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Can someone tell me why we can't get a 32 or 64 gig phone?

Difference in price is just bonkers

http://oi34.tinypic.com/34ysfmu.jpg

that's comparing the 16gb to the 64gb though...

in the us the difference between 16, 32, 64 might be around to $50. with new contract/renewal the 16gb is $199. i'd expect the 32gb to come in around $249 and 64gb maybe around $300. if they start pricing those models higher than that, it becomes cost prohibitive considering you can buy an sd card to make up the storage difference for less than what vzw is charging for the on board storage upgrade.
 
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I would buy the 64gb if offered. Heck, I have a 128gb iPad 4.

Funny story this morning. A customer at a local corporate store asked as well about a 32gb version. The sales person actually told him you can transfer apps to the expandable storage. Jeepers. To avoid the inaccurate information, I politely corrected the salesman and he stated I was wrong. Double jeepers. The misinformed dude also knew better, but I could not keep quiet.

Yes, I was there asking about when a larger size would be offered, but based on the discussion above, not the best source for the answer.
 
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Not unless Verizon offers a 32gb version. I have less than 2gb free on my 32gb S3, so no way a device with less than 10gb free out of box will work. No 32, no sale.

A lot of folks seem to not appreciate that an SD card does NOT add app storage. Offering this model only is nuts and an insult to heavier users.


These days I need 32GB. I tried the 16GB route with the nexus 4 and I'm pretty much at my ceiling with space, so my next device has to be 32GB or more.

I was entertaining grabbing the 64GB HTC but am holding off for now...

But I don't know man, I might give the S4 a look, initially I was a little down on it but from reviews I'm hearing its a pretty awesome device! I'll take my trip down to at&t on Saturday and give it a whirl.
 
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I represent that majority. Don't game on my phone. Use for business, surfing web, photos etc. I don't even load any music on my phone as that's what my Ipod is for.

I just checked my (Don't Laugh Please) Droid Bionic and still have 7.7GB available and I have had this useless piece of junk for 2 years.

I do understand the gamers point for more storage.

You would also think it would make more sense to offer this during pre orders as the carriers would have additional time to fill those orders and early ordering would be an indicator as to what the masses are looking for.



to the contrary, i think more android users appreciate the difference between on board and sd card storage (when it comes to app use) than you might be giving credit for.

imo the main factor is the type of user. it kinda comes down to gamers and non-gamers.

i'd consider myself a heavy user (mostly business and leisure) and have more than 70 apps installed on my phone (which use ~2gb on board storage), but only a handful of games. media is by far the storage hog on my phone taking up over 20gb. all that stuff can go on an 32 sd card i already have. if i need more media storage i'll get a 64 gb sd card.

i can see gamers who use their phone as their main gaming device having an issue with only 16gb of storage. especially since all that stuff likes to reside in on board memory. but even then, 32gb on board might eventually be too little for gamers. my nexus 7 is my gaming device and since i don't keep much media on it the 32gb on board works.

strategically i think this is a decent move for vzw since it doesn't put even more distance between their release and the other carriers who are releasing before them. who knows why there is a wait for the 32gb s4, but it is odd. the sliver lining seems to be that most the carriers are waiting for the 32gb version and there's the fact that this phone supports sd cards. so based on the type of user, the 16gb will probably suffice for the large majority of consumers.
 
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I do not think VZW or others (in NA) have intent on selling anything higher anytime soon. The common answer from several stores has been "You can transfer and install apps on the sd card". Their own staff are telling customers this and even a sales rep on a call commented this as well. Scary ignorant and misleading customers.

If you are not a gamer or do not use some of the more data hungry apps, the 9-ish gb free is plenty. There are about 30% (edit: 15% is more accurate) of us (that buy this device segment type) though that do want the additional space for apps. The average EA and Gameloft game now as example is 1.5GB when including data stored by the app.

There is a rumor being pushed by some media the reason the 32GB S3 was retired was demand for bigger storage was nill. This is incorrect. They retired the 32GB to position the 16GB S3 as a lower cost entry contract device now that the S4 has been released.

Catch is there is no 32GB version of the S4 to fill the void. For that matter, there appears to be none anywhere yet.

Added:

Wonder why Samsung decided to rush this launch? Bigger display 5s on the way? Doubtful, but you never know.
 
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^ 30% of the total target audience seems kind of high. samsung is a smart company and spends tons of money on advertising and market analysis. i'm thinking they must have results hinting of little impact to holding out the 32gb version since they offer the sd expansion. could also be related to price point and profit margin mix of manufacturing/selling the 32gb vs the 16gb.

that said, i am surprised 32gb isn't on the radar since almost all recent flagship phones on vzw were released with the 32gb option if it were available. perhaps they're holding out the 32gb version and higher to steal some of apple's thunder later down the road?

memory is cheap and ubiquitous so them not offering the 32gb or higher has to be a strategic decision and not an oversight...at least, that's what i would think...
 
