Techs & Trends
Grasping RAM, ROM, Flash, User, Built-in, and External Memory
Hi,
I’m doing a report about Smartphones and the carriers for a non-profit organization called UCAN (www.ucan.org). I’m finding your site to be very helpful.
I’m trying to understand the seemingly interchangeable terms for memory that I find at different sites. I see RAM, ROM, Flash, User, Built-in, and External. The first and last a clear. Some phones don’t show a ROM spec but they show a Flash spec. I know that Flash memory is not RAM because it’s slower and I gather that it usually contains the OS + apps. Do some phones have the OS stored in a EPROM (i.e.ROM) instead of flash memory or are ROM and Flash the same?
Some phones show internal USER memory. I assume this to be part of either the flash memory o...
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I’m doing a report about Smartphones and the carriers for a non-profit organization called UCAN (www.ucan.org). I’m finding your site to be very helpful.
I’m trying to understand the seemingly interchangeable terms for memory that I find at different sites. I see RAM, ROM, Flash, User, Built-in, and External. The first and last a clear. Some phones don’t show a ROM spec but they show a Flash spec. I know that Flash memory is not RAM because it’s slower and I gather that it usually contains the OS + apps. Do some phones have the OS stored in a EPROM (i.e.ROM) instead of flash memory or are ROM and Flash the same?
Some phones show internal USER memory. I assume this to be part of either the flash memory o...
(continues)
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Check out the terms in the Glossary link to the side bar. That should clear up the bulk of what your looking for.
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You're right, it helps. Thanks. I now know that ROM is a throwback and is today a misnomer for FLASH memory.
The terms USER Memory and BUILT-IN Memory are not defined. Can you help here?
The terms USER Memory and BUILT-IN Memory are not defined. Can you help here?
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Built-in memory is generally the total amount of non-ROM storage space on the device.
In the strictest sense, user available memory is a subset of this built-in memory on the device. Some of this non-ROM internal memory still has to be reserved for use by the operating system and actively running applications, so it is partitioned off and only a portion of the internal storage capacity would be made available for actual user data like the address book, media files, etc.
In the strictest sense, user available memory is a subset of this built-in memory on the device. Some of this non-ROM internal memory still has to be reserved for use by the operating system and actively running applications, so it is partitioned off and only a portion of the internal storage capacity would be made available for actual user data like the address book, media files, etc.
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