In the light of the announcements of the Google versions of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, the talk about Sense and TouchWiz and their associated bloat seems to have petered out. But while an AOSP update is still on the cards for current owners of these two industry darlings, consumers still have to content with this annoying added baggage. The Galaxy S4 16GB only actually offers 9.15GB of storage once you factor in the extra apps, but a new update for German users of the Korean company’s flagship smartphone brings a little, and I mean very little bit of respite.
The update does a little bit of housekeeping and bumps the stock storage capacity up, allowing you to enjoy a bit of extra space for stuff you actually want. Before you go running off to the Play Store to download The Avengers in high definition, though, the update only pushes things up from 9.15GB to 9.23GB. But hey, it’s still a few extra photos, apps or songs for you to retain on your device’s flash storage, and if it ever does occur that an update lets users to do away with all that added timber, at least things won’t be so tight in the meantime.
As well as the minuscule bit of extra space, the update also allows users to move apps to the SD memory card, but obviously, this will likely have an adverse effect on performance. There’s also new camera firmware, HDR video recording, better legibility and a whole host of other bug fixes and performance enhancements.
Unfortunately, as aforementioned, the update is only available to German owners of the Snapdragon Galaxy S4 (I9505), but if you don’t happen to reside in the land of poets and thinkers, you can bet that a similar update will soon be available where you are.
Of course, things would be a lot easier if the Galaxy S4 released on stock Android (or TouchWiz et al was removable at the discretion of the users), but while this may not have happened from the get-go this time around, the almost repenting move to deliver a ‘Nexus’ version does bode well for future releases.
Anyway, we’ll keep you updated should we hear of any more markets receiving the corresponding Galaxy S 4 update, so stay tuned to our coverage here at Redmond Pie!
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