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iPhone 12 iPhone 12 storage question - is 128gb enough?

I restored my iPhone X from Backup after returning the 12 Pro and i'm at 27.3GB from 256GB now... lol
Could easily live with 64GB.

the only thing that fills up for me over time, is Music and maybe some Movies/TV Shows i download to watch on the way. But never clean it up....

Still ordered the 128GB Mini though... That way i can completely forget about it until my next phone.
 
I believe you should pay for what you need. Anything more is wasting money. Since 128gb phone will have 100gb free to the user, I think most people will be more than fine with that amount of storage.

Also if you are someone needs more than 100gb of storage you likely know that before you buy the phone. I'm more than happy to use a 128gb phone, but I want for 512gb for the ipad pro as I know 256gb storage not very comfortable for my use.
 
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I currently have an iPhone SE 2020 with 64GB and I find that more than enough. I'm probably not your typical user though; I don't do any of the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram stuff and I don't use iCloud. I take loads of photos - mostly of my children - but I move them across to my Mac and delete what's on my iPhone, except for any exceptionally good ones. Even when I feel like my phone might be getting full/cluttered when I check the storage it's not high. Right now I'm using just 21GB. I am thinking at some point next year I might upgrade to the iPhone 12. 64GB will definitely do for me.
 
If videos and photos are the only thing really taking up space, does it make sense to go above 128GB, if you have iCloud Drive at the same time?
 
I have been hovering around 130gb used on my last few iphones. And I don't feel like i'm storing all the much on it. I have some playlists on there. Like 4 maybe. photos and video are kept in the cloud. I have a bunch of apps though. Currently about 4gb of podcasts.
 
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I bought the 128 but now I‘m having second thoughts. While I‘m currently only using 32GB on my 12 Pro and have a 2TB iCloud plan, I fear that ProRAW and DV will let that number skyrocket.

But returning it and buying the 256 would have me wait another month. Ugh.
 
I'd like to post my opinion since I got the same worry every time I bought a new iPhone.
In the end I think: once the phone internal storage is enough to provide space for vital functionalities on latest iOS version, that would be the right choice for size.
(And this "vital" space is decreasing (think about this) because new iOS does itself a storage optimisation temporarily removing infrequently used app, and reinstall them on demand.

Consider that nowadays there are cloud service streaming service, no problems with bandwidth.
Storing everything in your device is more all data loss oriented. And you'll never have enough storage to compare on what you could get real time from the net.

You may say iCloud is expensive (but easy for backup beginners). Yes it is and there are alternatives. You do not have to backup everything there.

So if you're a beginner and you don't know how to route your backup assets... yes you might worry about storage,
and might be worth to spend 100-200 bucks more for more capacity.
Otherwise I think you've got already enough skill on how to optimise your local iPhone storage and backups.

One last point... as iPhone versions are released entry level model storage capacity is incrementing...
For my experience the very first offer capacity size, looks cheap but might be a pain to manage.
Second size offered, normally's been the best choice for me (price vs. minimum size)
Not very sure for iPhone 12 if it's worth 256GB. Since 128GB look like already quite a lot of room for the device and iOS.

So the final question I would ask myself is: Am I missing some new feature/app/service that would need more local device room that 128GB could not fit, and either I cant move to the cloud?
 
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nikkoala said:
I'd like to post my opinion since I got the same worry every time I bought a new iPhone.
In the end I think: once the phone internal storage is enough to provide space for vital functionalities on latest iOS version, that would be the right choice for size.
(And this "vital" space is decreasing (think about this) because new iOS does itself a storage optimisation temporarily removing infrequently used app, and reinstall them on demand.

Consider that nowadays there are cloud service streaming service, no problems with bandwidth.
Storing everything in your device is more all data loss oriented. And you'll never have enough storage to compare on what you could get real time from the net.

You may say iCloud is expensive (but easy for backup beginners). Yes it is and there are alternatives. You do not have to backup everything there.

So if you're a beginner and you don't know how to route your backup assets... yes you might worry about storage,
and might be worth to spend 100-200 bucks more for more capacity.
Otherwise I think you've got already enough skill on how to optimise your local iPhone storage and backups.

