Microsoft explains why the Nokia Lumia 630 only has 512 MB RAM
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Many feel that the Nokia Lumia 630 would have been a more competitive device if it had 1 GB of RAM.
It turns out however that Microsoft has been actively working rather hard to make 512 MB of RAM not just a realistic but very viable specification.
According to a blog post on MSDN one of the major focuses in Windows Phone 8.1 was to optimise the OS to consume less memory.
30% of the entire engineering budget was devoted to optimization, and as a consequence:
…apps written using Windows 8.1 app model and XAML stack consistently runs 30% faster than apps written using the Windows Phone 8 Silverlight app model. It also consumes significantly less memory…
This does unfortunately leave Microsoft once again with the challenge of explaining why 512 MB on their OS equals 1 GB on Android (an issue that Apple never seems to have despite the relatively low RAM on their handsets also).
Of course the real motivation for this effort is to sell extremely low cost handsets, and unfortunately in that area Microsoft is still being out-competed by OEMs like Motorola.
Do our readers agree Microsoft needs to follow up with an extremely low cost handset to make all their software engineering effort worthwhile? Let us know below.
