You probably would be informed, if you asked the question. The real problem I see is that the number is going to change every day. And if Tmobile tells someone like Danny that the phone has 700MB of free storage, the software gets updated tomorrow and he looks at it then and it says 600MB, then they're going to be complaining that they were "lied to" and this time they will be right.
To keep it updated and totally accurate, they would have to have a list of every phone they sell and keep it updated real-time.
I have bought at least a half dozen Android phones as gifts after I had already owned a Samsung Galaxy SIII.
Each time, I learned that the specifications and reviews missed the important things.
I conclude that it's easy to buy a $500 smartphone, but, you have to know what we've been discussing to buy a good $200 phone (e.g., the Moto G, for example).
Every time someone says that, I have to disagree, but, I'm kind of tired of disagreeing since my argument is so simple and obvious.
If they are incapable of keeping track of a trivially simple spec for how much usable flash memory it contains out of the box on the score of phones they own, then they have absolutely no business selling something as complex as a smartphone in the first place.
It's just a single number, for each phone, sold, out of the box.
Given the number of phone variations that they sell, it's likely a sum total of no more than 100 single datapoints for each carrier. If you think they can't handle that, then our carrier's problems are far more severe than the simpler fact that they lie to us about the specs. :)
Do you disagree that to keep it accurate, the free storage space would have to be updated real-time?
No it's not. That phone has an OS and pre-loaded apps. When you first turn it on and connect to service, it's going to download updates for much of that software. And tomorrow the update for any one of them can result in less free memory. It could be different at 8PM than it was at 9AM, because some company has issued a new update for it's software. The phone that had 700MB free at 8AM, might only have 650MB or 600MB free at 9PM.
It's 100 datapoints updated in real-time. Otherwise they'd tell you the phone has 700MB and when you turn it on and connect, you could be left with 600MB and then you'd be accusing them of "lying", which you're already doing. So far, I don't see that they've actually lied. They've just not made it clear how much memory you're left with.
If I were the carrier, I'd put a disclaimer on the literature saying that the Flash memory is used for OS, pre-loaded apps, which can take a significant amount of the 4GB, whatever that the phone has. Then you're on notice. I probably wouldn't screw around maintaining up to date lists because the number of customers that have a problem with it, is small. If it's not small, it would be pretty dumb of Tmobile to be screwing customers. They make money off the service revenue and they are just going to drive away customers, for no logical gain, if they sell them phones that are "unusable", as you claim. What's the point to having your store filled with bitching customers, credit card challenges, complaints to consumer affairs, FTC, etc?
Bearing in mind that these $200 phones were gifts, I have had two users give them back to me, asking me to fix the problems.
Meanwhile, the $200 Moto G is happily being used by a third gift recipient.
Out of just those three phones, two came back as unusable. That's all I know.
If these phones are actually "usable", as you intimate, then we'd have to say for what purpose. Certainly they're not usable if the owner needs/wants/loads more than 600MB of app storage.
For me? That limitation would make them unusable. For my two gift recipients? They were definitely unusable. For others, the 600MB might make the phones be usable.
Indeed! They even suckered me into paying for yet another phone, just to obtain a usable phone on their network! :)
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I had already paid them $240 (plus about $24 tax) for the LG Optimus F3. Then they suckered me into trading that F3 in for the $400 (plus about $40 tax) 16GB Nexus 5, which, in the end, added about $160 to my bill.
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We all know I could have bought that same 16GB Nexus 5 for about $50 cheaper, unlocked, on the open market; but, I had wanted so badly to get rid of that nearly useless F3 that I opted to trade it back to T-Mobile for full face value.
I think T-Mobile *knows* the specs for the LG Optimus F3 & LG Optimus L9; but they don't want YOU to know the specs (otherwise, they would have told us the specs).
It's not like THEY don't know the specs. They just don't want YOU to know them.
I'm getting repetitive, so, maybe we'll just need to agree to disagree so everyone doesn't have the read the same arguments.
Somehow, every other company on the planet manages to understand its product "contents" "out of the box" well enough to report to the consumer how much it "contains" (out of the box) when those contents can vary across items.
Why can't phone companies tell us how much memory it has available, out of the shrink-wrapped box?
As I already stated multiple times, Kelloggs manages to state at least how much cereal is guaranteed to be in a box ("some settling of contents may occur"); Coca Cola manages to state how much liquid is going to be in a bottle; Airsoft manages to guarantee 1,000 BBs in a bag; toilet paper manufacturers seem to be able to figure out how many sheets are on a rool; tire manufacturers seem to get the load-carrying capacity under control; Toyota can tell you how many miles per gallon the various Camrys will get within reason; etc.
Heck, even Safeway can tell me, for every single slab of meat in the refrigerated section, how much each one weighs, within reason.
If a phone carrier can't tell me, within reason, how much memory is available to the user at the time the box is opened, then they have absolutely no business selling phones.
It's that simple.
If someone thinks that's too much to ask of the phone carrier, then we will just need to agree to disagree, & leave it at that.
Hi Trader, Again, I'm repeating myself, so, for the sake of others reading this thread, let's just agree that you and I have totally different ideas of what 'out of the box' means.
For me, all they have to state is how much available memory for apps is available on the day that the box is opened.
To me, that's what "out of the box" means, before I ever bother to insert a SIM card into that T-Mobile phone and before it ever is able to connect to a WiFi access point.
For you, out of the box clearly means something other than that static number for each phone.
That's OK; but let's stop discussing it because we're clearly not talking about the same 'out of the box' condition.
