Android

Galaxy S23 series, watch out for the memory cut: System occupies almost 60 GB

February 8, 2023

The new smartphones of the Galaxy S23 family have been available on the market for a few days and there is a very important detail to address before the launch promotions end which allow to reduce the price of the configurations with more memory.

At present, in fact, Samsung’s initiatives make the purchase of the basic size of each of the Galaxy S23s completely inadvisable, which is bringing the S23s with at least 256/512 GB (depending on the model) into the hands of users, and this is a good thing, especially if we go to see how much of that memory is actually available to the user.

Yes because one of novelty emerged with the Galaxy S23 concerns precisely the space occupied by the System item, which seems to have grown considerably compared to the past, weighing up to over 60 GB in some cases. Below you see the details of two of the Galaxy S23 Ultra that we have in the editorial office, a 512GB retail unit and a 256GB version. In both cases, the System item weighs over 55 GB and the interesting fact to note is that the screenshot of the 256 GB variant was taken after its reset, so when the only space occupied was that of the basic configuration of the Samsung firmware. As we can see, of the 256 GB available (we know that they are actually much less) as many as 55 are occupied by the System itemleaving less than 200 GB free for the user.

Sammobile’s colleagues also found that this memory-related anomaly seems to mainly concern some local variants of the Galaxy S23, given that one of the Indian models in their possession has a much less memory-heavy System entry, given that it occupies about 38 GB. To give you another term of comparison, Google’s Pixel 7 (here the review) require just 15 GB of space for the systems o it is not clear why Samsung reserves 3/4 times more memory.

We remind you that the new Galaxy S23s do not yet support the seamless update function, which requires the presence of a second partition for the quick installation of Android updates. The activation of this function would certainly have justified an increase in the occupied memory, but given its absence, the reason that led the System item to reach such important dimensions is even more mysterious.

On the left, how the space occupied by Sistema on S23 Ultra 256 GB has grown, on the right, the Indian version of Sammbobile

At the moment we have no feedback regarding the basic version of Galaxy S23, which we recall is the only variant also available in the 128 GB size. At present, in fact, the launch promotions make the purchase of this version of Galaxy S23 completely inadvisable, but it seems that it is still better to avoid this configuration even net of what is reported in the article, as well as for the adoption of slower storage exclusively on the 128GB variant. We await a response from Samsung, which could intervene to better explain the situation.

Samsung Galaxy S23, Charger Included, Android Smartphone, 6.1 Dynamic AMOLED 2X Display, 50MP Camera, 8GB RAM, 256 GB, 3900 mAh, Phantom Black [Versione italiana]
1039€

Samsung Galaxy S23+, Charger Included, Android Smartphone, [Versione italiana]
1349€

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, Charger Included, Android Smartphone, 6.8 Dynamic AMOLED 2X Display, 200MP Camera, 12GB RAM, 512 GB, 5000 mAh, Cream
1659€