How come iphone 6 128gb only has 114gb (capacity 114gb, available 110)installed but sells as 128gb?

Look, I'm not Ed Snowdon or pretending to be anyone else. I understand the underreporting of capacity. I have 4 iPhones in the family, just upgraded all to iPhone 6. I purchased an iPhone6 16GB for my wife who has minimal usage except for phone, text and pictures which get downloaded to her PC after she shoots a group. Here's my problem:

The iPhone 6 16GB, fresh out of the box, reports only 11.6 total capacity! With iOS 9.1 and swap space required to update, how can they honestly sell this phone? 4.4GB of a total of 16GB is proportionally ridiculous. Can anyone tell me if this sounds reasonable?

Thanks for any insight.

Click the link in the green SOLVED box at the very start of this thread.

This is why no one has indicated that they have been helped by ANY of the answers. Does this bother any of

you high-level "experts"?

I read the referenced article but I also asked for your OPINION!

"Should Apple honestly market a 16GB phone that barely has room to load iOS 9.1 and swap space to update after most basic use?"

Additionally, how about you READ the question before answering blindly? What I noted is that PROPOTIONALLY the two systems for measuring flash drive are misreporting the difference on a 16GB vs 32GB vs 64GB vs 128GB because they should be proportional to each other but they're not.

Any experts out there care to venture an actual answer?

This is a technical support forum. It is not a blog and is not an appropriate place for philosophical opinions. The memory on any iPhone is what it is. We can explain why it is what it is, but whether it is or is not what you think it should be is irrelevant. The simple facts are:

• 16 GB is really 16 GB, but when that 16 GB is displayed on the phone it appears to be 14.95 GB simply because the measurement system is different. Like 100 pounds is only 45 kilograms. That doesn't mean that it is any less if you weigh it on a scale that only shows kilograms.
• The real difference is thus between 14.95 GB and 11.4 GB. Or, if you prefer to use decimal measurements, the 11.4 GB in base 2 is 12.2 GB in base 10.
• Sticking to base 10 measurements, 16 GB - 12.2 GB is 3.8 GB. This space is used by iOS, by the "disk" formatting, by iOS data, and by the file location map. This last item is the only thing that varies with the overall capacity of the device; there are more sectors in 128 GB than there are in 16 GB, so the location map will need to be much larger for the higher capacity device.

This is the same way capacity has been reported and described on every computing device ever made over the past 65 years. It would be pointless to discuss if 65 years ago the wrong standard was chosen; it is what it is.

Boy Larry, I'm sorry; you're clearly a superior human being. My fault for not realizing the difference between a technical support forum and a blog.

Please accept my deep apologies for asking someone to venture an opinion on the ethics of marketing

<Edited by Host>

So, do you want "an actual answer" as indicated in your penultimate post, or someone to "venture an opinion" as indicated in your last post?

rdunne3 wrote:

This is why no one has indicated that they have been helped by ANY of the answers. Does this bother any of

you high-level "experts"?

I read the referenced article but I also asked for your OPINION!

"Should Apple honestly market a 16GB phone that barely has room to load iOS 9.1 and swap space to update after most basic use?"

Additionally, how about you READ the question before answering blindly? What I noted is that PROPOTIONALLY the two systems for measuring flash drive are misreporting the difference on a 16GB vs 32GB vs 64GB vs 128GB because they should be proportional to each other but they're not.

Any experts out there care to venture an actual answer?

They are not linearly proportional because as total storage size increases, the sector size and file system layout also changes, to make optimal use of the available storage. The same thing goes for conventional hard drives, available formatted storage is not strictly linear with increasing formatted capacity.

Do they not teach the differences in base 10 and base 2 math in schools any longer? I can understand people not understanding the finer points of binary storage formats such as sector size and so forth, but grasping the simple difference between capacity in base 10 versus base 2 should be simple for anyone with a high school diploma.

You know, I finally get a sensible and responsive answer to my question and yet your insecurity causes you to be snarky and condescending in your response. I don't know what they teach anymore in high school since I'm 52 years old, but I did learn the difference between base 10 and base 2. However I had not considered that there would be a non-linear correlation between different size of capacity.

Thanks for your answer,

<Edited by Host>

rdunne3 wrote:

You know, I finally get a sensible and responsive answer to my question and yet your insecurity causes you to be snarky and condescending in your response. I don't know what they teach anymore in high school since I'm 52 years old, but I did learn the difference between base 10 and base 2. However I had not considered that there would be a non-linear correlation between different size of capacity.

Thanks for your answer, it was the first informative one offered but maybe go see a therapist for that brilliant lack of self-confidence?

I'm 53 years old and, back in my day, I was taught that ad hominem attacks have no place in an argument between adults.

unlike your friends who questioned my academic credentials, my comment was not ad hominem, actually it's a professional opinion and advice. They all seem to suffer from a big dose of insecurity with a side of projection that leads them to insult people to fill their need to demonstrate their intelligence and superiority over we technical illiterates who shouldn't own a piece of computing equipment if we are incapable of understanding its internal workings. Glad none of you are my patients.

News Flash: regular people without a CS degree use cell phones, etc., especially Apple products which are sleek, simple and convenient for those of us who are too busy to troll discussion boards under the guise of helping. Never again! I'd rather pay for an actual genius at the bar who at least pretends to be patient with me.

rustic204 wrote:

You might want to recheck your sources and let us know.......

Does that mean that you are not able to let us see your sources, if so, why not?

grom751 wrote:

Ok so your OS takes 8gb why mine takes 14?

Because a 128GB phone requires a lot more space in its File Allocation Table than a 64GB phone, which in turn uses more space than a 32GB phone. Not so hard to understand.

rdunne3 wrote:

unlike your friends who questioned my academic credentials, my comment was not ad hominem,

Calling other posters a "bunch of arrogant jerks" is a professional opinion? Advice?

Lots of people, by the way, have found Michael and Lawrence's answers helpful. That's where they got all the points. Given that only about 20% of posters (someone correct me if I've got that wrong) ever bother to mark posts as solved, that means they've helped a lot of people. If you are referring to the "This helped me" at the bottom of every post, they are a relatively recent addition and no, almost no one appears to have noticed them.

rdunne3 wrote:

unlike your friends who questioned my academic credentials, my comment was not ad hominem,

Certainly looks that way to me.

I don't question your credentials, just your manner.

Apple should fix their code to display the gb properly. Niff said;)

<Edited by Host>