This new phone is more powerful than my gaming PC and I don't know why

tech radar ^ | April 12, 2022 | Tom Bedford

[fireman15]

18GB of RAM in a smartphone?

It's no secret that modern Android phones often pack unnecessary specs - I'm looking at you, 108MP cameras and 4K screens - and the new Nubia Red Magic 7 Pro brings some more.

This is a new gaming phone from a company that's made quite a few at this point (hence the '7' in the name), so you'd think it'd know exactly what gamers need. Well, what they apparently need is more RAM than your average gaming PC.

That's right, the newly-unveiled Red Magic 7 Pro comes in a few configurations, and they top out at a whopping 18GB of RAM. Or, if you want to stick to a measly 16GB of RAM, you can go up to 1TB of storage space. That's a lot.

It tops my gaming PC My gaming PC, built in 2021 to be able to handle high-end gaming, as well as whatever DaVinci Resolve and Adobe After Effects could throw at it, has 'only' 16GB of RAM.

This was an amount that, when I was buying the parts, was sold to me as enough for these intensive processes. And, after having used the PC for months, it seems enough for games or video making. So 16GB is just fine for tasks that you wouldn't even do on a smartphone.

The PC 'only' has a 1TB SSD too, the same amount of storage space as the Nubia phone goes up to. Admittedly this wasn't the best decision on my part, and I've just ordered a 6TB HDD, but it goes to show that the Red Magic 7 Pro matches my gaming PC for storage space as well.

[fireman15]

"The state of the game

When it comes to mobile gaming, there's a simple fact that undercuts lots of the marketing fluff around gaming phones.

Mobile phones aren't like consoles; there aren't just two or three versions that all gamers have. There are hundreds of different types of mobile phone, and to ensure that all mobile owners can play games together, most titles are optimized to play on all devices.

You don't need a super-powerful mobile to play PUBG, or Call of Duty, or Fortnite, or Genshin Impact. Any fairly modern device can do so, though maybe not at the top graphical options.

That's one curious, but appreciated, difference that mobiles have with PCs - lots of PC developers are happy to just shrug their shoulders and say 'well, some gamers can't play our game', locking out users who don't have top-end specs.

Perhaps because they're designed as portable and readily accessible, or perhaps because mobile developers are trying hard to compete for your attention, any old phone can play all the most popular games.

With that in mind, 18GB of RAM is just completely unnecessary. I'd go so far to say that you don't really need more than 8GB, and some won't even need that.

So why do phone companies, especially Nubia, push so hard into additional RAM like this? Well, it's hard to know for sure, but there's one reason that I can think of: I wouldn't be writing this article if the phone had a normal amount of memory.

[daniel1212]

It tops my gaming PC My gaming PC, built in 2021 to be able to handle high-end gaming, as well as whatever DaVinci Resolve and Adobe After Effects could throw at it, has 'only' 16GB of RAM.

What? I do not game, at all, and 64GB is often not enough with my multiple browsers, and documents.

[fireman15]

I do not understand the obsession with phones and phone apps. I was going to apply for a new Heloc and the loan officer told me that I needed to use their phone app to create an account and fill out the application. I told him that I tried to avoid entering information on my phone's relatively tiny screen because it was a PIA (pain in the ass). But young people today are obsessed with their phones and do not seem to mind pecking away with one finger on a tiny screen.

Here is another article from Samsung Business Solutions bragging about their powerful phones.

Your phone is now more powerful than your PC

https://insights.samsung.com/2021/08/19/your-phone-is-now-more-powerful-than-your-pc-3/

[xp38]

I guess you could call it spec flexing. There are some dive watches that are rated to depths no diver would ever reach but hey the watch can!

[fireman15]

I do not game, at all, and 64GB is often not enough with my multiple browsers, and documents.

With cheap giant SSD’s and the way that modern operating systems handle browsers and multiple applications, you should not need 64GB of RAM to operate smoothly. If you are having difficulties it seems like either your computer may have some configuration or malware issues, or you use your computer in an unusual way.

[fireman15]

I guess you could call it spec flexing. There are some dive watches that are rated to depths no diver would ever reach but hey the watch can!

That is similar to what the author seemed to conclude. I will admit that often what seems ridiculous today ends up being worthwhile sometime in the future.

[lefty-lie-spy]

I’m very impressed with my iPhone 15 Pro Max so far.

[Red Badger]

How many gigabytes does one need to play Candy Crush?.................

