Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Despite the overall decline in mobile phone shipments, the mobile phone industry continues to "roll in". New machines piled up at the end of the year, and all kinds of main selling points were overwhelmed. And in the midst of a sea of machines, we notice a growing trend that is no longer a secret:

16GB+256GB, the memory and storage space of two phones in the OPPO Reno 9 Pro series, which went on sale in December, and the highest configuration of the newly released flagship phones of vivo and Xiaomi have also come to 12GB+512GB. By contrast, the iPhone 4 running memory in 2010 has only 512MB storage, and the storage specifications are 16GB and 32GB; at that time, the so-called "born for fever" configuration Mi 1 only gave the running memory of the 1GB.

In more than a decade, the initial configuration of running memory and storage space of flagship mobile phones has increased several times.

In the PC industry, there is an Andy-Beer law (Andy and Bill's Law). Andy refers to Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, and Bill refers to Bill Gates, the former CEO of Microsoft, which means that the performance improvements brought about by hardware upgrades will soon be consumed by software. Now it seems that the mobile phone industry has also fallen into the "Andy Bill" black hole.

Who ate the running memory of the phone? The running memory of the mobile phone refers to the memory needed when the program is running. the larger the running memory, the faster the system runs the program. Generally speaking, under the premise of the same system and the same processor, the larger the memory, the more applications can run at the same time, the less frequent the background killing, the smoother the use of the mobile phone.

On the whole, the rich functions of the system, the push mechanism of the system and the expansion of App carve up the growth of mobile phone running memory.

In the past, the systems of various mobile phones were relatively simple, and mobile phones could be fluent for a long time without a lot of running memory. The smooth transition that iOS once boasted was one of the important selling points of iPhone. Today, in order to create their own system differentiation, the major Android brands are also working hard on the system interaction. From message screen display and theme wallpaper to screen components and transition animation, manufacturers try their best to provide more "gaudy" system functions.

OPPO adds "blooming wallpaper" to the latest system ColorOS 13, and the buds in the screen will grow as the phone is used for more time, and the dynamic effect will be full of vitality in front of users.

Xiaomi has added "flower pet furnishings" to its latest MIUI 14. Smart kittens and vibrant cacti have made their home on the desktop screen of Xiaomi's mobile phone, as if users are really accompanied by pets when using the phone. However, so far, the function of flower pet decoration is really just "decoration". The only interaction mode is finger clicking, kittens and dogs will show expressions and lovely movements, potted plants will blossom, and so on. At night, pets change to sleep at the same time. Xiaomi has really made a lot of efforts on the desktop game. in addition to flower pet furnishings, MIUI 14 has also added a system experience that is more beautiful than function, such as large icons.

Huawei and vivo also offer a large number of theme styles, and users can choose a variety of wallpapers and dynamic effects according to their preferences.

These visually ingenious designs undoubtedly take up the running memory of the phone.

In addition to enriching the system from an aesthetic point of view, some practical features, such as desktop widgets and small window mode, also take up the phone's memory.

In the past, desktop widgets tend to only take the responsibility of convenient access to specific functions of App, but now widgets have evolved certain information display functions and interactive functions. For example, the weather component can update the temperature and air quality in real time, the schedule component can display ongoing sports events, and some system desktop components can even directly complete operations such as playing music without showing the open screen of App.

Small window mode is more hot in recent years. When listening to online classes, taking notes and answering messages when playing games, small window mode does bring a more convenient experience. The essence of small window mode is multitasking, and opening small windows will undoubtedly take up more memory than background silence.

In order to improve the "productivity" of hardware, multitasking is a function that manufacturers have to improve. Even Apple, which has always been conservative, has added "pre-stage scheduling" to its iPadOS 16 system. The push of iPadOS 16 is delayed due to the poor development of this function, which shows the requirement of resource scheduling capability for multitasking. If there is not enough memory and the system kills the background frequently, the "productivity" of the pre-scheduling will be meaningless.

Manufacturers not only want to provide beauty and convenience when users use the screen, but also make a fuss on the information screen display.

Aesthetically, the major systems provide a variety of charging dynamic effects and dynamic information screen wallpaper; functionally, the lock screen interface also has a certain information display and simple interaction ability. For example, ColorOS can display service cards in the status of the message screen, and intuitively display service progress information such as takeout and taxi hailing, while iOS allows iPhone users to view real-time sports scores on the lock screen. Almost all systems have supported the control of audio playback and pause through the lock screen interface without unlocking.

With screen display, desktop widgets, transition animation, small windows and multitasking, the mobile phone system is becoming more and more refined and convenient. The price of refinement and convenience is sacrificing fluency and memory.

