Hack your OnePlus 3 to take full advantage of its 6GB of memory

When your phone has 6GB of RAM, you expect it to be able to run all of the apps you want at the same time. The low-cost 'flagship killer' OnePlus 3 is one such handset, but people who have got their hands on the phone are discovering the it doesn’t necessarily use the available memory as they would have expected.

Tests show that the OnePlus 3 requires apps to be reloaded more frequently that phones with less RAM, and this has upset some users. The good news is that -- providing you don't mind getting your hands dirty with a little hacking -- you can dramatically improve your phone's memory management.

OnePlus co-founder' Carl Pei, who recently explained what is meant by the 3's Optic AMOLED screen, says that what people are experiencing is by design, and it's not a problem. Taking to Twitter, he said that memory management was balanced against battery life, adding that anyone who wanted to take control of things for themselves was welcome to do so.

.@LucaDuci we have a different strategy for RAM management that benefits battery. We think this is the best user experience.

— Carl Pei (@getpeid) June 17, 2016

So what's the trick? As explained over on XDA Developers, you need to edit your OnePlus 3's build.prop file. This system configuration file is used to control all manner of settings, including the number of apps that are stored in memory.

There are various apps that can be used to edit .prop files, including BuildProp Editor, but you could also do it through ADB. In the file, there is a line that reads:

ro.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=20

You're looking to replace the default setting of '20'. You may have to experiment with different numbers, but XDA Developers suggests that 36 and 42 could be beneficial. Try it for yourself and see what you think.