Apple sued over shrinking storage with iOS8 updates

[Bateluer]

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/31/7474947/apple-sued-over-16gb-iphone-ipad-storage

The complaint, which seeks class action status for others who purchased 16GB devices, further accuses Apple pushing users to its paid iCloud storage plans to store things like photos when they run out of room on the device. It also accuses Apple of not working with third-party storage vendors and desktop file transfer utilities for customers to be able to offload their files.

"Using these sharp business tactics, [Apple] gives less storage capacity than advertised, only to offer to sell that capacity in a desperate moment, e.g., when a consumer is trying to record or take photos at a child or grandchild’s recital, basketball game or wedding," it says. "To put this in context, each gigabyte of storage Apple shortchanges its customers amounts to approximately 400-500 high resolution photographs."

Perfectly valid concern, but Apple isn't alone. Samsung's 16GB Galaxy and Notes lose ~40% of their usable storage due to TouchWiz bloat. Google's Nexus devices only hand out a pittance of storage. Both Google and Microsoft are pushing their cloud utilities.

 

[ImDonly1]

Think it is even worse on my S4.
It is supposed to be 16GB but storage shows as 9.72 GB total space.
That's on a GPe rom, I believe the regular touchwiz rom has less than 9 GB available.

 

[postmortemIA]

Think it is even worse on my S4.
It is supposed to be 16GB but storage shows as 9.72 GB total space.
That's on a GPe rom, I believe the regular touchwiz rom has less than 9 GB available.

Yeah, if you have carrier's version of the device, you get even more bloat. Apple is actually better on this, as they don't permit carrier's bloat to come preinstalled.
And if you don't have root access, you can't even remove any bloat.

 

[Skurge]

Difference is you can add an SD card on Samsung phones also there aren't going to be 16GB highend Samsung phones. They will all be 32GB and higher with an option for an SD card. The issue is that Apple still sell 16GB flagship phones, which is ridiculous IMO.

Also android updates don't need 5GB of free space.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't really mind so much that some of the 16GB raw NAND flash is taken up by the OS, but it is IMHO abominable of Apple not to provide a microSD or equivalent removable storage capability on their devices.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Meh, not that big of a deal.

The bigger deal is 16gb is just not enough storage, and so Apple needs to move to 32gb at a minimum. 16gb is totally unusable.

 

[Crono]

I don't feel bad for iOS users. If they really cared, they would hurt Apple where it counts, and switch to Android or Windows Phone devices with 32 - 64GB internal storage and/or microSD slots.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the mobile space, and there are plenty of alternatives with much lower pricing. I don't think any consumers were really misled by advertised storage capacity. Most users who aren't aware that a big chunk of internal storage is taken up the OS probably don't even have a frame of reference for how big or small a gigabyte is, or how to manage files.

Updates almost always take up additional space, and I don't think any of the popular mobile OS' are tiny installations - and given what smartphones are capable of these days right out of the box, that's not surprising (though I'm sure there is plenty of bloat to be found). That's more a general lack of knowledge on how computers operate - and let's face it, a smartphone is a computer - than a fault of Apple's.

That said, all these phone manufacturers selling $600+ phones really should be offering 32GB or 64GB with their base flagship offerings. Three of the last four flagship phones I purchased (Lumia Icon, Lumia 1520, HTC One M7) did, and the one that didn't (M8, though I purchased the 32GB version) at least has a microSD card slot, as does the 1520. I don't see that padding Apple's profits is a good reason for them not to make 32GB the base standard.

 

[lxskllr]

That said, all these phone manufacturers selling $600+ phones really should be offering 32GB or 64GB with their base flagship offerings.

Especially since it's virtually free. Flash storage is ~50¢/Gb to the consumer buying one piece at a time. To a phone maker? Probably 10¢/Gb or less.

 

[luv2liv]

lol. stupid lawsuit.
what's next? people buying a Ford Taurus and expect it to perform like a Ferrari?

 

[Crono]

lol. stupid lawsuit.
what's next? people buying a Ford Taurus and expect it to perform like a Ferrari?

More like people buying a Ferrari and expecting it to have cupholders.
(Though that analogy doesn't hold up too much, either...)

 

[postmortemIA]

Especially since it's virtually free. Flash storage is ~50¢/Gb to the consumer buying one piece at a time. To a phone maker? Probably 10¢/Gb or less.

Yep, but very lucrative to sell: buy at few dollars, sell at hundred. Or sell icloud space

 

[khha4113]

Yeah, if you have carrier's version of the device, you get even more bloat. Apple is actually better on this, as they don't permit carrier's bloat to come preinstalled.
And if you don't have root access, you can't even remove any bloat.

Right, because they have their own bloatwares!

 

[shabby]

2010 - 16gb phones with 5mp cameras and 720p video 10-50mb games
2015 - 16gb phones with 8/13/20mp cameras, 4k video and 100mb-1gb+ games

Wtf is wrong with these companies, why upgrade the soc/ram/screen/modem and leave storage so low? We're paying $600+ for high end hardware, we expect every component to be updated including storage.

 

[ponyo]

What a ridiculous lawsuit. 16gb is still the standard in the mobile world. Apple is the only company I know with the available 128gb option.

 

[Denithor]

I came in thinking this was going to be that storage capacity was being chipped away with each increased iOS update (ie 12GB available with iOS 6, dropped to 11.5GB with 7 and 11GB with 8 or something like that). Instead I find that people are grumbling that the OS takes up space on the phone's internal memory? LOL. The OS has to go somewhere...

iRetards!!

