iPhone 11 Pro iPhone 11 hugely better RAM performance than the Pro models on iOS 13.0

[armeca]

Hi everybody,

Yesterday I got really disappointed. I went to an Apple Store to see and try as much as I could the new models.

This post is about ram and speed performance between two models at least with iOS 13.0 which was the version available at that moment. I couldn't try if iOS 13.1 improves this fact. I know both phones have 4gb of ram which is the thing that made me thing apple needs to vastly improve performance on the pro models

Well... the test I did was the following. I took an iPhone 11 in one hand and an 11 pro max in another (guess that with the standard 11 pro would be the same). I closed every app in the background and then fully clean ram with assistive touch button and the volume up and down commands. Then I only use in both phones all the apps preinstalled in the first page of both phones. I opened every single app in both phones and both performed well. I also interacted with the apps like for example selecting a song in Apple Music, a message, a contact, open a webpage, an iBook...

Then I made the test that usually struggle iPhones...I took only 1 photo in both phones after opening all those apps (including the camera which was the fourth app but I didn't take photos in the first round).

After doing that in both phones I made a second round opening in order all the apps and OMG, the difference was pretty noticeable. The pro model had to reload calendar, photos, mail, maps, music, podcast, App Store, webpage opened on safari, phone app lost contact position, same on iMessage. It was such a downside and what is more, some apps that resisted only one miserable photo in ram memory opened but seemed that took like some effort reopening.

In the other hand the iPhone 11 kept almost everything in ram and was instantly opening all those apps with 0 lag as differ from the pro on little apps kept in memory. The only app that lost position was photos in the sense that I kept it in the first round in edit mode and in the second the app open in all photos view.

I did the test in various models and all performed equally. I don't know wtf is happening but it was very very disappointing. The difference in performance when reopening apps in a second round was day and night.

I hope it is a software problem but both iPhone 11 and pro were in iOS 13.0 so the software was the same. I can only think of the resolution of the display or two versus three cameras being in favor of the non pro model but even in that case it is not justified. the a13 bionic supposed to be a monster and this year both phones have 4gb of ram. If I got this result between the xr and the xs I could pass it but with the new models I think it shouldn't happen.

It wasn't a thing of one or two apps reloading in one phone and not in the other. It was massive. The pro lost almost every single position in ram and need to reopen 90% apps and it seemed to suffer a bit when doing it. The 11 standard was noticeable faster and snappier.

Make the test if you like in a store but make sure to close all apps before and clear ram activating assistive touch button and then volume up, volume down, click the ball of assistive touch and long press the home virtual button because that is the procedure for fully cleaning ram in iPhones nowadays.

Hope it is only a software problem. If not...oh man...
I did it because I had an X and ram wasn't good enough for me as differ from the xs and I needed to be sure that actual phones perform ok

Comment with or without testing. Remember this test was intensively done under iOS 13.0. If I can I will make it again under iOS 13.1 that is already out.

Have a great day

 

[Khedron]

4GB on the Pro is Tim pushing his tightness to its spiteful maximum. It's even worse than taking the spare tip out of the $129 Pencil 2, because at least then he'll still sell you one for $19. There's no option to pay to uncripple your iPhone 11 Pro.

 

[I7guy]

In normal use the 4gb is more than sufficient. I just don’t see people being serial app openers. I rarely see reloads on my Xs max.

 

[Applefan4]

Likely the iPhone 11 has better RAM management thanks to its lower resolution and smaller screen. iPhone pro has a lot more pixels to push and has to work with the same amount of RAM.

 

[Supermallet]

God people on this forum will complain about everything. Who opens every app on the first page of their phone, then takes a photo, then reopens all those apps as a regular way of interacting with their phone?

In regular day to day use the 11 Pro is great. If you’re upset about this stuff, buy an 11, or an Android phone, or just keep the phone you have.

 

[WindowsTraitor]

A GB ram increase would have had a minimal cost increase from the supply chain perspective.

This was done so next year you have a reason to upgrade.

I was Windows, then Windows Traitor, but now I am becoming an apple cider...

If the slowness is confirmed, this should be consider a manufacturer’s defect and be covered under the warranty. Meaning that they should replace the board with ram.

 

[tps3443]

Is this another attempt to make the iPhone 11 seem like a much better device over the 11 Pro?

And one is trying to justify this with super silly ram test?

The iPhone 11 Pro is made of solid steel. The build quality alone is worth it to me!!

My 11 Pro Max hauls ass. I’ve updated to 13.1 as well. Awesome device. If you want the best of the best then buy a 11 Pro, they’re super premium phones.

if you want close enough, aluminum construction, bright colors, lesser camera, and honestly the exact same performance buy a iPhone 11 for $699 and save some cash!

 

[noobinator]

Good thing I'll never use my Pro like that in real life!

