What Type of RAM is used on iPhone?

What is RAM?

In a simple word, RAM or Random-Access Memory is the short-term memory of your device. Just like a person suffering from short-memory loss, without RAM your iPhone cannot do requested tasks or, at least, anything would be much, much slower. For example, when you don't have enough RAM apps and games would run at a snail's pace or they won't run at all. Just imagine, with no RAM, what's the use of your expensive iPhone?

RAM is a super-fast memory that stores (or remembers) everything running on your iPhone. That puts RAM at the front-line of performance on your phone. Every time you request a tab from the browser or load an enemy to shot, RAM shows up on the scene. It prevents CPU of your iPhone from accessing your device's slower storage such as hard drive or even a solid-state drive (SSD) over and over again.

RAM is a volatile technology meaning that it forgets everything once it loses power. As an advantage, the same amount of RAM can be used again and again by your device. If you have the right amount of RAM on your iPhone, applications will load and run smoothly and give you the feeling that your smartphone is running faster. But the size is not everything. When it comes to RAM, quality always wins quantity.

What Type of RAM is used on iPhone?

Because Apple always tries to keep details of its products secret, there is no official statement about the RAM types used in iPhone product. But fortunately, leaks and product teardowns are there to help us. When iPhones go under screwdriver you will find that they have high-quality LPDDR RAM manufactured by Apple partners.

For example, an iPhone 11 teardown by iFixit website revealed that iPhone 11 hides an LPDDR4X RAM from SK Hynix under the hood, which is one of the most recent SDRAM generations available for mobile devices. Apart from excellent resource management by iOS, this explains why an iPhone with less RAM is often faster than an Android smartphone with more amount of RAM. They chose quality over quantity. Apple's iPhone 11 Pro has one-third as much RAM as top Android flagships, but it still crushes them.

So, what is LPDDR or mDDR used in iPhone?

From the technical view, LPDDR is a type of SDDR memory that is optimized for mobile devices. You may have heard of DDR RAM that is common in Pcs and Laptops. LPDDR or mobile is the same RAM type but consumes less power (As the LR letters in front of its name indicate) and though, are more appropriate for mobile devices.

If you don't understand anything from these technical terms, don't panic! To drive a car, you don't have to know how a clutch works. Similarly, to enjoy your iPhone you shouldn't know the type or size of its RAM.

Anyway, it's good to know that the letter in front of the RAM type indicates the RAM generation. For example, LPDDR4 shows that the RAM installed on your iPhone is 4th generation, and its faster than the past generations like DDR1 or DDR2.