Google's Nexus 7 tabs 'can't perform' if flash RAM crammed

Reports are filtering in that some Google Nexus 7 tablets slow to a crawl once the memory starts filling up, and require a hard reset to bring them back to the admirable speed expected of Google's flagship hardware. Most of the reports, on various forums, relate to the 16GB model, and claim that once the remaining capacity is …

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely side-stepping the storage issues of the article, users who complain "a device that is labeled for 16GB storage, that in reality only has just over 13GB of storage" bug me. Where do they think the OS is stored etc.? Do they complain their 500GB hard disk only has 485GB free after Windows is installed?

Full comment for clarity incase anyone confuses the extract above with the issue in the article:

"So here I am, stuck with a device that is labeled for 16GB storage, that in reality only has just over 13GB of storage ... but due to performance issues, REALLY only has 9-10 GB of storage available for content and software."

[Oliver Mayes]

My phone is labeled as 16GB, it actually has 13.2 GB 'available', and the OS takes up another GB of that so I actually only get around 12. As far as I'm concerned that's false advertising.

[Anonymous Coward]

"My phone is labeled as 16GB, it actually has 13.2 GB 'available', and the OS takes up another GB of that so I actually only get around 12. As far as I'm concerned that's false advertising."

You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

I can't speak specifically for the Nexus 7, but the Nexus S has 13.2GB of "external" storage space for media/content, 1GB dedicated for applications and their data, 500MB for cache (application temporary storage) and 500MB for the OS. So that's 15.2GB.

Granted I'm missing about 800MB here, but I don't know if the 'df' command on the device is using 1024 of 1000 as the multiplier and what rounding is happening, the output is definitely in human readable format.

[JDX]

You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

Yes but you're a nerd who knows about how computers work, the typical user isn't.

We know why broadband doesn't always/normally get the quoted maximum speed but we still complain it's misleading. Same deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

"Yes but you're a nerd who knows about how computers work, the typical user isn't."

That was my original point though, they shouldn't be complaining (wrongly) about something they don't understand.

The device does have 16GB of storage, it's not advertised as having 16GB of free storage, the same way a PC isn't advertised as having a 500GB hard disk with 485GB free.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Re: You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

Okay, in your very black and white world, how about I sell you a tablet that has "100EB of storage, yes, you read it right, EXAbytes". Okay, but to access 99.9999999% of that storage you have to be connected to the Internet, to get to my cloud, but it does technically have 100EB of storage available, so I'm not lying...

[Peter H. Coffin]

Re: You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

Or, for that matter, that their 1TB hard drive only has 931GB on it once the formatting and marketing has chalked up "TB" drives that hold 1000 "GB", that are 1000 "MB" each, made up of 1000 "KB" per, instead of powers of two like the engineers intended.

The real problem isn't the amount of storage on the devices -- users know they're not going to get the full measure there. The problem is how poorly the device handles nearing the capacity. If the gizmo requires a reserve, then it shouldn't show the reserve space as free. Proper OSs don't let mere mortals use ALLLLL the disk space either, reserving what they need to operate. Automobiles show "E" on the fuel gauge well before the fuel runs out as well. Why not this thing as well?

[Steve Evans]

Re: You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

The shit's really gonna hit the fan when he discovers his 2 litre car is really a 1996cc...

[Dabogues]

Re: You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

THANK you! That is the point.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Peter H. Coffin

Hard drives use SI prefixes, which are strictly powers of ten, no matter what certain parts of the IT community want to believe they mean. It's not the drive manufacturer's fault when the OS misreports that.

Once you accept that fact the discrepancy is not much of a problem any more, especially if you're aware of it, and you can get on with worrying about the important things in your life.

[Dabogues]

Re: You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

Dude, you need to chill out. I understand the technology, and it still bugs me that the industry continues to mislabel these things. It's particularly important with lower capacity devices. I bought a 16 gig N7 full aware that the actually storage would not be 16 gigs. I get that. My whole point in the forum was that it's labeled one thing, in actuality is another number, and in terms of practical usage is even less. So now my "16 gig" device is really only 10 gig. You're totally going off on something that isn't the point.

