When the Samsung Galaxy S23 was out, there were tons of rumors concerning various features and capabilities of this handset. When saying this, first, we mean the negative topics. For instance, there was a rumor as “the Android operating system on the Galaxy S23 Ultra takes up 60GB of storage space.” While for an average user, this number doesn’t mean anything, for advanced users, it’s a serious problem. The thing is that if so, that is twice more than 25GB of storage taken up by Windows 11. The latter is a more complex desktop operating system. So does it turn out that Android requires more space than Windows?
Today, from PhoneArena, we learned that this info has nothing in common with reality. The rumors were based on a misleading report in the Samsung system settings. The Android OS size is smaller than reported there.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Doesn’t Occupy More Space Than It Should
The confusing info came from some users who reported that their large-storage Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra phones’ Android system occupies more space than it should. But it’s senseless because the system occupation should be identical on all models, regardless of their storage capacity.
Well, we should have some knowledge of informatics to understand what happened. As @Golden_Reviewer points out, there is a 7% “loss” in storage. Because:
- 128GB storage has around 119GB of usable space;
- 256GB storage has 238GB usable space;
- 512GB storage has 494GB usable space;
- 1TB storage has 930GB usable space.
The reason is that any operating system, its specific module that manages memory, needs some space for storing data concerning the storage. Besides this, it’s related to the fact that we are dealing with the binary system and not a decimal system. But let’s not deepen into details.
What happened is that the system is counted towards your “system storage” in Samsung’s storage report. On contrary, desktop operating systems display the correct storage space. For instance, if your computer has a storage space of 512GB, the system will show that you only have 494.38GB of those ready to use. But the mobile operating systems, in this case, Android, doesn’t show how much storage space can be used.
Wrapping up, the Android OS files occupy around 20GB on the Samsung Galaxy S23 series of smartphones regardless of the model and the storage version. But Google should fix the wrong calculation not to mislead Samsung phone owners.
