Advertised Storage not available storage

Cyber Ghost

When is this gonna stop?

Got a mobile lately with supposedly "4GB" internal storage available. Just over 1GB actually available!

Tablet with 8Gb internal - Actually 4.8!

This has been going on for ages - Got a Xbox 360 years ago with a 20Gb harddrive. Only 11GB available.

I know the operating system takes up space but as it's completely not usable companies shouldn't be able to advertise like this.

Government needs to step in make legislation to stop this annoyance!

D3PO

they don't advertise available storage they advertise quite correctly the total capacity of the storage. Theres no issue here.

I don't know why its an annoyance you know that the available will be less than the total.

Cyber Ghost

D3PO wrote: »

they don't advertise available storage they advertise quite correctly the total capacity of the storage. Theres no issue here.

I don't know why its an annoyance you know that the available will be less than the total.

That's a load of rubbish.

How am I supposed to know that the phone has 1GB storage actually available for apps? Where does the manufacture state this?

Stoarge for apps is one of the most important parts of the phone and they don't tell you how much.
It's ridic.

D3PO

they don't tell you how much but they equally don't tell you the wrong amount.

they advertise the same way globally and its understood and considered industry standard that they advise on the size of the storage and not the available size.

Cyber Ghost

As i say, they need to introduce legislation to change this.

D3PO

Cyber Ghost wrote: »

As i say, they need to introduce legislation to change this.

why ?

do you really think for one second that this is in anyway worth of wasting political time on.

Tell ya what why don't you take a case to the supreme court and force a change be made so if you feel that strongly about it.

Whilst your at it why not complain that a GB is being advertised globally as industry standard as 1000 mb instead of 1024 :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Paulw

Now, they should also change the law when it comes to every single device that comes with storage.

When you buy a hard disk, it says the capacity is eg 4TB, but when you plug it in to your PC, you never get all that space.
When you buy a NAS, you never get the capacity it can possibly hold.
A digital camera that has space never holds the number of photos it says it can.

We're being defrauded of space. :eek:

Again when business say 1GB = 1000 MB it is wrong. It should be 1024 MB.

Same with phones, tablets, etc ... the world is gone mad ..... :eek:

NOTE : the post is full of sarcasm. :rolleyes:

Cabaal

There is no issue here,

The Operating system and apps have to be stored somewhere,

If they gave you a empty drive/memory card and told you install the operating system yourself you'd claim company's weren't thinking of the customer...this of course would be true because most people don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to installing a devices operating system or upgrading or installing firmware.

Tippex

Cyber Ghost wrote: »

As i say, they need to introduce legislation to change this.

in fairness I think there are a lot more pressing things that governments need to bring out legislation for (this is a first world problem and not much of an issue at that)

seamus

For anyone who's interested, there's an actual reason why these things don't match.

It's the difference between raw capacity and bytewise capacity. Manufacturers have always stated the capacity in raw numbers.

So 8 bits = 1 byte. 1,000,0000 bytes = 1 Megabyte = 8,000,000 bits.

Then the pesky computer scientists came along and made their own definition of what 1 Megabyte was. For mathematical reasons that we don't need to go into here, they defined 1 Megabyte as 1,024 Kbytes = 8,388,608 bits.

And so, whenever a manufacturer stated that a drive's capacity was 1 Megabyte, they meant 8,000,000 bits. But everyone assumed they meant 8,388,608 bits. So people felt they were getting stiffed for those bits. Which is nearly 2.5% of the entire capacity. Nothing to be sniffed at back in the old days.

Of course, this has gone on for years. Who is right? The manufacturers are. Kilo/Mega/Giga are all iso decimal units of increasing factors of 1,000. Using it to refers to increasing factors of 1,024 is just plain incorrect. Instead the correct notation for these is KiBi/MeBi/GiBi.

Despite these being the internationally accepted standard terms, it still hasn't caught on with software producers, who will still incorrectly use Kilobyte to refer to 1,024 bytes.

So when your hard drive appears to be much smaller than advertised, it's not the manufacturer's fault, it's Microsoft's fault for not correctly reporting the size of the drive.

D3PO

that's actually not the reason why. Although what your describing has already been touched on twice in that post already that's a separate issue.

this post is about capacity advertising versus available space relating to OS, firmwares, preinstalled apps etc taking up a certain amount of said space.

UCDVet

A lot of people are quick to point out that when they say 4gb they don't mean 4gb...and since everyone knows this, it's okay? I'm not sure I understand or agree with this at all.

The fact is, a consumer reasonably has *no idea* how much space is available on the device. And before you say, 'Well, it is your device, you can format the hard-drive or blah, blah, blah'....that used to be true with traditional computers. But in today's world of cellphones and tablets, in many cases you can't. In lots of cases, doing so voids your warranty and lots of times there are no reasonable alternatives.