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I’ve got you beat for ridiculous apps. The town of Leavenworth, WA requires you to have an app to park in city parking lots! We pulled into a parking spot and the sign on the spot instructed us to use the app. We had to sit in the car, download the app, fill in all the information on the tiny phone screen, add payment information (I use a “virtual card” to avoid ever entering my “real” credit card number and that was a another big time-consuming process), and finally pay for parking. It took FORTY FIVE minutes!! So much for a nice dinner in town. When we finally got to walk to town, there was a conventional payment kiosk. We could have paid and been on our way in minutes, but the sign on our parking stall told us to use the app!

To top it off, we were ten minutes late getting back to the car and got a $40 parking ticket. I complained to the city about this ordeal and they cancelled the parking ticket.

This “app” business is insane.

[z3n]

The last time I had an android phone is had 18 billion pre-installed and completely unnecessary apps. There are a lot of apps that you couldn’t remove unless you jailbroke it.

Bloatware needs processing power and memory

[KrisKrinkle]

Why are cell phones more reliable than laptops?

My cell phone just works. My laptop sometimes doesn’t load properly, sometimes gets the blue screen of death or a black or white screen necessitating a hard shut down, sometimes makes me wait while it updates. They are both about the same age.

I don’t have problems with the cell phone except that the screen is too small for much of what I want to do and it doesn’t have a convenient keyboard or mouse.

[Night Hides Not]

I play two games: World Golf Tour and Civilization V. I would never play those on my phone, the screen is way too small for me.

I stick with Civ 5, the modding community has created thousands of mods for that platform.

[daniel1212]

With cheap giant SSD’s and the way that modern operating systems handle browsers and multiple applications, you should not need 64GB of RAM to operate smoothly. If you are having difficulties it seems like either your computer may have some configuration or malware issues, or you use your computer in an unusual way.

Thank God I only use SSDs, and a NVME for the OS, with a Ryzen 3200G 3.6Ghx CPU on a MSI B450 pro Mobo, orig. built for about $600. However, with multiple installations of Firefox Portable, and two of Vivaldi, each for its own general purpose (right now 3 for forums and documentation, and two of my own web sites, 3 for comparison shopping, one for banking), hacked so as to enable multiple rows with multiple tabs open - much, much more efficient than bookmarks), plus multiple documents, then RAM gets used up. Of course, that need not slow down computing much due to the speed of writing to the NVME drive, but it can over stress explorer.exe.

https://i.postimg.cc/3xHsJM56/Tbar-2.jpgPraying about getting a new mobo which supports 128GB (about $200.00 total).

[Chode]

it’s not a phone, it’s a commuter wi a phone app...

[algore]

I would much rather have a nice flip phone, or maybe a punkt phone if they were a bit cheaper.

I was forced to give up my flip when my carier made 2g unreliable, but for a while I was ok with a nice nokia windows phone, but then that was made obsolete as well.

I am working on a nice computer right now with 3tb of ram, 384 cores and 4 mi210 “gpu cards”

I can even play Doom on it.
but most of the time when I ask it to do stuff it says:

“I’m sorry Al I’m afraid I cannot do that”

[ken in texas]

re. ... young people today are obsessed with their phones

Indeed. I often wonder how long it will be before they insist on voting with an app on their phone. No more driving to the polling place or filling out that pesky mail-in ballot.

[Grampa Dave]

My Samsung/Trax phone is also, a senior citizen, and I use it in my car when I need to check with the real boss, my wife.

She has a newer Samsung and she uses it with our Comcast package. As it is very fast and efficient for her needs. It operates very fast re sending or receiving. She has an Acer small tablet for her heavy duty stuff.

She prefers her phone for most of her so called use.

One of our sons has the Apple 7 and never uses any computer.

His wife has a later Apple phone and prefers her home Apple computer with her home run business.

99% of my computer needs are met with my Acer Chromebook 317. I use my former Comcast business with it like my wife does with her mini Acer.

A DIL always has the latest Apple phone and their computer for her small business and personal use. She is addicted to Facebook and other online garbage sites. Her phones are handed down to their adult kids.

[Bratch]

To this day, the best mobile phone I've ever had.

[telescope115]

I used to have a Razr. It was a good phone. I have an iPhone 11 Pro, I could upgrade to a newer iPhone, but this one is paid for, and it works just fine.
I have 256 gigs storage, which is WAY more than I need, I just keep taking pictures and taking pictures with it. It’s great.

[discostu]

Well in the world of gaming PCs your base RAM isn’t nearly important as the RAM on your GPU. I doubt there’s enough room in a phone for all that. So sure the phone’s RAM might be more than the PC’s, but is it more than the PC’s + the GPU’s? Probably not, since the CW there is 8GB VRAM is too little.