➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: iPhone 15 multitasking

• 🏎️ iPhone 15 series could get more, faster RAM, according to analysts

• 💪 Apple has largely cleared older RAM chip backlog, making room for upgrades

• 👍 Improved RAM means better multitasking, as more apps can stay in memory

The iPhone 15 Pro Max release date may bring crucial hardware updates that let Apple’s new smartphone lineup do more things at once, according to a DRAM report by Taiwanese researchers at TrendForce (via MacRumors). The firm said in an October 2022 report that the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro series would be getting a spec bump to 6GB RAM and 8GB RAM (up from 4GB and 6GB) respectively, as well as a periscope lens for the 15 Pro Max camera, and that iPhone 15 USB-C ports would be a reality. In yesterday’s article, it predicted the phones won’t just get more RAM, but that the LPDDR5 DRAM chips used will be faster than those in the iPhone 14 series.

TrendForce supported these claims while discussing an oversupplied DRAM market in 2022, saying that manufacturers have now largely cleared their backstock of slower chips and are looking for more, though it noted growth in the smartphone market is expected to be modest compared to that of servers.

iPhone 15 RAM: why it’s important

Random access memory, or RAM, is a key component of any computer, as it supplies active memory that’s “faster” (meaning higher bandwidth) than the chips used for storage. For buyers of Apple’s iPhone 15 series phones, increasing the RAM would mean more apps can be kept live at once, enabling more capable multitasking than before, while newer RAM chips will make for a smoother overall experience as the memory is accessed. This would potentially open up more feature possibilities than would have been possible before.