I multi-task. Like a lot. And I think that, when examined, so does everyone else. Flip over to Outlook to grab that meeting link as you try to bark directions to Google Maps through Google Assistant, then flip back to your task list to check a thing and then back over to the grocery list to see if you may or may not be able to get away with not dealing with Safeway this evening., then smash the fast forward button on your headphones cause this song sucks. And it’s fast. I have had phones that lagged between each step, and I noticed that, as it became increasingly molasses-y, the rhythm of my thinking slowed to accommodate it.
So performance is a pretty key piece for me, but what I need isn’t liquid graphics, what I need is a lot of RAM. Right now, I’m using a Galaxy Note 10 4G Comcast/Verizon with 8gb of RAM, and it functions beautifully. Its performance has been the standard by which I have judged many things in the two years since we have been together, and I am very grateful for its acquisition one week before the San Francisco Bay Area COVID-19 lockdowns.
I’m pleased with increasing RAM in recent tablets, which speaks to the commonality of both multi-tasking and of memory hog applications. Even then, budget tablets still have 2-4 GB of RAM, and in my old Tab S3 with 4 GB of RAM, OneNote chokes on pages with a lot of handwriting, and the launcher is routinely forced to unload the widgets. That simply won’t do.
And I’m not really sure how processor bandwidth factors into these calculations, because, from what I’ve seen, the processors aren’t the limiting factor. This phone is spec-wise capable of running everything that I need, except perhaps a faster WWAN connection. Except the screen is tiny. And drawing and reference sketches on it are great, but it is very hard to write on. And so you can see the desire for a similar tablet. The usage performance of Galaxy Tab S8+ 5G is quite amazing, but weighing in at only 6 GB of RAM, 2 GB less than my Note 10 2019, which concerns me about its future-proofing as pixel densities scale up and we continue to build memory-hungry applications.
Loaded up, though, I’m continuing to be impressed by the nimble agility of this tablet, and look forward to continuing to test its capabilities.