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Xiaomi introduces RAM drives to smartphones so gamers can load games like PUBG Mobile faster

  • Xiaomi is introducing a RAM drive feature on the Mi 10 Ultra, which can already be used on games like Peacekeeper Elite, Honour of Kings and QQ Speed
  • RAM drives, once the sole domain of PCs, allow RAM to be used like regular internal storage, greatly improving software speeds

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Peacekeeper Elite, also known as Game for Peace, is Tencent’s sanitised makeover of the battle royale game PUBG Mobile. By making the game more patriotic and removing blood and death, Tencent was finally able to make revenue from the game in its home market. Image: Tencent/Handout
Matt Haldane
Xiaomi says it has a way for gamers to get a significant speed boost on the Mi 10 Ultra by installing games directly to RAM instead of the internal storage. It is the kind of thing that was once the sole domain of PCs, but modern smartphone hardware is finally making it possible on mobile devices.

One of the pesky things about modern gaming is that massive, sprawling titles can take a little bit to load. That is why some people cannot wait to get their hands on this year’s new generation of consoles, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5. One immediate benefit of upgrading, even before buying any new games, is the big improvement in load times owing to the included solid state drives (SSDs) that come installed, instead of the hard disk drives (HDDs) in the older consoles.

This is the kind of speed improvement that Xiaomi appears to be trying to bring to smartphones in China, where mobile gaming is the norm. To do this, Xiaomi is introducing RAM drives to mobile devices, said Zeng Xuezhong, Xiaomi’s head of smartphones, in a Weibo post on Sunday.

A RAM drive, or RAM disk, allows a computer to use a portion of RAM as storage, offering a huge improvement in software speeds by utilising memory normally reserved for quick tasks. On RAM, games could install and load between 40 and 60 per cent faster, Zeng said. He added that for Peacekeeper Elite, the Chinese version of PUBG Mobile that is also known as Game for Peace, installation time is just 10 seconds on RAM instead of 19 seconds on internal storage.

RAM drives apportion a certain amount of the memory to be used like traditional storage, giving software a significant speed boost. Image: Xiaomi via Weibo
RAM drives apportion a certain amount of the memory to be used like traditional storage, giving software a significant speed boost. Image: Xiaomi via Weibo

In his post, Zeng calls the new feature “RAMDISK”, saying it is being trialed on the Mi 10 Ultra, a collector’s edition phone designed to commemorate Xiaomi’s 10th anniversary. The phone was not released outside China.

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