iPhone & Virtual Memory

[UltimaGTR]

Does anyone know if the iPhone uses excess memory for RAM or does it have another chip in it for RAM? In other words, will an iPhone work better (faster) with some memory left empty so that it can use if as virtual memory is used on a Mac?

 

[amjaliks]

iPhone virtual memory is equal to its RAM size. It won't use flash memory for swapping.

 

[UltimaGTR]

So are you suggesting that the RAM is the size of the left over memory of the iPhone? Please explain...

 

[robbieduncan]

The iPhone has volatile SDRAM for OS and application runtime-RAM usage and flash storage for data storage. It does not use virtual memory. So no, leaving more space on the flash storage will have no impact on application speed.

 

[UltimaGTR]

The iPhone has volatile SDRAM for OS and application runtime-RAM usage and flash storage for data storage. It does not use virtual memory. So no, leaving more space on the flash storage will have no impact on application speed.

Thank you!!! That is exactly the type of thorough response I was looking for.

 

[ckorhonen]

Not necessarily true - a few weeks back I noticed that I had no free space left on my iPhone. Applications were crawling, taking a lot longer to load and/or crashing, even after a reboot.

After removing a load of songs and pictures, things went back to normal.

Now, I doubt the Flash memory is used for virtual memory or ramdisk, but it seems like not having free space can cause problems with apps which are expecting to have access to local storage.