iPhone curiosity question

CG19a

Hi, while I'm stuck on a train I thought I'd ask this question.

I had an iphone 5s 16gb, which had a capacity of 13.5gb after iOS 7 was installed.

I now have a 5s 64gb which only has a capacity 56.5gb after iOS 7 is installed.

Is there a reason why there would be a 5gb difference between these two? The numbers are for before any apps are installed, where the only difference is that one is a 16gb model and the other is a 64gb model.

bsms1147

It's because of this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

And a (near enough) correct quote made by someone elsewhere to explain; 'Drive makers use 1 Billion (1,000,000,000) bytes for a gigabyte whereas everyone else uses 2^30 (1,073,741,824) bytes. Therefore you see only 93.1% of the advertised space.'

The 16GB iPhone will actually be around 14.3GB
The 64GB iPhone will actually be around 57.2GB

iOS is approximately 752MB, so subtract it from both and you have the figures you posted.

It's the reason why anything with storage (phones, harddrives etc) will often use the disclaimer 'actual formatted capacity [may be] less' or similar.

CG19a

Thanks. Great answer, now with three hours left I'll need to find something else to ponder!