Smartphones could soon have 24GB of RAM, because reasons (Update: Confirmed?)

Update: June 27, 2023 (2:50 AM ET): Well, it looks like OPPO or OnePlus might not be the first to offer a phone with 24GB of RAM.

REDMAGIC has announced on Weibo that the upcoming REDMAGIC 8S Pro will be equipped with up to 24GB of RAM. It’s unclear if this is indeed 24GB of RAM or if the company is using virtual RAM to get to this figure. We’ll nevertheless find out on July 5 when the phone gets announced in China.

Original article: June 26, 2023 (4:27 AM ET): It seems like smartphone brands have largely settled on 8GB to 16GB of RAM in their high-end models, although the REDMAGIC 7 Pro gaming phone tops out at 18GB.

Now, noted tipster Digital Chat Station has claimed on Weibo that smartphones with up to 24GB of RAM are coming.

The leaker doesn’t note a specific model or brand, but does mention “Oga.” This is reportedly the name of the entity grouping OnePlus, OPPO, and Realme. Lending further credence to this is the mention of Color OS in the post, with the platform powering both OnePlus and OPPO in China. Meanwhile, Realme UI is effectively a slightly modified version of Color OS.

Overkill for smartphones?

Nevertheless, we’re not sure why you’d want 24GB of RAM on your smartphone. There are several benefits to having more RAM, such as being able to multitask more apps, having more browser tabs open, enabling more advanced features, and more.

In saying so, today’s brands are still aggressive when it comes to memory management, inevitably killing background apps even though 12GB to 16GB of RAM is available on many flagship phones. Our own testing also found that 8GB to 12GB of RAM was ideal and that 16GB RAM was overkill. So you could argue that phone makers aren’t even making the most of the RAM they already have.

In other words, even if you’ve got a phone with 24GB of RAM, you aren’t likely to see a noticeable difference compared to a phone with 12GB or 16GB of memory.