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BullittMustang

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 27, 2008
615
98
I know we don't get the whole 64gb available. Mine says 56.7 capacity in settings. Can someone with a 64gb model check theirs and let me know?

Thanks
 
I know we don't get the whole 64gb available. Mine says 56.7 capacity in settings. Can someone with a 64gb model check theirs and let me know?

Thanks

Perfectly normal. Your phone's operating system is installed onto the same flash memory, which takes out some space.
 
Wow. Thanks everyone. If you reread my first sentence, I said I knew it was normal. I just wanted to know someone else's amount.

Great to see such a friendly group.
 
iPhone 5, 57.3GB total capacity.
 

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56.7 Is Normal on iOS 7+ iPhone 5S
57.3 Is Normal on iOS 6 iPhone 5

Kinda does suck that we continue to loose space as the iOS advances in versions. but I think Apple can do a clean up though and they should.

Like many Apps that we download from the App Store that are universal -- no matter which device we download it on - the App also downloads the files needed to run on other devices.


Ex Download a Universal App on a iPhone 5S, It will also download the component needed for the app to run on iPad and iPad Mini thus increasing the total size of the App downloaded and storage capacity used by the App.

I understand this eliminates the need for downloading the App again and and again but I think it would be better if the app downloaded the remaining data once it was installed on the other devices in a minor "update" fashion.
 
You're running iOS6.1 though, which isn't a like for like comparison as iOS7 is a marginally bigger OS.

Here's my 64GB 5S showing 56.7GB

View attachment 439505
Uhm…are you saying that the size of the OS determines the capacity of the flash storage?

I get that iOS 7 is larger, but that's kind of like saying that running Mountain Lion instead of Tiger on a Mac changes the capacity of the hard drive. The hard drive capacity remains the same. It's the OS that gets bigger or smaller.
 
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Thank you everyone for the helpful replies.
I have never had a 64gb version, and the loss of space seemed high compared to my 16gb versions I have had.
 
Outside of the OS there is also a "loss" of space due to the fact that advertised capacity is not the true capacity... 64GB advertised is actually more like 59.5GB (before the size of the OS comes into play).

Whatever the advertised space is you should take roughly 7% off of that number to come up with the true capacity of the device. This is what I have read anyways...
 
So why does Apple advertise 64gb when actually it is 57 or 56 gb? storage available..
 
So why does Apple advertise 64gb when actually it is 57 or 56 gb? storage available..

Sadly that's the way the industry does it. Microsoft pull the same kind of stunt with their surface tablets, for example. It's something of a cheap-ass trick for any vendor to be doing, don't get me wrong, but it's also "accepted practice" in IT.
 
64GB chips in the device mean that there is a physical chip in the device that is 64GB. Space gets eaten up by format, OS, and included Apps. iOS in general is decently small compared to some other OSs. If you eliminate the OS, you'll have almost a full 64GB for storage but then your iPhone wouldn't be an iPhone since it would just be a portable hard drive with just formatting.
 
64gb is raw unformatted decimal based storage

in reality the file system needs to be formatted first, then the OS and computers work in binary and not decimal
 
OP just wanted people to post their max capacity to compare because this will fluctuate slightly from device to device, not to explain why it isn't the full 64gb. I only have a 32gb though, which is at 27.5gb.
 
Sadly that's the way the industry does it. Microsoft pull the same kind of stunt with their surface tablets, for example. It's something of a cheap-ass trick for any vendor to be doing, don't get me wrong, but it's also "accepted practice" in IT.

It's not a cheap ass trick. It's just the difference how humans use the decimal system and computers use the binary system.
 
It's not a cheap ass trick. It's just the difference how humans use the decimal system and computers use the binary system.

Exactly, if someone is measuring with a yard and someone else is measuring with a meter of course the lengths are going to be different.
 
It's so because they are legally allowed to say its 64gb rather than 57. So they will of course use the number which looks best.

Also, 64 is a nice round number in the computer world. 57 is a little random.
 
64GB is seen by iOS as 60.5GB approx. iOS 7 when expanded/installed it takes about 3.2GB and Apple always keeps approx. 400-700MB [depending on device capacity] Extra on the OS partition (if u have ever jailbroken your device you can see the partitions and their storage -- as well as the empty space in the OS partition) and the OS uses that extra 500-700MB to download/store certain things.
 
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