[Doug 3]

Re: You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.

it is someone else's responsibility, not the user who only cares about being a consumer and being able to throw it out the window so it disappears when done. Why on Earth would anyone expect people to know complex things like basic technology? It's like the car, when something smells or breaks it's time to pay someone to help me make it all better. I don't need to know the basics of how brakes work to know that the screeching sounds for the past month every time I hit the brakes were indicators of a problem. When I hit the back of the car in front of me when I couldn't stop was all the indication I needed to know.

Silly geeks.

[Alex Walsh]

I think more to the point their 16GB Nexus 7 will only have a usable storage size of about 14.8GB when formatted, which then has another 1.8GB or so in OS and pre installed files.

[Anonymous Coward]

But people don't think of tablets or phones in the same way as computers - so the OS is just something which is there, not something that has to be stored alongside everything else. For instance, in the old days of non-smartphones, if you got a phone that said it had 2GB of storage, it actually had 2GB of storage (well, still a bit less due to formatting, but that's always been unavoidable)... you didn't lose some for the OS, because that was probably on an EEPROM.

People just haven't switched to a "computer" way of thinking with tablets or phones, they don't care about the internals, and really, unless you're a geek, why should they?

[Richard 81]

Fair enough

Then the marketing bods need to get used to quoting approximate storage space. We're in the land of "up to" here, but at least people won't have reason to grumble.

[Charles 9]

Re: Fair enough

And I HATE that. IMO "up to" is outright false advertising because they lead you on but then say they never promised the maximum speed. No, ads should be conservative...and services should guarantee a speed so that they're forces to say "at least" instead of "up to" (and if they can't deliver, they're not fit for purpose and can be pursued legally for it). If you can't guarantee the speed, then you can't guarantee your business and shouldn't be in it. Insist on ABSOLUTE truth in advertising: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help your deity.

PS. And that goes for ALL advertising, not just electronics and services.

[Dabogues]

A comment from the person who was actually quoted.

AC, thanks for differentiating from that comment. I'm actually the person who the article quotes as saying that, and this is my FULL comment from the forum (http://www.modaco.com/topic/356978-n7-slow-down-laggy/page__pid__2019222__st__20#entry2019222):

"So here I am, stuck with a device that is labeled for 16 GB storage, that in reality only has just over 13 GB of storage (don't get me started on how the industry can continue to get away with this), but due to performance issues, REALLY only has 9-10 GB of storage available for content and software (including the OS)."

Anyway, this is a real issue for the Nexus 7, and it sort of bugs me that the Register is basically claiming that it's difficult to fill up 16 gigs with just apps....uh, not really. At least, not if you play games.

[JeffyPooh]

The issue du jour is the final drop from about 13 GB to about 9-10 GB

The initial drop from 16 to about 13 is a well-known given. I think that it was mentioned to set the stage for the issue du jour, that is the inexplicable Android storage bug that somehow causes performance issues when the mass store gets even close 80% full.

So... What's the point of the 8GB Nexus 7? 8 becomes 5 after the OS is loaded (fine), but one needs to leave about 4 free to avoid performance issues, that leave ONE ???

FAIL.

[davidp231]

In-depth clarity.

One would never see 500GB/500GB on a hard disk. Some of that is lost when it's initially low level formatted at the factory, due to sector/layout information etc. In reality a 500GB disk when unpartitioned will only allowed something in the region of 440GB because of this. Much in the same way 3.5inch floppies had an unformatted capacity of 2MB. A chunk of that is taken when it's formatted, leaving you with 1.44MB. I've got 2x 250GB hard disks in my rig, and their unformatted capacity is 232.88GB, due to the above reason.

Flash memory/memory cards are no different in this respect. With this in mind on your nice shiny new 250GB drive (in this case), you'll have 210GB free after Windows (or your OS of choice) is installed.

