16 GB Capacity says 14 GB?

all 16's will show that.. you never get the full amount

This is normal - the "missing" two gigs is accounted for by the iOS and other such features that are absolutely necessary for your phone to work.

Was that a serious question? Seriously? Any device with internal HD memory and this includes computers will always have slightly less space available than the capacity advertised. Some space is used for the OS and native applications. If you look at a computer and it you thought you got a 320GB HD, you will see that some of the gigs have been already taken up and you can never free that space up.

yes my new iPhone that came in today reads 14GB even my 3G and 3GS phone shows more. even the 8GB phone shows 7.2GB so why do we loose an even 2GB thats a lot of space. I understand loosing some space not that much. something seems off. and yes this is a real question. I would like an answer also.

Thanks
DP

Its off because there is more hardware in the iphone 4, more hardware means more software needed to power..

does your 3G and 3Gs have a front facing camera? An led flash? a 5 mp camera? a 326 ppi screen? an A4 chip? face time?


all that stuff requires more software to power it. think about it, it's not some conspiracy to jip you of 2GB...

I can tell you with a fare amount of assurance that even with all of those nice hardware features there is NOT 1 GB worth of software to support them. Sorry your wrong. This is either a flaw or a gimmick. Probably a flaw just like the antenna issues and the display.

well the past phone took about 1.7 GB for info.. so all that software added would be 307 MB so it's entirely possible for it to equal 2 GB taken.

then take it to apple and demand them to give your 2GB's back.

Hi: Point of clarification: All mass storage devices (Hard Drives, Flash Drives) report in exactly the same fashion. True storage capacity will be approximately 7% less than advertised. In this case 7% of 16gB equals approx. 1.2 gB "missing" leaving the rest as true storage capacity. No magic, no trickery.

Stedman

This is not flaw and many will tell you it is because of the space needed for the OS or that formatting takes up the space, but they are all wrong.

Many years ago, the HDD manufacturers got together and decided to start screwing their customers. They changed the meaning of a gigabyte from what it should be (1,073,741,824 bytes) to simply 1 billion bytes. This is a cheat and a great way for storage manufactures to cheat their customers. In the beginning only a few caught on and there was a lawsuit filed, but the storage makers only got their hands slapped and where told they could continue this heinous practice as long as they disclosed it on the packaging. Well they do, just in very small text.

The over all effect of this change was not all that great when hard drives where only 1-2 gigabytes in size. However, now I have a 1 TB (yeah right) external HDD sitting next to me. The actual size of which is far less. It is more like 940 gigabytes.

What is worse is that now Apple is playing along and making the OS read the HDD as that size even though the byte count does not bear that out. It is despicable and shameful that we as consumers have let these companies do this to us and get away with it. It is even more shameful that we make excuses for it and do not really understand the systems we use on a daily basis well enough to know when we are getting screwed.

My iPhone 3GS at (supposed) 32GB is actually only 29.3 GB and I am not even certain I can trust the iOS to actually show me the real amount of capacity either. Considering that Apple changed Snow Leopard to go along with this fleecing of it's customers.

Message was edited by: Richard Wessels

Message was edited by: Richard Wessels

remember your phone runs on software and software requires space and it is usually around 2 gigs in all phones

Take it back and get a 32 gig if you are worried about two gigs. Spoiler------ I only have 30 gigs available though so you might try and get a Droid.

The size of the iOS 4 software and firmware is about 328 MB.. I know because I just downloaded it. Also most of the OS goes into the firmware and is not stored in the user storage area. This is simply the same storage cheat again that is ripping off consumers and they do not even know it.

Just look for in it really small letters and I am sure you will find it somewhere on the iPhone part of this site. They will say that for the purposes of storage they are changing the meaning of a GB to 1 billion bytes instead of its normal value

Message was edited by: Richard Wessels

UPDATE = Just did some simple math. 32 Billion bytes is only 29.8 GB and my iPhone shows a capacity of 29.3. Assume some space lost to formatting and storage of the OS and that would appear to be about right. It is still a pretty drastic difference considering that to really be 32 GB the actual space in bytes would have to be 34,359,738,368 bytes.

Assuming a supposed 16 GB device. At 16 billion bytes that is actually 14.90116 GB. Again adjust for some lost space in formatting and for the storage of the OS and there you have it. Lost space due to the fleecing of the customer and crooked storage companies.

Just in case you are interested, the actual number of bytes it would really need to have to be 16 GB is 17,179,869,184 Bytes

Richard -

wow someone has an issue(s).