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This is the same way that the SGS2 was released 2 years ago. Afair, ATT never had other than the 16 GB SGS3. When the SGS3 was announced, the 64 GB model was stipulated to come later - and it was much later lol.

With 2 motherboards/processors and all of the radio variations, starting with a single storage model seems more like a typical Samsung release than the SGS3 was.

The pent-up demand from SGS and SGS2 upgraders is probably going to move the 16 GB version as quickly as they can stock them.

I don't know if rushed to market is the right term, or yeah, maybe it is. But it wouldn't help them to wait in the face of this year's competition. This year the new Samsung is just not eclipsing everything else in the press by any means.

As for reps telling people that apps can go on the sd card, meh, they've been saying that to people for three years.

That's why we're here, so people can get the facts. :)
 
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If I recall correctly, moving apps to sd was a feature of froyo or gingerbread (can't remember which one) that was disabled with ICS. I remember doing it on my old Droid Charge 2 years ago. With fragmentation across many devices with many being left on these old OSs, it may not be technically incorrect for the rep to say it given the context. But you are right that it should not be assumed to be true on these newer devices.
 
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I think that it was Froyo and there was an Eclair app for it before that. (edit, maybe it was Gingerbread lol)

And it's never worked right because most devs continued to write data to /data partition.

And they still do.

And of those writing elsewhere, they're making a standard system call to see where storage is. On an older phone, that call returns the sd card. On newer models it doesn't, it points to internal storage whether you have an sd card or not.

Sorry app devs, but sloppy design and coding practices are at the root of the problem here.
 
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Please note I stated 30 (which is really 15%- wrong on the 30) percent based on the specific segment of devices and not all in general.

As noted before, I guessed the reason for a 16gb only was production expediency to cover what seems to be a hasty launch to fill channels.

That said, the S3 was also a highly anticipated launch, but had 32gb out of the gate. Catch was the launch was on weighted average, a month later in relation to global area launch. The S3 launch was more staggered in that regard.
 
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I think that it was Froyo and there was an Eclair app for it before that. (edit, maybe it was Gingerbread lol)
It was introduced officially in Froyo, but the GB implementation was better (moved lib as well as apk). But as everyone says, they won't be selling any devices which still have that feature.

Ah, sales reps not knowing what they are talking about is hardly new. When I was buying my first phone one told me that Vodafone were GSM but Cellnet (O2 now) used their own, different digital technology. As far as I could tell this was because Voda used "GSM" in their marketing and Cellnet did not, so he'd made up a story based on that. So reps peddling info that's out of date but was once true is not even the worst :(
 
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Sorry app devs, but sloppy design and coding practices are at the root of the problem here.

I can see that as a huge influence.. but I'm trying to wrap my mind around it taking over across so many manufacturers, with no (that I can see) carrier/provider resistance (meaning, "give us back one of our best marketing blings, you guys: this is basic Android stuff, we're not Apple.. blah etc").
 
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In case it hasn't been mentioned, in my AT&T 16GB GS4:

9.72GB is remaining for user use.

I have about 199 apps installed and now I have 6.93GB free. According to the phone, 2.04GB is used for apps so the rest is used for miscellaneous stuff.

I am not a big gamer and really at most would have a few games so this would work for me. For people who install a bunch of 1-2GB games, though, I can see this being an issue.

Pretty happy so far and I do love the screen (my primary reason to upgrade from GS3)... I wish my case would come so I'm not as terrified when holding onto it bare.

:)
 
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I can see that as a huge influence.. but I'm trying to wrap my mind around it taking over across so many manufacturers, with no (that I can see) carrier/provider resistance (meaning, "give us back one of our best marketing blings, you guys: this is basic Android stuff, we're not Apple.. blah etc").

Excellent point - how did we get here?

I think we know what happened and I'm pretty sure we can say how it happened - but why it happened? That I don't know.

You and I have discussed the apps to sd card debacle before and how, thanks to no user root out of the box, we can't change allocations. I've since refined our previous discussion and updated it for Jellybean, I'll quote it here to save a jump -

Exactly.

