Does storage capacity affect battery life?

[iPodJedi]

I was wondering if you have a very full storage capacity of your iPhone or iPad, will it make your iPhones battery last a shorter amount of time. Or, if you have used a very low amount of your storage, will your battery last longer? I ask this because my iPad is nearly full and it does feel like it runs down kind of quick sometimes. But my iPhone seems to last a long time and it is less than halfway full of storage capacity. With my iPod touch, It was completely full and the battery was terrible, when I removed a ton of apps, I got the storage down to half, and the battery lasts longer.

 

[zorinlynx]

I was wondering if you have a very full storage capacity of your iPhone or iPad, will it make your iPhones battery last a shorter amount of time. Or, if you have used a very low amount of your storage, will your battery last longer? I ask this because my iPad is nearly full and it does feel like it runs down kind of quick sometimes. But my iPhone seems to last a long time and it is less than halfway full of storage capacity. With my iPod touch, It was completely full and the battery was terrible, when I removed a ton of apps, I got the storage down to half, and the battery lasts longer.

A nearly full phone CAN reduce performance and battery life somewhat, but you're not likely to notice the difference. It will be very small.

The reason is, the more full you let your device become, the more the flash memory will become fragmented. This means that in order to write, a larger number of blocks has to be erased. Erasing and writing flash is energy-intensive and takes time, so the result is lower battery life and performance.

This only makes a difference when writing. Reading is not affected. Personally, I like to keep at least 15-20% of flash free. Not only does it help avoid this issue, but it means I have plenty of room for photos and videos, especially when traveling.

 

[joeblow7777]

So the short answer is technically yes, but practically not really.

If removing a lot of apps greatly improved battery life on your iPod, it's possible that one or more of those apps was running some background processes that were draining the battery.

 

[McGiord]

I don't think so. it might have an impact in booting time or any kind of checks but nothing that the user will notice on a daily and regular usage. I guess that having more open space allows for faster performance, and how that impacts the battery, the faster it works the more you do the more battery gets used long term. Again not really detrimental in my opinion.

 

[yeah]

A nearly full phone CAN reduce performance and battery life somewhat, but you're not likely to notice the difference. It will be very small.

The reason is, the more full you let your device become, the more the flash memory will become fragmented. This means that in order to write, a larger number of blocks has to be erased. Erasing and writing flash is energy-intensive and takes time, so the result is lower battery life and performance.

This only makes a difference when writing. Reading is not affected. Personally, I like to keep at least 15-20% of flash free. Not only does it help avoid this issue, but it means I have plenty of room for photos and videos, especially when traveling.

Luckily, flash memory is extremely fast, even on an iOS device, and you will notice slight degradation in performance/battery if the space is fragmented.

 

[cynics]

Luckily, flash memory is extremely fast, even on an iOS device, and you will notice slight degradation in performance/battery if the space is fragmented.a

Memory (RAM) is extremely fast. The iPhones flash storage is not however. Last time I saw an Anandtech test (which I admit has been awhile) it was around 20-30 mbs. Nothing compared to an SSD in a computer or even a HDD.

 

[nostresshere]

...
If removing a lot of apps greatly improved battery life on your iPod, it's possible that one or more of those apps was running some background processes that were draining the battery.

This is more apt to be the answer.

 

[Narien]

I think zorinlynx's answer is the most correct one. A full memory (or very close) could draw a little extra.

However, the actual effects are negligible at best, if you do that many writes, odds are you will be using the screen a lot as well, and that will drain power a lot faster.

 

[FatPuppy]

With 2 gigs of free memory I think every device is just fine. I keep my free space at 3.4 maximum cause than the stupid ios 7 starts to download.

 

[eelw]

LCD, cellular connection and GPS represents most of the battery consumption on phones. Power usage for storage is a very small fraction vs these 3 items.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Not to slightly change the subject but does a 16gb device use power less than a 64gb device?

 

[Narien]

Not to slightly change the subject but does a 16gb device use power less than a 64gb device?

I think so yes, HOWEVER watching a youtube video for just a few sec would probably drain more.

It really isn't a factor!

 

[Shuri]

I was wondering if you have a very full storage capacity of your iPhone or iPad, will it make your iPhones battery last a shorter amount of time. Or, if you have used a very low amount of your storage, will your battery last longer? I ask this because my iPad is nearly full and it does feel like it runs down kind of quick sometimes. But my iPhone seems to last a long time and it is less than halfway full of storage capacity. With my iPod touch, It was completely full and the battery was terrible, when I removed a ton of apps, I got the storage down to half, and the battery lasts longer.

I've seen my battery drain faster on my iphone 5 and on my fathers 4S, too when the Storage (not RAM) was almost used. Can be coincidence though.
My Theory is, that iOS tries to move things when getting storage requests while being full, for example delete caches of photo stream or other things, which can be loaded again and haven't been used for a while. But I didn't check on this.