Honor is advising users not to switch off Honor Smart Memory, saying the feature is designed to improve day-to-day performance rather than get in the way. In a post published today, one of the company’s performance engineers responded directly to the question of whether the setting should be disabled and said Honor still recommends leaving it on, even though the option to turn it off is available.
According to the engineer, Honor has spent a lot of time testing the feature across both lab scenarios and real-world user experiences. The company says its MagicOS software adjusts the underlying strategy based on each phone model’s hardware configuration, with the goal of landing on what it sees as the best balance out of the box.
Honor also says the system has gone through several rounds of technical tuning. The core idea is to use data compression together with dynamic expansion methods so the phone can deliver a larger effective memory experience without requiring the same amount of physical space. In plain terms, the company is treating software optimization as a way to stretch available resources more efficiently.
The first benefit Honor highlighted is stronger background app retention. With Honor Smart Memory enabled, the system is supposed to keep more apps cached in the background, which lowers the chance of them being killed off. That, in turn, can make app switching feel faster because more apps are ready for a hot start when brought back to the foreground.
The second claimed benefit is a larger pool of system-available memory. Honor says this translates into more room for the phone to handle everyday tasks smoothly, helping maintain a more fluid experience during normal use.
There are still users who prefer disabling memory expansion features on principle, especially when they want tighter manual control over how their phone behaves. But Honor’s message here is pretty clear: based on its own testing, it believes keeping RAM expansion active gives most users better background behavior and a smoother overall experience.
For anyone using an Honor phone with MagicOS, this latest explanation amounts to an official recommendation from the engineering side: unless you have a very specific reason to turn the feature off, Honor thinks it’s better left enabled.
