My phone says I still have a certain amount of space left but everytime I connect it to my laptop, the space becomes lesser.
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The amount of storage advertised for a phone is generally the entire capacity, including the space needed for the operating system.
The computer looks at the overall capacity and use, including your phone’s system files.
How much less? If it’s 2-3%, could easily be a unit conversion issue.
It could be related to something I discovered not too long ago: there are two definitions of what a GB is. I purchased a 256Gb SD card and was shocked to discover my PC said it only had 238GB right out of the box! I emailed the company, and turns out that Windows uses a different definition of what a GB (and all other sizes) than what the storage companies use. Storage companies like SanDisc say 1Gb=1×10^9 bytes (called decimal notation ), while Windows defines a GB as 2^30 bytes (binary notation).
Might I add to this discussion:
There are technically two different units that are commonly refer to as a Gigabyte. There’s a normal Gigabyte (GB) and then there is a Gibibyte (GiB).
Normal GB, MB, KB, etc is a base-10 measurement, so 1 KB is 1000 Bytes. 1 MB is 1000 KB, and so on.
However, it can be more simple in computing to refer to things in base-2, hence the Gibibyte, Mebibyte (MiB), Kibibyte (KiB), etc.
One KiB is 1024 Bytes. One MiB is 1024 KiB, and so on.
This causes a lot of confusion because they are referred to as the same thing colloquially, and especially in advertising. Why include 1024 GB when you can just give them 1000 and call it the same thing?
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