Xiaomi smartphones allow you to increase the amount of RAM. This is done programmatically, but the increase can be 20-25%. Here’s a look at which Xiaomi smartphones allow it now and which will be available in the future.
If we take a smartphone in general, we always pay attention to some parameters when buying it. More often than not, we want to know what camera, screen, internal memory and RAM it has. In this case, within one model, we can usually only influence the amount of memory. When we buy a smartphone, we can often expand the built-in storage with memory cards, but there is nothing we can do when we realize that we do not have enough RAM.
Manufacturers have now found an interim solution to this problem. RAM can be increased using software tools. It may be a crutch, but sometimes this solution can be useful. I tell you how it works and which Xiaomi phones will allow to use this function.
Expanding your phone’s RAM
Back in late April, Kacper Skrzypek, the renowned MIUI specialist, revealed that Xiaomi was working on a feature to expand RAM for its smartphones. The feature even has its own uncomplicated name – “Memory Expansion”.
Is it possible to expand your phone’s RAM
After some time, a new feature for Xiaomi, which other brands have tried before, has become available for several smartphones under the Mi, Redmi and POCO brands. Now we have an even more comprehensive list of devices that support memory expansion in MIUI.
The memory expansion feature appears on smartphones with the operating system update. It initially debuted in the Redmi Note 10 Pro 5G. After a while, the update appeared on some other devices running MIUI 12.5.
Now, Kacper Skrzypek has shared a list of devices that support the memory expansion feature in either the beta version or the stable build. Here they are.
Which phones support memory expansion
- All Snapdragon 888, 870 and 865 phones except the Mi MIX Fold (it hasn’t received MIUI 12.5 yet)
- POCO X3 GT
- Redmi Note 10 Pro 5G
- Redmi 9 5G
- Redmi Note 9T 5G
- Redmi 9T
- Redmi 8
Which Xiaomi phones will get memory expansion
- Xiaomi Mi MIX 4
- Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite NE
- Redmi 10
- Redmi 10S
- Redmi 10 5G
- Redmi 10 JE
- Redmi 10
- Redmi 9i
- Redmi 9C
- Redmi 9A
- Redmi 8T
- Redmi Note 8 2021
There are other models that will get an update in the future that will allow for the memory expansion feature. According to Kutzper, devices with more than 256GB of storage can increase the RAM capacity by 3GB. Meanwhile, devices with 128GB and 64GB can increase RAM by 2GB and 1GB respectively.
How to increase RAM
As you understand, the increase of RAM will be at the expense of the reserves of the built-in storage. That is, the phone’s regular memory. This increase cannot fully replace the larger RAM because the built-in memory is much slower than the RAM. And it’s the speed that affects how the smartphone will work and download data. Hence, the speed of the smartphone in general will become slower.
Such features are already being offered by other manufacturers. The first device with memory expansion capability was the Vivo X60. Its developers allowed users to use their device’s regular storage as RAM. In that case, the addition was 3 GB at once, due to which the maximum amount of RAM Vivo X60 could reach 15 GB.
Companies are pushing the virtual RAM boost feature as a multitasking tool. Allegedly, the extra RAM will allow smartphones to run applications more efficiently in the background. For a device with such a large amount of memory, this looks a bit odd, as the average app doesn’t take up more than 500MB in memory. That is, a smartphone with a large amount of RAM can support a couple of dozen apps. It’s unlikely to make much difference to it if you add another 2-3GB of memory at a low speed.
One thing is certain. Now all Android smartphone manufacturers will gradually start offering such functions, and they will become mass-produced. But we will have to choose the device more carefully before buying it. Many will write in the column “amount of RAM” the maximum value. You could say software, not hardware.