 

[johannnn]

iPhone 11 Pro has the same RAM and resolution as the XS, right? NEVER have I complained about the lack of memory in my phone.

It makes total sense that 11 can have more apps open given the ****** screen, but that doesn’t make the Pro more bad. The Pro has enough memory for 99% of the population.

 

[ultravegeta1981]

iPhone 11 Pro has the same RAM and resolution as the XS, right? NEVER have I complained about the lack of memory in my phone.

It makes total sense that 11 can have more apps open given the ****** screen, but that doesn’t make the Pro more bad. The Pro has enough memory for 99% of the population.

Im assuming you had iphones in the past? If so,how could you have lived with them with **** screens in the past?

 

[flashflooder]

I think you guys saying you won't use your phone like this are missing the point.

If the phone can hold less in RAM due to the camera, this means in real world usage you will be reloading apps from scratch more often. This adds up to significant time, over the year+ you'll have this phone (presumably), spent waiting for the phone to perform operations.

Seems like a valid point by OP, and odd to me that the "Pro" version is handily outperformed in real world usage, by the "cheap" phone.

They should've put more RAM in the Pro models if the new camera system is so demanding. Period.
I'm a 3rd gen iPad owner, so you can't tell me Apple doesn't make mistakes sometimes and underspec their machines to bump up profits...

 

[armeca]

This is only a post to have a friendly discussion. Nobody should take this as a personal attack or to it´s own device. I can buy both the 11 and the pro and I am just creating a thread.

I was only trying to put on the table that again Apple is pushing hardware to it´s limit. The pro models should have 6gb of ram if they struggle with 4.

I Know that the normal behavior doesn´t include opening 15 apps and then open again to see if they reload. The thing is that when using normally you are maybe opening individually those apps and then you are going to take 1 MISERABLE picture and maybe immediately coming back to that email you were writting before taking that picture and the pro model may reload it from the scratch losing text or position. This could happen in apps that you are using in that moment or maybe some app you use an hour again forgetting to end the thing you were doing.

What is more. It is not a thing of which phone keeps more apps. The thing is that taking only one picture makes the pro model reload 90% of the apps and that is not a pro model behaviour. If the standard model could hold most apps, the pro model should too.

If it is a problems with optimization we will see in updates. If not, the pro models maybe need 6gb of ram for a normal performance. We are not talking of opening Luma fusion or iMovie and pushing the hardware to the limit. I opened apps like calendar, music, podcast, messages. Normal apps.

Maybe it´s due to the three cameras or the resolution screen. I don`t know but this thing should not happen in a pro model thousand dollar phone. It doesn´t happen in most medium phones with android.

This remember me when iPhone X came with 3gb of ram and it had horrible ram performance over the Xs 4gb ram especially when the x was running iOS 11. I said this because i suffered it personally. Or when the iPad Air (version 1) came with only 1gb of ram and performance was terrible reloading constantly. This is not a minor thing in some cases.

Personally I think that the software isn`t optimized because ios 13 is not a huge step over iOS 12 in which 4gb ram models perform as expected. The thing that disappoint me is that the standard 11 works flawless so I am not sure what to thinK. If it was only a software problem should happen in all models...

Peace and love

 

[archer75]

13.1 fixed that on the pro models.
Also, I have a iPad pro with 4gb of ram and that thing flies. Even with the multiple windows introduced in IOS13.

 

[armeca]

13.1 fixed that on the pro models.
Also, I have a iPad pro with 4gb of ram and that thing flies. Even with the multiple windows introduced in IOS13.

If true, good news. It was not normal. I will try to do the test again in a store where phones are update to 13.1. Thanks for your comment.

 

[NT1440]

Meanwhile, in reality, normal people just use their phone and don’t blink twice about their precious email taking a half a second longer to open up.

I feel like these absurd “tests” becoming popular on YouTube has really screwed with tech enthusiasts understanding of normal people’s expectations from their phone.

 

[mi7chy]

Understandable that the 11 does better since it's uses less memory due to lower resolution and fewer cameras so less camera processing memory buffer. That's why experienced users were pushing for more DRAM than the anemic 4GB.

 

[armeca]

Meanwhile, in reality, normal people just use their phone and don’t blink twice about their precious email taking a half a second longer to open up.

I feel like these absurd “tests” becoming popular on YouTube has really screwed with tech enthusiasts understanding of normal people’s expectations from their phone.

It is not a question of a mail opening 1 sec later. It is more about the following:

You are writing a 3 pages email and filling a big form in safari and you are almost done when you decide to take a picture. Then you come back and everything has been cleared of ram so you miss ALL the work. There are more examples that are also delicate and believe me...if that happens to you...in that moment you would say what a **** I paid for.

This is the real problem of apps reloading. Not for other scenarios In which it does not matter at all.

