Yes inadequately researched and ill-conceived. Seems to have been offered as a result of irrational community pressures before it could be properly researched.
Doubt all you want. Read the history and the piles of posts from
@Mr_Loon pushing for it
This distinction may be a little subtle for some (one?) but what I was (and still am) pushing for was for a 2GB Pyra and a 4GB to be tested side by side to see how much benefit is gained from the additional 2GB of Ram. So when people pre ordered a Pyra they would know whether the extra cost of a 4GB unit was worthwhile expenditure.
I fully admit I don't know if 4GB is necessary or worthwhile, without such testing i.e. knowing swap performance / impact on battery life etc. it's very hard to say.
What I also know is that logic tells me that under my personal usage scenario for a Pyra (running an Android VM with 1GB dedicated Ram & Multi Tab Browsing / Multi Layer high resolution image editing) it would seem likely that 4GB would provide some benefits.
Now, I love hanging out on the IRC channel.
I was so amused when I got to read that the wrong memory chip had been used in the 4GB samples. We got the usual version, not the mobile/low voltage version. There was checking that needed to be done to find out if we ordered the wrong model number or whether the wrong one was delivered. I was surprised that a post wasn't made to update the crowd regarding the issue. I hope that I'm not breaking any unwritten (or written) guideline by forwarding this information. I hope that I don't take any thunder away from an ED post.
Sounds like a test with a board running the mobile / low voltage version would be a sensible way to proceed.
In the out of ideas for news titles post ED mentions :
We already ordered samples of a different RAM Chip (also 4GB in total size) by a different manufacturer.
We'll populate one PCB with those. If that chip works, we can pretty much rule out 1.
@EvilDragon : Is this different Ram Chip the mobile / low voltage version as mentioned by
@pimaster ?