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16 gb iPhone 4 is only 14

M

michaelfields

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 8, 2010
243
0
I tried searching but I didn't find any threads about this. When I got my phone and hooked it up with nothing on it, it says the capacity is 14 gb.

also when I go into setting>general>about under capacity it also says 14 gb.....

where are the other 2?? I'm pretty sure there wasn't 2 gb set aside for the os on my 3G
 
Your operating system takes up space. Also the number of bytes in a gigabyte is different in Apple's eyes then what the actual number is.
 
michaelfields said:
I'm aware of that, but 2 gb? seriously? Why wasn't my 3G with the same os like this if that's the case?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I made an edit up there. I know there's a thread around here somewhere about it, but Apple's definition of a gigabyte is less then that of the actual amount of bytes in one.
 
My 3GS, my 3G, and even my old 1st gen took up nearly 2gb with the operating system and other sundry stuff.

yeah... it's like that with iPods, computers, everything...

In fact, if you buy a new, blank HD, it already doesn't have exactly the same amount of space listed on it.

I promise.
 
"1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less."

Quoted from http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

"1 gigabyte = 1 073 741 824 bytes"

This is in actuality.

So when they say "16GBs", they mean 16 APPLE gigs, which means 16 billion bytes. And 16 billion bytes does not equal 16 actual gigabytes. So take that plus your OS into consideration, and that's why our actual drive sizes are lower than advertised.
 
I just checked my old 3G and it says 14.5 so I guess it's not that big of a difference..
 
Statusnone88 said:
"1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less."

Quoted from http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

"1 gigabyte = 1 073 741 824 bytes"

This is in actuality.

So when they say "16GBs", they mean 16 APPLE gigs, which means 16 billion bytes. And 16 billion bytes does not equal 16 actual gigabytes. So take that plus your OS into consideration, and that's why our actual drive sizes are lower than advertised.
Click to expand...

It's not "Apple gigs" this is pretty standard across the industry. Try not to start some other "Well Apple does this" scenario. Everyone does it. Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, EVERYONE.

It's a difference in measurement.

1 Byte
1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
etc.

What happens when you start something like this instead?

1 Byte
1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte

?

You're taking a total capacity and inflating the number because 1000 is less than 1024, thus by dividing the total capacity by a rounded number you're inflating the size of the drive to begin with. You might think.. oh well that's only 24 megabytes for every gigabyte... no... think again.

17 179 869 184 bytes are in 16 gigabytes... at 1024

If the drive is 16 000 000 000 bytes then clearly your capacity is less.

http://compreviews.about.com/od/storage/a/ActualHDSizes.htm
 
Statusnone88 said:
"1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less."

Quoted from http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

"1 gigabyte = 1 073 741 824 bytes"

This is in actuality.

So when they say "16GBs", they mean 16 APPLE gigs, which means 16 billion bytes. And 16 billion bytes does not equal 16 actual gigabytes. So take that plus your OS into consideration, and that's why our actual drive sizes are lower than advertised.
Click to expand...

You shouldn't call it Apple gigs, because don't all manufacturers use 1 GB = 1 billion bytes when marketing to consumers?
 
IronLogik said:
It's not "Apple gigs" this is pretty standard across the industry. Try not to start some other "Well Apple does this" scenario. Everyone does it. Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, EVERYONE.
Click to expand...

No one's starting a scenario. I don't sit around and check the actual capacity for new storage drives all day. My iPhone was my only base for education on this.
 
Statusnone88 said:
"1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less."

Quoted from http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

"1 gigabyte = 1 073 741 824 bytes"

This is in actuality.

So when they say "16GBs", they mean 16 APPLE gigs, which means 16 billion bytes. And 16 billion bytes does not equal 16 actual gigabytes. So take that plus your OS into consideration, and that's why our actual drive sizes are lower than advertised.
Click to expand...

Actually 1 gigabyte (GB) is 1,000,000,000 bytes. The 1,073,741,824 measurement you're referring to is actually a gibibyte. (GiB) These are IEEE's standards, not Apple's.

However, if Apple continues to list the capacity in GiB, they really should label it as such, or go the other route and convert the number to actual gigabytes (which is how they're erroneously labeling it). Otherwise people will keep getting confused.

Snow Leopard introduced proper GB measurements after all, they should really incorporate it into iOS.
 
I bought a box of 3.5" blank diskettes that said 2MB on them, once.. Got them home and formatted. Turned out they were only 1.44MB, luckily I had my receipt.
 
Alright, who let my mother on MacRumors? seriously, it took me quite a while to reassure her that the iPod nano she bought a while back wasn't defective for this exact same reason.
 
Obviously you're not very keen on how storage mediums in electronics work...

You never have access to the full capacity of a storage device because a section of the memory is partitioned off to the OS. This applies to basically any storage medium out there.
 
Darth.Titan said:
Actually 1 gigabyte (GB) is 1,000,000,000 bytes. The 1,073,741,824 measurement you're referring to is actually a gibibyte. (GiB) These are IEEE's standards, not Apple's.

However, if Apple continues to list the capacity in GiB, they really should label it as such, or go the other route and convert the number to actual gigabytes (which is how they're erroneously labeling it). Otherwise people will keep getting confused.

Snow Leopard introduced proper GB measurements after all, they should really incorporate it into iOS.
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth.
 
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