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128gb iPhone: When are we likely to see one?

T

Totty1987

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 7, 2011
153
14
I've had my 64gb iPhone 4s for a week now and I'm loving everything about it, but my 45gb itunes library has left me with about 10.1gb of free space. It's inevitable that with the size of apps, this space will diminish quite quickly.

Anyway how soon can we expect a 128gb iPhone?
 
In 2 years I think, definitely not next year. Phones tend to upgrade capacity at this interval, at least in the last several years.
 
yly3 said:
In 2 years I think, definitely not next year. Phones tend to upgrade capacity at this interval, at least in the last several years.
Click to expand...

iPhone 1: 4GB/8GB
iPhone 3G: 8GB/16GB
iPhone 3GS: 16GB/32GB
iPhone 4: 16GB/32GB
iPhone 4S: 16GB/32GB/64GB

Actually the only one that did NOT get a capacity boost was the 4.
 
yly3 said:
In 2 years I think, definitely not next year. Phones tend to upgrade capacity at this interval, at least in the last several years.
Click to expand...

It's not that simple/straightforward/predictable...

I mean, there actually has to be space in the phone for that much memory.

Either the memory will become smaller overtime (manufactures will find new ways to make it), or the phone will get bigger.
 
Yumunum said:
It's not that simple/straightforward/predictable...

I mean, there actually has to be space in the phone for that much memory.

Either the memory will become smaller overtime (manufactures will find new ways to make it), or the phone will get bigger.
Click to expand...

64gb takes up barely any physical space
 
seanfranklin said:
iPhone 1: 4GB/8GB
iPhone 3G: 8GB/16GB
iPhone 3GS: 16GB/32GB
iPhone 4: 16GB/32GB
iPhone 4S: 16GB/32GB/64GB

Actually the only one that did NOT get a capacity boost was the 4.
Click to expand...

Not exactly.

The 16Gb and 32Gb have maintained their respective price points since the 3GS until today. The 64Gb option is new with the 4S, but has not replaced the 32Gb.

Hopefully, with the next iPhone, we'll see the 64Gb and the 32Gb variants replace the 32Gb and 16Gb price points.
 
We're not going to see it next year.

Pricing is a HUGE factor. The iPhone 4 didn't get a capacity bump because the prices of NAND flash didn't go down for 64GB chips at the time.

And right now, we're seeing shortages of parts for hard drives, which means prices for all storage, including Flash memory for SSDs, is going for rise for at least the next quarter or two until production capacity returns in the hard drive segment.

Maybe the iPhone 5S will get 128GB.

In the meantime, I'm betting there will be even stronger reliance on iCloud if apps get much bigger. Maybe they'll even start doing actual streaming for some music and video from iTunes.
 
Dwalls90 said:
Not exactly.

The 16Gb and 32Gb have maintained their respective price points since the 3GS until today. The 64Gb option is new with the 4S, but has not replaced the 32Gb.
Click to expand...

OP didn't ask about price, just capacity. The iPhone 4 is the only model not to have a higher capacity option than the previous model.

Happy with my 64GB for now :) but of course higher capacities will come, it's the nature of technology.
 
what do you keep on your phone/in your itunes library to take up that much space?

I could never get close to filling even my 32gb iphone.

Is it movies? I never understood why anyone would want to keep a lot of movies on their phone. Do you really watch them often on the go?

Anyways, I think we are moving towards cloud storage/streaming now.
 
NovemberWhiskey said:
what do you keep on your phone/in your itunes library to take up that much space?

I could never get close to filling even my 32gb iphone.

Is it movies? I never understood why anyone would want to keep a lot of movies on their phone. Do you really watch them often on the go?

Anyways, I think we are moving towards cloud storage/streaming now.
Click to expand...

I keep a lot of movies/tvshows on my phone because even with the cloud and streaming it can use up a lot of data.
 
Dwalls90 said:
Not exactly.
Click to expand...

