When Samsung began shipping the Samsung Galaxy S4, the 16GB model was in the most demand, since it's the lowest-priced Galaxy S4 customers can buy. On launch day, many customers who purchased a 16GB Galaxy S4 were shocked to find that there was only 8.82GB of available storage.
While it's common practice for manufacturers to ship a device with less storage space than the total amount claimed, it's unacceptable to only receive a little more than half of the advertised amount. Samsung Galaxy S4 owners, especially new 16GB owners, took to online forums to blast the company for only giving them a relatively small amount of space for them to install apps, music, videos and more. The news began to spread across smartphone forums and major tech sites and Samsung was forced to respond to the issue.
Samsung prepared a statement and sent it to CNET regarding the Samsung Galaxy S4 memory complaints:
"For the Galaxy S4 16GB model, approximately 6.85GB occupies [the] system part of internal memory, which is 1GB bigger than that of the Galaxy S3, in order to provide [a] high resolution display and more powerful features to our consumers. To offer the ultimate mobile experience to our users, Samsung provides [a] microSD slot on Galaxy S4 for extension of memory."
It's great that Samsung reminds us of how innovative the Galaxy S4 is and even explains to us that we are getting ripped off in a better way than the company did with the Galaxy S3. Samsung even reminds us that it did think about the issue by including a microSD slot for expandable memory; we just have to remember to buy a microSD card to fix an issue the company created. Samsung could easily remedy this situation by including a microSD card with the Galaxy S4, like other smartphone manufacturers do. The small cost is worth the price of bad press.
