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Why Do I Only Have 1566 MB's Of Ram When It Says 2 Gigs?

A

adn258

Lurker
So I just bought a Galaxy S3 at Wal-Mart for 97 cents with the 2 year contract. I suppose I could use the advice of you lovely people? Firstly it was advertised that it had 2 gigs of memory but when I open the phone to the application manager it says it has a maximum of like 1566 megabytes?

Why would it show that? Lastly I know the Samsung S3 is a good phone and many people might even prefer it over the S4 but I'm worried that over a 2 year contract span this phone will become a dinosaur; should I throw a little more money out on a newer phone before my 2 week trial of using this phone is up?

I can exchange it still. Would getting a slightly newer phone like the HTC one be a good idea? What's the deal with this RAM stuff? What would you do? Will the S3 still be a usable phone in 2 years?
 
adn258 said:
So I just bought a Galaxy S3 at Wal-Mart for 97 cents with the 2 year contract. I suppose I could use the advice of you lovely people? Firstly it was advertised that it had 2 gigs of memory but when I open the phone to the application manager it says it has a maximum of like 1566 megabytes?

Why would it show that? Lastly I know the Samsung S3 is a good phone and many people might even prefer it over the S4 but I'm worried that over a 2 year contract span this phone will become a dinosaur; should I throw a little more money out on a newer phone before my 2 week trial of using this phone is up?

I can exchange it still. Would getting a slightly newer phone like the HTC one be a good idea? What's the deal with this RAM stuff? What would you do? Will the S3 still be a usable phone in 2 years?
Click to expand...

Your phones operating system is using some of the ram, this is normal. As far as being usable in 2 years, i used and old phone for 17 years. Now i don't advise keeping a phone this long today. But the Galsxy S3 is a good phone i see Samsung will upgrade the O.P to Kit Kat soon,so i see it being used for many years but the new S5 is going to be a much improved phone IMHO.;)
 
The ram thing is normal. My 1gb s3 has like 800mb in reality. I think it has something to do with binary or hexadecimal or macine code or something but its just the way it is.
If you can, id suggest getting a newer phone. Not for anything to do with the ram, just because it will be supported with android updates for longer. The s3 is excellent but its nearly 2years old :thumbup:
 
funkylogik said:
The ram thing is normal. My 1gb s3 has like 800mb in reality. I think it has something to do with binary or hexadecimal or macine code or something but its just the way it is.
If you can, id suggest getting a newer phone. Not for anything to do with the ram, just because it will be supported with android updates for longer. The s3 is excellent but its nearly 2years old :thumbup:
Click to expand...

What's the deal with the HTC one then? Do you think that's a decent phone?
 
The S3 is a total beast of a phone for the current time. I actually had an S4, and returned it and bought the S3. The extra features to me wasn't really worth it and the S3 still packs a huge punch. As the others have stated, the OS uses some ram so you're never going to have the full 2GB just like on a computer. You never have the full amount of ram when you install it or like a HDD, you never have the full amount of space.

Will the phone be usable in 2 years? That's totally up to how you take care of it. I've had phones last a long long time, and I've had a pair of shoes out live a phone. It all depends on how you take care of it, and treat it.

The S3 packs a punch with 16GB of internal space with just a little over 11GB available to the user along with supporting up to a 64GB Micro. I went with the Samsung 32GB Micro, and have no issues with it at all. It's a very fast card, and the phone loves it.

I'm very happy with the S3. It's fast, it makes a great device to watch movies on. I'm always downloading movies, and transferring them over so I can lay in bed and watch a movie. There's nothing like it. The 4.8" HD display is amazing, especially coming from a 3.5" non HD display.

I'm on MetroPCS so there's no contracts so I had to pay $399 for the phone, but I do get a $50 rebate that should be arriving in the next week or two. So, the fact you paid $0.97 for it, is amazing. What kind of plan are you on, and who's the provider associated with Walmart? The only reason I ask is because on Metro, I'm on the $60 plan, but I have TRUE unlimited 4G data, and honestly, MetroPCS's 4G has gotten a lot lot lot faster. Here's a speed test I did a few weeks ago when I was visiting FL with my LG Motion.
Speedtest.net by Ookla - My Results

A lot of carriers give you like 2.5GB of 4G for the month, and once you reach that, they cap you for the rest of the month with slower speeds. MetroPCS doesn't do that if you're on the $60 plan, and like I said, they're pretty fast, and the above test proves that. The best part is, I don't even pay the bill :)
 
adn258 said:
What's the deal with the HTC one then? Do you think that's a decent phone?
Click to expand...

Yeah i think its an excellent phone. Quite a big upgrade from the s3.
I suppose its down to which operating system you prefer though, samsung's touchwiz or htc's sense.
Personally id rather get the nexus 5 but i realise thats not an option on some US carriers :thumbup:
 
adn258 said:
So I just bought a Galaxy S3 at Wal-Mart for 97 cents with the 2 year contract. I suppose I could use the advice of you lovely people? Firstly it was advertised that it had 2 gigs of memory but when I open the phone to the application manager it says it has a maximum of like 1566 megabytes?



Why would it show that? Lastly I know the Samsung S3 is a good phone and many people might even prefer it over the S4 but I'm worried that over a 2 year contract span this phone will become a dinosaur; should I throw a little more money out on a newer phone before my 2 week trial of using this phone is up?



I can exchange it still. Would getting a slightly newer phone like the HTC one be a good idea? What's the deal with this RAM stuff? What would you do? Will the S3 still be a usable phone in 2 years?
Click to expand...


Its the gpu that is taking some ram as vram just like intel hd graphics uses shared memory and the rest are used for android system.
 
This is my s3 uploadfromtaptalk1394494304582.jpg and this...
 
I would like to know, also. A link would be nice. I don't believe the RAM is being used by the phone. I had a Galaxy Centura with 512MB of RAM that registered 396MB available. Now I have an S3 with around 500MB not showing up.

Just so you know... a PC with 2GB of RAM shows 2GB of RAM. A 256MB hard drive shows up as 256MB... until you format it. I don't know why these phones lose sooo much RAM but I like the hexadecimal answer above.. it is something like that in my opinion.
 
ive read before that touchwiz takes up a lot of ram usage, so maybe thats why with the s3 you dont get as much as advertized...

funky as far as your questioned posed knowing you have both devices rooted :D maybe its cuz the different roms cause different uses...idk just a thought
 
Not sure buddy, the ram stated in "about phone" doesnt change from rom to rom, its actually the same as it was with touchwiz which is a HUGE rom :confused:
 
Yeah, TouchWiz shows up in a task manager and it does use 90+MB of RAM on my factory StraightTalk Galaxy S3, but it is being accounted for. On a fresh reboot on my phone, I use 800MB of RAM... which then builds up and builds up til I average at least 1.1-1.2 GB used. And then I open a browser lol.
It wouldn't bother me if I had 2GB of RAM available lol..
 
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