By golly, I think I figured out the biggest incentive for the 5S.

[Surf Monkey]

Who is going to need 128GB on their iPhone? just why?

This retrograde argument has been going on since I bought my first Mac. It had a TEN MEGABYTE drive. At the time the biggest external you could get was 50MB, and people said exactly what you just said. "Who is going to need a 50MB drive?? I mean, seriously! Overkill!"

The amount of space required expands in direct proportion to the amount of space available. Ten years from now someone will be carping about how no one in their right mind could possibly need more than 20 terabytes of storage.

 

[braddick]

There was never an 8GB iPhone 4 though until the 4S came along and the 4 became the cheaper option. When introduced the minimum was 16.

Yes. I misread your original post. You are of course, correct.

 

[terraphantm]

As for apps, I also regularly delete any app I haven't used in a few weeks. Since you can re-download anytime I don't think it's much of a hassle.

If you delete an app, you also lose any saved data. So in a game for example you'll lose all your progress. IMO it's not reasonable to expect one to be content with just deleting apps without some sort of mechanism to keep that data in the cloud.

 

[Gregintosh]

This retrograde argument has been going on since I bought my first Mac. It had a TEN MEGABYTE drive. At the time the biggest external you could get was 50MB, and people said exactly what you just said. "Who is going to need a 50MB drive?? I mean, seriously! Overkill!"

The amount of space required expands in direct proportion to the amount of space available. Ten years from now someone will be carping about how no one in their right mind could possibly need more than 20 terabytes of storage.

That may be true that in the next 5-10 years 128GB will seem paltry and 16GB or 32GB completely unusable (the way my first 500MB hard drive wouldn't even be able to support an OS these days).

But in the next 2 years 128GB is going to be overkill. (BTW, not saying that it wouldn't be NICE to have just saying it is not necessary or does not necessarily warrant paying extra money for).

iTunes Match, along with streaming services like Spotify are making the storage of music less intensive. If combined with fast LTE service and higher bandwidth caps make streaming music completely viable (and let's face it, as people become more dependent on streaming and wireless the bigger the caps are going to have to get as people will demand it).

Other than that, video is a big space killer, but I am not sure how many people need to have entire seasons or collections of movies loaded all the time. Plus, on a small resolution for a cell phone you don't need much.

For all the other space needs there are now cloud services or alternatives that can be used instead. Ultimately, yes, it comes down to the user, but in my opinion someone who *NEEDS* (different from just "wants") 128GB on a PHONE is probably doing some things very inefficiently.

 

[acarney]

My 64gig is actually feeling a little small.... Most my music is in the cloud & I only have like 1 HD video, but I do have about 2600 pictures on it & about 35 Gigs just from Apps. I also subscribe to about 6 podcasts at ~45Mb each, each week that's 270mb more being added to the phone.

Why not just delete all this stuff since its in the cloud? I don't feel like burning through my data limit if I'm traveling for four or five days because I downloaded 10 hrs of podcasts & maybe a game (like Max Payne ~1Gig) & maps for TomTom or something. Now if anything on apples cloud & app/music store did NOT count towards data limits, well then with LTE it probably would be fast & easy to constantly redownload stuff.

Btw, no reason to pay a hotel $9.95 a night or something for ~2mbits wifi or what not when I could just leave it on the device.

I wouldn't mind 128Gig maybe after the 5 S or something.... But god, think of a restore/backup on that beast! It's taking 6+ hours to fully restore my 64Gig 4S (about 7gig free) off a 100mbit cable connection. The solid state flash is just far too slow.

 

[Steve686]

My 64gig is actually feeling a little small.... Most my music is in the cloud & I only have like 1 HD video, but I do have about 2600 pictures on it & about 35 Gigs just from Apps. I also subscribe to about 6 podcasts at ~45Mb each, each week that's 270mb more being added to the phone.

Why not just delete all this stuff since its in the cloud? I don't feel like burning through my data limit if I'm traveling for four or five days because I downloaded 10 hrs of podcasts & maybe a game (like Max Payne ~1Gig) & maps for TomTom or something. Now if anything on apples cloud & app/music store did NOT count towards data limits, well then with LTE it probably would be fast & easy to constantly redownload stuff.

Btw, no reason to pay a hotel $9.95 a night or something for ~2mbits wifi or what not when I could just leave it on the device.