What I want, no one makes -


  • Sufficient storage so I don't have to manage one single thing, or, as little as possible, much, much less than now.
  • All user storage accessed via USB mass storage, no more MTP, no more special PC add-ons to get to my stuff - all accessible with the world's simplest USB driver for any Windows, and no add-ons for a Mac or Linux PC.
    • This can be done with an extra software layer between the USB port and memory storage, so stop telling me how hardware works, you manufacturers. If you can not figure how to apply an internal client/server model for that, pay me, I'll do it for you.
    • And you can still share storage while connected, just like MTP, only without the Mickey Mousing around.
    • Don't tell me that my internal storage has to be FAT32 to be accessed via USB storage. With a client/server model and a hardware buffer or two, that's not true.
  • If there must be separate partitions for /data (where user apps+data go) and user storage, then give me a slider that I can use any time to raise one, lower the other
  • If that's all one partition, fine. Do not break it into folders and hold my hand with MTP. Did I mention that I hate MTP? Because it basically sucks?
  • No more bragging about how they've done me a favor with the new age of Honeycomb/ICS/Jellybean storage. The file system models are not modern, they're still stone age, better alternatives exist, fix it.
    • Oh, yes you can span internal storage and an external card and address it all as one filesystem as far as the user is concerned. Advanced Linux platforms do this every single freaking day. Don't tell me you can't.
  • Give me that with options that include 96 and 128 GB.
  • If you want to use a card for that, fine. How about making the device recognize SDXC/UHS-1 instead of just SDHC/Class 10 and letting me triple my bandwidth?
    • This just in, we're all sick and tired of hearing that widgets cannot go on to the sd card because of boot-time mounting issues and sd card speed. Fix it, we've only been complaining for years about that.


Except for one component described above, and I could be wrong on even that not already laying around somewhere, all of the technology I describe _exists_.



But it doesn't exist on a smartphone.

I'm running ICS right now (yep, ICS where everything I like just works) and I just checked.

I have 360 apps installed, over a hundred are mine. To see what an app is about, the obligatory equation:

Android = embedded Linux OS + Dalvik Virtural Machine + apps that run in the Dalvik and call Linux services

About 240 included apps in /system/app -> 350 MB
My apps (includes some updates to included apps) in /data/app -> 477 MB
Dalvik runs with a cache, like a browser, so /data/dalvik-cache -> 340 MB
And basic data for those apps, /data/data -> 1,103 MB aka 1.1 GB

My total /data allocation -> 2.1 GB
Used -> 1.9 GB
Free -> 222 MB

And then after all of that comes my internal user storage (the famously so-called internal sdcard in GB and ICS, now just called /storage in Jellybean, but it's still the same thing) -> 9.9 GB

My camera knows to put pictures in that 9.9 GB slot (even lets me point to my actual sd card instead) - but its config data lives in /data/data.

My book reader knows how to send its books to that 9.9 GB area but it's oblivious to the fact that I have an sd card (unless I manage books there by hand with my file explorer) and its config data also lives in /data/data.

But I have more apps than I can name that simply believes that all that exists is /data/data and as I mentioned earlier, plenty of others that simply can't fathom that I might actually have two sdcard-like user storage partitions.

That all adds up to exactly why I want to try a fixed 64 GB model without an sd card at all, if I can get away with it. I reserve the right to change my mind, lol, but I wouldn't mind giving one a spin. It's a convenient solution to the problem.

Legacy apps and legacy app practices are not going to change. Lack of foresight by app developers is not going to change.

Google keeps "helping" us:

We get to use MTP to access storage. How a Windows protocol made its way into a basic Linux operating system still escapes and baffles me, but that's what we got.

They're hiding storage allocation facts by saying that you have places for Pictures, Music and so forth when you look at your storage in Jellybean. On the surface, that all sounds very user friendly. The reality of our thousands of support threads with people trying to figure out where the heck their stuff is so that they can get to it tells me it's not as friendly as Google believes.

As long as we have fixed filesystem allocations, it's going to continue to be a problem.

Android's use of FUSE - a way of creating virtual filesystems on top of the actual ones - together with large-storage devices - is a huge step in the right direction.

But I have 1.1 GB of app data in /data/data and an sd card with a slow interface that is formatted with a Windows scheme as stunning examples of what forced us into today's climate.

Old phones with sd cards and small storage could always operate without the sd card - and - you could interchange sd cards and the phone would still work. Those are the key points of how we got here. And those were good features. But that's why apps to sd is defective by design.
 
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Just a few of my games eat that 9.7gb space up: Conduit, Dead Trigger, Espagauda II, Ikaruga, NBA Jam, Zen Pinball, NOVA 3, and GTA, Shadowgun and Asphalt 7. All games I like to play and have no desire to app juggle them and my other apps and games- not to mention not wanting to start from scratch again.

What is the point of the fancy chipsets for fancy 3D graphics for phones when the devices have in comparison, low storage? Kind of like building a big shopping mall with little parking space ;) Again, the issue is CHOICE- if you want the 16gb cool and ditto for the 32gb model. As it stands now though, it appears choice is not in play as far as the S4 in NA.

added:

I was hoping the LG Pro G might make it to VZW, but looks like it will not. That was my next choice if the 32GB S4 did not pan out.
 
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