Nokia N8: Will 256MB RAM Be Enough for Multitasking?

June 21st, 2010 • • 66 comments

iPhone users rejoice today as they finally get a taste of multitasking. Nokia users have been doing it for a while now, but with certain limitations. Running too many multiple apps in the background results in “memory full” errors. Previous Nokia N97 and N96 power users are aware of this. Is the Nokia N8′s 256MB RAM memory enough for multitasking?

Nokia N8 memory full.jpg
Nokia N8 out of memory with 6 apps open

I’m bringing this question up after watching a recent video of a pre-release Nokia N8 demonstration at Nokia Connections. 42 seconds into the video, you’ll see the error pop-up, “Memory full. Close some applications and try again.” This was triggered when the Nokia rep was trying to play a video from the gallery. A few seconds after the message, she held the menu button to show the current apps running. They were the browser, application menu, gallery, photo editor, social networking app, and the WiFi wizard.

Before we judge too quickly, we have to keep in mind that the device shown was not running final software. I also did not see this message during my short preview of the Nokia N8.

For comparison, the Nokia N97 had 128MB RAM and the Nokia N900 had 256MB. When the Google Nexus One was released in January, it came out with 512MB. The new iPhone 4, which many tech geeks would argue doesn’t support “real multitasking” has 512MB RAM. The Nokia N8 is expected in the third quarter this year and was stuck with 256MB. Why didn’t Nokia opt for higher RAM?

I sound like I’m nitpicking, but I’m simply concerned. I’m excited about the Nokia N8, but I really… REALLY… hope we don’t see that “memory full” message when the device makes it to the market.

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  • Stylinred

    i dont see why when we've seen the n8 run 15 apps simultaneously smoothly in that russian n8 overview

  • http://twitter.com/HookahGuru David Puffer

    I didn’t see that video prior to my post. Still though, 512mb of RAM would be great, not for the built in apps like the music player or photo gallery but for the third party ones that tend to annihilate RAM.

  • Mike

    Well, I’ve seen a video, and heard the guy explaining that, the phone works really fluid, cause this new phone has a hardware graphics accelerator, and he mentions that the device’s cpu will be in charge of running the apps and the OS, and that the graphcis accelerator will run all the homescreen and graphics related stuff, so the phone shall run flwalessly regardless of the ram, I’ve also seen in some other forums that the phone will 135mb of free ram on bootup.

  • Lookatbowen

    Have the Nokia N8 on trial and when plugging it into my Windows 7 desktop I can see two memories: Mass Memory 7GB/14GB free and Phone Memory 0 bytes out of 256MB :-(

    For the life of me I cannot find the area of the phone where I can free up memory. Nothing is open as well, and the few apps I have installed are nowhere nearly adding up to 256MB. So I am really puzzled.

    Any ideas?

    • Sincerely, the smartarse.

      Lol, ROM and RAM isn’t the same…

  • Truebloodvampirism

    Hi everybody, I was thinking of an amazing trick to do, except, that I don’t know where I should post it. aint like I’m new to the forum yet I want everybody to read this…..
    I’m a C++ Programmer however I’ve minimal to no clue bout compiling S^3 apps, but if anyone can put me in the right direction, that’d be absolutely great…

    So let’s get to the point….
    How about 15 Gigs of ram on N8 sounds astounding and legendary… and mostly unbelievable..
    I do believe it’s possible if I can somehow manage to force the phone read the E drive (Mass memory drive) as THE D: Drive (Ram Drive).
    I cooked my own firmware and made alot of modification to the current exsisting firmware. but again, i don’t have what it takes to make it go SYMBIAN ! SOME HELP WOULD BE REALLY REALLY APPRECIATED.
    I was also thinking bout another trick which is to expand ram through partly using a dedicated space on the E drive, as in Windows pagefile.sys.
    Please…..Let everyone know about this and e-mail me if you can give me sometips on how to proceed… I’m intending to share this with everyone… and credits to all who have helped me.
    E-mail me at TrueBloodVampirism[at]Ovi[dot]com

  • Anon Legion

    I have a 16gig N8, reasonably new (only 2 days old) with the newest software installed. I get this all the time when i try to add pictures on my phone list, even with all other programmes closed.

  • http://viettelonline.com/ LienDTK

    Nice, that’s helpful for me!

  • Lek855

    I will say this, Nokia seems to intentionally screw up every new phone they release. The X7 has massive memory but a fixed focus camera and no TV out. The N8 has the best camera but not enough memory. The E7 has TV out and Document EDITOR but a fixed focus camer and not enough memeory. How is it possible this company can make so many models of phones and not get even one of them right? The best phones Nokia ever made, 6700 classic and E52, they discontinue them. It’s as if Nokia takes whatever is logical and does the opossite.

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