Four years ago, we started to see the first smartphones land with 1GB of RAM. Oh how we marvelled at them, quipping at how they managed to out-spec our first PCs.

Fast forward to today, and we’ve got the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and LG V10, both of which are rocking 4GB of RAM. You’d think that was more than enough, of course, but we all know that tech only ever moves in one direction.

That direction, as it turns out, appears to be heading towards 2016 flagships sporting 6-8GB of RAM, according to sources in China. It sounds like overkill of course, but then again, we remember when people were arguing how pointless 1080p screens were too.

While 8GB of RAM does sound extreme, it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility. Rumours courtesy of Chinese analyst Pan Jiutang suggest that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 830 system on chip (SoC) will be able to support these higher levels or RAM, so it shouldn’t be a problem for manufacturers to implement.

You could argue, of course, that improved OS and app optimisation is a more elegant solution than simply brute-forcing more RAM into a phone, and you’d have a point. After all, iPhones have always had less RAM than their Android competitors, while managing to run smoothly, thanks to iOS’ hardware optimisation.

Still, if it results in having genuine notebook competitors in our pocket, then we’re going to embrace those extra gigabytes with open arms.

Source: G for Games