Upgrading RAM on a smartphone?

[DeeJayCruiser]

Hey all I just purchased an OEM phone from China, the unit is sweet minus the fact it has 64 FREAKING MB!!!!>!>!> Needless to say, it's the lovely way they word their profiles (they say that the "capacity" is 512 mb).

So it got me thinking.......how the heck does RAM work on smartphones? It's an android phone of course, I've never opened a smartphone to check out the hardware but is there a ram slot, and what kind of particular RAM does it use and where can i find it?

Thanks!

 

[AndroidSPCS]

The only thing you can upgrade is the microSD card. Unless you're a electrical engineer, you're not going to be able to hack the motherboard and upgrade the memory on the phone. They do not work like laptops or desktops.

 

[dan330]

Yeah..its a no go.

 

[takeshi]

So it got me thinking.......how the heck does RAM work on smartphones?

You don't. Make sure you do your due diligence before the purchase.

Hey all I just purchased an OEM phone from China

I hate to use generalizations but that's always a risky move.

 

[DeeJayCruiser]

Yeah I know you're right.....

 

[lordofthereef]

I take it this thing is a knockoff?

 

[shenkov]

Buy it in China? no no no

 

[snapper.fishes]

Hey Hey hey.....

Okay fine. Most Chinese phones are still crap. I would know. I live there. Checked out a couple of Lenovo phones before..... gosh. I wonder why they can't make phones like their laptops, which are actually quite decent.

Some Chinese phones however are pretty darn good.

 

[tindog13]

I wasn't able to do due diligence because it wasn't made widely known that Android removed the ability to run apps from the SD for the ICS upgrade, it was only discovered after the fact by trying and failing... and that's the reason I would need a ram upgrade... I like the phone I have, it just doesn't have enough internal memory because I can't run any apps from the external memory so I run out of room really quickly. And all the new phones offered by my carrier (T-mobile) are too physically large to be convenient.

 

[Hadron]

You are talking about something different - internal storage rather than RAM. When we talk about RAM we mean the volatile working memory used for running apps, rather than the flash storage used for persistent app/data storage.

There are tricks to extend app storage onto an external sd card, but they require rooting the phone (and, of course, having a removable SD card, which not all phones have).

 

[batboy]

I think it's not possible to do that unfortunately ...
but it would be cool

 

[Rxpert83]

Without a modular setup it really isn't possible to upgrade certain parts of the phone.

There are companies trying to make that happen though

 

[hiredgun]

I have a Chinese HTC Harmony Chinese knock off, lol, and I honestly can't complain about how it runs right now at all. Of course it came with Chinese bloatware that I can't get rid of without rooting and totally can't read, but I took it down to the friendly Chinese " Bazar" on the corner and they told me not to worry about it that the programs can't do the phone any harm, lol.

 

[kate]

Without a modular setup it really isn't possible to upgrade certain parts of the phone.
There are companies trying to make that happen though

Most notably:

Phonebloks and Motorola's Project Ara Team Up To Change Mobile

 

[ralphsteven]

I think this project is futuristic. But who knows, maybe one day we can expand the RAM memory just by connecting the phone to a "gadget"