Igeekphone News, August 29th: Although the Google Pixel 10 phone has 12GB of RAM, it has a little secret: it has allocated a fixed memory partition exclusively for AI use, which is completely unusable for ordinary applications and games.
This is a design deliberately created by Google. According to Android Authority, in the 12GB memory of the standard Pixel 10, Google has reserved approximately 3.5GB specifically for its own AI framework and for the dedicated processor responsible for AI tasks in the Tensor chip to call. This piece of memory can be imagined as an “AI exclusive VIP area”, accessible only to the AI functions of mobile phones. It is precisely because of this partition that the AI functions on the device end can operate normally, such as real-time voice translation, instant summary of call content, and photo editing, etc.
Last year, Google adopted a different memory strategy. At that time, the standard version of Pixel 9 chose a “safe approach”, opening up all memory for ordinary applications. The “Exclusive AI memory partition” is an exclusive configuration for the high-end model Pixel 9 Pro – which is equipped with a larger 16GB memory. But with the Pixel 10 series, Google changed its direction, apparently aiming to make AI occupy a more core position in mobile phones.
For the daily use of most users, approximately 8.5GB of available memory is actually sufficient to meet various demands. But Google’s positioning of the Pixel 10 is not merely “a phone that meets the needs of the present” – it should be noted that Google has promised to provide mainstream system updates for this phone for up to seven years. As the usage cycle of mobile phones extends, hardware needs to keep up with the continuous upgrading pace of software. By the end of the support cycle, future Android system versions, more resource-intensive applications, and more complex multitasking operation habits may all impose higher requirements on mobile phone memory. By then, the 3.5GB of memory that is currently “locked” might become a valuable resource that mobile phones cannot afford to consume.
Igeekphone needs to note that in the new Pixel 10 series, only the standard version is equipped with 12GB of memory, and all “Pro” models are equipped with 16GB of memory. Suppose Google also reserves 3.5GB of memory for AI in Pro models, then these models can still provide 12.5GB of available memory for ordinary applications. Therefore, for users who need to frequently perform heavy multitasking and plan to use their mobile phones for a long time, Pixel 10 Pro, 10 Pro XL or 10 Pro Fold would be more suitable choices.