For the past few days, information has been circulating on social networks and media that Samsung’s new flagships have a strange problem, allegedly with their “out of the box” operating system taking as much as 60 GB of built-in memory. This is really quite scandalous, because the basic S23 has 128 GB of storage, and even with 256 GB of memory, giving 60 GB to the system at once is somehow too much. Therefore, it was interesting to understand this issue.

First, having acquaintances with the Galaxy S22 Ultra and currently testing the Galaxy Fold 4, there is an opportunity to compare the volume of the system in them and in the company’s new flagship. Secondly, the information about how much the system takes in the Galaxy S23 Ultra was a little alarming. For example, journalist Alex Maxham tweeted on February 3 that his smartphone’s operating system takes up almost 69 GB, and this started a wave of posts about this feature of new Samsung flagships.

Do the system files in Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra take up 60GB? It seems not

His screenshot shows that Samsung’s standard My Files file explorer doesn’t show how much memory apps are taking up. If you look at the Galaxy Fold4 in the same way, it showed that the system takes up 81.75 GB!

Do the system files in Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra take up 60GB? It seems not

The fact is that the Samsung file explorer does not immediately have full access to the smartphone’s memory, and if you do not give it the appropriate permission, it will not be able to calculate the actual size occupied by applications. We give it access, and now the Galaxy Fold4 shows that the operating system takes up 41.73 GB, and the programs take up 40.08 GB.

Do the system files in Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra take up 60GB? It seems not

To verify whether there is the same difference between what the file explorer initially shows in the Galaxy S23 Ultra, I asked Sasha Liapota, who just bought this smartphone and already had time to test, send me a screenshot of how it shows the system size.

The first screenshot showed that Samsung’s file manager also doesn’t have full access to the file system by default, and shows that the OS is taking up 118GB.

Do the system files in Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra take up 60GB? It seems not

If you give it access, the system volume “drops” to 57.96 GB, still a lot, but not 69 GB, like Alex Maxham’s.

Do the system files in Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra take up 60GB? It seems not

In comparison, the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s file explorer shows that the system takes up 47.45 GB if you don’t give it full access, and 27.16 GB if you do.

S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra are not so different smartphones in terms of software for the amount of storage space used by the system to differ so radically. So what’s the problem?

Looks like it’s in the way Samsung’s My Files file explorer represents data. In all three tested smartphones, the System item for some reason occupies almost half of the space that is occupied by applications. It seems that the explorer just takes into account their cache and other additional files that are stored in the system folder as an image of the operating system.

This is also confirmed by the fact that if you install another file explorer, Google Files, it shows completely different information. For the Galaxy Fold4, this is already a more realistic 26.24 GB, and only 7.7 GB of applications that the OS considers system.

Do the system files in Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra take up 60GB? It seems not

The same check in Google Files showed that in the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the system takes up even a little less – 25.31 GB. Add pre-installed apps here and it’s 32-35 GB, which generally fits into that amount of memory that the system can occupy on modern smartphones.

Do the system files in Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra take up 60GB? It seems not

More precisely, of course, it will be possible to check when we receive the new Samsung flagships for testing and can run them cleanly without transferring data from another smartphone. However, it seems that the problem is really in the way Samsung’s own application displays memory information.

Having given full access to the programs, I compared on Fold4 how much free memory is shown by the built-in My Files explorer and what Google Files shows. So the latter displayed 11.55 GB less occupied storage than Samsung’s own file manager.

I hope that the company will pay attention to this and provide an adequate display of the occupied data storage in its smartphones.