Device manufactures pre-load devices with crapware they are paid to provide and users are forced to deal with it. Removing them, in many cases, means voiding the warranty and requires a technical skill far beyond what can be expected from a user. I can root my cell phone and remove crap I don't want - but only because of the expertise of people who figured it out, provided software and instructions....and even then, it carries a huge risk.

The amount of usable space can't be determined, the amount of space required for 'system' operations isn't specified and the amount of space that can be cleared isn't specified.

I get the whole 1000 verse 1024, base 10/base 2 stuff....and yes, it's deceptive and confusing. There are computer science majors that can't concisely explain the difference....but I feel like that doesn't approach the meaninglessness of the 'Xgb storage' problem.

Again, historically, with traditional computers the OS was always an insignificant amount of space for most users *and* they had the option of installing something else - at least in the non-commercial side of things. Maybe it was different if you bought a mainframe...but now we're talking about devices where stuff you can't remove is 50-80% of the total space.

one shot bang bang

i got a nokia lumia 625 8GB few days a go,it only had 5.7GB when i checked it on my pc.the rest of the memory is used for the phones software.

rubadub

Cyber Ghost wrote: »

This has been going on for ages

UCDVet wrote: »

A lot of people are quick to point out that when they say 4gb they don't mean 4gb...and since everyone knows this, it's okay?.

The OP has seen it in the past so I'm wondering why they simply don't just look up about devices before buying them.

e.g. google for the post above

how much usable space on a nokia lumia 625 8GB

2nd hit without even clicking on it

the 625 is less impressive, coming with just 8GB, only 5GB of which is usable

RossieMan

most specs sheets actually state the usable space, or so i've found when buying anything.

I thought it was pretty much common sense too.

SD cards are insanely cheap nowadays anyway.

gctest50

one shot bang bang wrote: »

i got a nokia lumia 625 8GB few days a go,it only had 5.7GB when i checked it on my pc.the rest of the memory is used for the phones software.

All the "shiny" stuff takes a lot of space ?

- it'll take a grand size of memory card though :

Maximum memory card size: 64 GB

http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/lumia520/specifications/

rubadub

gctest50 wrote: »

- it'll take a grand size of memory card though :

Often they can take more, same with some motherboards & ram. They test them with the highest ones at the time but later they often can cope with more, so again check reviews, it can depend on brands too.

I had a nokia with a 2GB card years ago, when the max was stated as 516mb

gctest50

Its just starting to get some bit good - not really all that long ago when they

produced scrap like this and were proud of the progress :

Cyber Ghost

RossieMan wrote: »

SD cards are insanely cheap nowadays anyway.

Nexus anyone? Moto G?

Plus on Samsung devices you usually can't install apps on sd card, just photos and you're hardly going to keep GBs of photos on your phone with USB cables, dropbox, facebook auto upload and whatnot.

It's retarded to think the "man on the street" sees a phone with 4GB internal storage advertised and when he gets home he sees he has only 1GB available for apps.

aN.Droid

Non issue.

Phone has the advertised space. The phone isnt advertised as having the space available for apps but that the space is there. Which it is.

As seamus points out aswell there will be discrepancies between advertised space and available space in the end of the day anyway because people much smarter than us used maths to break outside the standard notation of units (1x10^3 = etc.) and instead are exponentials of 2 (2^10 being 1024)

If you want to get deeper into it you will have to study binary arithmetic.

Nino Brown

seamus wrote: »

For anyone who's interested, there's an actual reason why these things don't match.

It's the difference between raw capacity and bytewise capacity. Manufacturers have always stated the capacity in raw numbers.

So 8 bits = 1 byte. 1,000 bytes = 1 Megabyte = 8,000 bits.

Then the pesky computer scientists came along and made their own definition of what 1 Megabyte was. For mathematical reasons that we don't need to go into here, they defined 1 Megabyte as 1,024 bytes = 8,192 bits.

And so, whenever a manufacturer stated that a drive's capacity was 1 Megabyte, they meant 8,000 bits. But everyone assumed they meant 8,192 bits. So people felt they were getting stiffed for those bits. Which is nearly 2.5% of the entire capacity. Nothing to be sniffed at back in the old days.

Of course, this has gone on for years. Who is right? The manufacturers are. Kilo/Mega/Giga are all iso decimal units of increasing factors of 1,000. Using it to refers to increasing factors of 1,024 is just plain incorrect. Instead the correct notation for these is KiBi/MeBi/GiBi.

Despite these being the internationally accepted standard terms, it still hasn't caught on with software producers, who will still incorrectly use Kilobyte to refer to 1,024 bytes.

So when your hard drive appears to be much smaller than advertised, it's not the manufacturer's fault, it's Microsoft's fault for not correctly reporting the size of the drive.

