So far the Samsung Galaxy S4 has been flying off the shelves at a rate considerable faster the its predecessor the Samsung Galaxy S3.

But buyers of this new super phone from Samsung are discovering 2 differences over older models. First up is 16gb translates anywhere between 8.8gb to 9.62gb free to the user. Secondly, the expansion memory card slot can only be used for media (photos, documents and music) and not for storing apps or games. With many top games now requiring 2gb, it won’t take long to use 9gb of memory. Also bear in mind apps cache a lot of data, so dropbox, Google Music and others also take up a large amount of internal memory.

The previous workarounds for saving apps or games on the memory card have been removed by Google in its operating system. So apps like Apps2SD do not work. Other options like rooting (which in turn voids your warranty) and using Foldermount is not reliable or without creating other problems. Also take note that apart from a rooted device voiding your warranty, a number of apps won’t work on a rooted device. These include banking apps and Google Play film rentals as examples.

Despite Google removing the ability to remove saving apps or games to the memory card and the pain it might cause, it is actually a good thing, as apps and games will run better in internal memory.

So the obvious solution would be to purchase the 32gb or 64gb versions of the S4, but if you look in any of the high street stores you won’t find them. In fact you won’t find them online either at present.

Well, this morning I met up Samsung, who clarified the current position. Samsung offered the retailers all 3 memory sizes, that is 16, 32 and 64gb and all of them opted for the 16gb only. This was based on previous buying decisions based on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and how the older version of the android operating system functioned. None of the retailers took into account the lower internal memory of the S4 and apps all having to be installed into internal memory. With regards buying 32gb or 64gb versions these will be available and are in certain places, and Samsung explained these would be a online purchase only due to none of the stores buying the larger memory models. Samsung promised to get back to me with details of when and where these larger models could be purchased from.

So watch this space!