When you buy a 16GB iPhone, iOS 6 takes up roughly 1GB of space on the device, leaving about 15GB or so to spare. Buy a 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4, on the other hand, and you get just 8.49GB!
Why? Samsung says all the bloat is because of the nonsense, half-baked “software features” they keep on baking in.
In a statement to CNET, everyone’s favorite Cupertino copycat said:
“For the Galaxy S 4 16GB model, approximately 6.85GB occupies [the] system part of internal memory, which is 1GB bigger than that of the Galaxy S3, in order to provide high resolution display and more powerful features to our consumers. To offer the ultimate mobile experience to our users, Samsung provides [a] microSD slot on Galaxy S 4 for extension of memory.”
New features in the Galaxy S4 that are “justifying” this bloat include technology that pauses a movie when you take your eyes off the screen, or gestures that let you control your phone without touching it, and so on. I’ve tried them: at best, they’re maybe ideas for apps you’d download in certain situations; at worst, they barely function.
True, you can pop a microSD card into a Samsung Galaxy S4… but that’s only good for things like movies and music. If you want to run an app, you’ve only got 8GB of space. You’re boned.
Aren’t you glad you’re an iPhone owner? Sure, 16GBs isn’t a lot on an iPhone either, but at least they’re not screwing you for almost half of that just to justify some crummy software tweaks.
Source: CNET
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