It's my opinion that any phone carrier that does not know how much usable space is on their phone, out of the box, then, that carrier has no business selling phones because they are too complicated for them to keep track of.
Out of the box.
My argument is really that simple, but, I've said it so many times already that even I am tired of saying it. :)
That's not true. The example of a PC has been cited many times. I've never seen a PC manufacturer spec a number other than the unformatted drive capacity. They don't spec what's left after it's formatted, after the OS, after the restore partition, after the apps, etc. You say that doesn't count, because the amount of space left is still large. So then take a look at tablet devices. I just looked at Dell's website. They have a bunch of tablets and all they give is the spec for the total storage, not what's left.
I've explained one good reason why they don't want to, but you refuse to address it. That's because they would have to maintain a list and update it in real-time. That doesn't work well when you want to put out marketing literature, advertisements, maintain websites, etc. All Tmobiles competitors are saying their phone has 16GB internal storage, and Tmobile is going to say, as of 10AM, 4/14, our LG L9 has 650MB, later today, it may be different?
Do any of those products have an automatic update service that can change the those product parameters any time you turn it on? Good grief. And it;s not that they just can, it's that they do get updates frequently.
See the above. Which is a more vaild comparison, beef or PC's and tablets?
And again, to do that, they'd have to maintain a list of all phones they are selling, updated in real-time. Do tablet manufacturers do that?
If I was the carrier and I only had a few people complaining, I don't think I'd maintain a list. I would put a disclaimer on the literature that says a substantial portion of the available flash storage is used by the OS, pre-loaded apps, etc. That way anyone that is concerned can go to the phone store, turn the thing on, and take a look.
When you buy meat at Safeway that they don't describe as "boneless," like chicken, semi-boneless ham, T-bone steak, pork chops, rib roast, whole fish, etc, does Safeway tell you how much of the contents are usable (i.e. NOT bone), or do they tell you the TOTAL weight? The supermarkets around here all tell you "net weight," including inedible, unusable bone. And in the case of a pork roast, that weight often includes a piece of inedible, unusable skin, as well.
Often, the unusable portion could be considered insignificant - but not always. For example, by the time you remove the patch of skin and the rather large bone from a pork shoulder, you have maybe half the volume of the original piece of meat - if you're lucky. That's why it's one of the least expensive cuts of pork. Bone-in chicken is often a good half bone, as well.
But the supermarkets don't tell you that, do they?
It's a pain, but I can now point to the flickr photo directly, instead of to some "photostream" active image.
By viewing the source code, I can reconstruct the image URL, but I have to be careful to not use the small images.
For example, here's a reconstructed URL of the software that I organized for the gift recipient of the Nexus 5 that arrived recently from T-Mobile (in trade for the Optimus F3):
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But, here is the much larger photo reconstruction URL:
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The "trick" is to turn off javascript, and then "open link in new tab", and then "view source", and then "cut and paste" the partial URL (properly reconstructed) into the USENET post.
Cumbersome. Tedious. Yes.
But, I feel that giving you pictures allows you to help me (and others) more efficiently (and picturepush died recently).
And the reply has been, just as many times, that the order of magnitude of loss is nothing like what we're seeing here with 4GB Android phones that end up being 600MB phones.
Notice that there are plenty of people complaining, now that I look at every review, by LG Optimus L9 customers (model p769):
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Most of those reviews were apparently put there *after* I had bought the L9 phone, so even had I known about this web page, I wouldn't have seen them in time to trade in the phone right away for the 16GB/12GB-usable Nexus 5 instead:
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Anyway, I'm setting up the LG/Google 16GB/12GB Nexus 5 as we type, and here's how much space (roughly) is left after adding desired applications (before giving it to the gift recipient):
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It's Android 4.4.2, which, all by itself, out of the box, (roughly) took up 16GB - 12.5GB = 3.5GB
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The pre-installed apps (roughly) took up, of course, more of the space such that in usable form, only (roughly)
8.5GB of the original 16GB is actually available to the user:
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Note: There is no external SD card, but an sd card would only be usable for user content anyway (and not for apps).
No, but if you ring the bell for the butcher he can probably tell you roughly how much waste there is. Moreover, food is likely to be something that you continue to purchase, so your experience will tell you the difference between a whole chicken and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I think they're also required to tell you how much water has been injected into it, but again, that's something you can learn through experience. We really don't buy a new cellphone every few weeks, and when we do buy another one it's not likely to bear much relationship to the one we bought before.
All we want is to know what we're buying before we buy it. Personally, I want an easy return method if I can't test beforehand. It's my own fault that I didn't realize how important being able to take decent pictures of something more than 3 feet away was within the 2-week easy return period, which is a learning experience: test the hell out of something as soon as you buy it!
BTW, with the new 16GB/12.5GB Nexus 5 which T-Mobile sent to replace the almost useless LG Optimus F3:
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I'm done installing the necessary apps into the internal memory:
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It seems, after the OS was installed, there was roughly
12.55GB of the original 16GB, so the OS took up about 3.5GB.
The pre-installed apps took up another few hundred MB such that the Android 4.4.2 phone started with about 12.28GB:
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Then, after I installed these basic smartphone apps:
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The phone was left with about 10.72GB of available space:
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So, just "my" list of basic apps alone, seem to take up (roughly) about 2GB of storage space (this includes offline road maps for California, which are a necessity, IMHO, for when you really need it when there is no cell signal or your data plan is low).
When I plug in that 12.5GB Nexus 5 into Linux, it shows "free space" of about 11.5GB, which is actually 1GB too high.
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