Claims that Samsung has misled consumers over the storage capacity of the Galaxy S4 are to be probed by the UK’s leading consumer-rights TV show.
Earlier this month, tech-site forums were alight with complaints that although the entry-level Galaxy S4 edition ostensibly sports 16GB of storage, in reality it only offers half that.
This is because the sheer range of proprietary apps and user interface customisations – CF: Smart Scroll and Smart Pause – take up around 8GB of storage, leaving significantly less room for music, games, apps and whathaveyou.
Samsung has already responded to the furore. But only to recommend that anyone who feels short-changed by the 16GB Galaxy S4 should invest in a microSD card, which can boost the handset’s storage by up to 64GB.
In response to the furore, Watchdog is looking into Samsung’s ads for its handset in next week’s edition. A trailer for the show features the inexplicably still-popular but never-less-than-terrifying Anne Robinson explaining how Samsung "claims its brand new Galaxy phone has an extra large memory - what did it forget to mention?"
For what it’s worth, given how many innovations the new Nature UX brings we’re not entirely surprised that they take up a goodly tranche of the Galaxy S4’s memory.
But we also wonder if, given that Samsung can’t have imagined that the Galaxy S4's reduced storage would go unnoticed, maybe it might’ve been an idea to supply a free microSD card with the phone.