[Philippe]

You get what you pay for

Cheap Tablet = Crap Tablet

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You get what you pay for

Clearly you don't get what you pay for, otherwise I wouldn't have to constantly jump through Apple's hoops with iOS just to get half the functionality and freedom I have with Android devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You get what you pay for

Feature count means nothing. I don't need 10,000 features if 1000 does everything I need.

If I want to cut a piece of rope I'll use a knife, not a swiss army knife since the knife will do it easier.

Freedom? freedom to do what exactly? install bad or pirated software?

If all of the things you mention really bothered people the iPad wouldn't have 70% market share.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You get what you pay for

If all of the things you mention really bothered people the iPad wouldn't have 70% market share

So the fact that the iPhone only has 17% smartphone market share proves that it really bothers people? Or does it actually prove nothing and is unrelated?

[Richard 81]

Re: You get what you pay for

Send in... the tro-o-o-o-olls.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You get what you pay for

Exactly right. My motto is "Buy cheap, buy twice". So if you buy cheap stuff you'll end up buying something better and you lose more than just buying something decent in the first place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You get what you pay for

Ah, the other platform foamer. You and "Obviously!" should get together and FORM BABBY, as you clearly have a Romeo and Juliet ting gawn; neither can resist stories about Apple or Android.. Love from both sides of the tracks <3

[Big_Ted]

Re: You get what you pay for

"Cheap Tablet = Crap Tablet

Simple"

Crap Tablet = Walled Garden = Apple = Very Expensive Tablet

There fixed it for you

[My backside]

Re: You get what you pay for

No, you didn't.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: You get what you pay for

Not always true. I have what looks like a Alibaba special branded by a small European start-up that is surprisingly good, and it's available for the same ball-park cost as the Nexus 7.

It's got a 1.2 GHz Cortex A8 processor, 9.7" 4x3 IPS screen and an 8000mA/h battery that gives ~8 hours of continuous use. It runs ICS 4.04, and can use Google Play. Before the Nexus 7 was available, I would say that it was highly recommended. Even now with Google selling the Nexus 7 at little or no profit, I would say that it or one of it's follow-up tablets is worth a punt if you want something with a 4x3 aspect ratio larger screen.

And I can almost guarantee you that you have never heard of the company's name.

[Alain]

Re: You get what you pay for

Care to give us the company name and model name anyway?

[Miffo]

Re: You get what you pay for

Yeah - that's why I have no issues with the 8GB model!

[Anonymous Coward]

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

"Anyone with a decent collection of music has gotten used to leaving most of it at home since the classic iPod disappeared"

The iPod Classic isn't dead... yet.

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_classic

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

Indeed. And with high-end iPod Touch or iPhone 4S you *can* run around with your entire music collection (unless it's more than 50GB*)

* Approximate, depending on format... blahblahblahblahblah. ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

Yeah, sadly, even at 320k, mine's still too big. I have playlists set up to sync to each device, and have to rotate things in and out as the mood takes me. A pain in the arse to do, but nice once it's set up.

Still, I am ancient enough to remember the Walkman, so this seems like such a world of convenience and choice, despite my moon-onna-stick whines :)

[Dave 126]

Re: Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

Other hard-disk PMPs are available from Cowon and Archos, though sadly not longer from iRiver. The Archos unit that had a 500GB HDD did have problems with building its database if there were over 10,000 or whatever audio tracks on it, but this appears to have been fixed with a firmware update.

However, I'd probably buy a Sansa Clip and a pouch of microSD cards which are currently around 50p /GB. I'm clumsy and so have learnt to avoid gadgets with moving parts, so far as I can.

Though the iPod's scroll wheel is a handy thing (used to have one on my Sharp MD player) for long lists of music, I prefer to be able to drag n' drop.

Presumably this Nexus device has USB OTG? (not that the existence of an ungainly workaround is any excuse for the thing not behaving as advertised)

[quarky]

Really?

