HELP: iPhone 3G only reporting 64MB of DRAM

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HELP: iPhone 3G only reporting 64MB of DRAM

My iPhone 3G has always seemed slow. Subjectively, it was more sluggish than the ones I saw in the Apple store, and ones owned by friends. But it was okay. When my wife got a 3G, I was jeallous that it was so much more responsive. Then iOS4 came out. I upgraded both phones, hoping it would improve performance on my phone. Her phone was sluggish, while mine was completely unusable. When updates came out to fix these problems, her phone became usable again. Not great, a bit sluggish at times, but usable. Mine wasn't helped at all.

My 3G is so bad that I cannot use the maps app. Apps often crash when starting up. Mail will sometimes freeze the phone for 5 minutes or more before I can use it. And the worst problem is that the phone often hangs up when a call comes in so that I cannot answer it. I slide my finger, but nothing happens, and the call is missed.

Recently, I started to suspect that perhaps there was some malware (it would have to be a worm) that I didn't know about, sucking up CPU cycles. I had iStat, but it didn't report CPU load for individual processes. Just a load average of about 1.0. Then I installed DeviceStats, and I didn't see anything useful there either. And the I realized something: Both apps report that main memory totals 64MB.

According to the wikipedia article and several other web pages, the iPhone 3G should have 128MB of DRAM.

Was there a run of iPhone 3G that only has 64MB of RAM? Or are both apps incorrectly reporting the total RAM? Or is the device defective, and this is an explanation for the slowness?

If this is the case, than I'm really irritated. The phone is long out of AppleCare, and only now do I discover that they stuck me with a broken phone. What are the chances I could talk Apple into a coupon I could apply to the next generation of iPhone? Any suggestions on persuasive words I might use? (I've heard about people being real jerks to Apple employees to get their way, but there's no way I'm going to act like this towards someone who's a person just there to help customers. I want to sweet-talk them into giving me some $$ off on a newer device. Or a replacement 3G. Or whatever's fair.)

Posted on Jun 15, 2011 10:37 AM

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Answer 1

theosib Author

Level 1

20 points

Jun 15, 2011 10:53 AM in response to theosib

Actually, DeviceStats reports this:

Active 13MB

Wired 32MB

Inactive 6MB

Free 3MB

This totals only 54MB.

iStat reports this:

Wired 28MB

Active 12MB

Inactive 6MB

Free 2MB

This totals 48MB. But there's probably some rounding. I'm not sure where the remaining 10 or so megs went, because the video memory only accounts for at most 600K.

In any case, I expect that this SHOULD total more than 100MB. Am I wrong?

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Answer 2

modular747

Level 6

19,656 points

Jun 15, 2011 10:53 AM in response to theosib

That's the thing about most warranties, they expire. If your phone ALWAYS was sluggish compared to all the others, you should have dealt with it DURING the warranty period.

I have no idea whether the apps you're using accurately report the installed RAM, or whether a defect or damage at some point disabled some of it. You can go to Apple and plead your case, but there are no magic words that will con (um, "sweet-talk") them into giving you something you're not entitled to.

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Answer 3

theosib Author

Level 1

20 points

Jun 15, 2011 12:38 PM in response to theosib

Just to be clear, I am aware that my phone is well out of warranty, and that what I'm asking may be unreasonable. In fact, that is exactly what I told the AppleCare reps on the phone just moments ago. Since I can argue logically that Apple sold me a defective phone, I wanted to know if they would be willing to assist me in any way, even though I'm not actually entitled to it. There was no conning. There were no lies. I gave them my serial number, and they knew everything about it. I also didn't yell or threaten, and I thanked them for their time and patience.

Tech Support couldn't help me, other than to offer me a $199 repair. Obviously, I could upgrade to a new phone (under contract) for about that much, so that wasn't helpful.

So they transferred me to another department. I don't remember what it was called, but it was basically sales, and "customer relations" comes to mind. Anyhow, they've offered me this coupon that will give me discounts on certain products, depending on the price of the product. So, for instance, spend more than $300, and I can get $100 off. Unfortunately, it doesn't apply to iPhones, but I CAN use the discount when I buy my wife a new MacBook, which is going to happen soon.

I got more than I expected. I'd have been happy with a $50 discount. If they'd offered me nothing, I still wouldn't have stormed off and bought an Android phone. (At least not for that reason. ;-) )

On a final note, I think that this problem is something that iOS should warn the user about. Half the RAM missing is a glaring problem that the OS has to know about or else it couldn't disable the defective portion. It's an oversight that an alert doesn't pop up, informing the user that they should take the device in to be looked at. I have therefore filed a bug report to this effect.

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Answer 4

modular747

Level 6

19,656 points

Jun 15, 2011 1:06 PM in response to modular747

I'm glad thery were able to help you in this way.

As far as there being a bug in the iOS for not alerting you about missing RAM, I'd have to say that this is the first report of this in this forum, now >100 million iPhones out there... Unless you've restored the phone as new (no backup), and the RAM is still not accounted for, your haven't established that this is real, and not due to corrupted data/settings in the phone.

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Answer 5

theosib Author

Level 1

20 points

Jun 15, 2011 1:46 PM in response to modular747

Oh, I definitely did a complete factory restore. When iOS4 first came out, there were lots of different sets of suggestions all over the web about how to "fix" the performance problems. I tried them all. I believe I did two system restores, not including the ones that happened as a normal course of the iOS upgrade process.

As for the lack of reports, I discovered this problem by accident. Of all the iPhone users out there, how many are going to both have this problem AND be looking at stats apps?

Anyhow, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that there might be a few phones out there with some bad DRAM, and it doesn't seem unreasonable that iOS might do an integrity check on the DRAM and use what parts work.

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Answer 6

Gecks

Level 1

0 points

Jul 23, 2012 4:42 AM in response to modular747

modular747, you can add 2 more reports: i've had this issue with both my iphones! my 3GS started reporting ~128MB (should be 256), and my 3G is currently reporting ~64MB (should be 128). apple game me an out of warranty replacement for the former, but i've not asked about the latter as it's a battered hand-me-down that i would feel cheeky even asking about!

i just think it's something that people wouldn't neccesarily realise it's going on. the phone gets slower but you'd be suprised how much of that people will just assume is a software or 'phone age' problem. and who actually download these ram apps, nevermind is able to inteprit the myriad memory definitions apple use (wired/inactive/free). i think this issue might be quiet widespread - memory chips definitely fail, in all products.

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