Comment Re: Moto G? (Score 1) 67
It's not so much that the OS needs huge amounts of memory. It's that the apps do, and that amount keeps increasing over time. The resident size of the current Facebook app on Android, for example, is over 100MB, and since it checks frequently for updates it can't be effectively suspended and thrown out of RAM. Some of Google's own apps, notably the Chrome browser, are also culprits.
iOS doesn't need as much RAM because it's not a full-bore multitasking OS. It does limited background operations, and the scope of those has increased over time, but still stops short of the full thing. That means that iOS doesn't need to have as many apps resident in RAM. Android can also suspend things to disk if necessary, but that tends to mess with the expectation that you can switch instantly to another app. Chrome can also minimize its memory use if the device is running low on RAM; mostly it does that by discarding tabs other than the currently selected one, with the consequence that switching to other tabs is slower because they may have to be rerendered or even downloaded again.