Smartphone storage specs advertising confusion in SA

Truly amazing how much cr@pware service providers load on a phone. My SO bought a phone from VC. After rooting it and deleting the junk around 600Mb extra memory was available!
 
Allin said:
Truly amazing how much cr@pware service providers load on a phone. My SO bought a phone from VC. After rooting it and deleting the junk around 600Mb extra memory was available!
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You should checkout how much space you save on a SGS4 with cyanogenmod.

literally GBs!
 
What I was getting at is there are no official CyanogenMod ROM builds that I can find on http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ or XDA for the i9500.

I would happily flash an AOSP ROM to my S4 if such a beast existed.
 
Nether said:
You should checkout how much space you save on a SGS4 with cyanogenmod.

literally GBs!
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Did it on my Galaxy S3 and it is a different "phone".

However, I still prefer a phone with a physical keyboard. Just this morning I challenged someone to send my our street address via whatsapp without looking at his phone while typing on his screen, while I did the same on my bottom-of-the-range Samsung. No post will ever be delivered at that address - mine will be! What gets me is that touch typing that was invented about 125 years ago has still to be perfected on a virtual keyboard!
 
The ruling comes after a consumer complained that Samsung advertised the device on its website as having “4GB memory”, yet found that only 500MB of that storage was available to users.

He said that the operating system and Samsung’s software takes up approximately 3GB, while pre-loaded software from the service provider (Vodacom, in this case) consumes another 500MB.
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That makes a substantial difference to what is actually available... and what is available is literally peanuts.
 
This was my complaint. It's bloody annoying, you have a few MB to play with, and when the phone gets to a 100MB you keep getting warnings there isn't enough space to perform functions like open the photo gallery.

I've asked ASA to rule that they must specify the amount of space available to the consumer. Loosing well over 75% of space isn't cool. Even with a MicroSD card, the apps will only install to the internal memory

There's all sorts of crap software, like navigation software with maps which you can't remove.
 
xrapidx said:
This was my complaint. It's bloody annoying, you have a few MB to play with, and when the phone gets to a 100MB you keep getting warnings there isn't enough space to perform functions like open the photo gallery.

I've asked ASA to rule that they must specify the amount of space available to the consumer. Loosing well over 75% of space isn't cool. Even with a MicroSD card, the apps will only install to the internal memory

There's all sorts of crap software, like navigation software with maps which you can't remove.
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This is Android for you.
I fully concur with your view and the ASA ruling. I hope you pursue the problem with Samsung and if necessary request the Small Claims Court to assist using this ASA ruling as part of your evidence chain. Remember that your claim must be less than R12000 - Go for it.
 
I actually took this up with Samsung first, in the hopes they'd assist in removing the bloatware, but they weren't interested, claiming all the software was mandatory, and required for functionality.
 
xrapidx said:
I actually took this up with Samsung first, in the hopes they'd assist in removing the bloatware, but they weren't interested, claiming all the software was mandatory, and required for functionality.
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I would test their statement in the Small Claims Court if I were in your shoes. The windows phone 8 has 32Gb and uses about 3Gb on the system but these Android devices!!
 
I'm not sure I understand. Should hard drive manufacturers claim a lower capacity because space is needed for an operating system if the drive is used as your primary drive? The claim isn't false, just a certain amount is used by the OS.
 
Oj0 said:
I'm not sure I understand. Should hard drive manufacturers claim a lower capacity because space is needed for an operating system if the drive is used as your primary drive? The claim isn't false, just a certain amount is used by the OS.
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But the claim in question is not by the manufacturer of the memory, it's Samsung's claim as the seller of the product as sold to the end user.

Also, it gets tricky when 75% of the claimed storage is unusable. It would not be an issue (I think) if this number was say 20%.
 
Oj0 said:
I'm not sure I understand. Should hard drive manufacturers claim a lower capacity because space is needed for an operating system if the drive is used as your primary drive? The claim isn't false, just a certain amount is used by the OS.
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Viva said:
But the claim in question is not by the manufacturer of the memory, it's Samsung's claim as the seller of the product as sold to the end user.

Also, it gets tricky when 75% of the claimed storage is unusable. It would not be an issue (I think) if this number was say 20%.
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Read this ASA Ruling to understand: http://www.asasa.org.za/ResultDetail.aspx?Ruling=6682
 
Oj0 said:
I'm not sure I understand. Should hard drive manufacturers claim a lower capacity because space is needed for an operating system if the drive is used as your primary drive? The claim isn't false, just a certain amount is used by the OS.
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It's not just the OS... It's all sorts of crap which isn't needed, or wanted. Would you be happy if you bought a 500gb hard drive, and 400gb is used by software like Internet explorer which you don't want, or use?
 
xrapidx said:
This was my complaint. It's bloody annoying, you have a few MB to play with, and when the phone gets to a 100MB you keep getting warnings there isn't enough space to perform functions like open the photo gallery.

I've asked ASA to rule that they must specify the amount of space available to the consumer. Loosing well over 75% of space isn't cool. Even with a MicroSD card, the apps will only install to the internal memory

There's all sorts of crap software, like navigation software with maps which you can't remove.
Click to expand...
Good for you! I also complained to Samsung and received the same BS response.
Now I root every Samsung device before I even start using it. In all but one case I then added a custom ROM, and the devices have never given me any problems. The amount of unwanted bloatware they load is incredible, and then to add insult to injury the service providers add their own rubbish too.
 
The Advertising Authorities procedures seem very inefficient - I responded to their ruling stating that Samsungs change of advertising from:
4GB Memory
to:
4GB Memory (actual formatted capacity is less)

is still very deceptive, as no consumer is going to anticipate having access to less than 25% of that 4GB.

I just received a response from them saying they can't address this with the previous complaint, I must lodge a new complaint against the advert in its current format (which I have done).

But this means companies can just play this out as long as they like with no real repercussions - you also have to lodge it PER product... :wtf:
 
xrapidx said:
The Advertising Authorities procedures seem very inefficient - I responded to their ruling stating that Samsungs change of advertising from:
4GB Memory
to:
4GB Memory (actual formatted capacity is less)

is still very deceptive, as no consumer is going to anticipate having access to less than 25% of that 4GB.

I just received a response from them saying they can't address this with the previous complaint, I must lodge a new complaint against the advert in its current format (which I have done).

But this means companies can just play this out as long as they like with no real repercussions - you also have to lodge it PER product... :wtf:
Click to expand...

This is why I gave up with the ASA when I had issues with Groupon... they just alter the advert slightly, and its a whole new process...
 
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