In addition to the running memory, the specification of the low-power memory technology LPDDR and the computing power of the SoC itself also affect the fluency of the phone. On the low-cost mobile phones launched by various manufacturers, due to the low memory specifications and processor performance, in order to ensure the basic fluency of use, manufacturers will "castrate" the mobile phone system, that is, the low-end phone system is more streamlined than the flagship system.

Consumers often find that the application icons of some low-end computers are static, while when the flagship computer returns to the desktop, the icon applied by the system will show the corresponding animation effect; the low-end machine has fewer details and faster speed in the transition animation. Thus it can be seen that the effects and functions presented by the mobile phone system do eat up part of the computing performance and memory.

In addition, Android phone manufacturers tend to maintain low hardware gross margins and make extra profits through system advertising in order to improve the competitiveness of their products. When the user opens the calendar, opens the folder, checks the weather, and opens the app store. Advertising spaces that can be seen everywhere are loaded all the time and occupy memory to a certain extent.

But the most gluttonous is the unlimited expansion of App, especially Android, where App can't be relayed by Apple servers like iOS's App because it can't connect to Google servers at home.

The mechanism for iPhone to receive messages is called APNs (Apple Push Notification Service), which is a global mechanism planned at the bottom of the system and implemented by the resident process of the system. For the communication between the third-party App and iPhone, the server of the third-party App first sends a notification to the Apple server, and then the Apple server notifies the mobile terminal. So iOS can receive notifications from Apple servers when App is not running. On the other hand, Android App has its own background processes for communicating with their respective servers, and instant messaging App and App backend that need to push messages retain these processes to receive messages.

By contrast, Apple's background mechanism is a "pseudo-background", where message notifications take up only dedicated processes and take up less memory. However, Android can not really run without background, and keeping too much App of the notification process may lead to excessive memory consumption and reduced fluency.

Image source: in addition to the characteristics of the system itself on Apple's official website, App itself is also happy to be "frequently active" in the background. Nowadays, many App have the function of waking up other applications, such as e-commerce App pulling up the payment App when paying, clicking on the open-screen ad to enter other App, and so on. In the CSDN forum, you can find at least 4 kinds of developers' other settings to wake up other App tutorials, including going to the App startup page and directly calling App activities.

Waking up other App can link the function with other products and reduce the operation steps. For example, by authorizing a common social App when logging in to an account, you can control users' data in various fields in their own hands. At the same time, the more other accounts bound to a social account, the more dependent the user is on the social App. Many large manufacturers use this to ensure that users' full links are in the hands of their own ecology or partners. What's more, user data can be obtained through real-time calls in the background, which can be used as a data source for personalized recommendations.

The operation of App in the background is not only for the purpose of providing users with convenient operation, but also for many behaviors that are simply conducive to their own business purposes. However, no matter who it is running for, App background operation takes up precious memory of mobile phone users. In practice, we seldom see the compromise made by developers to ensure the smooth experience of users using mobile phones, and most enterprises choose to consume users' hardware performance to maximize their business interests.

The same is true when the application is running in the foreground. App continues to add more functions to App in order to deeply bind users and improve the per capita usage time. The addition of some collaborative features can enhance the user experience, while others that only cash in traffic and promote sales transformation greatly reduce the user experience. For example, in recent years, the major e-commerce platforms in a variety of festivals in the open-screen marketing activities, and some originally functional App in order to obtain advertising revenue in the page to load the flow of information.

The abuse of function not only increases the memory footprint when App is used, but also causes mobile phone manufacturers to change the allocation of memory resources when optimizing the system. For some App and game App that need to load a lot of information, mobile phone manufacturers sometimes adopt the way of preloading in order to improve the speed of opening applications. However, this will take up part of the memory in daily use. If the scheduling strategy is reasonable enough, different preloading mechanisms can be adopted according to the peaks and troughs of memory use, which can naturally improve mobile phone fluency. If the scheduling is not reasonable, there will be a vicious circle.

It is the same group of people who eat the mobile phone's storage space and the running memory, the mobile phone system and the third-party App are still to blame.

The increasingly bloated functions of the above mobile phone systems take up a lot of storage space. Not counting the more and more system data accumulated in the course of operation, the system firmware which is often more than 10G allows consumers to directly reject mobile phones of 64G and below when buying a phone. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the minimum storage configuration of the brand new phones on the market in recent years has come to 128G. In some digital forums, many users even said bluntly that if they want to buy a long-term mobile phone, the storage specification should be at least 256g, otherwise they may have to change to a new phone with more space in less than two years.

