Hello and welcome to today’s post. I’ll be talking about Memory, Storage and ROM.

These are certain terminologies that we tend to use a lot of the time. Now, a lot of us myself included, sometimes use these terms wrongly or incorrectly.

Memory Storage and ROM

Memory

The first one I’d like to look at is Memory.

Yes, a lot of us use the term memory when referring to how much storage space we have on our phones. This is absolutely wrong. Really wrong.

Strictly speaking, on a smartphone or computer, the term memory refers exclusively to RAM or RAM space.

Read: Smartphone RAM explained

I’ve seen people complain that their phones keeps popping “out of memory” notifications. This happens when they’re trying to load or install certain apps and that no matter how much they clear their storage, the problem simply won’t go away.

What the phone or computer is trying to tell the user is that there’s not enough Random Access Memory or RAM to carry out the task. Even if such a user chooses to wipe the phone clean, it won’t work.

My kid sister recently picked up my old Tecno Pouvoir 2 and was trying to install Snapchat on it. I kept rolling my eyes at her because the phone is old and has a weak SoC (MediaTek 6737). On top of that, it only has 2GB of RAM. All the phone did was complain about memory till she eventually gave up.

Me: 😂😂🤣🤣

This is usually a problem for phones with low RAM like 512MB (yes, they still exist), 1GB, 2GB or even 3G RAM in some cases. So the term MEMORY exclusively refers to RAM.

Read: Storage on a smartphone explained (types & uses)

Storage

The second one is Storage.

Storage is what many people refer to as memory or ROM. This is also not correct. Storage refers to any facility on your phone or computer that is designed to hold data permanently. At least until the user decides to delete it.

If you check your phone, it’s boldly written there as STORAGE. The one that comes with your phone is called Internal Storage, not internal memory. The other storage types that you add to it (like microSD cards or for those who plug flash drives or HDDs) are called External Storage.

ROM

The last one I want to talk about is ROM or read only memory.

I can forgive people that still call it Internal Memory, but ROM? Ha!

“Sir, how much gig RAM and ROM?”

“Really, in 2022?”

ROM simply stands for read only memory. This implies that ROM is a type of memory that your phone or computer can only read from. This means that you cannot save or delete anything from the memory. All you can do is read what’s on it. Examples of ROMs are those Sega or Nintendo game cartridges. They’re read only. You can only play the game on it and do nothing else.

The data on our Internal storage can be modified, deleted and written (saved). So that means that it is not ROM. ROM means read only. So please if you know someone who uses that term. It’s really wrong.

ROM also refers to certain types of software. In fact, that is what we call them nowadays. Custom versions of AOSP or Android OS/skins are known as Custom ROMs. ROMs meaning software in this regard.

If you go to a place like Reddit or Quora and mention ROM, people would think that you’re into flashing ROMs.

I used to call it ROM and Internal Memory too so….🥱🥱🥱🥱

It was around 2018/19 that I stopped. So there’s that. We learn everyday.

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