One of the most impressive characteristics of the new Samsung Galaxy A55 is that it has an option for 12GB of RAM — at least in some markets. That's very unlike Samsung's mid-range phones, and it is mighty impressive considering that even more expensive devices, such as the base Galaxy S24, are missing out on 12GB.
But as impressive as the Galaxy A55's memory configuration is, Galaxy A54 users probably shouldn't lose sleep over it. If you have been wondering whether or not you should upgrade from the Galaxy A54 to the A55 for more RAM, our advice is to give Samsung's RAM Plus feature another fair try in 2024 before you rush into an upgrade.
RAM Plus works a lot better nowadays
Samsung's virtual RAM feature, i.e., RAM Plus, has a bit of a bad reputation, caused by issues that cropped up a few years ago when RAM Plus was first implemented. It reportedly slowed down phones, and there was no official way to turn it off initially.
Now, it is true that technically speaking, any virtual RAM solution will be inferior to physical RAM chips, as virtual RAM converts storage (which is usually slower than RAM) to be used as random access memory.
However, today, Samsung's RAM Plus feature is better optimized and should work better at keeping apps in memory than it did a few years ago. Users have also been able to turn RAM Plus off via the Settings app for a while now, and many did and forgot about it.
But if your Galaxy A54 has trouble keeping background apps in memory, you should try turning RAM Plus on and see how it works in 2024. Even if virtual RAM is technically slower, as long as it's used only for keeping background apps in memory, those performance differences should be unnoticed. That is, as long as the system is well optimized — which it might be nowadays.
If you want to turn on RAM Plus on your Galaxy A54, you can open the Settings app, access “Device Care,” tap “Memory,” go to “RAM Plus,” and select one of the available options. You'll need to restart the phone to apply the changes.
