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iPhone 4S has 512 MB RAM, iFixit and Anandtech verify

by Steven Sande Oct 13th 2011 at 6:30PM

It's official.

We kept hearing that the iPhone 4S has "only" 512 MB of RAM, not the 1 GB that everyone was hoping for. But we wouldn't believe it until iFixit finished their teardown today. Their results are official -- the iPhone 4S contains 512 MB of RAM.

How could they tell? The code on the A5 processor highlighted in red by iFixit in the photo at the top of this post has a string denoting "E4E4". According to Anandtech, each E4 indicates a separate 2 Gb LPDDR2 die. That's 4 Gb altogether, or 512 MB of LPDDR2 RAM.

Before you get too upset, note that Anandtech posits that faster and/or more RAM would have affected the iPhone 4S battery life, and that it may take a year for processor technology to progress to the point that iPhone users can have speed, RAM, and the battery life they desire.



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9 Comments

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puhsitch

"That's 4 Gb altogether, or 512 MB of LPDDR2 RAM"
The statement, it confuses me...

October 13 2011 at 7:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
5 replies to puhsitch's comment
intellerv

why do you need a gig anyways? IOS isn't a resource hog like Bloatdroid.

October 13 2011 at 6:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to intellerv's comment
steve

More RAM may not be immediately useful, but having it there would potentially allow for a higher level of multitasking, more RAM intensive applications, and higher overall performance (since it would allow more buffering and caching of flash content). Due to the increased power usage, it would probably only be desirable if iOS had the ability to power up segments of RAM only as they were needed.

October 13 2011 at 11:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
gooniebird

I recall thinking similar when my father bought the first-ever 1GB Hard Drive ($999) back in the '80s for a file server for his company.
I seem to recall Bill Gates saying something similar about exceeding 640k RAM. "Why would anyone need more than 640K?"
Funny how some people can have blinders on when they think they don't.

October 14 2011 at 10:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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