Is there a memory-efficient replacement of java.lang.String?

Question

After reading this old article measuring the memory consumption of several object types, I was amazed to see how much memory Strings use in Java:

Answer 1

I believe that Strings are less memory intensive for some time now, because the Java engineers have implemented the flyweight design pattern to share as much as possible. In fact Strings that have the same value point to the very same object in memory I believe.