The Samsung Galaxy S23 Android OS consumes 60GB of storage

midian182

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WTF?! While phones are advertised as having a specific amount of storage, many new buyers are shocked to find that a significant chunk is already taken up. This is especially true of the Galaxy S23, which, thanks to Samsung's version of Android, comes with 60GB of storage already filled. That's four times what the stock version of Android consumes on the Pixel 7 phones and around double what Windows 11 takes up on a PC.

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S23 series last week. Storage capacities vary from 128GB to 1TB, but Ars Technica reports that 60GB is used for the system partition straight out of the box. That's a hefty chunk, especially for those who purchase the handset with the least amount of storage.

For comparison, the stock version of Android 13 used in the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro takes up just 15GB of internal space. But the Galaxy S23, which runs on Samsung's One UI 5.1 custom skin on top of Android 13, is packed with bloatware. Owners of the company's handsets will be familiar with how it duplicates many Google apps—browser, app store, messaging app, keyboard, etc.—adding its own versions to a device and taking up space. What's even more annoying is that these apps usually can't be removed.

Additionally, Samsung has a reputation for creating low-quality code, and it sells space on its devices to companies who want their apps to come pre-installed. Facebook, Netflix, LinkedIn, Microsoft Office, and others are often found already installed on Samsung handsets, and there's usually more bloatware if you buy a phone from a carrier. Again, many of these apps can't be uninstalled.

That 60GB figure is especially surprising because Samsung is the only major Android phone company that doesn't take advantage of Android's A/B Seamless Updates feature. This uses two copies of the operating system, one offline in the background and an online one that's being used. When an OTA update is pushed out, the offline copy can be updated while the online OS keeps running. When the update is complete and the phone reboots, the device switches to the updated OS. This drastically reduces update times, which can take up to 30 minutes on devices with a single operating system, but it does consume some storage space.

The bad news for consumers is that the Galaxy S23 series doesn't come with expandable storage. Though for Samsung, it means people are more likely to opt for the more expensive models with larger capacities.

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Yikes - just had a look at my 12 Pro Max:

9.38GB iOS
4.78GB System Data

What are Samsung doing that requires >4x that?
 
Just had a look at my Motorola One, System = 19GB.

I started using Motorola after having a couple of Samsungs and found the near vanilla Android on them and lack of bloat to be refreshing. Not to mention the regular updates, Something that is quite lacking with the Samsungs I had.
 
Before on my S20 Ultra I had a 400 GB A2 microSD that was extremely fast I kept almost everything there, so the OS was a non issue. Now on my 256 GB S22 Ultra I noticed that I run out of space very quickly... now I get it!

A screenshot from my own S22 Ultra:

 
*** This article is factually incorrect ***
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra comes with a minimum of 256GB of storage.
 
And yet still no dolby vision.
no satellite emergency comm as well.
all s23 lens frames are also prone to scratches.

I'll keep on my s22.
my s9 lasted for 4 years before went out for s22 trade in only to realized that it has no rgb notification led.
 
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System - 6.1GB on Motorola Edge 30 Fusion, but apps take around 26GB, some of them are mine, some preinstalled, but Google's apps seem to be around 1GB each which is crazy.

Samsung is chock full of bloatware and features as well. It does run something akin to a desktop OS with that DeX thingy. I imagine something like that will take up a lot of space.
 
Meh, this is nothing new since previous versions get updated to new Android and Samsung UI it takes more space. No an issue on my Samsung S20 Ultra. No need to upgrade as there is not a big enough difference to warrant the cost. Thanks Samsung :)
 
You guys have decided to give the guy who wrote the Ars Technica article more traction when it is simply incorrect. And while normally AT is pretty good, this guy is talking out of his ars.

He didn't know that samsung consolidates app-storage and system-storage if you don't enable the device care app-storage permission.

No it's not 60 GB of system files it's around 29 gigs of system files and SEPARATE APP FILES. Author actually doing zero verification.
 
You guys have decided to give the guy who wrote the Ars Technica article more traction when it is simply incorrect. And while normally AT is pretty good, this guy is talking out of his ars.

He didn't know that samsung consolidates app-storage and system-storage if you don't enable the device care app-storage permission.

No it's not 60 GB of system files it's around 29 gigs of system files and SEPARATE APP FILES. Author actually doing zero verification.
Since you're reference the Ars article, this link was included in it as some kind of validation to the claim:

 
The problem is because Android falsely converts Gibibytes (GiB) to Gigabytes (GB). say you have a brand new phone with 128Gig of storage spec. instead of displaying the real storage partition size of exactly 119.2GiB Android storage menu will display 8.8GB used out of 128GB.

so you have a flagship phone with 512Gig of storage. Android should've shown 476.8GiB total storage. but they didn't, instead they will say 35.2GB is being used for system out of 512GB total storage. so when the menu shows system used 60GB, they actually just took about 25GiB along with the misinterpreted 35GB.

this got caught a while back when samsung introduced 1TB S10plus model.
Having just unboxed and started the device, it was reporting 88.7GB used of 1024GB with 935.3GB free. 88.7GB, yes you read that right.

