I don’t get why Android phones have so much ram.
They often have more ram than my wife’s MacBook and the same or my as my desktop.
How much ram is needed if you’re not gaming or video editing?
In my case, it’s a very occasional picture or video recorded and then just social media apps and web. Do I need to get a phone with 12gb? Or is that just thrown in there for marketing?
Well, Android runs over JVM which runs over Linux. There’s overhead and Android needs to compensate. Add in poor memory management and OEMs that happily kill apps in the background for no good reason (even if you tell them not too), and marketing guys trying to out RAM competitors just so they can release a phone with an “upgrade” every year, you get current Android RAMathon.