I don't know if this should be posted here or on the Debian sub-forum. Please feel free to move this topic to a more appropriate sub-forum if warranted.
Before I go into the subject, I wanted to say that I did encounter a similar issue with a fake RAM size on a 10.1" Android tablet that I bought from a Chinese seller on eBay. The eBay ad claimed the tablet was an octa-core system with a 4GB RAM. Upon received the tablet, sure enough the info section under the settings did really show the device had 8-core CPU with a 4GB RAM. However, the system wasn't very responsive. So, I installed this AIDA64 utility and it revealed the tablet only had a 4-core CPU with 1GB RAM.
Now back to the subject. A friend recently bought this Android 10.0 TV BOX 16GB 256GB 8G 128G D9 TV Box 2.4G/5G WIFI 905 Core 4K 4D bluetooth TV receiver 1280P Fast Set Top Youtube Set and the info on the device really shows the system has 16GB RAM. So, I asked him to install the AIDA64 utility and it finds out the system indeed has 16GB RAM. However, upon looking closer to the /proc/meminfo (see the attached picture or the excerpt below) dumped by the AIDA64 utility, is it safe to conclude that this device only has 1GB RAM, i.e. MemAvailable is 251744 kB with a SwapCached 12944 kB, as shown below?
Before I go into the subject, I wanted to say that I did encounter a similar issue with a fake RAM size on a 10.1" Android tablet that I bought from a Chinese seller on eBay. The eBay ad claimed the tablet was an octa-core system with a 4GB RAM. Upon received the tablet, sure enough the info section under the settings did really show the device had 8-core CPU with a 4GB RAM. However, the system wasn't very responsive. So, I installed this AIDA64 utility and it revealed the tablet only had a 4-core CPU with 1GB RAM.
Now back to the subject. A friend recently bought this Android 10.0 TV BOX 16GB 256GB 8G 128G D9 TV Box 2.4G/5G WIFI 905 Core 4K 4D bluetooth TV receiver 1280P Fast Set Top Youtube Set and the info on the device really shows the system has 16GB RAM. So, I asked him to install the AIDA64 utility and it finds out the system indeed has 16GB RAM. However, upon looking closer to the /proc/meminfo (see the attached picture or the excerpt below) dumped by the AIDA64 utility, is it safe to conclude that this device only has 1GB RAM, i.e. MemAvailable is 251744 kB with a SwapCached 12944 kB, as shown below?
MemTotal: 16777216 kB MemFree: 15818188 kB MemAvailable: 251744 kB Buffers: 888 kB Cached: 205980 kB SwapCached: 12944 kB Active: 320304 kB Inactive: 255352 kB Active(anon): 233500 kB Inactive(anon): 140876 kB Active(file): 86804 kB Inactive(file): 114476 kB Unevictable: 4208 kB ...OTOH, is there any other way anyone out here can recommend on how to solidly check the RAM size, besides opening the case (which I believe is completely sealed, i.e. no screws found at the bottom of the case)? Perhaps, install the Armbian on a USB stick to find out more (if the device is supported)?