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Actual storage size of the LG Optimus F7

mrsmumbles

Android Enthusiast
ok i guess with the optimus on sale for $240 its almost worth it but it would depend on whether they have a locked bootloader for me. no cwm or custom roms no deal. i can make a zte run whatever i want to a certain extent, lg is questionable

Beware. The f7 is either wrong in ALL the specs sheets I've been reading or there's something fishy going on. The internal storage is only 4 GB and there's less than a full GB of RAM.
 
Beware. The f7 is either wrong in ALL the specs sheets I've been reading or there's something fishy going on. The internal storage is only 4 GB and there's less than a full GB of RAM.

Eh not a huge deal i dont use internal storage thats what sd cards are for. You can go get 64gb of storage for it if you really want. The ram thing may be a downfall but not a massive one
 
Beware. The f7 is either wrong in ALL the specs sheets I've been reading or there's something fishy going on. The internal storage is only 4 GB and there's less than a full GB of RAM.

Lol keep in mind that you never get the advertised amount of ram/memory. Its always cut. The ram is just under the tip of 800mb. The other 200 is for the system. 4 gig is available for the user in storage and the rest is for the systems/partitions.

The sequent advertised ram is 768 but its really 575 MB;)
 
Wow. Well I used a couple of apps to try to determine the ROM and they say 4, and available is 3 something.
 
The thing is, if I'd known better I could have gotten a N4 for the money, last month. I'm very upset with myself.
 
Lol keep in mind that you never get the advertised amount of ram/memory. Its always cut. The ram is just under the tip of 800mb. The other 200 is for the system. 4 gig is available for the user in storage and the rest is for the systems/partitions.

The sequent advertised ram is 768 but its really 575 MB;)

If you or junkie get a chance, I wonder if you could check one out at a store and find out for sure? I have another week and a half to return it and I want to just to show them I'm seriously p****d off if the ROM really is 4gb and not the advertised 8. It was too expensive for just the camera and display IMO because I don't use the camera much. The display is nice but once app data starts to clog the system it will become a lot slower. And I'm afraid to root.
 
System storage is specified like a hard drive on a new PC - it says you get ABC gigs but you don't - after Windows and anything else included, you get XYZ gigs.

It's the exact same thing for phones and they're all legally advertised like that in the USA. You do get the full amount, and some of it you use by having the operating system and useful apps like the dialer installed.

RAM is similar to the days when bios on a PC was run in ram - in our case, some of it is eaten by gpu processes, a little more is eaten creating i/o paths to critical hardware like the phone radio, so what's left for operating system is less, and after the operating system, what's left for user apps is less again.

4 GB storage set aside for the system is pretty reasonable. Ditto for a few hundred MB of RAM.

All phones sold are specified with hardware specs.

What you get for your add-on apps and storage is less, but one way or another, you're using all of the specified hardware.

Hope this helps. :)
 
System storage is specified like a hard drive on a new PC - it says you get ABC gigs but you don't - after Windows and anything else included, you get XYZ gigs.

It's the exact same thing for phones and they're all legally advertised like that in the USA. You do get the full amount, and some of it you use by having the operating system and useful apps like the dialer installed.

RAM is similar to the days when bios on a PC was run in ram - in our case, some of it is eaten by gpu processes, a little more is eaten creating i/o paths to critical hardware like the phone radio, so what's left for operating system is less, and after the operating system, what's left for user apps is less again.

4 GB storage set aside for the system is pretty reasonable. Ditto for a few hundred MB of RAM.

All phones sold are specified with hardware specs.

What you get for your add-on apps and storage is less, but one way or another, you're using all of the specified hardware.

Hope this helps. :)

Yes, thanks.

I'm still just not sure there is 8gb ROM. I checked it out with two different hardware identifying apps and they both confirm a starting amount of 4 with 3 something available.
 
Yes, thanks.

I'm still just not sure there is 8gb ROM. I checked it out with two different hardware identifying apps and they both confirm a starting amount of 4 with 3 something available.

