• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

HTC Bravo/Passion and Google N1 RAM

carthesis

Well-Known Member
Oct 1, 2009
103
0
Sheffield, UK
A question for the general forum population:

I'm looking around for info on the Bravo/Passion, and the commonly held wisdom is that the Bravo and the Passion are basically the same thing, except for different markets (Bravo UK/EU, Passion US), and that they both share more than a passing similarity to the Google N1.

However, the Google N1 is listed as having 512Mb of RAM, whereas all the bumf I've found on the Bravo/Passion suggests a mere 256Mb of RAM. This strikes me as a bit... well... crap. :(

Now, given how similar all these phones are to each other, and the fact that HTC built ALL of them, I find it hard to believe that they'll use different mainboards. I also seem to recall seeing something about there being a 'hidden bank' of RAM on the N1 that Cyanogen, or those other freakin' geniuses over at XDA, have managed to unlock.

My question is thus:

Do we think the Bravo/Passion will have 512Mb of physical RAM with only 256 available for Apps to run in (with the rest reserved for the OS in the same way the N1 was, as I understood it)

OR

Have HTC skimped and stripped off some of the RAM, meaning there only 256Mb in total?

Android 2.1 on the Nexus with the Cyanogen ROM seems to have about 230Mb of RAM free from the 512Mb installed, so about 280Mb seems to be reserved for the OS/phone stack/gfx/whatever else. When you remember that Cyanogen manages to speed things up by (not only) stripping the unnecessary crap off, and that the HTC version will come with SenseUI, this all adds up to 256Mb of RAM TOTAL seeming like it might not be enough to make this phone useable (see HTC Hero, which comes with 288Mb RAM on Donut).

Having been using a Samsung Galaxy :)mad:) since UK release, and struggling day after day with the truly pathetic 39Mb of RAM available after a fresh boot meaning web pages take approximately one week to render and that the phone as a whole struggles, lacking RAM will be a problem for me and for others too I suspect.

Thoughts?
 
Actually the N1 has 512mb of usable RAM. Some is used for FB, GPU, AMSS as for every phone, and we can explect that to be about 100 to 150mb.

The Rest is totally available to linux. The .29 kernel is simply unable to address anything over 256mb. That means that it can only see 256mb curently. About 25mb of this is used for things like the framebuffer and shared memory. The majority of the RAM used by the other resources like the AMSS (the 100 to 125mb) doesnt need to be addressed by the kernel so can be used above 256mb.

With the .32 kernel which will be released soon, the kernel is able to address ALL 512mb. That means we will have 512mb - 100 to 150mb available to android.

The ram isnt HIDDEN and there's no hack or crack to reutilise it as such. Cyanogen just patches in the himem addressing that the new kernel will use.

As for different main boards. The main board can be identical for both 256 and 512mb boards. They simply drop in a different SRAM chip and compile the kernel differently. This isnt difficult or costly for them to do.

Its plausible that the Bravo could have 256mb RAM, although unlikely. By the time its released 256mb RAM will be 'average' and not future proof for new android builds.

However they could do it as a marketing ploy or to maximize profits. Most people wouldnt know the different. Look at the 32A, 32B mess with the magic.
 
Upvote 0
Kam - thanks for explaining that.

Suppose you're right about the different chip densities - it just seems mad to me that they'd do such a thing. Personally, I think I'd just launch it with the same spec as the N1 as it'll sell better because of it. That and the fact it's going to be available through the networks and have SenseUI means it'll sell.

Suppose we'll just have to wait and see....

PS - is the Cyanogen ROM as good as it looks?
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones