You’re shopping for a new phone and you see a spec sheet that says, “8GB RAM + 8GB Extended RAM.” It sounds amazing, right? A whopping 16GB of memory for a phone that costs way less than a flagship. But what exactly is this “Extended RAM” feature? And does it truly give your phone a performance boost, or is it just clever marketing?
Here at Unbox Diaries, we’re taking a closer look at this trend to uncover the truth.
What Is RAM, and What Is “Extended RAM”?
First, let’s simplify. Think of your phone’s RAM (Random Access Memory) as a workbench. It’s a super-fast, temporary workspace where your phone keeps all the apps you’re actively using. The more RAM you have, the bigger your workbench, and the more apps you can keep open at the same time without things slowing down.
Extended RAM, also known as Virtual RAM, Memory Fusion, or RAM Plus, is a different story. It’s not actual RAM. Instead, it’s a feature that takes a portion of your phone’s internal storage (the place where you keep your photos, videos, and files) and temporarily uses it as extra memory.
So, when you see “8GB + 8GB,” it really means you have 8GB of real, fast RAM and another 8GB of much slower storage space acting as a backup.
The Problem with Using Storage as a Workbench
This is where the marketing meets reality. While internal storage is getting faster (thanks to technologies like UFS 3.1 or 4.0), it’s still nowhere near as fast as physical RAM. To stick with our workbench analogy:
- Physical RAM is like a high-speed, well-organized workbench right in front of you. You can grab anything you need instantly.
- Extended RAM is like a separate storage room in a different building. To get something, your phone has to stop what it’s doing, go to the storage room, find the item, and bring it back. It works, but it’s much, much slower.
Because of this speed difference, the phone’s operating system won’t use Extended RAM for demanding tasks like gaming or editing videos. It will always prioritize the much faster physical RAM.
When Does It Actually Help?
So, is Extended RAM completely useless? Not necessarily. It can offer a small benefit in one key area: multitasking.
When your physical RAM gets full, your phone has a choice:
- Close a background app completely to free up space.
- Move a less-used app from the fast physical RAM to the slower Extended RAM.
For phones with less than 6GB or 8GB of physical RAM, this can be genuinely useful. Instead of completely closing apps you’ve just used, the phone can “park” them in the Extended RAM. This means when you switch back to that app, it loads faster than if it had to restart from scratch.
However, for modern phones that already come with 8GB, 12GB, or even 16GB of physical RAM, this feature is far less impactful. Most users won’t fill up 8GB of RAM with everyday tasks, so the phone will rarely, if ever, need to use the extended memory. In some cases, constantly reading and writing to the internal storage can even cause a slight slowdown or use more battery.
The Verdict: Marketing
Ultimately, the answer is a little bit of both, but with a heavy lean towards marketing.
For most users with modern smartphones, RAM extension is a great-sounding feature that provides minimal real-world performance gain. It’s a fantastic marketing tool that allows manufacturers to put a huge number like “16GB RAM” on the box, which looks incredibly appealing to consumers who think more RAM always equals a faster phone.
The biggest benefit is found on entry-level phones with limited physical RAM, where it can improve the fluidity of multitasking.
UD’s Takeaway
When you’re shopping for a new phone, don’t let the “Extended RAM” number be your deciding factor. Instead, focus on the physical RAM (e.g., the base 8GB or 12GB). A phone with 8GB of real, physical RAM is almost always going to be faster and more efficient than a phone with 4GB of RAM and an additional 4GB of Extended RAM. For most of us, 8GB of physical RAM is more than enough to handle everything from gaming to heavy multitasking with ease.
What do you think of RAM extension?
Is it a feature you use, or have you turned it off?