How many of those are stock, and how many are rooted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maxing out the device

"It also seems safe to say that few Nexus 7 users will ever max out their devices' capacity."

Uhh, 3 HD films, and it's maxed out. Even Transformers which came with it was something like 5GB on it's own when downloaded from the Play Store.

[davtom]

Re: Maxing out the device

I would think it's safe to say that most WILL max out their capacities given enough time - just like used to be the case with hard disks.

[Tim Bergel]

Re: Maxing out the device

I managed to nearly fill my N7 frighteningly easily - but I must say it was a real pleasure to do so as it makes such a good job of dealing with directory trees of data just dumped into it. Can't say I'm seeing it running slowly though - but I'm still going to trash 2-3 GBytes of music files...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Maxing out the device

Well, quite, I have more than 16 GB of (just as an example) high quality niche pr0n that caters to one of my favourite combinations of taboos- gotta love rule 34.

[Tom 35]

Not all Nexus 7 affected

I've filled my Nexus 7 a couple times (mostly video files). Right now it has 6.33 GB free, but I have had it down below 200 MB free.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that they fix the problem before I get hit by it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not all Nexus 7 affected

Is that a 16GB model (I'm pondering the 8GB)?

I also wonder if these are Google I/O freebies, there don't seem to be a large number of complaints on the linked forums and they seem to spread over a few months.

Some of the I/O freebies had screen ghosting issues which Asus then said was because they were pre-production units.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not all Nexus 7 affected

I have an 8GB and haven't experienced any issues when it's been filled. For the 8GB I'd recommend using the 1-click-root application, installing Stickmount and picking up a USB OTG cable and 64GB USB stick if you plan to watch many films.

[ukgnome]

Re: Not all Nexus 7 affected

Most users probably wouldn't do this.

Then again I am not most people, thanks to Modaco I have a bespoke OS with working NFR and flash, as well as iplayer. I only stream, I don't store content. Although using stickmout I could. Makes the 8GB model very attractive. With regards to the memory issue I used advanced task killer. And sometimes I even clear the cache.

No trouble here officer, move along.

[Tom 35]

Re: Not all Nexus 7 affected

It's a 16 GB that I pre-ordered from a local retail shop so it's one of the first batch to reach Canada.

[Big_Ted]

Or alternatively

Do what I did, took the cost of a new iPad and bought the Nexus for at home use as I don't need the storage for video / music / audio books etc as they are on my NAS, then bought a 64GB playbook for all the media needs along with email and browsing at work where apps are not needed so much. Add in the cost of screen protectors, cases and a rapid charging dock for the playbbook and it was still less than the iPad.

Each one does exactly what I want perfectly without the worry of carrying it to and from work as my phone covers that.

[Law Device]

Same old Android

I'm sorry to say, this sounds exactly the same as my experience with a whole host of other Android devices.

I was hoping that Google would have these memory issues sorted by now.

Android still isn't ready for the mainstream.

[p3ngwin1]

The author is an idiot.

The Nexus 7 has 1GB of RAM, the rest is permanent flash storage.

the article is supposed to be describing permanent storage gets filled and slows the system.

[Steve Knox]

Flash, even Flash "storage" is a type of RAM (specifically NVRAM, as opposed to DRAM and SRAM.) This is a form of memory, even if it's not the system operating memory.

While the author does use some terms ambiguously, none are used incorrectly.

Any apparent discrepancy between the article and the underlying subject matter can therefore be attributed to poor reading comprehension.

[toadwarrior]

If you buy a budget tablet you get budget performance.

As far as most people not using the whole amount, I assume android owners are like iphone / ipad users then they do have music and movies and apps for their commute and it doesn't take too many movies to eat into 16gb.

And if you plan on using the thing for more than a year then you will just accumulate junk. The average user knows how to add things but rarely deletes things (probably out of fear of breaking something) so if this problem is real then google needs to do something.

For a company that has so many supposed geniuses you'd think it'd cross their mind to test the thing with its storage used up.