Also technically there was a 16gb 1st gen (although not at launch), so really only the 3GS and 4S came in larger capacities than their predecessors. Based on that, it would probably be no earlier than the 2013 iPhone.

I would guess it'll be a while, and there'll be a 128gb touch for a while first, too, possibly. But it may also depend on where iCloud goes and how much people continue to want very large capacities. We might not get back to the kind of capacities the later disk-based iPods have for a long time.

When I got my original 8gb iPhone, it didn't have nearly enough space for what I wanted on it. In two years, my 32gb went from having a few gigs of extra space to just a few hundred megs. I wouldn't be surprised if I can fill the 64gb I ordered in two or three years.... But I also wouldn't be surprised if 64gb were still enough by then.
 
seanfranklin said:
OP didn't ask about price, just capacity. The iPhone 4 is the only model not to have a higher capacity option than the previous model.
Click to expand...


Price DETERMINES capacity. If apple cannot negotiate a good price on a certain capacity of NAND flash chips, then they will not put them in the devices if they can't make a desired profit level at the existing price points. They will wait and try again with the next device/year, which is what happened with the iPhone 4.
 
NovemberWhiskey said:
what do you keep on your phone/in your itunes library to take up that much space?...
I think we are moving towards cloud storage/streaming now.
Click to expand...

I keep music, some largeish apps, a fair number of pictures. I keep a pretty good amount of space free for recording videos (1GB = 6 minutes of video).

Cloud/streaming is nice, but as long as the carriers are imposing small data caps it's not going to really be practical for everything.
 
seanfranklin said:
iPhone 1: 4GB/8GB
iPhone 3G: 8GB/16GB
iPhone 3GS: 16GB/32GB
iPhone 4: 16GB/32GB
iPhone 4S: 16GB/32GB/64GB

Actually the only one that did NOT get a capacity boost was the 4.
Click to expand...

Actually there was a 16 GB original iPhone released in February, 2008. So the 3G wasn't a capacity boost either.

So the original iPhone started at 8 GB (max). 221 days later, the 16 GB model was made available. Then 500 days after that, the 32 GB iPhone 3GS was made available. Then, 847 days after that, the 64 GB iPhone 4S was made available. That means on average, it took 522.67 days for the iPhone to get a capacity boost. So, October 14, 2011 + 522.67 days = Tuesday, March 19, 2013-> date of the iPhone 128 GB release :)
 
scaredpoet said:
In the meantime, I'm betting there will be even stronger reliance on iCloud if apps get much bigger. Maybe they'll even start doing actual streaming for some music and video from iTunes.
Click to expand...

NovemberWhiskey said:
Anyways, I think we are moving towards cloud storage/streaming now.
Click to expand...

Unless carriers go back to offering unlimited data plans, I don't see this happening.

Physical storage is ALWAYS going to be a necessity on mobile devices. Unless of course every inch of the country gets 4G speeds and unlimited data plans become the norm.
 
himynameiscody said:
64gb takes up barely any physical space
Click to expand...

since the largest a single flash chip goes up to right now (or at least, the ones Apple uses) is 32GB, 64GB takes up twice as much space. Currently, 128GB would take 4 times more physical space than 16/32GB. When that changes (when we see reasonably priced 64 or 128GB chips) is when we will see a 128GB iPhone
 
we will never see one, its all going cloud based now, i bet future phones will just stream data from the cloud and the phones will hold just the basic info, so very small storage will be o the phones themselves.
 
SL4VE said:
we will never see one, its all going cloud based now, i bet future phones will just stream data from the cloud and the phones will hold just the basic info, so very small storage will be o the phones themselves.
Click to expand...

yeah and those data caps sure will make that work :rolleyes:
 
well it depends, if the traditional files such as movies, pictures, videos etc become more high tech or higher definition then they are going to take up more space which... will therefore result in the next iphone needing more space to accomodate the bigger size of the files (due to higher quality). the quality of files will definetly become better over the next year but the question is will they become high enough and take up more space that apple will have to implement a 128gb iphone?
 
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