Without root, which you don't want right now and that's cool, you can't run apps that lets you see all of the way under the hood.

So the user storage apps report user space.

On my 16 GB phone, those apps say that I have about 2 GB for apps and data and just under 10 GB for an "internal SD card" (no actual card, just a piece of storage and a rose by any other name).

I'm missing 4 GB according to those apps. But they're not telling the whole story (and using root Linux commands, I've verified where every bit has gone).

If those apps say that you have 3 or 4 gigs, I promise you have far more.

Am I thinking of someone else or didn't I read that you had the LG Optimus F7?

If so, here's what you have -

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=4059

Notice how that site correctly identifies the 8 GB as "raw hardware" and 4.1 gigs available to the user.

Plus - you have a memory card slot so you're not stuck like some people.

Unless you are into heavy gaming, your phone as configured has room for a LOT of apps and you can choose what you want for user storage to plug in.

PS - it's probably fair for me to move this discussion to the LG Optimus F7 forum, but I can leave it here if others want.

Same thing happens with ZTE phones because this is true for all of them.
 
A lot of companies round up when converting bytes to gigabytes instead of dividing by 1024 they divide by 1000 for advertising purposes... all storage volumes have been advertised as such for a long time...but for the ram I think some of it is just system reserved. Could it be reserved for the gpu?
 
The
A lot of companies round up when converting bytes to gigabytes instead of dividing by 1024 they divide by 1000 for advertising purposes... all storage volumes have been advertised as such for a long time...but for the ram I think some of it is just system reserved. Could it be reserved for the gpu?

Every phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon of any sort has some ram reserved for the GPU and some reserved for memory-mapped i/o.

What's shown by all utilities is what's left.

Very little is lost to GB rounding here for storage.

Most of it is just out of sight.

Here's a picture of mine (under the df command), all values in the size column are rounded down. I have 2.1 GB for /data and about 9.9 GB for /mnt/sdcard in reality.

PS - the bootloader, recovery and a few other goodies below the operating system can't be shown by df.
 

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By the way - here's how to see everything, sizes are in 1024 byte blocks, use in conjunction with the mount command to match partitions with mount points -
 

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Without root, which you don't want right now and that's cool, you can't run apps that lets you see all of the way under the hood.

So the user storage apps report user space.

On my 16 GB phone, those apps say that I have about 2 GB for apps and data and just under 10 GB for an "internal SD card" (no actual card, just a piece of storage and a rose by any other name).

I'm missing 4 GB according to those apps. But they're not telling the whole story (and using root Linux commands, I've verified where every bit has gone).

If those apps say that you have 3 or 4 gigs, I promise you have far more.

Am I thinking of someone else or didn't I read that you had the LG Optimus F7?

If so, here's what you have -

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=4059

Notice how that site correctly identifies the 8 GB as "raw hardware" and 4.1 gigs available to the user.

Plus - you have a memory card slot so you're not stuck like some people.

Unless you are into heavy gaming, your phone as configured has room for a LOT of apps and you can choose what you want for user storage to plug in.

PS - it's probably fair for me to move this discussion to the LG Optimus F7 forum, but I can leave it here if others want.

Same thing happens with ZTE phones because this is true for all of them.

Hi, many thanks again.

So the few apps that LG preloaded are taking up 4GB? That seems incredibly excessive to me and almost impossible but I guess I have to believe it.

I'm interested in rooting but I don't have a working computer at the moment. If I knew all the steps it probably wouldn't be so scary and I'd love to get that storage back.

I did buy a micro SD card but I didn't install it yet because I was going to put a couple older cards in first to transfer music and videos to the internal ROM and then put the new card in and copy it onto there.

If I could root and run apps from the card that would be excellent.

In my Hydro I've had to uninstall a majority of what I installed just to be able to update and to cut down on crashes. I would only have about 4x as much on the f7 which really isn't much and the f7 only has at best twice the RAM of the Hydro.

The great thing about the Hydro is that it's already stock Android, almost (but you still can't uninstall the Google apps). So I can plainly see what's going on with the hardware.