 

[TreVader]

If Apple are being sued then I suppose Samsung, LG, Sony, and Google among others are being sued for the exact same problem, right?

 

[TreVader]

I don't feel bad for iOS users. If they really cared, they would hurt Apple where it counts, and switch to Android or Windows Phone devices with 32 - 64GB internal storage and/or microSD slots.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the mobile space, and there are plenty of alternatives with much lower pricing. I don't think any consumers were really misled by advertised storage capacity. Most users who aren't aware that a big chunk of internal storage is taken up the OS probably don't even have a frame of reference for how big or small a gigabyte is, or how to manage files.

Updates almost always take up additional space, and I don't think any of the popular mobile OS' are tiny installations - and given what smartphones are capable of these days right out of the box, that's not surprising (though I'm sure there is plenty of bloat to be found). That's more a general lack of knowledge on how computers operate - and let's face it, a smartphone is a computer - than a fault of Apple's.

That said, all these phone manufacturers selling $600+ phones really should be offering 32GB or 64GB with their base flagship offerings. Three of the last four flagship phones I purchased (Lumia Icon, Lumia 1520, HTC One M7) did, and the one that didn't (M8, though I purchased the 32GB version) at least has a microSD card slot, as does the 1520. I don't see that padding Apple's profits is a good reason for them not to make 32GB the base standard.

I'm glad you don't feel bad for us, I wouldn't want anybody to feel bad for a group of people who use a different mobile OS.


We certainly are hurting for storage with a mere 128GB available on our devices.


In all seriousness, have you ever even owned an iOS device? Because I've owned a couple android devices and with the exception to the Nexus 7 they were all garbage. Especially the Galaxy S4

 

[Zaap]

Difference is you can add an SD card on Samsung phones also there aren't going to be 16GB highend Samsung phones. They will all be 32GB and higher with an option for an SD card. The issue is that Apple still sell 16GB flagship phones, which is ridiculous IMO.

This. Its a non-issue on a Samsung phone since one can add all the storage one wants.

Of course leave it to Google to screw up SD card storage at stock as they try themselves to be more Apple-like and flush every Android advantage down the toilet... but I digress.

 

[Sooon]

The original Surface Pro 64 GB only has 30 GB of available storage, while the Surface RT 32 GB only has 15 GB available.

 

[WelshBloke]

I came in thinking this was going to be that storage capacity was being chipped away with each increased iOS update (ie 12GB available with iOS 6, dropped to 11.5GB with 7 and 11GB with 8 or something like that). Instead I find that people are grumbling that the OS takes up space on the phone's internal memory? LOL. The OS has to go somewhere...

iRetards!!

Yeah I assumed that it would be something like that. Even then I'd have thought it a rather spurious lawsuit anyway.

I do think that all manufacturers should only be allowed to advertise the free space that's available on the device when the device is sold.

 

[TreVader]

So now Google wants me to pay $100 for a microSD card in addition to buying their crappy phones?




You guys who claim Apple and iOS is a ripoff, what about your microSD storage, which costs 30%+ of the cost of the phone yet does not allow you to run apps without a custom rom or Lollipop (which is only available on a few android sets)? Where is the convenience of taking your phone apart to add storage that should have been there to begin with?



This lawsuit is retarded. Apple has to put the OS somewhere and Apple isn't the one that decided to count "GB" by the thousands instead of 1024, that was done by storage manufacturers. You are basically suing apple for having an OS at all.

 

[lxskllr]

So now Google wants me to pay $100 for a microSD card in addition to buying their crappy phones?




You guys who claim Apple and iOS is a ripoff, what about your microSD storage, which costs 30%+ of the cost of the phone yet does not allow you to run apps without a custom rom or Lollipop (which is only available on a few android sets)? Where is the convenience of taking your phone apart to add storage that should have been there to begin with?

What? 16Gb(or ~10Gb remaining) is sufficient for programs, and the data can go on external storage. I agree there should be more storage as standard, but it takes a special kind of stupid to argue against user modifications/extensions.

 

[TreVader]

What? 16Gb(or ~10Gb remaining) is sufficient for programs, and the data can go on external storage. I agree there should be more storage as standard, but it takes a special kind of stupid to argue against user modifications/extensions.

Why do you think there are zero android handsets available with 128GB and 64GB is so rare? Hell, in 2013 I was the only person I met who even had a 32GB Galaxy S4, they were ALL 16GB.


Android manufacturers use MicroSD as an excuse to skimp on storage on EVEN THE HIGH END MODELS! They will charge you extra for extra storage but refuse to give you anything close to apple because "there's a micro SD slot".


Also, MicroSD is incredibly ugly and impractical. It's not as fast as the internal NAND and it requires royalties to be payed to sony for use of the format. It is garbage and I would stop buying iPhones if they added a MicroSD hole to the side of it.

 

[JeffMD]

I believe apples suit may have merit if they are forcing you into one cloud storage company, but there are countless 8 and 16gb phones and tablets who never give you full storage and more and more storage get taken up with regular updates. There are 4gb android phones that pretty much require an sd card to load anything extra on it.

 

[tdawg]

Hopefully the courts throw this out as just another frivilous lawsuit. With dropbox, google+, facebook, etc offering to automatically backup/sync your devices photos and videos, there exist a number of alternatives to buying paid storage in iCloud.