Live data from Hacker News

Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

idc.com

31–40 of 341 posts

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#31

Somehow, with 12GB of RAM, I can't get my iPhone 17 Pro to keep more than a few safari tabs open without having them refresh when I come back from an app or two, and it makes me want to throw my phone across the train (Where the internet often cuts out!). A lot of software has been squandering the massive hardware gains that have been made. I hope this changes when it becomes a lot harder to throw hardware at the pro…

Removing docking functionality could possibly reduce RAM usage by never enabling 4K screen output. This would be similar to the switch lite.

Although, for a $450 device that doesn’t need to make much of a profit on its own, I also don’t think they’re heavy on memory in the first place (12GB). You can buy top quality Chinese Android handhelds with more RAM and better Qualcomm processors than the Switch 2 for about the same price, and those companies are making $0 in software royalties (e.g., AYN Thor Max is $450 with a 16GB/1TB configuration).

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#32

[flagged]

slop. also stupid. bad llm. phone values drop 60%+ per year. if you re-parse this without spending all your time on em-dashes you will note that it slows diffusion of next-gen chips, it does not cut off those users.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#33

Somehow, with 12GB of RAM, I can't get my iPhone 17 Pro to keep more than a few safari tabs open without having them refresh when I come back from an app or two, and it makes me want to throw my phone across the train (Where the internet often cuts out!). A lot of software has been squandering the massive hardware gains that have been made. I hope this changes when it becomes a lot harder to throw hardware at the pro…

Android Firefox with ad blockers - life changing.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#34

Somehow, with 12GB of RAM, I can't get my iPhone 17 Pro to keep more than a few safari tabs open without having them refresh when I come back from an app or two, and it makes me want to throw my phone across the train (Where the internet often cuts out!). A lot of software has been squandering the massive hardware gains that have been made. I hope this changes when it becomes a lot harder to throw hardware at the pro…

iOS I think has really aggressive background task killing, and it also drives me insane. I know they do it for battery life but I'm about ready to switch to Android, and would have a long time ago if I that didn't also mean replacing my watch, headphones, etc. Is it too much to ask for me to manage my own background processes on my phone? I don't want the OS arbitrarily deciding what to pause & kill. If it actually d…

I recently started learning how to do iOS apps for work and the short answer is: you don't.

Apple seemingly wants all apps to be static jpegs that never need to connect to any data local or remote, and never do any processing. If you want to do something in the background so that your user can multitask, too damn bad.

You can run in the background, for a non-deterministic amount of time. If you do that, iOS nags your user to make it stop. If you access radios, iOS nags your user to disable it.

It's honestly insane. I don't know why or how anyone develops for this platform.

Not to mention the fact that you have to spend $5k minimum just to put hello world on the screen. I can't believe that apple gets away with forcing you to buy a goddamn Mac to complile a program.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#36

Somehow, with 12GB of RAM, I can't get my iPhone 17 Pro to keep more than a few safari tabs open without having them refresh when I come back from an app or two, and it makes me want to throw my phone across the train (Where the internet often cuts out!). A lot of software has been squandering the massive hardware gains that have been made. I hope this changes when it becomes a lot harder to throw hardware at the pro…

Am I too much of an idealist to hope that AI leads to less buggy software? On the one hand, it should reduce the time of development; on the other hand, I'm worried devs will just let the agents run free w/o proper design specs.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#37
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory uses power, this is a major factor in why aggressively stopping things helps. There is a strong argument modern mobile goes too far for this.

I can't imagine the iphone is entirely powering down memory. Otherwise just unallocating memory won't change the power consumption.

Those aren’t the only two possibilities though.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#38
post #22

If the memory shortage is real and sustained, I wonder whether we’ll see a secondary effect in the resale market.

> I wonder whether we’ll see a secondary effect in the resale market.

I'm paying more on ebay for thinkcentre tiny and thinkpads - 12th gen intel and newer.

Refurbished spinny drives have been steadily climbing - up 50% since late last year. That's on top of the 20% mystery jump that happened in the last week of 2024.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#40

Somehow, with 12GB of RAM, I can't get my iPhone 17 Pro to keep more than a few safari tabs open without having them refresh when I come back from an app or two, and it makes me want to throw my phone across the train (Where the internet often cuts out!). A lot of software has been squandering the massive hardware gains that have been made. I hope this changes when it becomes a lot harder to throw hardware at the pro…

Am I too much of an idealist to hope that AI leads to less buggy software? On the one hand, it should reduce the time of development; on the other hand, I'm worried devs will just let the agents run free w/o proper design specs.

The message with AI from execs is that you have to go fast (rush!). Quality of work drops when you rush. You forget things, don’t dwell on decisions and consequences, just go-fast-and-break-things.
Post reply on HN