Oppo’s virtual memory gives your phone more breathing room

• Oppo is adding virtual RAM support to Reno 5 series phones.
• The approach temporarily turns up to 7GB of storage into temporary memory when your physical RAM runs low.
• Oppo’s sibling brand Vivo uses this feature, but not as aggressively.

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Oppo is the latest phone maker to use virtual memory to offset hardware limitations. The brand is rolling out a virtual RAM feature that gives Reno 5, A94 and A74 phones extra headroom when physical RAM runs short.

As with a similar feature for Oppo’s sibling brand Vivo, you can tap a settings option that provides up to 7GB of virtual memory using your phone’s storage. It’s not as fast as real RAM, but it should prevent your phone from choking if you’re juggling multiple apps or running any particularly intensive software. You can choose from three capacities depending on how much you need.

Related: The best Android phones with expandable storage

The virtual memory update should be available now on at least some devices, although access might vary depending on your region and model.

This won’t give you the performance of a ROG Phone 5 or another device with giant heaps of real memory. Storage is typically much slower than RAM, and the virtual memory might struggle if you’re running certain games or other apps that need quick access. This should, however, reduce the pressure to buy a new phone just for the extra memory —and it might let you get away with a lower-cost phone if you otherwise aren’t very demanding.

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