PCWorld: A lot of new 64GB Android phones use more SYSTEM space than does a Windows 10 PC due, apparently, to seamless updates & hardware abstraction

PCWorld: A lot of new 64GB Android phones use more SYSTEM space than does a
Windows 10 PC due, apparently, to seamless updates & hardware abstraction

All verbatim below, dateline today...

"*That's more space for system files than a Windows 10 PC requires*"
- LG V60: 28GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- OnePlus 7T: 27GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- Pixel 4 XL: 25GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- Galaxy S20 Ultra: 20.4GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- OnePlus 8 Pro: 20GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- Galaxy S10: 19GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- Pixel 3a: 15GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)

"The crux of the issue seems to be with hardware abstraction (Project
Treble) and A/B partition selection (Seamless Updates). Those are the
features that help your phone update faster by segmenting important system
partitions like boot and vendor. That way phones can receive important
updates in the background, and install and reboot quickly without the risk
of corrupting important system files and bricking your phone."

"For some perspective, that's more space for system files than a Windows
10 PC requires. On a 64GB phone, system files could eat up 30 percent of
your allotted space. Add some bloatware, a few games, your favorite apps,
and a 4K movie or two, and you're pushing the limits of what your phone can
hold. Clear cache and restart all you want, that space isn't coming back."

"If Apple can build a modern operating system that uses a small fraction
of space of your internal storage, then Google should be able to as well."
--
Why 64GB isn't enough space for Android phones anymore
System files have ballooned to nearly 30GB on some phones.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3561890/why-64gb-isnt-enough-space-for-android-phones-anymore.html

In other words... It could be worse.
That's kind of funny.


Arlen Holder wrote:

PCWorld: A lot of new 64GB Android phones use more SYSTEM space than does a
Windows 10 PC due, apparently, to seamless updates & hardware abstraction

All verbatim below, dateline today...

"*That's more space for system files than a Windows 10 PC requires*"
- LG V60: 28GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- OnePlus 7T: 27GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- Pixel 4 XL: 25GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- Galaxy S20 Ultra: 20.4GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- OnePlus 8 Pro: 20GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- Galaxy S10: 19GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)
- Pixel 3a: 15GB (is used up out of the original 64GB)

"The crux of the issue seems to be with hardware abstraction (Project
Treble) and A/B partition selection (Seamless Updates). Those are the
features that help your phone update faster by segmenting important system
partitions like boot and vendor. That way phones can receive important
updates in the background, and install and reboot quickly without the risk
of corrupting important system files and bricking your phone."

"For some perspective, that's more space for system files than a Windows
10 PC requires. On a 64GB phone, system files could eat up 30 percent of
your allotted space. Add some bloatware, a few games, your favorite apps,
and a 4K movie or two, and you're pushing the limits of what your phone can
hold. Clear cache and restart all you want, that space isn't coming back."

"If Apple can build a modern operating system that uses a small fraction
of space of your internal storage, then Google should be able to as well."

Arlen Holder wrote:

"For some perspective, that's more space for system files than a
Windows 10 PC requires. On a 64GB phone, system files could eat up
30 percent of your allotted space. Add some bloatware, a few
games, your favorite apps, and a 4K movie or two, and you're
pushing the limits of what your phone can hold. Clear cache and
restart all you want, that space isn't coming back."

But who cares. Using a smartphone as a personal computer would be like
wearing a straitjacket. Ewww.

Using it to get from here to there, fine. But a real computer should be
there.

Seems to be a substantial number of people on YouTube comment sections
who use a smartphone. Trying to use a smartphone for information
gathering and debate would royally suck. Hopefully it will draw them
into the real world of personal computing.

But who cares. Using a smartphone as a personal computer would be like
wearing a straitjacket. Ewww.

Using it to get from here to there, fine. But a real computer should be
there.

You'd be surprised by the number of Reddit Android posters asking for
complex multimedia apps for audio, video and image editing.

On 6/10/2020 9:30 PM, John Doe wrote:
Arlen Holder wrote:

"For some perspective, that's more space for system files than a
Windows 10 PC requires. On a 64GB phone, system files could eat up
30 percent of your allotted space. Add some bloatware, a few
games, your favorite apps, and a 4K movie or two, and you're
pushing the limits of what your phone can hold. Clear cache and
restart all you want, that space isn't coming back."

But who cares. Using a smartphone as a personal computer would be like
wearing a straitjacket. Ewww.

Actually, with a flagship phone with a fast processor, people use their
phones for many tasks that would normally require a computer.

