Help 16gb means what?

[PeterSquires]

Ok, please dont shout if this is a really stupid question.

My Galaxy S2 16GB arrived today and it is my first Android.

I thought that 16GB meant it had a 16GB SD card supplied with it, but there does not appear to be a SD card in it?

Storage reads as follows;
System storage 1.97GB
USB Storage (whatever that is) 11.5GB
SD Card 0GB

Any advice gladly accepted,

Peter

 

[Trev186]

Ok, please dont shout if this is a really stupid question.

My Galaxy S2 16GB arrived today and it is my first Android.

I thought that 16GB meant it had a 16GB SD card supplied with it, but there does not appear to be a SD card in it?

Storage reads as follows;
System storage 1.97GB
USB Storage (whatever that is) 11.5GB
SD Card 0GB

Any advice gladly accepted,

Peter

An actual plus of the Galaxy s line is they include INTERNAL MEMORY in addition to an optional SD card slot.

Your phone has 16 GBs (or 32 Gbs if you pay more) Internal memory supplied. Adding a 32 GB SD Card will give you even more.

This is a huge advantage of the Samsung line for someone like me who has loads of media they want on their phone. Most other phones either do less internal memory or none at all.

 

[blagger]

The phone itself has 16GB onboard, my figures read the same as yours. You do not get an additional SD card with it.

However those that ordered from Phones4U got a free 8GB SD card, got mine this morning.

 

[Quboid]

As mentioned, it is 16GB of internal storage. You can put a MicroSD card in if you want more.

The 16GB in split: 2GB for apps, 11.5GB "USB Storage" for media (music, photos, movies etc). This of course adds up to 13.5GB - where the other 2.5GB has gone, I don't know. Even if they use the 1KB = 1000B (which is flat out lying, but hard disk manufacturers do it), that's 1.4GB missing.

 

[PeterSquires]

The phone itself has 16GB onboard, my figures read the same as yours. You do not get an additional SD card with it.

However those that ordered from Phones4U got a free 8GB SD card, got mine this morning.

Just remembered another thing that really confuses me - when I click on "My Files", it states /sdcard before the folders, which made me think that these files are on a non exsistant sdcard?

Confused of Cambridgeshire

 

[Quboid]

It is a bit confusing that. In My Files, /sdcard is the internal memory and /sdcard/external_sd is the MicroSD card, if you have one.

 

[DT]

Even if they use the 1KB = 1000B (which is flat out lying, but hard disk manufacturers do it), that's 1.4GB missing.

I believe the space allocated for the kernel, bootloader, etc., is a separate memory area that's not part of the total calculation of "usable" memory.

Just remembered another thing that really confuses me - when I click on "My Files", it states /sdcard before the folders, which made me think that these files are on a non exsistant sdcard?

Confused of Cambridgeshire

The part of the internal memory that's set aside for "user files" like media, documents, etc., mounts under /sdcard, which I always thought was an odd choice (it's kind of a "virtual SD card" I suppose).

When/if you install an "external" card, it mounts as /mnt/external_sd (technically the sdcard is also under /mnt/sdcard but when you connect via USB you just see the root).

 

[PeterSquires]

I believe the space allocated for the kernel, bootloader, etc., is a separate memory area that's not part of the total calculation of "usable" memory.



The part of the internal memory that's set aside for "user files" like media, documents, etc., mounts under /sdcard, which I always thought was an odd choice (it's kind of a "virtual SD card" I suppose).

When/if you install an "external" card, it mounts as /mnt/external_sd (technically the sdcard is also under /mnt/sdcard but when you connect via USB you just see the root).

Many thanks for a clear explanation of an illogical use of words by Samsung or Android, whichever. Obviously not designed for fools like me

 

[XplosiV]

Don't forget with any kind of drive, it has to be formatted. An 80gb hard drive only gives you 76.x gb as formatting it will create some kind of directory structure and file allocation table (fat/fat32/ntfs/ext2/ext3/ext4) so some of that 16gb will be lost effectively 3 times over, one for each partition, kernel, apps, personal storage.

 

[Quboid]

Don't forget with any kind of drive, it has to be formatted. An 80gb hard drive only gives you 76.x gb as formatting it will create some kind of directory structure and file allocation table (fat/fat32/ntfs/ext2/ext3/ext4) so some of that 16gb will be lost effectively 3 times over, one for each partition, kernel, apps, personal storage.

The File Allocation Table and suchlike don't take much room - the misrepresentation of a kilobyte as 1000 bytes, rather than 1024 bytes, is the cause of a lot more.

It should be:
80GB = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 x 80 = 85,899,345,920 bytes

Disc manufacturers lie about it and claim:
80GB = 1000 x 1000 x 1000 x 80 = 80,000,000,000 bytes (80 billion)

80 billion bytes is actually:
80 billion / 1024 = 78,125,000 Kilobytes, /1024 = 76,294 Megabytes, /1024 = 74.5 Gigabytes

By the same logic, 16 billion bytes is 14.9GB. I should point out that I don't know if they are doing this, earlier sold state manufacturers actually measured honestly but I wouldn't be surprised if this has stopped.

For some reason I'd assumed there was a separate drive for system stuff like the kernel. I've no actual reason for thinking this. Even so, 1.4GB is a lot considering it was a couple of hundred megs on my Desire.

 

[XplosiV]

You could always try partitioning a 16gb sd card into 3 drives and see what your cumulative usable space is. Theory is one thing, practice is another.

It does not matter if you partition an 80gb drive as fat, fat32, or ntfs, you still get only 76.x gb usable space. The other variable is sector size.

From a manufacturer point of view, if your putting 16gb of ram into a phone with the intention of partitioning it between apps storage and personal storage, why not swype off 100mb for the kernel/system data, like why bother spending out for an additional 128/256mb rom chip when you already have that juicy 16gb sat there that the average user probably won't fill.

 

[Uber-Duper]

Hey Guys

Android is a Linux OS, as such, i'd imagine that the missing 1GB is partitioned as swap space. This is aside from RAM, and is not accessible within the OS.

Hope this helps

 

[MagicMarker]

Hi, what is the maximum micro SD card size you can put in it?

Edit: I think it's 32gb, can I get any Mirco SD card?

Edit again: http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxys2/html/specification.html
It is 32gb.

What class would I need?

 

[Quboid]

You can use any class, the class is the speed; higher is faster and therefore better. It refers to the minimum write speed in megabytes per second. In practise, a class 10 MicroSD card will generally write at about 14MB/s, and read at around 18MB/s. YMMV.