Android 13 phone has more storage left due to mandatory new file system

A phone that comes out with Android 13 will probably have more storage space than under Android 12 and was previously the case. Google would like to mandate the Erofs file system, where Android now mainly uses ext4.

Erofs, Enhanced Read-Only File System, saves space compared to ext4 and also provides faster read speeds. On the firmware of a phone, this can save up to 800 MB, writes Esper.

Google hasn’t yet confirmed that it’s making Erofs mandatory, but it’s been mentioned several times in the Android source code. In December last year, an engineer already spoke about the obligation for Erofs in Android 13 and in the meantime work is underway on the support from Erofs. “Erofs should replace ext4 as the file system for read-only partitions.”

Erofs is in Linux 5.4. OPPO and Xiaomi, among others, are already using last year’s file system. Erofs comes from Huawei’s stable, where an engineer made it. It was a feature of Emui 9.1, a software release from 2019. Huawei then claimed it was 20 percent faster than ext4 and could save up to 2GB of storage.