizing the UI, although some of the software in this family bucket can strictly manage the background process permissions and "kill" some task processes that do not meet the requirements in exchange for the fluency of the system. But the addition of this family bucket will make these custom UIs more bloated and more performance-eating.
But nowadays, the customized operating systems of major manufacturers will basically not add so-called new features on a large scale, and you can think that this is the end of the mobile phone manufacturers. But it is undeniable that the manufacturers have optimized the mobile phone more than in the previous two years.
In addition, at present, Android mobile phone manufacturers have also developed memory fusion technology, that is, the use of the existing zram and swap technology on the Android system supplemented by AI algorithms to achieve the purpose of increasing storage, which is a very low-cost way to improve storage, 8G operation can bring about the improvement of 3G storage after opening this technology, that is, the final 11G storage. Although this is a certain gap with the real 11G operation, its performance is definitely better than before optimization. In Xiao Lei's view, this memory fusion technology realized by algorithms is a focus of the future development of mobile phones.
See here may be readers curious, why only Android manufacturers are running the memory of this inner volume? What about Apple? Why does the iPhone still maintain 4/6G of running memory? In fact, this has a lot to do with iOS. Unlike Android, the iOS system is based on the unix platform, which is a software architecture that is separated from the hardware, concentrating all hardware resources to ensure that the currently running software can remain smooth.
For example, when the app on your iPhone enters the background, it will immediately go to sleep and will no longer disturb you. At the same time, iOS also has a very perfect background message push mechanism, even if the user has cleaned up the APP, you can still receive the message pushed by the APP through Apple's server, so that the user does not need to rely on giving these APP permissions to receive the information push on time. And Android side because there is no perfect background message push mechanism, want to let the background APP can push messages in time, you have to let it reside in the background, over time naturally make the storage stretched.
And users who use iOS are really completely closed after closing an APP, but some Android APPS will not only run in the background as "sneakily" as mentioned above, but also use the permissions given by the user to give it camera, mobile phone memory, etc., to collect the user's privacy data, because these operations are system code level things, can not be solved by background cleaning.
However, this does not mean that the iPhone's killing background phenomenon is much stronger than Android, to know that the iPhone 13's running memory is only 4G, especially when the background is placed in the camera and other applications, as long as a few minutes do not care about it, it will be automatically reloaded. Even if iOS works much better than Android, that's not a reason apple squeezes toothpaste, and this birth defect isn't something that software can save.
Progress can be, but not too radical
In general, the reason why mobile phone manufacturers have successively cancelled the 16G storage version is because consumers and the market really do not accept its existence, on the other hand, because its current significance is mainly based on gimmicks. Of course, some people may say that the application volume is getting bigger and bigger, and the larger storage of mobile phones can extend its life, which is normally true. But don't ignore that the normal use cycle of a mobile phone is 2-3 years, there are very few mobile phones that can be used for four or five years, and the bottleneck at that time is not the number of storage but the performance of the CPU.
Therefore, in Xiao Lei's view, for ordinary consumers, there is no need to spend too much for a function that may never be used.