One last point... as iPhone versions are released entry level model storage capacity is incrementing...
For my experience the very first offer capacity size, looks cheap but might be a pain to manage.
Second size offered, normally's been the best choice for me (price vs. minimum size)
Not very sure for iPhone 12 if it's worth 256GB. Since 128GB look like already quite a lot of room for the device and iOS.

So the final question I would ask myself is: Am I missing some new feature/app/service that would need more local device room that 128GB could not fit, and either I cant move to the cloud?
Click to expand...

i agree. I think streaming and the cloud has rendered a lot of storage issues moot. It's not like the 'old day's when you stored your music/media content on your phone...or worried about downloading purchased content to your device and deleting it when you need it. Add the cloud storage for pics and most users are probably fine with a 128 gig device.
 
With your usage I'd get 256gb; its best to have 20% of storage free at least. If you're planning on keeping this phone for a while you'll probably fill it up, and its not nice having to constantly worry about storage.
 
I expect the OP's already made the decision or way past the return period already.

That said, just chiming in that I find 128GB pretty comfortable on the iPhone. 64GB was a mite too small for me but 128GB has been more than fine. Use of newer formats such as HEIC has reduced storage consumption for new photos and those are pretty much my biggest space hog on the phone (Download and Keep Originals on iPhone and iPad, iCloud is my offsite backup).

My real space hogs (TV, movies, comics, etc) are all on the iPad.
 
I pay $40/year for 500GB of cloud storage so i always buy 64GB version iPhones.
 
throAU said:
Actually no, empty space allows your SSD (or phone's flash - same thing) to do wear levelling and also avoids filesystem fragmentation, which whilst is less of a problem on SSD can eventually lead to your "Free space" being unusable if it is too fragmented.

Free space is also useful if you say, want to use your machine as a fast/large thumb drive temporarily to transport a bunch of data from point a to point b without a network, or faster than the network between the two points.
Click to expand...
Fragmentation is only a thing on spinning drives where you want files to be stored in continuous blocks so the needle can read them in one go. There is no such thing as fragmentation on SSD.
 
throAU said:
Actually no, empty space allows your SSD (or phone's flash - same thing) to do wear levelling and also avoids filesystem fragmentation, which whilst is less of a problem on SSD can eventually lead to your "Free space" being unusable if it is too fragmented.
Click to expand...

Fragmentation's not the issue. Poor garbage collection or lack of TRIM is. This shouldn't really be an issue with modern SSDs. Also, SSDs have the disparity between binary GiB and decimal GB (~7%) as default spare area.

In general though, SSDs still perform better when there's like at least 20-25% free space.
 
rui no onna said:
Fragmentation's not the issue. Poor garbage collection or lack of TRIM is. This shouldn't really be an issue with modern SSDs. Also, SSDs have the disparity between binary GiB and decimal GB (~7%) as default spare area.

In general though, SSDs still perform better when there's like at least 20-25% free space.
Click to expand...

There's two problems:

GC on the SSD
Filesystem fragmentation

GC will take care of the block utilisation in the SSD.
It won't fix fragmentation at the OS filesystem level which (in servers) can become so bad that the OS can't track store files because even though there's free space it is too fragmented.

I've run into this myself on a server before.

Elijen said:
Fragmentation is only a thing on spinning drives where you want files to be stored in continuous blocks so the needle can read them in one go. There is no such thing as fragmentation on SSD.
Click to expand...
As above. That's not the full story.

A file can only be stored in so many fragments. If the drive is so fragmented that the number of fragments required to store a file is larger than this number, the file can't be stored.
 
throAU said:
There's two problems:

GC on the SSD
Filesystem fragmentation

GC will take care of the block utilisation in the SSD.
It won't fix fragmentation at the OS filesystem level which (in servers) can become so bad that the OS can't track store files because even though there's free space it is too fragmented.

I've run into this myself on a server before.
Click to expand...

How large is the storage array, though? Also, how busy?

Consumer level devices aren't likely to be hammered the way enterprise storage arrays are so FS fragmentation is less likely to be a concern.
 
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