Because of AI: Pixel 10 with an effective 8 GB of RAM

Users of the Pixel 10 have 8 GB instead of 12 GB of RAM as standard. This is less than the Pixel 9, where Google offered users the entire RAM, while the 9 Pro models already had 3 GB reserved for AI tasks.

More AI for all models

As the new Pixel 10 models have more AI on board than their predecessors and Google is not only providing this for the Pro variants, the manufacturer is now also blocking part of the RAM for the basic model. This means that the basic model has to make do with eight GB for all applications. By reserving the RAM, Google apparently wants to ensure that the AI functions can be called up as quickly as possible.

Google explains that more and more AI processes are taking place directly on the smartphone instead of being outsourced to the cloud. To this end, the company has installed new and larger Gemini Nano models, which can be used for real-time translation when making phone calls, for example, or the Magic Cue function, which gives Pixel devices a more proactive assistant. However, this function, which is designed to display relevant information from appointments and emails at the right time, is currently only available in the USA. Local real-time translation requires just under two GB of memory on the devices, while AICore Service requires over six GB.

3 GB RAM for AICore and G5 TPU

According to Android Authority, both Google's AICore service and the TPU of the Tensor G5 are located in the partition in the new Pixel models. This permanently reserved memory is therefore not available, even if a large game or an intensive multitasking session pushes the free RAM to its limits.

As we were able to determine in the test of the Pixel 10 models, the eight GB of RAM does not seem to be a hurdle at the moment and does not slow down the device. The system on the Pixel 10 runs smoothly even with more demanding tasks. However, it is uncertain what it will look like after several years of use, as AI models and operating systems tend to get bigger and put more strain on the memory. After all, Google promises seven years of Android and other updates. The Pro models with 16 (effectively 13) GB of RAM are likely to age better.

However, if you don't use the AI functions anyway, you can free up a little RAM and memory by deactivating the AICore app. However, this is not necessarily recommended.

(afl)