[Irongut]

Apple is the one with the supposed geniuses, they even wear little T shirts to identify them.

[Gerard Krupa]

"For a company that has so many supposed geniuses you'd think it'd cross their mind to test the thing with its storage used up."

Bear in mind here that Google didn't build the thing, Asus did. Given how many reports of performance problems you hear about with the Transformer Prime, it's not that surprising that this device also has a glitch or two (although I've never personally had any performance issues with either device).

[Miffo]

"And if you plan on using the thing for more than a year then you will just accumulate junk. The average user knows how to add things but rarely deletes things (probably out of fear of breaking something) so if this problem is real then google needs to do something."

Er right - so if they fix it then suddenly people will start deleting things? The 2GB (or whatever it is) that they lost isn't going to see them through to old age is it?

[pewpie]

Oooh look at me - I'm all titley..

So how many computers are out there which work fine if you fill em up with pr0n? Far as I'm aware - zero.. Not exactly news, is it.. reads more like an industry subvert (how original).

[Mike 125]

WTF...

....is flash RAM?

[Steve Knox]

Re: WTF...

Flash is a form of NVRAM (Non-Volatile Random Access Memory) which is itself a subset of RAM (Random Access Memory).

If you are making the common mistake of confusing RAM with system operating memory, then you may want to look here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/fusio-io-flash-ssdalloc-memory-ram,16352.html

[Mike 125]

Re: WTF...

Errr, what? My comment was flippant...

As far as I can see, the forum discussions concern what happens when the file system starts to fill up, (so flash is implied). The article here is fine - it quite reasonably assumes we're discussing flash. The title is confusing, that's all.

I don't see what relevance that link has, unless the world is already more complicated than I thought... which could well be the case!

[bazza]

My tuppence worth

Of course, Symbian is an OS that was specifically designed to cope well in low memory situations. I think we should all be using that.

[SpitefulGOD]

Yep

Screen stops responding all the time on mine... Makes me want to throw it against the wall. Its not about how many cores you have if your OS is poo

[Andrew Macrobie]

Isn't flash...

... a type of EEPROM??

Also while it's correct the device has 16GiB of storage (seems no-one measures storage by the GB any more), the user accessible storage area is mounted in /sdcard so the available storage varies according to what's in the rest of the filesystem. I feel this is misleading advertising - your average bloke on the street will see that 16GiB as user available storage and to be fair, that's an entirely reasonable supposition.

So, as far as I (a reasonable and relatively sane person) can see, the issue there is not so much that people fail to understand why the built-in storage isn't entirely available but that the information regarding typical available storage is suppressed for the purposes of marketing. That's an improper stance to take, but a very typical one; after all, honesty and marketing don't historically go hand-in-hand!

[Arachnoid]

In case you forgot the Nexus 7 is a cloud computer,its designed to use the internet storage services hence why it had no memory card slot and to moan about not getting your full 16/32GB you paid for is just purile.The OS itself needs room as does the swap and temp files but of course you dont care about the little things like how the operating system actually works in real life.

With regard to harddrive it depends how you or the suppler format them as to what space is available so you clearly cant be blaming the drive manufacturer for what is in essence a software issue.Read the small print for a change and stop just looking at the headlines for inspiration.

[Steve 16]

@Arachnoid

It’s a cloud computer, without all the cloud services to back it up. For eample, Google Music which allows you store up to 20,000 tracks online in not available in the UK.

Also, an increasing number of games are over a gigabyte so it’s pretty easy to fill up the memory.

The point that’s being made is that if you come to close to using all the “available” memory, performance suffers and the device requires a hard reset to recover.

[paul.cahill]

The issue is that it's still slow after you clear space

As one of the people who brought this to the attentionn of El Reg let me clarify the issue.

It's not did we get our full 16GB.

If the space avaiable drops to below 2-3GB, sequential and random write speeds drop to a tenth of what they should be. If space is then cleared by deleting files (all my videos for a flight to the UK), the performance does not improve. Only a reset fixes it.