I knew the f7 would have resources eaten up by preloads but I had no idea it would be so much. I thought maybe 2 GB at most.

Is it possible to root without using a computer? Thanks again.
 
The The Android operating system -

Android = embedded real-time Linux operating system + Dalvik Virtual Machine (VM) + apps that run in the Dalvik and use operating system services.

Apps are fairly small - providing a fully featured platform so apps can be fairly small is what is taking the space.

As Android evolves more features and as your phone maker evolves more features, more storage is required for the latest version.

Exactly like on your PC, whether Windows, Mac or Linux.

You're carrying a microcomputer with a high def display and a mixture of several radios - it's far more than a few apps.

You can't run Firefox on your PC without a full operating system - same thing here. :)

Please check in the LG Optimus F7 All Things Root forum (LG Optimus F7 main forum is linked on our home page) for rooting details for you.

Only follow root advice for your model because it varies and only take advice from people who own and have rooted your model for the same reason. ;)

And your not going to get that storage back by rooting. You can rearrange some, MAYBE, for a modest gain - maybe.

Android today takes more than double the total rom storage I had in my phone in 2010.

It also does a lot more. :)

PS - I think you might want to use your phone before deciding that you need to run apps from your SD card. That feature is all but removed in Jellybean.
 
Lots to learn. :) Thank you. I'm surprised rooting wouldn't free up much space.

The various partitions are fixed, only in rare cases can you change those without bricking the phone.

Let's look at the partitions by their more popular folder names.

The included apps will be under /system/app but removing them won't shrink /system and give you extra space on /data or anywhere else.

And playing with /system is not the way to go. I've done rom development, know exactly what I'm doing, and I don't go down that path. :p

You may - or may not - be able to resurrect an old mod to map /data to your SD card to install more apps, but to what end?

I have as little or less space for apps than you do, and I have over a hundred apps added on.

How much do you really need?

What sort of apps are you looking at?

Apps are not big.

Android and your firmware is - and you won't be deleting that. ;)
 
yea apps are tiny, and ic you root your device and wanna do some.tinkering may i suggest gettimg the.full version of titanium backup or learning to make user apps into system apps manually though titanium is well worth the cost. that will allow you to embed apps you know youll never get rid of into the rom, and while ur in there you can remove stupid stuff like the.connection optimizer that just take up space. i personally keep apps like titanium backup, facebook, andchat, and tapatalk in system ao even when i factory reset they stick and they dont use up data space. not recommended for apps you dont use regularly but you can change launchers, browsers, anything you need to system even replacing the.old ones keeping you from wasting hundreds of megs on the stuff you will always.need around

though as earlymon said its not a good idea to mess with it manually the full version of titanium backup does a good job
 
also if youre going to make system apps just be weary of how.often you do.that sort of thing and always.have a good backup ready. it could very well break your device even with titanium backup. its a risky business but if youre willing to.risk it all for 100mb of free storage im not going to stop you lol
 
The various partitions are fixed, only in rare cases can you change those without bricking the phone.

Let's look at the partitions by their more popular folder names.

The included apps will be under /system/app but removing them won't shrink /system and give you extra space on /data or anywhere else.

And playing with /system is not the way to go. I've done rom development, know exactly what I'm doing, and I don't go down that path. :p

You may - or may not - be able to resurrect an old mod to map /data to your SD card to install more apps, but to what end?

I have as little or less space for apps than you do, and I have over a hundred apps added on.

How much do you really need?

What sort of apps are you looking at?

Apps are not big.

Android and your firmware is - and you won't be deleting that. ;)

Hi! It looks like I'll just have to accept the minimal space on it if I keep it.

But on my Hydro the system only takes up about 300MB so I'm surprised it would take 4 GB (slightly over that) on the F7.

I like to install a lot of stuff. Even if I rarely use some of it I like having it there unless I have to start uninstalling because the phone starts freezing or rebooting.

I'm not extremely into games but I have some stuff that's graphics intensive and I won't get to keep that stuff on really much more than on the Hydro.

