Back in January, an interesting infographic emerged comparing the actual amount of storage space our smartphones offer versus the quoted capacity, and it showed that Samsung’s Galaxy S4 was the biggest culprit for filling devices up with bloatware. Conversely, the iPhone 5c offered the most storage for a 16GB device, and the release just yesterday of a new 8GB iPhone 5c has thrown up the fascinating statistic that in terms of actual storage, the 16GB Galaxy S4 is a mere 3.7GB ahead of Apple’s new 8GB iPhone 5c.
The storage situation is seemingly cut-and-dried in the eye of the consumer, and why not? When walking into a store to pick up a new smartphone, one would expect that a 16GB smartphone from one vendor would be able to pack the same amount of movies, music, apps and other such fodder as the next model, but as the previous graphic from tech market researcher Which found, this is simply not the case.
With the new iPhone 5c, Apple dropped the price to reflect the new storage capacity, but while the Samsung Galaxy S4, with 16GB of storage, may seem like a more attractive prospect if you’re big on your entertainment services, the reality is that with so many additional apps, services, and the TouchWiz launcher sitting atop Android, you’re actually left with very little real estate to play around with.
Sure, the iPhone 5c has to cope with iOS and Apple’s assortment of stock apps, but the severity to which it affects the amount of space left over is minimal by comparison to some of the market’s other notable handsets. After factoring all of the additional clutter, owners of the 16GB Galaxy S4 are left with a mere 8.56GB to use for themselves, and whilst it is not the only culprit, it is by far the worst.
In a way, the idea of getting the amount of storage written on the packaging is becoming a fallacy, in a similar manner to which number of megapixels quoted for a camera’s sensor is not necessarily reflective of its overall performance.
But while HTC, for example, has made attempts to dispel the ‘megapixel myth’ affecting the point-and-shoot community, perhaps there needs to be a movement to highlight the fact that the consumer is ultimately being misled on how much ‘storage’ is actually out of reach, thanks to the number of apps that both OEMs and carriers decide to throw in for good measure.
(Source: AppleInsider)
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