[Kumnaa]

You're mixing up two different issues here.

1) 16GB is not 16GB - most people accept this as that's how the industry works. You buy a PC with 100GB of HDD then a portion of that is already used by ths OS. There is no real difference here.

2) The performance issue which is a genuine issue and has also been reported on the Android bug list (http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=37258) which is also worth mentioning

[hyperspacey]

As mentioned, this isn't "you totally fill your storage, performance drops off". This is, "if you have less than 3GB left, performance starts falling off a cliff, and stays off that cliff". I'm talking a difference of two orders of magnitude in read speed alone between a device with > 10GB stored and < 10GB stored, and write speed is consistently poor- the HTC Desire HD, the must-have phone of two years ago, outperforms a Nexus 7 that's developed poor IO speeds by a factor of about 3000, off the top of my head. This isn't a software issue as far as I can ascertain, I think there are genuine problems with the device's memory controller or something. It's scoring well below even how a bad mechanical drive should.

[kurkosdr]

"It also seems safe to say that few Nexus 7 users will ever max out their devices' capacity. "

Judging by how easily a friend of mine loaded to his Xoom an entire season of Breaking Bad, I am going to question the quoted remark.

PS: Don't ask why my friend got a Xoom. A company bought it for him.

[DF118]

Gunwales

Thus spelt.

Gunnels? Tsk!

[hyperspacey]

I'm sure there are a lot of people thinking, "well, this can't be so bad", but it makes playing any timing-based game comically difficult. Let's Golf 3 is a particularly Herculean task as if you're unlucky enough for any activity on storage to begin while attempting a shot you'll get a delay just when you're trying to hit the ball.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow performance

I've been experiencing slow performance as of late. I have about 1.3GB of storage space left on my device, most of the space is taken up by apps. Here are some strange things that have started to occur:

- Sometimes all icons will disappear after unlocking, even the dock icons. After several seconds they will reappear.

- Some games run incredibly slowly and on many occasions are unplayable

- Using the device in general can be very unresponsive. I have had many instances where I was browsing the web using both Dolphin browser and Chrome and they would appear to freeze for a few seconds and then execute my gestures. This is particularly irritating when I swipe it appears that the device hasn't picked up my input after which I attempt a few more swipes. Once the device does decide to respond it executes all of my swipes in one go. Needless to say that I am navigated to places where I don't want to go :)

People complaining about the device having less than 16GB of storage space should really try to understand how the storage space is utilised first. I really think that it is unacceptable for a device to have performance issues when almost full. It defeats the purpose of have storage space period! I don't want to have to keep 2+ GB clear just for a 'paging' file of some sort. I hope Google will fix this soon. I love the Nexus 7, it's a brilliant device so I still have full faith in it's potential.

[hyperspacey]

What date was your device made (inside the back plate)? Mine's is 2012/5/26. I'm trying to work out if there's a duff batch of initial launch machines that maybe have a dodgy memory controller or something.

[waxsta]

I haven't taken the back plate off of my tablet yet. Is there way I can tell the manufacture date without opening it?

[waxsta]

Has anyone tested maxing out their 16GB n7 when restored to factory default and NOT updating the operating system? Maybe it is an issue with the update to Jelly Bean?

This issue appears to be affecting many people see links below:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=37258

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJwPJkYwMcw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[Matt Hawkins]

"It also seems safe to say that few Nexus 7 users will ever max out their devices' capacity."

This is the most ridiculous thing I've read in a Nexus 7 article. It's easy to max it out. 2 or 3 films will do it. Or 2 films and a couple of decent games.

The storage usage reporting is also broken. On my 16GB device the numbers it is reporting simply don't add up. Deleting files doesn't change the reported free storage. Now we discover that touching the last 3GB causes performance issues.I hope Asus and/or Google sort it out because it will spoil what is otherwise a nice device at a sensible price.

[hyperspacey]

I'm very much inclined to return this and get a Galaxy Tab or something instead. I'm never buying Asus again, that's for sure.