I'm not sure why you say you have not much more space than I do; you still have 2gb left on system and 10gb on data?

I do understand that the new phone is full of more bloat but it's hard to wrap my mind around the fact my Hydro has only about 250 MB taken up by Android and system while the f7 has over 4gb.

But don't worry, I believe you when you say the space was there. :(
 
yea apps are tiny, and ic you root your device and wanna do some.tinkering may i suggest gettimg the.full version of titanium backup or learning to make user apps into system apps manually though titanium is well worth the cost. that will allow you to embed apps you know youll never get rid of into the rom, and while ur in there you can remove stupid stuff like the.connection optimizer that just take up space. i personally keep apps like titanium backup, facebook, andchat, and tapatalk in system ao even when i factory reset they stick and they dont use up data space. not recommended for apps you dont use regularly but you can change launchers, browsers, anything you need to system even replacing the.old ones keeping you from wasting hundreds of megs on the stuff you will always.need around

though as earlymon said its not a good idea to mess with it manually the full version of titanium backup does a good job

Thank you for these tips. I'll have to get my computer running again. :)
 
Hi! It looks like I'll just have to accept the minimal space on it if I keep it.

But on my Hydro the system only takes up about 300MB so I'm surprised it would take 4 GB (slightly over that) on the F7.

I like to install a lot of stuff. Even if I rarely use some of it I like having it there unless I have to start uninstalling because the phone starts freezing or rebooting.

I'm not extremely into games but I have some stuff that's graphics intensive and I won't get to keep that stuff on really much more than on the Hydro.

I'm not sure why you say you have not much more space than I do; you still have 2gb left on system and 10gb on data?

I do understand that the new phone is full of more bloat but it's hard to wrap my mind around the fact my Hydro has only about 250 MB taken up by Android and system while the f7 has over 4gb.

But don't worry, I believe you when you say the space was there. :(

According to this, the Hydro had over 1 GB taken by the overall system -

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=3771

Apparently, you've used the same incorrect tools to conclude that it only took 250 MB for the whole system.


I don't know what to tell you. Your new phone has LTE support, an HD display, two cameras, can shoot video in full high def, Bluetooth 4, and a lot of other features - all of which requires more system firmware.

My first Android had 256 MB of RAM and 512 MB of ROM (150 MB /system, 223 MB /data, 116 MB /cache).

My next phone doubled everything.

As did my phone after that.

As will your next one in two years. :)

PS - I have 2.1 GB total for /data (read:apps + app data) possible (not free, most of it is used) and just under 10 GB in one of user storage partitions (not free, most of it is used, as is my 64 GB sd card) - where apps can NOT go, just pictures, music, etc etc.

If your F7 follows the full Google spec, you may interchangeably have that 4 GB to use for apps, data, or pictures, etc etc.
 
If you want to see the actual storage for yourself, download Terminal Emulator, it's free -

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jackpal.androidterm

Enter this command:

cat /proc/partitions

The Terminal Emulator does not require root, and all phones I've used have the cat command is supported - but I can not guarantee that all do.

PS - forgot the most important part - look for the big number, usually at a "blk0" entry.

On newer phones that's almost always mmcblk0.

The other "blk" entries are how the total at blk0 have been divvied up.

On most phones, you'll be able to output the /proc/partitions list without root.
 
If you want to see the actual storage for yourself, download Terminal Emulator, it's free -

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jackpal.androidterm

Enter this command:

cat /proc/partitions

The Terminal Emulator does not require root, and all phones I've used have the cat command is supported - but I can not guarantee that all do.

PS - forgot the most important part - look for the big number, usually at a "blk0" entry.

On newer phones that's almost always mmcblk0.

The other "blk" entries are how the total at blk0 have been divvied up.

On most phones, you'll be able to output the /proc/partitions list without root.

Great! Thank you! :D:thumbup:

I replied to your earlier post but then mid-writing the WiFi closed because the battery (on the Hydro) went into save mode and my phone crashed. :eek: I'm not sure if I can still rescue my post.
 
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