Sony Xperia m4 - not fit for purpose!

Soldato
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14 Apr 2003
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So last month I decided to upgrade from my iPhone 5. I have had iPhones since the 3G.
I decided on the Sony m4 aqua as the price was good, the form factor was nice and the reviews were good and I liked that it was waterproof.

All was good for a few weeks. However now I am realising that the 8gb storage that comes with it makes the phone not fit for purpose. I thought a 128gb sd card might help but to no avail. The android OS takes up 4gb and the uninstallable Sony apps take up 3.5gb. Once you set up your phone and update all the apps you are already low on space. I have uninstalled almost everything to the point I have literally 3 10mb utility apps and I am still in a position where I cannot update any apps or even check my email with the Gmail app!
I have tried apps like link2sd but these don't seem to work as I don't have root.
I am going to try to return the phone as not fit for purpouse and get a z5 or another iPhone but I worry it's been too long now.

Not a great introduction to the world of android!
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
14 Apr 2003
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Deepest Yorkshire
Put simply... Don't buy a cheap crappy phone and expect it to be anything other that cheap and crappy.

It's a mid range phone by a respected make sold on the high street. I'm not expecting flagship performance but I expect to be able to install a few basic apps and keep the phone updated.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Greater Manchester
You're comparing a phone that costs £189 sim free with one that had a headline price of nearly £600 when new and still sells for close to £150 as a second hand refurb.

I know I'm only re-iterating the first response, but how can you have imagined these two handsets would be comparable in any way??

Go and get yourself a Galaxy S7 or a Xperia Z5 etc. and then you can see whether an Android phone can be comparable to an iPhone!
 
Soldato
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Just for reference, my Galaxy S6 has 32GB of storage (and still costs significantly less than the equivalent iPhone either sim free or via contract) and I am not even close to filling its memory. You're correct, 8GB isn't enough for a decent Android experience these days, that's why your handset was (by Sony standards) bottom dollar.

Just to offer something hopefully slightly useful, as you have your own SD card installed as well, you can offload some of the storage being used on your devices memory to the SD card. You do this in the "apps" portion of the system settings, there should be a button marked "move to sd", it won;t move the whole app but will move as much as it can. It can't be done for every app though and there's a chance Sony have removed this functionality in their newer handsets, my last Sony device was a Z1.
 
Soldato
Joined
3 Jun 2005
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West Sussex
Having the exact same problems with mine as the OP. After updates the phone only has a couple of hundred meg. I have set it up for file transfer on charge but I am literally clearing the cache daily to get that few meg just to install an app.

I am not a big phone user but I admit I have used lots of cheaper phones that work a hell of a lot better than this.

After last update I am having loads of compatibility issues. It seems if you want to pair it to something that isn't Sony, it no longer works.
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Dec 2006
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5,129
The limitation is the 8GB of RAM. Also Sony and Google Bloat that you can't uninstall. Also apps that you can't move out of internal storage, depending on which Sony/Android version of the OS.

With IOS and Android, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage is the new minimum. THough if you have the latest version of Android you can use the SD card as internal memory, ish.
 
Soldato
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24 Jun 2008
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People blast Apple all the time for having 16gb storage but at least you have enough space to use the phone - I can't believe any company would be dumb enough to have just enough space for the OS and non removable apps and nothing else - it would like there being a 3.8gb iPhone option.
Regardless of the price this is a ridiculous decision
 
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