Mar 14, 2022

Phone apps gobbling up storage: a rant.

 Barely a year ago, I had to get a "new phone". It has 32Gb of storage, which ISN'T Much... especially, when I have a 256 Gb Micro SD card, which I've used 17Gb from it. That's less than 10% of its capacity. When I got the phone I had to delete a shit ton of useless apps that were filling up the phone's scarce storage space. My previous phone had this nifty little feature that let most apps operate from the SD card (without rooting or hacking the phone) The newer phone didn't allow for that. So, that means that Netflix, Uber Eats, Facebook, and other applications that on my elder phone could operate from the far roomier 256Gb SD card must operate from the 32Gb Internal memory that already has 10Gb designated for the Operating System and 9Gb on "Other" stuff that cannot be interacted with, unless you root or hack the phone. 

I'm aware that more modern phones are giving users More storage, but no SD port... (but even more bloatware) No need to hear "GeT a BeTtEr PhOnE, yA dOuChE"! My issue is how freaking bloated these Apps get. Let's  use Netflix as an example: When you download the app from the store it says it's like 18Mb. You download it and once installed is 59Mb. Few weeks later Netflix is now occupying 1.13Gb same thing with Uber Eats. From both having 300Mb combined, they've ballooned up to 2.45GB.  That is some ridiculous Bullshit! 

Yes, I'm also aware of the whole having to make a "one size fits all" solution for different kinda of hardware justification. But at the same time it's funny how less cluttered these apps are if they're manually uninstalled and just downloading a more updated version 4-6 months later. Sure, the data + update bloat is staved off for a little bit, but it'll always creep back. It seems that the days of streamlined code due to storage limitations is a thing of the past...  what's the point of having 256GB in storage, if phones are overloaded with useless apps that can't be removed that love to eat up precious storage space. Why should my phone come with unremovable Amazon apps if I don't use Prime, or shop enough through Amazon to have their app, or use kindle? Why can't I check my mail through the browser and instead have to load an App... Outlook, yahoo! mail, Gmail... all require an app. Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram... hell, even Reddit is pushing an app. With everyone and everything having an app that is not streamlined to save space, the phones will get overstuffed pretty fast. 

Get your tinfoil hats on, because it's Crazy conspiracy theory time!

The apps are purposely bloated in order to fill up your phone memory's faster and force you to get a newer model ASAP.

Take off the tinfoil hats now.  But the thing is that by bloating apps and forcing to pugrade phones, we the customers lose. For example, the Tappers of Grayskull app. I used to have it two phones ago... now it no longer exists and neither does the phone I used to have before the one before my current phone. So, if I wanted to play, well I'm shit out of luck... unless I root a phone and download a dubious copy of the .apk from a теневой русский сайт, a Shady Russian Website... Спасибо, товарищ Дора Исследователь... Thank you, Comrade Dora the Explorer... This not only happens with games, sometimes it happens with company proprietary apps that are needed for special jobs. I mean how many companies remained stuck on Windows XP for years because they couldn't keep up with upgrading their PCs every few years to be able to keep up with the newer OS from Windows?

The more storage we get, the more bloated apps get and with phones ditching the Micro SD slot, transferring data from one phone to the next is a hassle, if you don't trust The Cloud...



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