High ram usage S21 Ultra 5G 512gb model

[booperkawaii]

I had originally got the 256gb S21 Utlra but decided to exchange for 512gb. I noticed I am using 6-7gb or RAM on average compared to the 256gb model using only about 3-5 on average. It's all the same apps and settings. I just did the Samsung cable transfer so nothing should have changed for the most part. I also have been disabling bloatware apps like I did on my other phone. Could it be that Android is allowing for more to run in the background because it has 16gb of RAM available as opposed to the 12gb available on the 256gb model?

 

[Hadron]

Short answer, yes.

If the phone has more RAM installed I'd expect it to keep more apps in RAM. These may be apps that you've used recently, or apps that you use frequently. They aren't necessarily running, most are probably just dormant in RAM, but that means that the next time you use them they are already loaded, which gives a faster response and saves energy (RAM uses as much energy when it's empty as when it's storing data, so there's no cost to keeping the apps in RAM, but there is an energy cost if you have to load them from storage every time you use them). This is actually the whole point of putting more RAM in a phone, to allow the phone to use it that way (there is nothing in your phone that needs that much RAM to run, the only purpose of it is to improve multitasking - well, that and as a marketing point, of course ).

There's an old Linux mantra, "empty RAM is wasted RAM", and that's how Android, which is based on the Linux kernel, operates. If anything I'd be more worried that the amount of empty RAM means that Samsung aren't making the best use of it than I would be that the average RAM usage has gone up when you have more available.

 

[booperkawaii]

Ok. I was wondering because it also felt slightly less snappy than the 256gb model which kind of bothered me. Like, more was running in the background.

 

[Hadron]

Well RAM usage and background processes are not necessarily the same thing, but unless you had been monitoring running processes on your old phone and kept the records to compare it's probably impossible to tell. However I can think of no reason why there would be more background processes running on the "smaller" phone of the same model (on the other hand, Samsung have been known to allocate larger system partitions to phones with more storage even though there is absolutely no need for that, so who can be sure?).

If the phone is new the OS may still be learning and optimising for your usage. To be honest I genuinely did wonder what Samsung were playing at when you said they were only using 3-5 GB RAM on a phone with 12 GB, as that's actually very low RAM usage.