Snapdragon 400 with 1.5gig ram vs 410 with 1gig ram

JEDI

Lifer
Sep 25, 2001
29,391
2,738
126
i have 2 phones and want to know which is better:
1) Kyrocera Hydro icon
Snapdragon 400 (Quad-core, 1200 MHz, ARM Cortex-A7 32bit), 1.5gig ram

2) LG Tribute 2
Snapdragon 410 (Quad-core, 1200 MHz, ARM Cortex-A53, 64-bit) 1 gig ram

Since the Tribute 2 uses the newer 410 chip, I'm assuming it's more power efficient?
and Obviously, by specs, the Tribute 2 should be faster.
but is the 1gig ram limiting it's potential?

So which is better?
 

shabby

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,782
45
91
With specs that low you will never be able to tell which phone is better or faster, i would simply get the phone that has a better camera/battery and newest version of android.
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,502
136
1GB is nigh unusable if you want to have more than one or two apps open at a time. CPU difference is negligible. I have a Tribute 2 as a backup phone, and unfortunately it feels a little cheaper than the original Tribute. I'd get the Hydro.
 

core2slow

Senior member
Mar 7, 2008
774
20
81
Does it make a difference which phone is better when they both will end up as doorstops, anyway?
 

NutBucket

Lifer
Aug 30, 2000
27,138
627
126
Preorder the recently announced Alcatel A30 for $60 from Amazon and toss the other two out the window.
 

dark zero

Platinum Member
Jun 2, 2015
2,655
140
106
Both are bad....

The ARM A7 is at Pentium 4 levels and that is slow as hell. Is unusable even with 3GB of RAM (I look at you HTC).

But 1GB of RAM is too low RAM on today's standards
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
1.5GB of RAM is leagues better than 1GB. The thing is 1GB is mostly taken up by basic OS and services, leaving almost nothing for apps. Going up to 1.5GB actually increases the amount of RAM available for apps by more than 100% in most scenarios.

As an anecdote, I have an amazon fire tablet (7" with 1GB RAM) and fire HD 8 tablet (8" with 1.5GB RAM). The fire tablet is really a miserable device. You can run one app at a time or watch a video or something, but multitasking is pretty much out of the question and even some singular apps fail crash and burn because of lack of resources (fire emblem heroes worked for a few minutes, but eventually crashed). The fire HD 8, with it's .5GB more RAM, is a massive improvement. It actually seems fast if you use it conservatively, closing apps after usage. If you want to switch between two apps, such as to look something up in a browser while watching a video, it can handle that fine too. It's not blazing fast by any means, but it's perfectly usable and it doesn't feel like a crippled device.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
59,651
10,175
126
1.5GB of RAM is leagues better than 1GB. The thing is 1GB is mostly taken up by basic OS and services, leaving almost nothing for apps. Going up to 1.5GB actually increases the amount of RAM available for apps by more than 100% in most scenarios.

As an anecdote, I have an amazon fire tablet (7" with 1GB RAM) and fire HD 8 tablet (8" with 1.5GB RAM). The fire tablet is really a miserable device. You can run one app at a time or watch a video or something, but multitasking is pretty much out of the question and even some singular apps fail crash and burn because of lack of resources (fire emblem heroes worked for a few minutes, but eventually crashed). The fire HD 8, with it's .5GB more RAM, is a massive improvement. It actually seems fast if you use it conservatively, closing apps after usage. If you want to switch between two apps, such as to look something up in a browser while watching a video, it can handle that fine too. It's not blazing fast by any means, but it's perfectly usable and it doesn't feel like a crippled device.
Here's my current stats on my 1gb kyocera...

Code:
Mem: 874464K used, 41608K free, 704K shrd, 26628K buff, 164932K cached
CPU:  0.0% usr  0.0% sys  0.0% nic  0.0% idle  0.0% io  0.0% irq  0.0% sirq
Mem: 878464K used, 37608K free, 468K shrd, 4760K buff, 139484K cached
CPU:  0.0% usr  0.0% sys  0.0% nic  100% idle  100% io  0.0% irq  0.0% sirq
Load average: 5.19 6.19 6.38 2/1015 19726
  PID  PPID USER     STAT   VSZ %VSZ CPU %CPU COMMAND
  266     1 media    S    80524  8.7   0  0.7 /system/bin/mediaserver
 8904   301 u0_a45   S     976m109.1   0  0.1 {ndroid.systemui} com.android.systemui
  733   301 system   S <  1038m115.9   0  0.1 system_server
 2996   301 u0_a115  S <  1016m113.5   3  0.0 com.termux
30886   301 u0_a142  S     894m 99.8   1  0.0 {.takke.cpustats} jp.takke.cpustats
23454   301 u0_a159  S <  1416m158.2   2  0.0 {owser.lightning} acr.browser.lightning
$
I find this phone very usable. More ram's always better than less, but 1gb isn't a miserable experience.
 

JeffMD

Platinum Member
Feb 15, 2002
2,026
19
81
I think the 1.5gb will give you a better experience when web browsing and such... there speed differences are probably not noticeable enough.
 

lopri

Elite Member
Jul 27, 2002
13,310
687
126
It took a while for me to make a verdict (really a no-win situation) but at the end I agree with JeffMD. My thought process is that even if S410 is faster than S400 by 30% at app launch, a frequent slowdown/refresh by 50% in-use will make that initial speed advantage dissipate quickly. One real life example is the iPad Air and the Nexus 7 which I had until a couple of years ago. While A7 is a much faster SOC than S600, I found myself grabbing the Nexus 7, which sports the latter w/ 2GB of RAM, more often. The constant refresh on A7 + 1GB was just too much.