Why can we expand RAM in our PCs and laptops but not our phones?
In: Technology
TLDR: Manufacturers don’t want you upgrading or repairing phones because it’s seen as hurting their bottom line. They want devices that are as 100% proprietary as possible that are not field serviceable. The goal is to make people buy the newest phone, and force them to buy as many accessories as possible directly from them.
To understand why PCs have replaceable components you have to understand the history of the PC.
Apple was the first company to bring an affordable personal computer to market in the late 70’s. The demand for such a product caught tech giant IBM completely off guard, so in order to get in on this new market they realized they needed to develop a product fast. Far faster than normally would be possible.
The engineers that designed the first IBM PC did so by using a number of off the shelf parts, as opposed to designing purpose made and proprietary components.
Soon other manufacturers like Compaq and Dell realized that they could buy those same parts and make their own IBM compatible Clones. All they would need to do is reverse engineer the only purpose made part in the PC, the BIOS chip, which they managed to do.
Soon the market was flooded with lower cost IBM clones. Cheaper machines that could run the exact same software as the more expensive IBM machines. This is the main reason why the IBM based PC architecture became the dominant force the market. Today there are no more true IBM PCs, everything is a clone.
The key point is companies like IBM didn’t want a ‘universal PC’ which could be modified, repaired, and use off the shelf parts. Keeping everything proprietary means you control everything from the sale, to service, to spare parts. They only did so out of necessity but by the time they wanted to bring everything PC related back in house by the 90s the cat was already of out the bag as it were and the market refused. People weren’t willing to pay a premium to buy an IBM branded proprietary machine (The PS/2) when there were so many superior and cheaper products on the market. The universal PC was here to stay, and IBMs share of the PC market kept dropping until they gave up and sold their market share to Lenovo.
The opposite is true of the smartphone market.
Companies like Apple and Samsung make 100% proprietary devices with purpose made parts soldered onto their motherboards. They don’t want their phones being upgraded or repaired, the whole point is to make people keep coming back to buy new phones.
A universal Smartphone would be an incredible invention, but none of the manufacturers have any interest in making one.
They know full well controlling the market, accessories, and repairs is too profitable a business.
Otherwise we would have generic low cost smartphones with a free open source OS, and easily replaceable screens and batteries.
There are primarily two reasons, space and power. People like their phones to be small which means there isn’t the space for connectors and boards to make it replaceable. By putting the ram close to the chip (sometimes on top of it, sometimes beside it) less power is used to communicate with that memory than with traditional ram in PCs.
RAM in your PC or laptop fits into a socket on the mainboard. This socket takes up a lot of space when compared to the cramped quarters inside a modern cell phone.
With PCs and the like RAM is separate from the system board, it can be physically removed and replaced.
My understanding of phones is that the RAM is actually built in to the system board so you can’t remove it. I would imagine this is done as a space saving measure, but I’m not certain.
RAM cannot be expanded in all PCs.
In smartphones and some PCs the RAM is physically soldered on to the logic board and cannot be removed.
On new Apple laptops with M1 chips, the ram is attached as a combined system on a chip (SoC).
There’s little demand and socketing RAM in phones would increase cost and size of phones (which many users don’t want).
A phone is typically one giant piece of integrated computer parts. It does not come apart so you can switch out components. This is done to make it small.
Computers have lots of open space in them so you can remove and replace parts. This is like putting a car into a compactor. You can change the tires before it gets smashed. After it is smashed into a cube, you can’t change the tires.
* In order for RAM to be used by a device, it needs to be attached.
* You can either:
* permanently attach it to the motherboard
* install it in a socket
* Directly attaching it to the motherboard takes slightly less space than having a socket the RAM needs to go into.
* On desktop computers, and many laptops, that little extra space isn’t a big deal.
* But on some laptops and all smartphones that tiny amount of space is needed for something else, like a battery.
Usually phones and other computer systems with non-expandable RAM have their RAM chips soldered directly onto the main board. Building this way is slightly cheaper, but more importantly, it’s a smaller size.
Starting with the original iPhone, the trend has been to make phones as thin as possible. Phone makers are afraid all the extra mechanical stuff you need for expandable RAM will make the phone too thick, and people will refuse to buy it.
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