Where Has My Internal Storage Gone?

We often get emails from our customers asking why the internal storage available for use on Chinavasion smart phone or tablet is less than what’s stated on the specification sheet.

Take our Azure – Android 4.0 ICS Tablet for example. The product specification says it has 4GB of internal space. But if you go into “Settings > Storage” it shows 2 internal storage partition of 1.15GB and 2.08GB. When you add these two together, you only get 3.23 GB of internal storage. So where is the (4 – 3.23) 0.77GB of internal storage gone?

Firstly, 4GB of internal storage in product specification is actually only 3.72 GB. This is because a 2 GB internal storage is 4,000,000,000 byte, but for computer 1GB is 1,073,747,824 byte because it works in binary. So our 4 GB of storage is actually only 4,000,000,000/1,073,747,824=3.72 GB.

Secondly, by default the android system will allocate 512 MB of storage for system usage only. For the system to run smoothly, this 512 MB of storage is reserved for system only and not accessible as internal storage, hence it does not show in the system setting at all. So if you add this 512 MB of storage to the 3.23 GB of internal storage, you do get 3.72 GB of internal storage.

For other Android Tablets and phones, the exact number can vary, but the same “conspiracy theory” still applies.