I wouldn't mind 128Gig maybe after the 5 S or something.... But god, think of a restore/backup on that beast! It's taking 6+ hours to fully restore my 64Gig 4S (about 7gig free) off a 100mbit cable connection. The solid state flash is just far too slow.

Ever watch the show Hoarders? They got nothing on you.

But seriously, I just bring my MBP if I am on the road for a few days to have instant backup and sync capability in case there is no wifi available and don't wanna burn some precious data.

 

[Gregintosh]

My 64gig is actually feeling a little small.... Most my music is in the cloud & I only have like 1 HD video, but I do have about 2600 pictures on it & about 35 Gigs just from Apps. I also subscribe to about 6 podcasts at ~45Mb each, each week that's 270mb more being added to the phone.

Why not just delete all this stuff since its in the cloud? I don't feel like burning through my data limit if I'm traveling for four or five days because I downloaded 10 hrs of podcasts & maybe a game (like Max Payne ~1Gig) & maps for TomTom or something. Now if anything on apples cloud & app/music store did NOT count towards data limits, well then with LTE it probably would be fast & easy to constantly redownload stuff.

Btw, no reason to pay a hotel $9.95 a night or something for ~2mbits wifi or what not when I could just leave it on the device.

I wouldn't mind 128Gig maybe after the 5 S or something.... But god, think of a restore/backup on that beast! It's taking 6+ hours to fully restore my 64Gig 4S (about 7gig free) off a 100mbit cable connection. The solid state flash is just far too slow.

Well you don't have to delete everything. 32GB or even 64GB is plenty for anything you'd want to do in the short term (within days or weeks), unless you're super finicky and have to have random things right now.

If you're planning a trip, you'd download your game, gps maps, and reading/listening material ahead of time. Your data plan would be more than sufficient to fill in a blank here and there and let you opt out of paying for hotel wifi (even though on my month long road trip through the American South I had free wifi at every location I stayed in even in cheap motels, though I'm aware of some higher end places that still do charge extra for wifi).

As for your 2600 pictures and 35GB of apps, do use them all everyday? How much of that have you not looked at or ran on your phone for more than 1 week? More than 1 month? Can't remember the exact day when it was last used? I bet you can cut that down A LOT if you stuck to only things you look at and use.

The point isn't that going cloud based means you're downloading all your data all the time, just that it allows you to keep just the essentials you NEED while data is there for the occasional song you want to listen to but wasn't on your playlist, or downloading that one obscure app you found yourself needing. A 2-4GB plan is MORE than enough for that.

I use just over 1GB per month and I download occasional podcasts on the go, listen to talk radio live streams from time to time, check email, download apps from time to time, and use google maps heavily. I even occasionally buy a song from iTunes on the go. So I know this is possible and feasible.

 

[fizzwinkus]

That sounds like a lot of work and constant fiddling and management just to have an incomplete set of data. Sure, anyone can work with a limited amount of storage, but some of us just don't want to waste the time. If phones only had 2gb of storage, I could still survive, but an easy 128gb with the knowledge that everything is there if I want to show it saves brain cells. I don't need the headache and micromanagement just to save a nice dinner's worth.

 

[nfl46]

128...please, Apple is pushing Cloud too much to allow that happen. Maybe in 2014.

 

[Markiie]

Dude, this is macrumors. We are not a representative sample of the average user.

Absolutely agree with this statement.

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12 mega pixel camera is going to be the biggest draw I believe. Beautiful pictures.

NFC i dont see happening not until next gen iphone IF THAT.

A6X processor maybe? Don't see that happening.

128 GB? I thought that maybe this was a possibility but many have pointed the storage farms that are being built so that's a pretty solid point to think its not gonna happen.

 

[acarney]

Ever watch the show Hoarders? They got nothing on you.

But seriously, I just bring my MBP if I am on the road for a few days to have instant backup and sync capability in case there is no wifi available and don't wanna burn some precious data.

Well you don't have to delete everything. 32GB or even 64GB is plenty for anything you'd want to do in the short term (within days or weeks), unless you're super finicky and have to have random things right now.

If you're planning a trip, you'd download your game, gps maps, and reading/listening material ahead of time. Your data plan would be more than sufficient to fill in a blank here and there and let you opt out of paying for hotel wifi (even though on my month long road trip through the American South I had free wifi at every location I stayed in even in cheap motels, though I'm aware of some higher end places that still do charge extra for wifi).

