Developer confirms 2 GB of RAM for iPhone 6s, 6s Plus handsets, 4 GB of RAM for iPad Pro

This is pretty clever.

Developer Hamza Sood was able to use asset catalogs associated with the Xcode 7 Golden Master to confirm the rumors around the iPhone 6s and iPad Pro RAM specifications. The catalogs confirm that the iPhone 6s has 2 GB of RAM, up from 1 GB in the iPhone 6, and the iPad Pro has 4 GB RAM, a 100% increase from the 2 GB in the iPad Air 2’s A8X chip.

RAM upgrades for the iPhones has been somewhat overdue, with many complaining apps have to relaunch too frequently on current hardware, especially on the iPhone 6 Plus. RAM affects how much app data the device can keep in memory at once. This is often seen through the number of tabs Safari can open before having to reload a website. More RAM provides a better experience across the system. The iPhone has been stuck with 1 GB of RAM since the iPhone 5 in 2012.

Adobe inadvertently leaked the specification about the iPad Pro containing 4 GB of RAM last week. The added RAM will offer benefits like split-screen multitasking under iOS 9 as well as enable apps to be generally more capable and do more memory-intensive things, like edit 3 4K video streams as is possible with the latest version of iMovie. Like the iPhone, it also enables the device to keep more apps ‘frozen’ in memory rather than having to relaunch the app from scratch.

Sood offered the following explanation of the hack via Twitter:

The image asset is chosen based on the memoryClass key in the simdevicetype’s capabilities.plist. 0 = <1GB, 1 = 1GB, 2 = 2GB, 3 = 4GB.

— Hamza Sood (@hamzasood) September 13, 2015

The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s will be available for retail sale on Friday, September 25th. The iPad Pro will be released in November.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via 9to5Mac and Twitter