CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphoneobjective-cmemory-management
Monish Kumar
Monish Kumar

Reputation: 2848

Limits of memory use on iPhone

I want to know the feasibility of these things:

1) Is it possible to download 200MB audio files to our application?

2) How much RAM can be accessed from an iPhone app? What is the largest amount of RAM an app can expect to use?

Anyone's help in this regard is deeply appreciated.

Thanks to all, Monish

Upvotes: 0

Views: 291

Answers (1)

DarkDust
DarkDust

Reputation: 92335

1) Yes, although you might make users angry who are not on Wifi + fast DSL. Also you will need to handle interrupted downloads.

2) No, since ARM is a 32bit processor a maximum of 4GB RAM can be addressed. Anyhow, iDevices have a maximum of 512MB right now (iPad 2). Your application will get killed by iOS if your app takes about 75% or so of the available RAM which means in reality you shouldn't use more than, say, 80MB of RAM. And if you need to address 8GB then your design is totally flawed to begin with.

There are always ways to work with a lot less (e. g. either by using better algorithms and/or by caching to disk). On the disk, you are only limited by the available space left on the device. So if you have an iDevice with just 8GB you're naturally out of luck as the system itself and other apps/data are reducing the available space. Same if you're on a 64GB iDevice which is packed with movies. You will need to be able to work with the space that is available. You can, for example, try to "reserve" the necessary space by creating a file and making it as big as you need it (via a seek and a write) but be prepared for angry customers.

Upvotes: 3

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