As for your 2600 pictures and 35GB of apps, do use them all everyday? How much of that have you not looked at or ran on your phone for more than 1 week? More than 1 month? Can't remember the exact day when it was last used? I bet you can cut that down A LOT if you stuck to only things you look at and use.

The point isn't that going cloud based means you're downloading all your data all the time, just that it allows you to keep just the essentials you NEED while data is there for the occasional song you want to listen to but wasn't on your playlist, or downloading that one obscure app you found yourself needing. A 2-4GB plan is MORE than enough for that.

I use just over 1GB per month and I download occasional podcasts on the go, listen to talk radio live streams from time to time, check email, download apps from time to time, and use google maps heavily. I even occasionally buy a song from iTunes on the go. So I know this is possible and feasible.

Valid points all around. However, I may have not made my trend clear; I almost feel like I'm phasing out a computer in exchange for the iPhone/iPad. Everything kind of lives in the iOS world for me. The podcasts & pictures most the time originate ON the device & only through automated syncs and cloud systems make their way back to my MacBook and NAS. Sure, I have pictures on my phone that I took with an iPhone a couple generations back. But that's because it's safe (cloud backed up), easy (originated on the device, photo stream to anything else) and fast (apple has developed some amazing databases allowing huge sets of data to be viewable fast). I could offload the data but that takes time on both ends (storing and retrieving) and adds an element of clutter (did I store it on the NAS, damn, I only brought my MacBook... Etc).

It might be hoarding, but these items don't always have readily available official archival copies. For example, The Film Vault podcast. They left the ACE network and went independent, all their (originally) free shows disappeared because the ACE network had produced them. It would be very enjoyable to go back & listen to them from time to time. That's why I keep the current airing ones, which I do listen too over & over again, especially if I am going to or have watched a movie by a director or something I know they've talked about. I often then go back and replay that episode. Etc.

When it comes to iPad, that's my first stop for offloading pictures from the DSLR, maybe 2 to 4 gigs of pictures at a time. If I want to sort & upload maybe four or five days worth of pictures that's a huge percent of space at 32gig or even 64gigs that needs to be freed up. Honestly, I actually like the iPad more for sorting & Flickr posting. If I actually subscribed to TV shows via iTunes I would be really screwed. Just following four or five TV shows during the winter season would probably be 5 or 6gig a week, and sure you might not save the whole season at a time, but two or three weeks worth if you get real busy....


Edit: Games and Apps; no I don't use them every day. BUT, keeping these in local storage is kind of a side effect of digital releases. Yes Max Payne or something might not be played every day, but I'm spoiled at home with 100mbits. If I'm at a friends house and want them to play, or am waiting for them to do something and want to play, or have a split shift at work and want to play then, if wifi is there its probably 5mbits or less. That game takes 20min before I can play. Can you picture that if it was the same with a Xbox game or something.... Takes you 20 min to get it out of the case & put it into the game system...

 

[ziggo]

Maybe you should look into getting rid of some stuff. Digital hoarding is a real problem - and it's expensive too.

As for Photos, I figure having them readily accessible via the cloud or external HD is enough (at least for stuff that's older than a few months). That really cuts down on how much you store on your phone.

For music, there's iTunes match. What I did was put together a play list of all my favorite songs I listen to all the time and I keep that downloaded on my devices, while the rest can live in the cloud.

As for apps, I also regularly delete any app I haven't used in a few weeks. Since you can re-download anytime I don't think it's much of a hassle.

Im a soldier and frequently am training in areas where my signal is spotty so relying on iCloud is out of the question for me at this point. And I like to keep my music collection on hand as I listen to albums not playlists. Much of my space is taken up by music these days

 

[Gregintosh]

Im a soldier and frequently am training in areas where my signal is spotty so relying on iCloud is out of the question for me at this point. And I like to keep my music collection on hand as I listen to albums not playlists. Much of my space is taken up by music these days

My 2,500 song iTunes library is 11GB. And that is assuming 256kbps iTunes Match. At that rate, on a 64GB iPhone (lets say 44GB is dedicated to music) that's 10,000 songs. Thats a LOT of albums.

If you lower the quality a bit to 128Kbps (which may not be distinguishable on many headphones from higher quality), you can probably double that to 20,000 songs.

 

[MuddyPaws1]

One thing that eats up my space is pictures and video. It's a pretty good camera and the video is very good. I shoot a lot. Add HD videos to my list of apps, music, movies and other stuff....bigger is better.

My 64 gig iPad is full.