In addition to the system firmware, pre-installed applications also occupy the storage space of new phones. Mobile phone manufacturers will sell "pre-installed bits" to increase revenue, and unlike the App recommended ads displayed at the bottom of the folder, pre-installed apps automatically take up storage space without the user's initiative. If you do not uninstall actively, some applications that are rarely opened will occupy the storage space of mobile phones for a long time.

The system firmware sizes of different systems range from 7 and 8G to 13G and 14G.

The "culprit" that really promotes the continuous expansion of mobile storage space is App.

It is an indisputable fact that super App is constantly expanding. Wechat, Alipay, Meituan, Douyin. These super App are not only the original themselves, but also instant messaging, local life, e-commerce transactions, casual games and so on. And these super App are still the melting pot of our time, users spend a lot of time on App every day, which means that all kinds of records and data are getting bigger and bigger.

Although super App people are aware of the urgency of "losing weight", there is still a long way to go. For example, WeChat Mini Programs is actually very difficult to "leave after use". When analyzing what content in Wechat will be stored, bilibili up master "Xuanli 199" pointed out that WeChat Mini Programs will form a Mini Program package in the mobile phone after opening it for the first time, and users deleting Mini Program from the" recently used Mini Program "will not delete the stored Mini Program package. To delete completely, you need to enter the settings for a series of complicated operations. If the average user does not follow the tutorial, it is difficult to find the operation to delete the mini package. As a result, the more Mini Program users use, the more storage space Mini Program bags take up on mobile phones.

And the "high-speed version" of App, which was once popular on the Internet, is also difficult to really lose weight. most of them are the swords of the platform to focus on the sinking market, and smaller installation packages make it easier to load them into low-equipped phones in the sinking market. It's just that over time, the expansion of various functions is still enough to make the Android become an old car.

What is the solution of Andy Beer's law? The contradiction between hardware upgrading and software expansion can be said to be the eternal proposition of the consumer electronics industry. According to Andy Beer's Law, it is the expansion of systems and software that motivates consumers to replace new phones with the latest processors.

But for mobile phone manufacturers, this is really a bit close to the distance. Instead of forcing consumers to change generations, it is better to optimize the experience and release more space. IOS takes advantage of industry status to establish strict App online standards, which limits the infinite expansion of App to a certain extent. At the same time, the backstage of iOS uses the tombstone mechanism, and the user can load the last stayed page immediately when the App is opened again after the App is killed, which not only frees the memory, but also does not increase the operation time of switching App, and improves the fluency of using mobile phone.

Now several major domestic mobile phone brands have also adopted the tombstone mechanism to optimize memory scheduling.

In recent major system version updates, Xiaomi has imposed restrictions on the behavior of third-party App. MIUI 12 introduces the flare function, which prompts the user and provides blocking actions when App invokes functions such as recording, video recording, and location positioning in the background. In the latest MIUI 14, Xiaomi launched the "Razor Plan", which promises to reduce the size of the system firmware and reduce the number of applications that cannot be uninstalled, providing more available space for users. In addition, MIUI 14 also opened the photon engine to third-party application developers, providing the ability to schedule core resource configuration in real time at the bottom of the system. Officials claim that photon engine can help improve system fluency by 60%.

Vivo's OriginOS 3 also provides mechanisms for unfair scheduling, memory fusion, and in-place resurrection. The unfair scheduling mechanism gives priority to the scheduling of system resources to the foreground and suspends the backstage demand. Officials claim that the unfair scheduling mechanism has brought a 10% performance improvement to multi-tasking scenarios and runs more smoothly. Memory fusion technology is to use the space borrowing of ROM as RAM to greatly increase the number of background applications. For the App which can not survive in scheduling, the in-situ resurrection mechanism also provides a solution. The background application cleaned by the system can quickly return to the previous state and progress when it is started again.

Other mobile phone manufacturers, such as Huawei and OPPO, have implemented similar memory expansion technologies and tombstone mechanisms in their systems.

The efforts made by MIUI, OriginOS and ColorOS to expand available space and improve fluency show that the fundamental driving force for solving the problem of memory and storage footprint is likely to come from mobile phone manufacturers.

The common problems of the industry inevitably require the joint efforts of the participants in all aspects of the industrial chain. In addition to the restrictions and regulations imposed by mobile phone manufacturers on App, the unified push alliance and App regulatory policies need to shoulder greater responsibility in order to effectively curb the unlimited expansion of App.

The fundamental driving force for accelerating the replacement cycle is for mobile phone manufacturers to create revolutionary technologies and innovative experiences, hoping that consumers will no longer change their phones because of insufficient memory or storage space.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:deep-echo, author: Huang Fu Yuwen

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.