From my Note 9 I can use a Bluetooth presentation device, keyboard,
mouse, and external monitor (wired or wireless) and do Powerpoint (or
Google Slides), play video, etc.. The phone has just become the
processing unit, the small screen is irrelevant. It's a lot easier than
carrying around a Core i7 laptop to do presentations.

There's about to be a quantum leap in performance of flagship phones by
Samsung, using an ATI GPU and Samsung's newest SOC.

On 6/11/2020 8:28 AM, sms wrote:

snip

There's about to be a quantum leap in performance of flagship phones by
Samsung, using an ATI GPU and Samsung's newest SOC.

https://www.slashgear.com/samsung-galaxy-phone-with-amd-radeon-gpu-coming-next-year-30618905/

sms wrote:

John Doe wrote:
Arlen Holder wrote:

"For some perspective, that's more space for system files than a
Windows 10 PC requires. On a 64GB phone, system files could eat
up 30 percent of your allotted space. Add some bloatware, a few
games, your favorite apps, and a 4K movie or two, and you're
pushing the limits of what your phone can hold. Clear cache and
restart all you want, that space isn't coming back."

But who cares. Using a smartphone as a personal computer would be
like wearing a straitjacket. Ewww.

Actually, with a flagship phone with a fast processor, people use
their phones for many tasks that would normally require a
computer.

Nonsense. It's called "physics".

the small screen is irrelevant.

That's silly.

It's a lot easier than carrying around a Core i7 laptop to do
presentations.

Like I said, it's for getting from here to there.

There's about to be a quantum leap in performance of flagship
phones by Samsung, using an ATI GPU and Samsung's newest SOC.

You don't need fancy graphics on a playing card size screen. The
most obvious impediment is battery life. You can't do ANY
power-hungry applications on a smartphone. Even if you could (you
can't), you would need to dissipate much more heat than possible.

Your "quantum leaps in performance" occur only in a vacuum. It's all
relative. At the same time, there are corresponding advances in
personal computer hardware and applications.

kelown wrote:

But who cares. Using a smartphone as a personal computer would be
like wearing a straitjacket. Ewww.

Using it to get from here to there, fine. But a real computer
should be there.

You'd be surprised by the number of Reddit Android posters asking
for complex multimedia apps for audio, video and image editing.

How about simple applications, like a USENET reader that properly
introduces prior authors...

On 6/11/2020 10:26 AM, John Doe wrote:

snip

You don't need fancy graphics on a playing card size screen. The
most obvious impediment is battery life. You can't do ANY
power-hungry applications on a smartphone. Even if you could (you
can't), you would need to dissipate much more heat than possible.

You are missing the point. The phone is not being used for the display,
or for input for that matter. It's sitting on the table, probably on an
inductive charger, connected to external peripherals. And you aren't
running CAD/CAM or Non-linear video editing applications, you're running
office applications or using a web-browser.

Years ago, I met with IBM who was pushing the concept of a "compute
core" which essentially was a smart phone, sans screen, that was pocket
sized and that the user would carry around and hook to a monitor,
keyboard, and mouse. It would be cheaper and smaller than a full-blown
laptop. When you're somewhere with a projector, or large-screen monitor,
the phone's screen size is immaterial.

On Thu, 11 Jun 2020 09:32:20 -0500, kelown wrote:

You'd be surprised by the number of Reddit Android posters asking for
complex multimedia apps for audio, video and image editing.

Just to be clear, the article outlines the space used _before_ adding any
user apps, where, I think, the point is Google lost track of efficiency.

The evidence points to Google badly managing its bloat, where it's almost
criminal, IMHO, for Android "system" files to be as huge as Windows are.

In this recent thread, by the way, I outlined the bloat as I converted a
neighbors' Windows 10 S (as it arrived from HP warranty repairs) to Windows
10 Home (where the system files were surprisingly small for Windows).
o *Is there freeware extent to convert Win10S to Win10H WITHOUT enabling the Win10S laptop Wi-Fi?*
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.comp.freeware/MwzjUei-0Oo

Excerpt:
(1) Win10S = Used space = 18.8GB
(2) Win10H v2004 before diskcleanup = Used space = 34.8GB
(3) Win10H v2004 after diskcleanup = Used space = 18.9GB
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.comp.freeware/MwzjUei-0Oo/pNc-YnNsAwAJ

I think the point is that if Windows takes up about 20GB,
why is Android taking up that much on the Pixel & Galaxy?

It's a valid point that Google lost track of space efficiency.
--
Apparently Apple can keep the system files low; so why can't Google?

sms wrote:

John Doe wrote:

snip

You don't need fancy graphics on a playing card size screen. The
most obvious impediment is battery life. You can't do ANY
power-hungry applications on a smartphone. Even if you could (you
can't), you would need to dissipate much more heat than possible.

