Bloated: Pre-loaded Apps Take Up 50% of Smartphone Storage Capacity

Thinking about getting a new smartphone?  Be sure to double check the amount of storage space it offers and cross check that with the amount of space already taken up when you turn it on for the first time.  Geek.com reports that, because of preloaded apps, the new 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4 actually only has about 8GB of free space on it.  Excerpt:

When a product’s packaging tells you that you’re going to get a certain amount of storage there’s an expectation that it will deliver something close to that amount for you to use. With Android phones, it’s common to simply not warn buyers that the available storage is partially used by the system and pre-loaded apps. If built-in storage is a big deal to you, the 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4 may not be your best choice.

If you head to the Storage section of the Settings on a new Galaxy S4, you’ll find that only 8.82GB is available to the user. That’s the total space available to you, so applications that were pre-loaded by your carrier and anything you sync over during account creation will pull from that amount. The rest of that 16GB you can’t even see as the user — Android tells you that the phone only has 8.82GB total, entirely cutting out the space used by the system itself.