I'm not defending Apple's absurd stinginess with RAM (though I don't think it's much of an issue on an iPad given how gimped the OS is), but I've never understood why high-end Android phones have 12/16+ GB RAM.
What needs that amount on a phone? 8GB on a desktop is...well it's not great, but it's usable, and usable for a damn sight more multi-tasking than you would ever do on a smartphone. Is it just because you need to look better on the spec sheet, like the silly camera megapixel wars of the 2010s?
I think that is very obvious. You have a browser window and a few apps open -- messaging, youtube, email, podcast etc. When you switch between apps and eventually back to your browser, you don't want the page to reload due to other apps eating up the memory. As simple as that. It's about having a good experience.
I don't know how they didn't realize that. Maybe they just don't use their phone as much as they think.
I freaking hate my iPhone Mini for that, load a YouTube video, a few tabs and a note and boom you are in for a reload every 3-context switch. It's disgusting for a phone that launched at a price too close to 1Keur for my liking.
And no, I'm not going to drop over 1keur on a stupid smartphone just to be able to load more than 5 tabs and a note without constant reloading when I'm just trying to do research in a shop to inform a purchasing decision.
I bought it solely for the form factor in the first place, but I really regret considering all the shortcomings that came with the price.
But if Apple think they are smartass, I'll have the last laugh by not buying their hardware again. My next smartphone is definitely going to have over 8Gb of RAM, just not from Apple.
We've reached a point where their chips has become so amazing they have to introduce "fake scarcity" and "fake limits" to sell their pro lines, while dividing their customers into haves and havenots, while actively stalling the entire field for the masses.
You could, alternatively, read less malice into the situation and realize that the majority of people buying an iPad pro don't even need 8gb of RAM to do what they want to do with the device (web browsing + video streaming).
Phones and tablets are effectively single-tasking. They don’t need much more ram than that in practice.
I use my iPad Pro constantly for heavy stuff and I don’t know how much ram is in it; it has never been something I needed to think about. The OS doesn’t even expose it.
Is a Pixel 8 a mid-range Android phone? Mine shipped with 8GB of RAM, and even with my frankly insane Chrome habits (I'm currently sitting at around 200 tabs) I'm only using about five and half gigabytes, and it runs a hell of a lot smoother than other phones with more RAM that I've used.
There's absolutely nothing a mobile device does that should require that much memory. That shitty OEMs bloat the hell out of their ROMs and slap on more memory to match isn't a good thing or something to emulate in my opinion.
WTF? Why so little? That's insane to me, that's the amount of RAM you get with a mid-range android phone.