Samsung RAM Plus slowing your phone down? Here’s how to disable it
One UI 4.1 made its debut on the Samsung Galaxy S22 series. One of the new features in One UI 4.1 is RAM Plus, which allows you to allocate part of your phone’s memory as virtual RAM. In theory, this should help multitasking performance and allow devices with less actual RAM to keep more apps open in the background. In reality, RAM Plus could have the opposite effect.
Why is my phone slower with One UI 4.1?
In the first few months, the performance of our Galaxy S22 was disappointing. It felt less consistent than our S21 Ultra, which always performed excellently. The S22U was never slow, but it dropped frames and stuttered a lot more than expected. At first we put this down to it being a new device in need of advance patches, but we ended up worrying it might be due to the Exynos 2200 found in our UK unit, albeit earlier Exynos chips this never let us down.
While looking for ways to increase the performance of the S22 Ultra, we came across several forum posts mentioning RAM Plus as the culprit, with owners of the S21 Ultra and other devices updated to One UI 4.1 using the same Problem faced like our S22. A post on the XDA Developers Forum had instructions on how to disable Ram Plus.
After trying it out on an Exynos S22 Ultra, a Snapdragon Galaxy S20, and a Galaxy M53 5G, we can confirm that some RAM Plus affects performance. Immediately after deactivation, the S20 and M53 reverted to the performance levels they saw prior to the 4.1 update. The S22 Ultra started behaving like it should have always been. It’s one of the fastest phones we’ve used, outperforming its predecessor.
How to disable RAM Plus in One UI 4.1
In One UI 4.1, you cannot open the Settings app and disable Ram Plus. Instead, you need to run an ADB command from your computer. It’s a simple command that you only have to run once. If you’re new to ADB, follow this guide to get started on your computer and enable USB debugging on your phone.
With your phone connected to ADB on your computer, copy and paste the following command into the terminal:
adb shell settings put global ram_expand_size_list 0,1,2,4,6,8
After the command is complete, restart your phone. After switching back on, navigate to settings > Battery and device care > memory and open the RAM Plus menu. Before running the command, you had the option to change the virtual memory used from 2GB to 4GB. Now you should see the option to set it between 0GB and 8GB or 16GB depending on your device.
Select 0GB from the list and restart your phone when prompted. Once it’s up and running, you should notice smoother animations, better sustained performance, and a more consistent experience overall.
Left: Unchanged RAM Plus menu. Right: Modified RAM Plus menu.
How to disable RAM Plus in One UI 5
Samsung allows users to disable RAM Plus without jumping through hoops in One UI 5 beta. Use to navigate to the RAM Plus menu settings > Battery and device care > memory and turn it off with the new switch at the top of the screen.
Should You Disable RAM Plus?
yes you should In our tests and as shown in several user forums, RAM Plus could affect your device’s performance. The ADB command is easy to run, and if you don’t factory reset your device, you only have to do it once.
Samsung adding a built-in disable option is all well and good, but it doesn’t help everyone. One UI 4.1 was the last update for the Galaxy S10 range, which means this ADB trick is the only way to bring these phones back to their former glory. Likewise, currently supported phones like the S20 or A series phones may have to wait until next year to see the One UI 5 update. Unless Samsung updates One UI 4.1 with a native option, following this tutorial is the best way to disable RAM Plus and restore your phone’s performance.