Why would anyone buy a phone so limited? I do have a modicum of common sense.
I don't use my mobile to to take pictures ( I have a p+s and a dslr) I don't have additional apps on my mobile ( I have a desktop, a laptop and a netbook in addition to my ipad).
It is only common sense at work.
They are attempting to buy you off.
TJ
That was a good hint. Thanks.
That "Otterbox" brand seems to show up nicely with a google alonside the Nexus 5!
Seems that these case brands come up fairly often: Otterbox Ballistic Cruzerlite Diztronic
The majority seem to be made out of something I had never heard of, called "TPU", which, when I googled, turned out to be
They'll be reporting the available space in a "as sold by manufacturer" configuration; the carriers routinely require a custom configuration with -- just for instance -- their own branding.
I suppose it is concevable that some carrier might require a configuration that left /more/ space spare than the direct-from-manufacturer spec (if so it'd probably be a Samsung device with Samsung Super Bloat somewhat mitigated), but I don't know whether that ever happens in the real world.
It'd be interesting to see a review comparing /carriers/ on this issue.
-- chris
The funny thing here is how you do exactly what you complain about Tmobile doing. You're exaggerating and going totally off the rails. You bought a 4GB phone that winds up with 600MB of free space. That's 15%. So, using the above analogy, that would be like buying a PC with a 500GB hard drive and finding out that only 75GB is free space. 100MB is an exaggeration, three orders of magnitude worse.
And you just did it again. An entry level Android phone with
600MB of free storage is not "essentially a 0GB phone". As I've said many times, I've put about a dozen apps on my 4GB phone and they took only 100 - 200MB. Typical sizes were 5 - 20MB. I could put ~5X that on your 600MB phone. It's not close to a 0GB phone and certainly not useless.
And there you go again.
It's false that an SD card can't be used to augment the internal storage. It's just that it can't be used to store apps. You can still put videos, pics, user data there.
That could be true, but I've seen no evidence to show why they did it. I don't see any competitive advantage to Google to do it and piss off their customers.
You have a valid point. But I think it's funny that you're just as far or farther off the rails than Tmobile. The big disconnect here is between what you expect an entry level phone to do and what I think most people buying such a product are looking for. You gave us a list of apps that I'd say you'd find in some advanced users, not an entry level user. If all those entry level buyers or even a large segment of them had similar expectations, Tmobile would have a huge problem. Their stores would be full of customers complaining about "useless" phones, demanding to swap them out or get refunds, etc.
Sounds about right.
-- chris
Which 'l' do we remove?
I can answer that question, but it will only be the truth, so, you might not like (or agree with) the answer.
Here are the phones I'm talking about:
#1: I have a Samsung Galaxy SIII, which, while it suffers from the same loss of 4GB of flash memory, the remaining
12GB doesn't cause loss of function.#2: However, the whole point of the other phones were to be gifts, and, as such, I had researched enough to know that anything less than $200 wouldn't get a decent phone.
#3: Given that $200 target price, today, I'd get the 16GB Google Moto G (as shown in the picture), which turns into a 12GB phone, but which can't use an external sd card.
#4: However, I was swayed (I admit) by the advertising for the LG Optimus F3 and LG Optimus L9, in that their admittedly low Flash memory of 4GB could be augmented by the addition of a 32GB external sd card.
#5. Nobody told me these three critical datapoints! a. There is only about 600MB of app storage available! b. The 32GB sd card is useless for app storage! c. The carrier used up almost the entire 4GB flash! d. The carrier defined the bloat to be non removable! e. None of the reviews noticed these extremely critical points!
So, the answer is that I had not realized, at the time, that the phones were so limited. Otherwise, I would not have bought them. Even now, I'm trying to get rid of them, in favor of something that actually works for the gift recipient.
It worked! :)
Notice the replacement Google LG Nexus 5 in the linup today!
The valid point they are making is that the vast majority of people aren't going to figure out to ask how much free storage the phone has. I didn't when I bought my 4GB Android. I didn't even think about how much free space it has versus how much space apps that I might download would take.
The latter gets into another interesting angle. With many, maybe most entry level Android buyers, this will be their first phone. Most aren't even going to know what apps they are going to wind up loading, let alone how much memory any or all of them take. So, while I agree that the sellers should at least have some kind of clear disclaimer that the OS, pre-loaded apps, etc consume a substantial portion of storage, a lot of people will still have no clue as to whether 600MB, 1.2GB, whatever is a lot, enough, or insufficient for what they want to do with the phone.
So, like me, you don't have a useless phone either. I find it amazing that you don't have any additional apps at all though. I don't think that's typical. However, as I've said before, I put about a dozen apps on my 4GB Android, it took 100 - 200MB total, typical app is 5MB - 20MB. One could put a couple big, 100MB apps, and dozens of apps that are the size I put on a phone with just
600MB. That doesn't seem totally unreasonable for an entry level phone, especially if the phone is priced aggressively. If you saw the list of apps Danny says he expects to be able to put on an entry level phone, it just doesn't compute in my world. How many entry level phone users are going to want multiple mapping programs, powerpoint viewer, excel viewer, etc? Can you even see a PPT slide on a screen the size of a phone?
I'll accept your math as it makes the same point I was trying to make.
