How to complain to the FTC and/or FCC about deceptive advertising

[trader_4]

The article just conflated "data storage" with "storage" or more correctly "internal storage". In this whole thread so far, I haven't seen anyone claim that the phone manufacturer, carrier, etc ever said that it has

4GB of "data storage". So, whoever is writing this isn't much better in the accuracy dept.

I'll take bets that Samsung never put on the box or anywhere else that the phone had 16GB of data storage.

What I don't understand is if it's the OS, why does the Android OS apparently vary so much from one phone to the next? Or maybe from one carrier to the next. I have it on my entry level

4GB phone and I have 1.3GB free space showing. And that is after I loaded 100 - 200MB of my own apps.

Not if you look at the phone, turn it on, before you buy it. I think the best the manufacturer can do is say that the phone has X GB of internal storage and point out that the OS and pre-installed apps can take a significant amount of it. Otherwise, to give an actual number, they would have to track every phone they make and update the number every day, because apps are constantly being updated with new versions and can grow.

Only 13.5GB? instead of 16GB? Now you're getting silly. When you buy a PC from Dell or HP, how much free space is on a 1TB drive? It isn't 1TB. It isn't even

1TB on a bare drive after it's formatted.

I'd love to know what those apps are. It would seem that would make the most sense, that it's being loaded with extra apps. But I'm left wondering what the apps are that Samsung wants to stuff a phone with that total on the order of 4GB. That's one hell of a lot of something.

The future updates thing is interesting. I wonder if that's a big part of it. That some manufacturers are reserving a lot of extra space so that if a future version on Android comes out, they can support it.

Yes, I do.

[trader_4]

So you claim.

As if anyone is going to wade through all that or gives a damn.

[Moe DeLoughan]

It was like he expected a Smart Car to have the same cargo space as a Ford Expedition. Nope. Not even with a rooftop carrier attached to the Smart Car - and nope, you can't access stuff in the carrier while you're driving, either.

[Danny DiAmico]

Even CNET was fooled!

Notice how DECEPTIVE Samsung was when they answered CNET's question as to why there was so little memory left on the Samsung Galaxy S4:

Samsung said (and I quote): ?For the Galaxy S4 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 [a] 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 S4 for extension of memory.?

Notice that Samsung didn't mention that you CAN'T USE that SDCARD memory for app storage, which was the original problem in the first place (that the app & os storage took up all the memory).

Also notice how Samsung IMPLIED (ever so insiduiously) that the memory could be used to solve the problem (of app storage bloat).

To me, they are clearly being deceptive. They even fooled CNET (who didn't mention what I'm saying above).

[Bruce Sinclair]

.. or to rephrase that ... it is acceptable and expected that advertising contains inconsistencies, misleading statements, errors and lies. :) :)

[Davoud]

Ann Marie Brest:

Irrelevant. We are in a corporate state, and the phone company defines truth.

[Danny D.]

You should *not* believe that you actually have 1.3GB! You seem to also have fallen for that trick (as did I).

What shows up on my 600MB LG Optimus L9 is 1.8GB (which I have said all along). What's ACTUALLY available is about half that, at 600MB.

I suspect you have a similar reduction in what you "think" is available. You *probably* have something more like 600MB available user storage.

Even after reading all 200 posts in that "how to get android to tell the truth about memory" thread, I'm still not sure WHY they do this.

To delve deeper, depending on your VERSION of Android, what you're probably seeing as 1.3GB is what appears to the Operating System as the available memory *before* the carrier-added bloatware and certainly before you added any apps.

But, what's nearly certain (depending on your version of Android), is that you have *much* less than 1.3GB of available space for apps!

The only way to arrive at the 600MB number (that I know of) is to add up the sizes of all the "stuff" that is in that 1.8MB.

Bear in mind, I'm (clearly) not an Android expert, so, I would ask those who know better than I how to arrive at that number of truly available space for apps.

[Danny D.]

One way to tell, is to add an app. See if the number changes. On mine, it doesn't. Does yours?

NOTE: I'd love for an Android expert to help explain all of this since it's an important figure that everyone seems to misinterpret (including me, at first).

[Danny D.]

That "may" be the case, but, if so, why did the reviewers accept the clearly incorrect answer the phone reported for the "available space"?

The fact they didn't catch on to what took me a while myself to understand, is that this "available space" isn't the available space at all.