The size of the usable internal storage (excluding all the OS partitions, etc.) on the 1TB S10 Plus is 982,984,064 bytes. Which is 982.9GB or 937.4GiB. The settings menu is actually displaying gibibytes not gigabytes, but calling it gigabytes. This is a common problem. So 1,024 minus 937.4 is 86.6, which then is being shown as 86.6GB. Once you add the pre-installed apps (2.1Gib) , this jumps to 88.7GB.

https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-galaxy-s10-plus-12gb-ram-1tb-storage-972254/

come on man.. I expect more from you guys...
 
It's 45GB on my Fold.

But this is lazy reporting on lazy reporting. Ars Technica didn't even bother to look into what it is that is taking up all that space, if the reported space used is actually being used.

There probably is a load of bloat there (subjective as that can be). But we don't know from this less than half-arsed 'journalism'.

Look, I don't expect very high standards here. If anything, this could have been (and still is) an opportunity for Techspot to get a leg up over Ars Technica. If you investigate what is taking up all the space, then your reputation would improve and it would show up Ars Technica.

Ron over there is well-known for having some very silly biases. I'm surprised he's still employed (guess he brings in the clicks).
 
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The problem is because Android falsely converts Gibibytes (GiB) to Gigabytes (GB). say you have a brand new phone with 128Gig of storage spec. instead of displaying the real storage partition size of exactly 119.2GiB Android storage menu will display 8.8GB used out of 128GB.

so you have a flagship phone with 512Gig of storage. Android should've shown 476.8GiB total storage. but they didn't, instead they will say 35.2GB is being used for system out of 512GB total storage. so when the menu shows system used 60GB, they actually just took about 25GiB along with the misinterpreted 35GB.

this got caught a while back when samsung introduced 1TB S10plus model.


https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-galaxy-s10-plus-12gb-ram-1tb-storage-972254/

come on man.. I expect more from you guys...
Yeah I read about that right after posting, and at best it is misleading to lump storage loss due to formatting to system usage. I suppose that is to the benefit to device manufacturers, to help stymie potential litigation similar to that which occurred in the early 2000s over advertised storage vs formatted storage. The layman user can't claim they are "losing" storage if the system is "using" it, and users nowadays are far less inclined to read the fine print or disclaimers anymore.

But anyways, my post was to address the claim that the usage differential was due to apps being lumped in to system usage, where it appears to not be the case.
 
Here I am still dragging along on an S9+ with ~12GB of system files. I think I'll skip anymore Samsung phones after this one dies. Definitely switching over to something with a custom ROM so I can be free of forced software whenever that is.

I was already tired of the uninstallable bloatware and the phone has a useless button on the side; they made it a requirement to use Bixby to get it to do anything other than bring up Bixby (stop trying to make Fetch happen).
 
Btw no Samsung for me this year and the year to come. I move to iPhone for the reason that iPhone protect your privacy more them Samsung does for sure.
 
Yeah I read about that right after posting, and at best it is misleading to lump storage loss due to formatting to system usage. I suppose that is to the benefit to device manufacturers, to help stymie potential litigation similar to that which occurred in the early 2000s over advertised storage vs formatted storage. The layman user can't claim they are "losing" storage if the system is "using" it, and users nowadays are far less inclined to read the fine print or disclaimers anymore.

But anyways, my post was to address the claim that the usage differential was due to apps being lumped in to system usage, where it appears to not be the case.

yeah it's probably the reason why. only this time samsung got a negative rep for something that happens with virtually all android phones. it's been 20 years and I can't believe people fell for the same old capacity tricks.

what infuriates me is that the android devs actually could easily correct the storage spec, but they didn't. when I go into storage settings it will display my phone having 256GB of storage, but when I put 256GB sdcard in it, it will correctly display the sdcard as 248.3GB. what's worse is that when I plug my phone to my PC it says my phone internal storage has a total of 229GB, which is what android should have reported in the first place.

one other thing, in the some older version of android, the storage setting page has a different approach. and it actually shows better stats than what we have now. sample: https://www.androidbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Moto-G4-SD-card.png
 
Ars have updated their article
Update: The original version of this article glossed over the fact that Android's storage screen starts with the advertised storage space, not the actual storage space, and then fudges the "system" numbers to make everything add up. Therefore it's not fair to compare Android to Windows or to compare phones of differing storage sizes. The 60GB number is from a 512GB Galaxy S23 device. Last year the number was around 49GB on a Galaxy S22 512GB phone, so the 512GB version, including all the same inaccurate storage calculations, somehow jumped 10GB year over year.
We can calculate the real world GB usage, and while all the numbers get smaller, the relative distance between Google and Samsung does not change. A 128GB Pixel actually has only 119GB of actual storage, so it erroneously adds 9GB to the "15GB" system on a 128GB phone, for an actual size of 6GB. A 512GB phone has 477GB of actual storage, so Samsung's 60GB storage size is 25GB on a 512GB phone, where last year it was 15GB. Samsung's 25GB Android package is still bigger than ever and four times the size of Google's 6GB Android install.

instead of acknowledging the mistake they made.. they resorted to "but last year it was smaller". typical sloppy journalism
 
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