OnePlus Two Will Be Among First Phones With 4 GB Of LPDDR4 RAM

By Lucian Armasu
published

OnePlus announced that its upcoming flagship device, the OnePlus Two, will come with 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, beating most of its bigger competitors to a smartphone that has as much RAM as most mainstream notebooks.

Earlier this year, the Asus Zenfone 2 became known for being the first smartphone with 4 GB of RAM, and for being offered at a mid-range price, too. Many people appreciated its multi-tasking capabilities, which were enabled by having so much RAM available for the operating system.

Ultimately, 4 GB of RAM wasn't that much more than the 3 GB of RAM we saw on multiple flagship smartphones even a year earlier. The main difference between the phones with 3 GB of RAM and phones with 4 GB of RAM is that the latter breaks a technical (and, one could say, even psychological) barrier for those users who are more enthusiastic about the specifications their phones have.

When the CPUs inside PCs or smartphones were only 32-bit, the operating systems would only recognize 3 GB of RAM. The fact that your device had 4 GB of RAM was a sign that you have a 64-bit chip in your device, and of course, an OS that supports that much RAM. That made people more excited about their devices, and the same thing seems to be happening now.

Unlike the Asus Zenfone, which had 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, the OnePlus Two will bring 4 GB of LPDDR4, likely becoming the first smartphone ever to ship with such a configuration.

Although on the PC side we'll probably see increases in performance as well when moving to DDR4 RAM, in mobile, the OEMs seem to take the battery efficiency path. Other smartphones such as the Galaxy S6 use LPDDR4 RAM (3 GB only, though), and the focus there was on lowering the power consumption significantly. The OnePlus Two will also take advantage of the battery efficiency improvements that LPDDR4 will bring.

OnePlus claimed that even with the improved power consumption, the OnePlus Two's RAM will still have a 32 GB/s bandwidth, which should be especially useful for slow-motion video, face recognition, and low-latency gaming.

The company promised to share all about the OnePlus Two on July 27, when the device is expected to launch. 

OnePlus has been revealing the OnePlus Two in dribs and drabs. Here are the most recent stories on the new phone:

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Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • uglyduckling81
    Maybe they will open up the new model to Australia. I was very disappointed when I got an invite to the One only to find they still hadn't changed their policy on shipping to Australia.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    Now, don't get me wrong, I love specs and improvement... but why?!?!?!?!?!?
    I mean, there are so many things that need improvement in phones these days! We need more internal storage. Faster and lower power WiFi. We need faster storage and RAM. Denser batteries. Better GPUs. Better low-light cameras. The list goes on and on and on.
    But I don't know anyone using more than 2 of their 3GB of phone RAM, and I don't see much of anyone whining about their displays. Those are two things that I think we can say 'we have done enough' and start commoditizing those components and push the envelope on things that we can actually appreciate being better.
    Reply
  • soldier44
    I'm just fine with tech progressing at the rate that it is. I just hope Samsung doesn't leave out the Micro SD card in the Note 5 at this point. Bad move if so.
    Reply
  • Arabian Knight
    meanwhile , Iphone still uses 1G of Ram and is still the smoothest phone ever....

    no one needs 4G of Ram in a Phone. Tablets ? maybe .. but the tiny phone ? not !
    Reply
  • MashR
    "The fact that your device had 4 GB of RAM was a sign that you have a 64-bit chip in your device, and of course, an OS that supports that much RAM."

    Not necessarily. As Zenfone 2 has 4GB ram, yet it runs on a 32-bit Lollipop.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    "The fact that your device had 4 GB of RAM was a sign that you have a 64-bit chip in your device, and of course, an OS that supports that much RAM."

    Not necessarily. As Zenfone 2 has 4GB ram, yet it runs on a 32-bit Lollipop.

    Lucian was referring to when it was early 4GB computers, not smart phones. We have long since made 32 bit systems able to recognize 4GB.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    Now, don't get me wrong, I love specs and improvement... but why?!?!?!?!?!?
    I mean, there are so many things that need improvement in phones these days! We need more internal storage. Faster and lower power WiFi. We need faster storage and RAM. Denser batteries. Better GPUs. Better low-light cameras. The list goes on and on and on.
    But I don't know anyone using more than 2 of their 3GB of phone RAM, and I don't see much of anyone whining about their displays. Those are two things that I think we can say 'we have done enough' and start commoditizing those components and push the envelope on things that we can actually appreciate being better.

    Aren't they giving us faster RAM? I admit don't look at all of the phones anymore, but 32GB/s is faster than any I've looked into so far. Also, how can you use more RAM if you don't have much more? Using near 3GB on a 3GB phone would quickly start to slow it down tremendously.

    I'm not saying that you're wrong about the other things being more important, but how much do we know about the other features on the phone at this time? Besides, at least for the CPU and GPU, they do keep improving. Batteries don't seem to change and cameras seem to change slowly at best for most phones, sure, but the CPU and GPU get updated often.
    Reply
  • avalanche41
    When i upgraded my s3 (1gb ram) to an s4 (2gb ram), i thought it was more than enough for a smartphone because for my s3 used to use only 700 mb on average and would slow down if it got higher. So i didnt want it to slow down and thus s4 did the job well with 2gb ram and no slow downs. But thats the case of 2 years back.

    Now not just the hardware has improved, but the software has inproved too. Apps that used to use about 30 - 50mb ram now use 100 - 150mb ram.

    So before my s4 did not get slow...but now with apps using more ram it has started to top the s4 ram as well.

    So i think 4 gb ram is going to be useful in the long run unless you are going to change your phone every year.
    Reply
  • cwolf78
    meanwhile , Iphone still uses 1G of Ram and is still the smoothest phone ever....

    no one needs 4G of Ram in a Phone. Tablets ? maybe .. but the tiny phone ? not !

    Wow, nice comparison. </s> The iPhone has severely limited multitasking, so less RAM is needed as it wouldn't be used properly. Smoothest phone ever? What crack are you smoking? Sorry, I just have to call BS on that one. I have both a HTC One M8 and a iPhone 5S, and you can't tell me that the iPhone is better in any respect (outside of the camera) including "smoothness" or overall speed, especially since the Lollipop upgrade on the M8. With the new carousel task switcher in Android, it makes having as much RAM as possible beneficial as you can easily and quickly switch to any previously launched app or game and is made even better if said apps don't have to be reloaded from storage.
    Reply
  • gggplaya
    16204564 said:
    Now, don't get me wrong, I love specs and improvement... but why?!?!?!?!?!?
    I mean, there are so many things that need improvement in phones these days! We need more internal storage. Faster and lower power WiFi. We need faster storage and RAM. Denser batteries. Better GPUs. Better low-light cameras. The list goes on and on and on.
    But I don't know anyone using more than 2 of their 3GB of phone RAM, and I don't see much of anyone whining about their displays. Those are two things that I think we can say 'we have done enough' and start commoditizing those components and push the envelope on things that we can actually appreciate being better.

    Many of those improvements are with the SOC which is out of a manufacturers control. The only things they can control are the design of the circuitboard PCB themselves and which components they select. The only things they can really control is "more storage" and buying better camera sensors. I have a feeling storage speed is limited to the SOC or storage controller and how much data it can feasibly move.

    As for low light camera, the sensor itself is relatively tiny compared to a real camera. Tiny pixels absorb less light. Only thing they can do is buy the sony sensor and add stabilization.

    Reply