You are missing the point. The phone is not being used for the
display, or for input for that matter. It's sitting on the table,
probably on an inductive charger, connected to external
peripherals. And you aren't running CAD/CAM or Non-linear video
editing applications, you're running office applications or using
a web-browser.

Years ago, I met with IBM who was pushing the concept of a
"compute core" which essentially was a smart phone, sans screen,
that was pocket sized and that the user would carry around and
hook to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It would be cheaper and
smaller than a full-blown laptop. When you're somewhere with a
projector, or large-screen monitor, the phone's screen size is
immaterial.

Sounds like a USB flash drive.

It's not a "compute core" since it cannot handle the processing.

Tiny power supply. Tiny display. Crippled input. It's not for
computing.

I appreciate the fact it has usable speech recognition, but that's
only via a Wi-Fi connection to Google's servers.

In article , John Doe
wrote:


It's not a "compute core" since it cannot handle the processing.

Tiny power supply. Tiny display. Crippled input. It's not for
computing.

not even remotely close to correct.

I appreciate the fact it has usable speech recognition, but that's
only via a Wi-Fi connection to Google's servers.

also wrong. it's done locally on device.

On 6/11/2020 4:00 PM, John Doe wrote:
you're running office applications or using
a web-browser.
The smart phone does a poor job at word processing, while it can handle
the processing, the display is too small to do proper formatting
especially of multi page documents.

Same is true for spreadsheet application. When you can see the
relationships between the various rows and columns in the spreadsheet,
the spreadsheet cells are much smaller than the area of your finger
needed to navigate around the screen.

Browsing is acceptable unless you are trying to watch a video, again the
screen is too small to watch any extended video, or a video with much
detail.

If you try to load a book, or large PDF again what you can do is limited
by screen size.

No a smart phone is not going to replace a computer with a decent size
screen for actually working situations.

On Thu, 11 Jun 2020 16:22:33 -0400, nospam wrote:

I appreciate the fact it has usable speech recognition, but that's
only via a Wi-Fi connection to Google's servers.

also wrong. it's done locally on device.

Privacy is a long chain of events, most of which should be done offline.

For those who aren't up to date on privacy-based recording technology...

On Android...
o I have on-the-device speech-to-text transcription & saving of text files.

Note that, for full functionality, it is _three_ different things:
1. 100% offline (i.e., no Internet involved), and,
2. Speech to an audio file (e.g., to a wav or mp3 file), and,
3. Translation of that audio file to an editable text file
(in the language of your choice).

On iOS... that didn't exist and even as of the latest iOS release...
o You get "some" but not all three of those required things (AFAIK).

See more complete details in the applicable threads on each platform.

*ANDROID*
o *Offline speech-to-text recorder/transcription*
Google Recorder APK port now available for many Android phones
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.mobile.android/_Amn35T16NA

*iOS*
o *How do you run speech to text transcription offline on iOS?*
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/misc.phone.mobile.iphone/V-piSLZ_I3w
--
Privacy is a long chain of events, most of which should be done offline.

John Doe wrote:
sms wrote:

John Doe wrote:

snip

You don't need fancy graphics on a playing card size screen. The
most obvious impediment is battery life. You can't do ANY
power-hungry applications on a smartphone. Even if you could (you
can't), you would need to dissipate much more heat than possible.
You are missing the point. The phone is not being used for the
display, or for input for that matter. It's sitting on the table,
probably on an inductive charger, connected to external
peripherals. And you aren't running CAD/CAM or Non-linear video
editing applications, you're running office applications or using
a web-browser.

Years ago, I met with IBM who was pushing the concept of a
"compute core" which essentially was a smart phone, sans screen,
that was pocket sized and that the user would carry around and
hook to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It would be cheaper and
smaller than a full-blown laptop. When you're somewhere with a
projector, or large-screen monitor, the phone's screen size is
immaterial.

Sounds like a USB flash drive.

It's not a "compute core" since it cannot handle the processing.

Tiny power supply. Tiny display. Crippled input. It's not for
computing.

I appreciate the fact it has usable speech recognition, but that's
only via a Wi-Fi connection to Google's servers.

People have made tiny compute devices.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...d-performance/

"A tiny fan inside the stick spins up when it's been busy for a while"

That could easily hang off a monitor. Think of the fun etc.
Now all we need is some glossy promotional adverts for
slow computers.

It's a ChromeCast but with "extra connectors". At an Intel price.

Paul