If 1Mb is only 8,000 bits, I'm with the OP, we need to sue! I can live with a few GB for the OS, but orders of magnitude less than advertised would piss me off.

Cyber Ghost

This has ZERO to do with how many bytes are in a bit and whatnot.

It's to do with the HUGE variation between advertised space and what you end up getting.

For example I bought two 4GB phones lately and one has 1GB (75% less than advertised) available for apps and the other 2GB.

How am I supposed to know this until I take it home and turn it on?

Does the law state that "ah shur you could have checked it online before you bought it" - me hole.

This is a joke of an issue imo and the companies get away with blue murder.
This could easily fall into false advertising and I don't know how they can get away with it.

Paulw

Cyber Ghost wrote: »

This is a joke of an issue imo and the companies get away with blue murder.
This could easily fall into false advertising and I don't know how they can get away with it.

Yes, it is a joke of an issue, so time to move on.

False advertising? No, they advertise that the device has X amount of space, not X amount of free space. Hence, no false advertising. :rolleyes:

drunkmonkey

In fairness to OP he's correct, it is false advertising. The Samsung S4 has to be one of this years worst offenders. Advertised as 16GB but only has 8.49GB of usable storage. Samsung got a lot of flack for it and rightly so.
When your dealing with techies they know it's not going to have 16GB storage but when your advertising to consumers it should state usable space.

Cabaal

drunkmonkey wrote: »

In fairness to OP he's correct, it is false advertising. The Samsung S4 has to be one of this years worst offenders. Advertised as 16GB but only has 8.49GB of usable storage. Samsung got a lot of flack for it and rightly so.
When your dealing with techies they know it's not going to have 16GB storage but when your advertising to consumers it should state usable space.

Except they are not correct,

If the OP can find an advert that states "8GB free space available" ands then takes the item home and finds thats not the case then they have a case, but thats not how they are advertised.

HD capacity has always included the operating system, if you bought a Windows 95 machine back in the early 90's with a 500MB hard drive you instantly lost space to the Windows operating system (in the region of 60MB-80mb so thats alot out of a 500MB drive),

Fast forward to now and if you buy a Windows, iOS, Mac OS, Android device now you instantly loose space to the operating system,

Nothing has changed, except storage is far far cheaper these days and customer's have loads of free or very cheap options for storing their media....dropbox, sd cards etc etc.

rubadub

Cyber Ghost wrote: »

How am I supposed to know this until I take it home and turn it on?

Does the law state that "ah shur you could have checked it online before you bought it" - me hole..

No need for a law, simple common sense should have told you to research it online. Especially in your case where you are fully aware that you always get less. Its not like your some auld granny conned by a salesman the first time buying such a device. In your first post you stated 2 devices which had just over half the stated capacity as usable, so its no surprise to you.

RossieMan

If only there was some sort of site where you type in what you want to know and it gives you the answer.

Cyber Ghost

Cabaal wrote: »

HD capacity has always included the operating system, if you bought a Windows 95 machine back in the early 90's with a 500MB hard drive you instantly lost space to the Windows operating system (in the region of 60MB-80mb so thats a lot out of a 500MB drive),

That's less than 15% of the space advertised.

I keep repeating but I ended up with 1Gb from 4GB which is a whopping SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT less than advertised.

This is a stupid example but say some "man on the street" who isn't very tech savvy decided to buy a Android smartphone as there's a particular app he's interested in and which he knows is a large 1.5GB. He notices the Huawei y300 (the one I bought) is being advertised with 4GB internal storage so he goes "Ah shur, that'll be plenty, like" - he takes it home and tried to install the app and finds there's only 1GB storage available!

The guy musn't have a clue what's going on! He must think his phone is broken or some****.

It's blatant misleading advertising and this has to be remedied

Cyber Ghost

RossieMan wrote: »

If only there was some sort of site where you type in what you want to know and it gives you the answer.

Everybody who buys phones uses the internet regularly do they?

aN.Droid

Op for the last time the phone is as advertised.

It has the space, just not the space available for apps.

You have been given multiple reasons for the shortfall of space and thats just the way it is. It is an industry standard. that word again is standard.

If you are going to be making a technical purchase such as a smart phone then yes you should 100% be expected to do some research on it beforehand. They are sophisticated pieces of equipment and have come a long way since the nokia 3210 one size fits all.

Also nowadays with cloud storage most stuff isn't even stored on the phone anyway. My music is all cloud streamed, my pictures the same.

I would love to know what app uses 1.5gigs by the way.

kippy

When you buy a PC or Laptop do you expect the advertised harddrive size to be the entirety of what is available to you?
This non issue is prevalent right across the board with anything that has internal storage. The manufacturers are doing nothing wrong as what they advertise is correct.
Ultimately if you are that interested in the detail of what is available do some research beforehand. Researching your purchases in general is a good thing anyway.