Well, I don't know how long their swap-out policy has been in effect, nor, how many other people complained, but, they gave me full (face) value for the LG Optimus F3 ($240) that they swapped out for a 16/12.28 GB LG Google Nexus 5 just this week:
So you are saying that a "little" lie is OK while a "big" lie is not. And that what is a "big" lie is dependent on the person's perception? And "lying" is perfectly acceptable if it is perceived as a "little" lie.
I guess that a 4 gig memory computer is only a "little" lie if only 384 gig is seen & reported by the OS.
What I've learned from reading this thread is that it's really easy to choose an expensive (say, $500) smartphone, but it seems rather tricky to select an inexpensive one (say, around $200).
For $200, you can get what I would characterize as an almost unusable smartphone (LG Optimus L9 or F3, for example), or a pretty usable smartphone (16GB Moto G).
I was misled. I was stupid. I believed the sd card would help. I didn't realize the bloat took all the space and couldn't be removed.
It all boiled down to how much flash was left for the user, as the sd card turned out to be a useless gimmick, suitable only for user content and not for app storage.
Why indeed? But surely we should be informed as to exactly how much space WE can use to add stuff that WE want before we hand over the credit card.
The good thing about a smartphone is that you have a computer/camera-like thing that fits in your pocket. It doesn't do anything as well as a real computer or real camera, but it's close enough for emergencies and provides some nifty stuff that your computer might not have. AND you can make phone calls with it.
My rip-stop nylon handbag weigs at least 5 pounds. Don't ask me what's in it, but it's all essential; When I try to weed out the useless stuff I mostly just get rid of old shopping lists and receipts. Cruft. If my purse weighed 4 pounds all by itself I'd have only 1 pound for my essential stuff, which isn't enough. Same concept.
I've got a cheap small P+s which I carry when I don't want to carry my GOOD p+s, the Canon A720IS, which is bigger. If the camera in the phone is better than that, I'd rather leave the Fuji at home.
I used to use a Speed Graphic. I love it. I also had an AE-1. I love that too. It makes me want to cry when I see them at yard sales for $20. The A720 is easier to carry. That counts for more. If the camera in the phone was that good I'd leave the Canon at home.
Common sense generally means LESS work :-)
The cheap Chinese mail-order places (I like DealExtreme -- they're selling nicer stuff now, but I forgive them) offer a huge variety of cases for the popular phones and tablets. I can't find one for my BLU, but the TPU rotating cover/case for my Samsung Tab 10.1 was $12 WITH a matching stylus. A friend put one of those on the tablet his kids abuse and it looks pretty ratty, but 5-year-olds aren't notoriously careful about things.
Delivery in about 3 weeks.
The BLU comes with what I assume to be plain vanilla Android 4.2.1. It says BLU when it turn on, but otherwise seemed to have only normal useful stuff. I wish I'd paid attention to the storage space before I started adding what I regard as essential stuff that i had on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 -- ES File explorer being the first.
'Android Assistant' says RAM = 468.7 MB, ROM = 1008.29 MB and SDcard =
1.79 MB. The specs say internal memory = 4 GB with 512M RAMA different BLU with 16 GB internal memory was said by an Amazon reviewer to show only 9 GB empty.
For $300 I could get a better BLU -- 32 GB and a better camera, but possibly with no USA warranty. If I'd been more informed I might have chosen that one. I certainly would now, with what I know, except for the warranty thing.
So many decisions...
Hey, great! Thanks! You proved me wrong :-) . I guess the latter jpg is essentially just your 1600px x 1154px original.
Great. Care to state those "few (unstated) things" you do to about:config?
I haven't. Like you, I'd welcome seeing more ways ... :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp
On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 08:32:04 -0400, TJ wrote in
Plus, what is really important to T-Mobile is that you stick with their service. That's where the big profit is. The phones are just something to suck you in, and as we can see, it worked well with Danny D.
I bought my ZTE Awe in December for $100 at BestBuy. That included 4 months of free service: 300min voice, 300MB data, 500 texts. No contract and after the 4 months are up, it should be costing me less than $25, the way I use the phone. The carrier is Zact, which buys time on the Sprint network.
I didn't pay attention to the memory issue at all, because this is my first smart phone. I didn't have any idea what extra apps I might put on it, how much memory they would need, etc. I was just looking for a good deal on an entry level smartphone and to get away from Verizon, who expected me to pay $80 a month for any kind of smartphone.
So, it wasn't tricky for me at all. And even if I had wound up with a phone that only had 600MB, which appears to be the worst case, I still would be happy. This one has 1.13GB free, after putting about a dozen apps on it.
I'd say your characterization is based on unreasonable expectations for an entry level phone. You can't put 10 lbs of crap into a
5 lb bag. If those phones were really unusable, how could Tmobile be doing it? They'd have a store full of angry customers, wasting the company's time, giving them a bad image, losing customers, etc. Makes no sense to me. What purpose would it serve? As someone else pointed out, Tmobile wants to keep you as a *service* customer. It makes no sense to scam you with a phone you can't use. If anything, the more apps, the more you can use it, the more $$$ they make. The more logical conclusion is that for most entry level smartphone buyers, that Tmobile phone is acceptable, not unusable.
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