Is the virtual memory of the mobile phone useful?

With the popularization of memory expansion technology, this technology is basically equipped with flagship from 100 yuan to 10,000 yuan, aiming to improve multitasking ability and system fluency by expanding the available running memory of mobile phones. However, many users said that this feature does not seem to be useful, and there is no difference in experience between turning it on or not.

In order to find out whether the virtual memory of the mobile phone is useful, we found four identical models with the same 12GB memory, and took you to find out with actual measurements.

1 What is memory expansion?

First of all, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of memory expansion technology before diving into the actual test. For users who are familiar with a computer's operating system, the term "virtual memory" is not unfamiliar. In the PC field, virtual memory technology effectively alleviates the problem of operating system deterioration caused by insufficient physical memory by temporarily storing part of the memory data in the hard disk. This type of functionality can be found in operating systems such as Windows and Linux.

Mobile phone virtual memory also dynamically manages storage resources, temporarily moving some data to flash memory space to simulate expanding RAM usage. However, unlike computer hard drives, mobile phones use relatively slow read and write speeds of flash memory, which means that frequent data exchange can lead to performance bottlenecks, especially in memory-intensive applications.

In Android, the Swap partition is used to swap inactive data from RAM to flash space to free up more running memory for currently active applications. However, because mobile flash memory, such as eMMC or UFS, is much slower to read and write than physical RAM, frequent swap operations can lead to significant performance degradation, especially in applications that require fast response times and high data throughput. In addition, long-term, heavy use of Swap may accelerate flash aging, which can affect the overall life of the device.

The picture comes from the Internet

In contrast, zRAM is a more advanced memory management strategy that does not write directly to the flash memory, but instead uses a portion of the RAM space as a compression area. When RAM is tight, zRAM compresses and stores the temporarily inactive memory content in real time, and then quickly decompresses and returns it to the system when the application accesses it again. This has the advantage of avoiding frequent reads and writes to slower flash memory, but at the cost of increasing the CPU load, as both the compression and decompression processes consume processor resources. Still, due to the high-speed nature of RAM, this extra overhead tends to be much faster than reading data from flash memory when relying on Swap.

2 Actual measurement of memory expansion

To fully evaluate the real-world utility of the virtual memory feature, we selected four base models with the same configuration and 12GB of physical memory. Three of the phones enabled 4GB, 8GB, and 12GB of virtual memory expansion respectively, while the fourth device served as a control group to maintain the native 12GB memory without any additional expansion.

During the test, we will use a series of software applications that cover daily use scenarios - including 19 apps that are commonly used by users, as well as the popular mobile game "Honor of Kings" as performance benchmarks. The specific test steps are as follows:First,Open these 19 APPs one by one in order,Make sure that each APP switches to its internal "My" page and returns to the desktop;Then,Immediately start "Honor of Kings",Conduct a continuous 5-minute man-machine battle to simulate the pressure of game running;After the test,Leave the device standing for 5 minutes in order to observe whether each App can still be stably stored in the background under different memory configurations,Not automatically cleaned by the system。

In order to ensure the validity and impartiality of all test results, we have completely closed the background programs of all four phones before we started, and uniformly updated the operating system and all test applications involved to the latest version. This series of rigorous operations is designed to exclude other variables, focusing on the real effect of virtual memory technology on multitasking and overall system smoothness.

According to the results, the mobile phones that enable 4GB and 8GB virtual memory expansion retain 16 and 17 APPs respectively, the mobile phones that enable 12GB virtual memory expansion retain all 19 APPs, and the mobile phones that maintain the native 12GB memory also retain 18 APPs.

To further test this conclusion, we selected a new set of test subjects – two phones with 8GB of physical memory, model E with 12GB virtual memory expansion enabled and model F with native 8GB memory settings retained. Using the same experimental protocol, the two phones were tested in a comparative manner to more accurately evaluate the actual effect of virtual memory technology on improving the phone's background multitasking ability.

The test results this time are more intuitive,Model E with memory expansion turned on has 6 more APPs than model F without memory expansion,It can be seen that the virtual memory has indeed improved the ability to reside in mobile phone memory。

3 Summary

Overall, virtual memory technology does play a role in enhancing the phone's multitasking capabilities and increasing the number of applications that reside. However, in high-end models with a large physical memory capacity, the improvement effect of virtual memory is relatively limited and not obvious. Especially when the native physical memory is sufficient for daily and heavy use, the increase in the ability of additional virtual memory to reside in background applications may not be enough to offset the potential costs, such as performance bottlenecks, flash memory life loss, and reduced system response speed.

Therefore, when deciding whether to enable the virtual memory function, users should fully consider the specific configuration, usage habits and actual needs of their devices, weigh the pros and cons, and ensure that the strategies adopted can not only maximize the use of hardware resources, but also ensure a good user experience and device lifespan. For models with smaller physical memory, virtual memory may be more effective at compensating for the lack of memory, while for phones with plenty of memory, you need to make careful decisions based on the actual situation to avoid "adding too much to the table".

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