The new Sony Xperia M4 Aqua, in both 8GB and 16GB variants, is starting to make its rounds and we think you need to be aware of a few details that were revealed on the Xperia Blog. Even though the smartphone is being advertised as an 8GB model, we think you need to be know that only about 1.26GB is available to the user. The screenshots below were taken right out the box, and as you can see, Android 5.0 takes up 4GB and pre-installed apps takes another 2+GB of that precious storage, leaving only 1.26GB for whatever apps you want to install, as well as your pictures, videos or music files. What we are saying is if you intend on getting the 8GB version of the Xperia M4 Aqua, make sure you pickup a 32GB memory card at the same time.
It begs the question as to why Sony would even consider even producing an 8GB model, or even a 16GB model with memory so cheap – 32GB should be the lowest size of memory that any smartphone in 2015 should have on board as standard. We hope that Sony will stop making the 8GB model available, anywhere, and settle on the 16GB model. Launching the M4 Aqua with only 8GB of storage in Europe, one of Sony’s largest markets, does not make any sense. Even in Sony’s own manual guide is handing out false information: “The E2303, E2353 and E2312 have 3 GB of free memory available to the user for downloaded applications and their data, music, pictures and movies while each device has up to 8 GB of flash memory in total.”
The Xperia Blog points out that even trying to remove the bloatware does little good as most of it is ‘baked’ into the device and therefore removable. Even if you turn off the app, it still resides as part of that 8GB of memory. They deleted the popular app, Facebook, and Kobo Books, AVG and a few others, but were only able to increase the usable memory to 1.73GB, which is still unacceptable.
Otherwise, the Xperia M4 Aqua has a lot going for it and it is a shame to see such a promising device crippled with so little storage. It has a 5-inch HD display, a 64-bit Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, expandable memory, 13MP main camera and a 5MP FFC, with waterproof and a 2400mAh battery