 

[donth8]

13.1 does seem to fix that issue but launching the camera app still clears the Inactive RAM and transfers it to Free RAM. I observed that behavior with the Usage app from the App store.

Also does someone know how much memory is allocated to the GPU? When adding all the Active, Inactive, Free and Wired Ram it does not add up to 3740mb like geekbench says, more like 2800-3200mb that is a lot and would help apps stay in memory a great deal. Just checked again right now and my RAM adds up to 3289mb why is the extra 450mb not being used?

 

[1144557]

Meanwhie the iPad Pro has 4gb of RAM in most models (only 6gb in the 1TB) and runs just fine with side-by-side or 3 apps open at once as well as PIP video.

A LOT more than the iphone can do with RAM. And never heard anyone have an iPad RAM issue with the Pros.

More RAM is isnt needed in the phones clearly doing less stuff at once. iOS doesnt need big RAM numbers. More isn't always better, more RAM costs more battery to run and other system resources. So being there just tot be there for overhead isnt always the best decision; unless you have an iPad with a huge battery or computer always plugged in.

 

[noobinator]

It is not a question of a mail opening 1 sec later. It is more about the following:

You are writing a 3 pages email and filling a big form in safari and you are almost done when you decide to take a picture. Then you come back and everything has been cleared of ram so you miss ALL the work. There are more examples that are also delicate and believe me...if that happens to you...in that moment you would say what a **** I paid for.

This is the real problem of apps reloading. Not for other scenarios In which it does not matter at all.

If you are doing all that at once often, then I think you should get a high GB RAM phone. Android has some excellent models with much more RAM.

 

[NT1440]

It is not a question of a mail opening 1 sec later. It is more about the following:

You are writing a 3 pages email and filling a big form in safari and you are almost done when you decide to take a picture. Then you come back and everything has been cleared of ram so you miss ALL the work. There are more examples that are also delicate and believe me...if that happens to you...in that moment you would say what a **** I paid for.

This is the real problem of apps reloading. Not for other scenarios In which it does not matter at all.

...why would you take a picture in the middle of filling out a form and writing such a large email?

Honestly it sounds like picking the wrong tool for the job there.

I feel for you if your work requires you to use a phone to do such work. Personally I’d never write that long on a phone unless I had a gun to my head.

 

[cmaier]

That's some fancy conclusioning right there, buddy.

 

[rvivancoITA]

Is this another attempt to make the iPhone 11 seem like a much better device over the 11 Pro?

And one is trying to justify this with super silly ram test?

The iPhone 11 Pro is made of solid steel. The build quality alone is worth it to me!!

My 11 Pro Max hauls ass. I’ve updated to 13.1 as well. Awesome device. If you want the best of the best then buy a 11 Pro, they’re super premium phones.

if you want close enough, aluminum construction, bright colors, lesser camera, and honestly the exact same performance buy a iPhone 11 for $699 and save some cash!

Do not be so rude putting an adjective (“silly”) to someone’s feedback/comment!
I have recently ordered a 11 pro (waiting for it) and his comment is really appreciated. He is just depicting an scenario on which the pro model is behaving “strange” or “under performance” where it should not be the case. Hopefully looks like this was a bug fixed with 13.1 firmware.
but again, respect others comments!
have a nice day!

 

[Khedron]

Meanwhie the iPad Pro has 4gb of RAM in most models (only 6gb in the 1TB) and runs just fine with side-by-side or 3 apps open at once as well as PIP video.

A LOT more than the iphone can do with RAM. And never heard anyone have an iPad RAM issue with the Pros.

More RAM is isnt needed in the phones clearly doing less stuff at once. iOS doesnt need big RAM numbers. More isn't always better, more RAM costs more battery to run and other system resources. So being there just tot be there for overhead isnt always the best decision; unless you have an iPad with a huge battery or computer always plugged in.

Never in the history of computing has someone said "it'll be better if I put less RAM in"

The only consideration is "we're already charging people the maximum price we can, and giving them the least storage we can, so the only other place to cut our costs is giving the minimum RAM we can get away with"

 

[jsmith1]

Likely the iPhone 11 has better RAM management thanks to its lower resolution and smaller screen. iPhone pro has a lot more pixels to push and has to work with the same amount of RAM.

You are exactly right, nice to see someone that knows what’s going on, pro users won’t admit it due to the $$ Apple got them for....many tests have shown there is no question now that the pro models running IOS 13 should have had min 6gb ram to run like a pro model should run....Apple knew this and still released it. Now they have to figure out the ram and heat modules for next year, maybe we vcan actually see a pro model.
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Never in the history of computing has someone said "it'll be better if I put less RAM in"

The only consideration is "we're already charging people the maximum price we can, and giving them the least storage we can, so the only other place to cut our costs is giving the minimum RAM we can get away with"

Priceless and perfect....post of the week! They need to clean inventory just like the watch 5 is almost identical to the 4 to clean inventory.