As with many Symbian OS 9 devices, the Sony Ericsson P990i suffers from a chronic lack of RAM, but Swiss Manager Pro claims to be able to help by providing manual and automatic RAM management tools. Steve Litchfield puts it to the test.
Read on in the full article.
Hmm..well the real issue are insufficient free RAM (like the M600 the P990 needs about 19MB really) and memory leaks (after 2 to 3 days of middle weight use I am usually down to 7.5MB of free RAM). These are fundamental issues SE, UIQ & Symbian need to address to let users unleash the potential of this great device. I think memory leaks fixes should come first, which will make Swiss Manager even more useful, and then once the bugs are sorted the s/w can be optimised to release more free RAM for user apps.
Why don't these companies learn? Nokia have been renowned for being stingy with memory for years, and now SE are playing the same stupid game. I've had a P910 for 2 years now and have *never* had memory problems. I guess that's what you call progress...
Completely agree. It seems to me to be obvious that computers need RAM to work in, yet over and over again we're seeing devices launched with nowhere near enough - effectively they're all lobotomised.
Try to zoom into an N93 or N73 image more than halfway, try to run Web without your PIM apps closing down, try to run a Java app and anything else side by side, and you'll hit the buffers. It's not good enough. All to save a few dollars on the cost of the extra RAM. I'd rather pay an extra $20 and get something that's not going to keep conking out.
Trying to use the P990i in its current state is like walking a high wire - it's a delicate balancing act if you don't want to come unstuck...
Steve Litchfield
"What computers have become"... I hope not! Because with the other computers I have 2Gb of RAM, and if I need I put even more. Now, with "what computers have become", like mine N73, I have 7-8 Mb of RAM and I can�t put more if I wich... I sincerely hope, that computers become something better then that!
The issue of RAM shortage is particularly interesting if you own/use a Nokia 9500 or P910i, as both of these devices have lots and lots of RAM and suffer very little memory leakage. Perhaps we'll have to wait until the Symbian 9.3 devices to get back some of the 'lost' capability 😉
I think it might help if smartphone manufacturers were bullied into including the amount of RAM on their tech specs. I don't think I've ever seen a press release for a smartphone that mentioned RAM, and when you ask a salesperson about it in a shop they invariably assume you mean the internal flash memory.
If people started comparing RAM on different devices in the same way they compare megapixel counts on cameras, the manufacturers would start seeing RAM as a selling point and bung some more of it in their devices to keep up with the competition. That's what home computers used to do in the 1980s when RAM was absolutely crucial, they had the amount of RAM written on the computer's casing just like cameraphones nowadays have the megapixel count written on their casing.
So, with all this in mind, I'd call upon any journalists reading this to always ask manufacturers and suppliers about the RAM, don't let them fob you off with internal flash memory. If they refuse to talk about it, mention it in articles.
krisse wrote:I think it might help if smartphone manufacturers were bullied into including the amount of RAM on their tech specs. I don't think I've ever seen a press release for a smartphone that mentioned RAM, and when you ask a salesperson about it in a shop they invariably assume you mean the internal flash memory.If people started comparing RAM on different devices in the same way they compare megapixel counts on cameras, the manufacturers would start seeing RAM as a selling point and bung some more of it in their devices to keep up with the competition. That's what home computers used to do in the 1980s when RAM was absolutely crucial, they had the amount of RAM written on the computer's casing just like cameraphones nowadays have the megapixel count written on their casing.
So, with all this in mind, I'd call upon any journalists reading this to always ask manufacturers and suppliers about the RAM, don't let them fob you off with internal flash memory. If they refuse to talk about it, mention it in articles.
Transflash/SD wouldn't work unfortunately, that's flash memory and is far too slow to use as RAM. The only way to upgrade RAM is to actually add more or larger capacity RAM chips.
PC memory upgrades are very easy because they involve putting in extra memory chips, and a desktop PC has so much space inside it that there's room for virtually unlimited extra hardware. Phones are so compact, there's not really the room for users to make hardware upgrades.