Would you file an FTC or FCC complaint for Android T-Mobile ROM lies?

The bad news is that nobody would buy this LG Optimus L9 if they truthfully advertised it's a 600MB phone for apps.

The result of that bad news is that I can't use the phone as it is (i.e., out of the box), since it is a 600MB phone for apps (even with the 32 GB SDcard).

So, the good news implication is that, even if I brick it, I haven't lost anything, since the phone is worthless from the get go.

All I can do is make a worthless phone less worthless or more worthless, depending on the outcome of my cyanogenmod efforts ...

I'm trying to line up my ducks with this tutorial:

I would complain to neither since both claims seem to be literally true. If I made such a purchase and wanted somebody to blame for the results then I'd have to start by blaming myself for not doing a bit of basic research before the act. Whinging afterward seldom does any good.

Do you really consider it "basic research" to know that the phone only has 600MB of usable storage space for apps?

How are you supposed to find this out, if neither LG nor T-Mobile will tell you?

No, you wouldn't buy it if you had known that. Tens of thousands of people own an L9 and don't see any significant number of them crying fraud or deceptive practices. There's a reason it's a $180 phone and not a $600 one.

Yes you can use it for quite a few apps even with only 600MB ROM. You want to use it for some apps that use an inordinate amount of space for storing maps. My first Android phone had 1GB ROM and 512MB RAM. It was usable for a lot of things. In fact I found the RAM size the bigger problem. You can also have small footprint apps that will kill the apps not currently running and take up space, freeing it for something else. (I like Andorid Assistant)

You've lost the value of the phone on the market. Lots of people would like to buy it as is. It's actually a lot of phone for it's price. I have recommended this phone to over a dozen people because for their meeds it's a great phone.

Or you could just sell it on eBay or Craigslist and cough up the extra $299-300 for a phone that suits your needs.

And be sure you get one on how to restore the stock ROM if you ever want to sell it.

Try posting the question on any or all of the several L9 specific forums.

Agreed: and when I buy a laptop (as I did) that advertised a 128 GB SSD, that turns out to have 16 GB[*] reserved for a recovery partition (and a fair amount of bloatware on the C: drive, to boot), then I feel that I've been lied to. It's not that I can't fix it (I have), but I can't shop to /my/ best advantage if the sellers twist the facts.

The position with phones is much the same, if not worse. On the little Samsung phone I have (or rather: had until I bricked it) that came "free" with the above laptop, there was so little space that, after I had added just /two/ small apps (a mapping app and a WiFi monitor) that it couldn't even update the apps that Samsung had locked onto the phone ("Not enough space to update YouTube", "Not enough space to update Google Hang-outs", ..) And, of course, putting a 32GB SD card into it didn't help at all...

-- chris

Files are portable, apps are not. That is also standard.

On Mon, 07 Apr 2014 05:29:08 -0700, dave scrit:

Except in Android 2.x and in 4.3 and above. Otherwise true.

OK. I am using the free XP file manager you download from Samsung on my only Windows device, a netbook with failing buttons. I don't even know why I'd try to remove an ap. What for? I'm just glad I can drag and drop songs and pictures. Or preload them onto the detachable memory..

Why does Android tell me they can't play .flac or .wav when they actually can? In fact they tell you to transcode down before loading. WTF? Almost all my files are from CDs and are lossless. Memory is cheap, hearing is not. I do not store RAW photos. There are limits to my self-indulgence.

hearing is definitely not lossless and grows worse as people age.

people can't hear a difference between a lossless audio file and a properly done mp3/aac, especially at 256kbps or 320kbps.

they might think they can, but in a double-blind test, people have consistently *not* been able to tell the difference. countless such tests have been done, with many, many people.

there certainly isn't an audible difference on headphones or with the built-in speakers of a device.

Chrome (the Android 'Browser') is much faster than firefox, but does NOT allow adblock plus -- which I consider essential for any browsing I do, especially with severely limited screen size.

There are always tradeoffs :-(

A knowledgeable person might have defined 'usable' as 'usable for downloading and running additional applications'; the problem is that NOBODY is knowledgeable the first time they buy a smartphone...or computer...or anything else that's fairly complex; there's always SOME nasty surprise no matter how much research you do.

Had that been done I think T-Mobile wouldn't have had a leg to stand on, especially if you'd recorded the conversation. I also think that the helpdroid would have said exactly the same thing -- "Sure you can do it"

-- because he didn't expect to hear the qualifier. Sort of like WW2 'dazzle' paint on ships :-)

OK, I complained to both. The FTC complaint contained a bit of clarification missing in my FCC complaint:

"When I was first interested in buying an Android cellphone, I determined that I wanted an external sdcard in order to NOT be limited by the internal phone memory. Every single provider of phones gives the amount of internal memory (in my case,

If you like my complaint, feel free to use it or any part of it in your own.

I did a lot of reading about cellphones, but NOWHERE did I see it mentioned that external sdcards couldn't run applications. I didn't ask anybody, I just read the specs. The BLU is a fine phone aside from this monumental drawback, which is apparently universal.

I should have read this newsgroup before buying the phone. I've found that people who review products in various "forums" and sales/manufacturers' websites generally don't have a clue.

:-(

Actually, no. I've downloaded apps that claim something like 5 MB, but when I end up deleting them the program itself (not the stored data, which i delete separately) takes up more than 3 or 4 times as much space as the claim.

Is it possible that some of the apps are zipped files that autounzip themselves into much larger versions?

Where did you discover this knowledge? What did you know that led you to seek it out? My computer has RAM and ROM internally, and whatever size hard drive(s) I want to add. Less RAM/ROM means stuff works slower, but is entirely independent of the size of the hard drive. Is it such a leap to assume that Android phones are similarly organized?

The majority of the HD space is NOT unavailable, though.

It makes sense. Chrome is an extension of google, and google relies on ads to make money. Google wants to be the place where people "log in" and then roam around the internet, making it easier for them to track you, and then display appropriate ads all over the place.

I'm not saying it's good, just "makes sense" from google's viewpoint.

Michael

BUT FIRST find out how to restore its virginity in the event of failure!

When we buy an automobile, we have certain unstated expectations -- motor, wheels, steering wheel etc. We don't need to ask for these specifically because everybody knows that they're part of the car. When was the last time you bought a car and the salesman asked "And will you be wanting headlights with that, sir?"

Maybe that was how it worked 100 years ago, but not for a long time now.

Buying a cellphone, especially the first one, is very different. First-time buyers don't know what they don't know. Since this is relatively new technology aimed partially at first-time buyers, the decent thing is to provide more and better explanation.

Unless the intent is to screw the customers, of course.