I still wish an Android expert would chime in to explain this, but, it appears to be the space that *was* available after the OS was installed.

The actual available space is MUCH smaller than what is reported by the Android OS, on the order of half of what is reported (depending on the Android version and on what the user installed).

So, if the PC Magazine and CNET reviewers did understand what they were doing, why did they report the wrong numbers when they complained about the bloatware?

The actual numbers are far worse than those that they complained about. Methinks that, if they actually knew this, they would have said so.

But, they didn't.

[TJ]

I'm no expert by any means, but I would think that caches could explain at least part of the discrepancy you're seeing. Because each app runs in its own "sandbox," each app has its own cache, with the size of each cache expanding or contracting depending on how the apps are used. Thus, if you check available storage before using any apps, as someone who is reviewing a phone might do, you'll get a different number than *after* you use some of them.

TJ

[TJ]

You need to complain to somebody about your calculator, too. Or maybe your public school education.

600MB is 1/3 of 1.8GB, not 1/2.

TJ

[tlvp]

600 MB is rather closer to 1/3 of 1.8 GB than to half of it. Why are *you* allowed to be so inaccurate but T-Mo and LG are *not* :-) ? Cheers, -- tlvp

[tlvp]

Exactly. And, failing information to the contrary, I must assume that, when they call something ROM, it's because it *is* ROM, and not something an ordinary user can write to -- or erase from -- without heroic efforts :-) .

If I'm wrong in that, well, show me how :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

[Neil Ellwood]

phone-memory.html

I am 81 and even I realise than when firms advertise the size of the capacity of mobile phones etc. it is the total capacity of which the operating system and other pre-installed items have taken a share. When just a little common sense is needed why do people find problems?

[trader_4]

I downloaded storage analyzer, which appears to be a popular and highly rated Android app for reporting memory usage. It appears to be confused, because it reports on the main screen 1.93GB free and when I click on the pie chart icon, it shows 1.95GB total, ~1.12 GB free. The 1.12GB number is exactly what the ZTE phone says is free when I go to system settings and click on storage. And it also went down from the previous 1.13GB after I downloaded the storage analyzer app. The info for the app says it takes up 1.6MB, so that is consistent with the 1.13GB going down to 1.12GB.

So, if anything, it's this free app that appears to be reporting the wrong memory size and it's overstating it by a huge amount compared to the phone, not the other way around. So far, I don't see anything that says I have less than the 1.12GB free that the phone shows. But it's also a curious thing that what is supposed to be a memory analyzer disagrees with itself on how much memory is free.

[TJ]

Even at the tender age of 64, I know that common sense is all too uncommon.

It comes from being "protected" from our own folly far too much. If you're never allowed to stumble, you don't develop the ability to avoid stumbling.

TJ

[trader_4]

You're wrong because obviously the smartphone has Flash and that is what is used to hold the OS, apps, pics, music, etc. Even the BIOS on PCs has been Flash, not ROM or EPROM for decades now. You don't want ROM because it can't ever be updated. Flash can and besides holding the OS, the same chip can hold user data, apps that are added, etc. Further, don't you think it would be pretty dumb for the whole industry to be distinguishing phones as 4GB, 8GB, 32GB, etc, if it's just ROM that the user has no access at all too? Why would anyone care?

The simple fact is that for Danny's phone, Tmobile incorrectly calls the 4GB ROM. LG calls it internal storage. Internal Flash memory would be an even more accurate description.

[TJ]

One should avoid making assumptions that defy logic. Isn't that what got Danny in trouble in the first place?

TJ

[Danny DiAmico]

UPDATE on the first 4GB phone gift: T-Mobile sent this Google LG Nexus 5 to replace (what I characterize as the nearly useless) LG Optimus F3 (with me paying the difference):

Out of the box, the Android 4.4.2 OS "reports" 12.28GB of the original 16GB of internal flash memory as being "available".

I'm not sure if that's an accurate report, as I'm not familiar with this newer OS, but that's what it says out of the box.

As for the second 4GB gift, I'm preparing to root the T-Mobile LG Optimus L9, and take my chances on seeing what I can free up of the puny amount of memory available.

[Danny D.]

Indeed!

The (stupid) assumption I made was that the 4GB would be enough, when, after it's filled up with the OS & bloatware, isn't close to enough.

Luckily, (a) I'm learning, with your help & advice, and (b) I now have a lot of phones now to give away as gifts! :)

Here are the ones just in my hands at the moment: