Is 128GB Enough iPhone Storage?

[jwolf6589]

We have an iPad and it's only got 32GB. It's quite old now but I've started having to delete stuff to install updates. Really need to upgrade it soon.

You have upgraded all your other devices including the MacBook and have ignored the iPad???

 

[jwolf6589]

Is 128GB enough?
For me it definitely is.

And that's with Photos and Spotify taking up the lion's share of the storage. The 400GB of photos is on my Mac and I rely on my 2TB iCloud and Google Drive to take care of storing things off device.

But then again, I don't play any games… so YMMV.

View attachment 2363743

400 GB’s of photos? I miss the film days when people had to learn to take good shots that count. These days many take 10 photos of a fence and 9 are terrible and they keep all of them.

 

[jwolf6589]

Not necessarily. The key here is WhatsApp. People use it for EVERYTHING. It is their phone, text, etc. app. And then they want to save it all.

Whatsapp doesn't use iCloud, but iCloud Drive. It backs up separately and it needs to keep a copy of the back up on the phone and in iCloud Drive. If someone has a 5gb WhatsApp file (and that is a small one, I've seen 30 and 40 gigs when videos are included), you need almost double the space on the phone to make the initial backup file.

So, someone has a 64gb phone, and they have 10gb of free space. They have 7gb of WhatsApp data... boom.. they do have enough space on their phone to back all that up. They need to start deleting stuff to make room.

I remember a customer in that situation, except that WhatsApp wants an insane 30GB of space for a backup. They had less than 5gb available. We started looking at the app. They had conversations that started AND ended 10 years prior! The customer goes off to another table and her and her husband start cleaning out the app. They come back, WhatsApp now needed just 1gb of space. They deleted almost everything.

128gb is good for a large number of people, but 256gb is really becoming more of a standard as people have more and more apps on their phones and the size of photo and video files become larger. (Yes, they do go to the cloud, but you need the space, especially for video, while you're shooting.)

I don’t care about WhatsApp…

 

[aj_niner]

In 2024, that's ridiculous.

Right now, a 1TB NVME SSD costs $60 RETAIL. There's no way, at Apple's volume, that 1TB of SSD chips is more than $20.

A base iPhone should be 1TB. A base Mac should be 2TB.

We've seen a MASSIVE decrease in storage on Macs, despite SSD prices for the rest of the world dropping to the point where they're cheaper than hard drives in 2008 when a 250GB hard drive was the standard storage option on a 15" MacBook Pro. In 2012, a 1TB hard drive was in virtually every MacBook Pro, 500GB was a thing but was rare.

Apple is price gouging. They always have, but it mattered less when we could easily upgrade the storage on our computers.

Let us take the $650 MBA 13" M1 5nm that has 8GB RAM & 256GB SSD & weighs 1.27 kg.

Is there anything on the market that had identical specs to that at that price point?

I am not saying I do not wish it had 32GB RAM & 1TB SSD for $650 but let us be grounded in reality and look at alternatives from Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus & Acer with nearly Apple™ to apple physical specs.

Only drawback is that Apple devices are designed to be so physically compact, light weight and low BoM cost that repair-ability and upgrade-ability is scarified. It is likely that ~80% of devices made will never be upgraded or repaired by the end user within 6-12 years.

 

[aj_niner]

400 GB’s of photos? I miss the film days when people had to learn to take good shots that count. These days many take 10 photos of a fence and 9 are terrible and they keep all of them.

Back in the day ~1 out of 1,000 persons owned a camera. Now it is nearly 1:1 due to it being part of the smartphone they bought. The camera's SoC does multiple duties doing other functions rather than just taking stills.

Smartphone chips and multitouch screen allowed for higher utilization via more functionality onto 1 device.

It can be a camera, GPS device, video viewing device, email device, browser device, etc etc.

 

[aj_niner]

We have an iPad and it's only got 32GB. It's quite old now but I've started having to delete stuff to install updates. Really need to upgrade it soon.

I'd replace it to a 2024 model if it does not receive iOS 17.x

 

[Jensend]

Great for my parents, not great for me.

In some ways, lower storage can be worse for people who aren't as tech savvy. I've had multiple family members run out of space on their Apple devices because they occasionally listen to a couple of podcasts, and the Apple Podcasts app automatically downloads and locally stores episodes of all the podcasts they listen to.

 

[Odan]

I only have 60GB left on 512 in total, I will be buying the 16 pro for more storage. Nothing else wrong with my 12 pro, battery is at 89% SoH and it lasts long. I agree that 128 seems low… soon they should do 512/1 tb and 2 tb with the pro models…

 

[techpr]

Need a 1TB iCloud+ plan

The $2.99 200GB needs to be 500GB now. The 1TB will cannibalize the 2TB option.

 

[svish]

Will be good to have 256GB as base storage for iPhones. But for some 128 will be enough. Definitely not expecting Apple to increase base storage for the non Pro iPhones in the immediate future. As for iCloud, will be nice if the free storage increases to at least 10GB.

 

[macduke]

I use iCloud storage and for me 256GB is all I’ve needed for many years now. And funny enough, I only use a little more than 128GB typically. Most of my storage is actually low resolution proxies in Lightroom that I like to have downloaded locally, as well as Music from some large playlists that I download to save data in the car (and allow wireless charging without overheating in the summer) as well as some local copies of my Apple Photos catalog, downloaded podcasts in Overcast and some DJI map data and storage.

But really if I stopped storing Lightroom, which I use a lot, I could get by on 128GB. When I’m flying I’ll download a few dozen YouTube videos which takes up a chunk of space temporarily. I don’t think I could get by comfortably on 128GB long-term but I could probably make it work.

 

[SebCohen]

Subjective. I use my phone all day, and i'm only using 114GB, so 128GB would have been sufficient for my needs.

It’s not how often or how much you use your phone, it’s what for. But the crux is 4K video, basically nothing else. Otherwise…..Always on WiFi and a free-data plan, you could get away with 64GB.

 

[HotDuckZ]

128GB are OK because iCloud+ is pricy~!!!

 

[SebCohen]

400 GB’s of photos? I miss the film days when people had to learn to take good shots that count. These days many take 10 photos of a fence and 9 are terrible and they keep all of them.

I have the same amount, ok ok FINE…you got me. I have 700GB. But my first digital camera was the Canon IXUS V1 (PowerShot
Digital ELPH S100 in the US…SOOO unsexy name) in 2000. I have scanned all my prints 1995-1999. And I count video with that amount. So each year has become exponentially hugher because of video. I take around 400-500 photos a month with my phone, 50 4K videos of 2-5 min duration, 100-200 with my mirrorless but almost no video. On holiday it’s up to 1000 phone, 100 video and 500 with my mirrorless.

 

[SebCohen]

The game here is yet another incarnation of rent (space) vs. own. If you opt to:

• pay for iCloud storage, you can offload much of the stuff that hogs up internal space. However, you are then on an endless rent train to store your "stuff" in space owned by someone else: complete strangers with for-profit motivations.
• avoid cloud forever rent, you need to "own" your own storage space, which will be the amount you have inside the iDevice and/or perhaps some external storage you also carry with you.

So, space renter could easily get by with very little local storage and they forever pay for using somebody else's storage space. Space owner could load up their device with owned data & media and as a bonus, have no dependency on a consistent connection to the cloud too. For example, a synched music collection will keep playing even in places with no signal.

The answer to the thread question: BOTH, depending on how you choose to rent or own space... or even some combination of the two.

In my case, I'm mostly anti-cloud, so I buy plenty of storage and synch media & files to put such stuff on device. I have NO dependency on iCloud at all and thus no ongoing rent. I regularly do like most of us did in the pre-iCloud days: regularly synch iDevice to Mac: new photos & videos get backed up to Mac via simple sync, etc. This approach means I also don't need to burn much cellular data to stream my "stuff" (NOT stored in any cloud). This combination facilitates me paying very little for 5G and no cloud rent. Spread that savings over many years and it adds up.

Someone else may not own much of their preferred music, movies, etc... and are perfectly happy to scratch such itches for a relatively low monthly (forever) rent + other subscriptions. That person could pinch internal storage while still enjoying the core experience I enjoy as long as they have a consistent connection to their cloud/services... and never stops paying the rent. They can spend less on the hardware purchase but then more on that cloud storage + other subscriptions. Someone like me will spend more on the hardware purchase but then as little as NOTHING on cloud & subscriptions.

Which way is better? That's completely "wallet of the beholder." The cloud + subscription renter would argue about the added- potentially hefty- cost of buying a library of songs, a library of video, the trouble in converting both to be able to sync into space on iDevices, etc. "Their" library (which is actually owned by someone(s) else) is millions of songs deep, countless videos, etc.

The "owner" typically already owns a big collection and thus those sunk costs are not applied to their consideration equation. Their collection(s) is MUCH smaller and thus, they don't have access to just about every song, just about every video, etc. but only the subset they've chosen to buy in the past.

Best and most reflected answer yet.

Ps let’s not forget iCloud is a “lock-in”, as Google Drive is. Ever tried getting 100GB off those places or migrate from one service to another? Of you use 1TB iCloud, you’re basically never getting off (easily). That’s also important for some.

 

[Abazigal]

Best and most reflected answer yet.

Ps let’s not forget iCloud is a “lock-in”, as Google Drive is. Ever tried getting 100GB off those places or migrate from one service to another? Of you use 1TB iCloud, you’re basically never getting off (easily). That’s also important for some.

It seems to me that the problem isn't about iCloud lock-in, but that people are storing way more stuff in the cloud than they have physical storage for.

As an example, I am using iPhones and iPads with 256gb of capacity. I am currently using 89.8 gb of storage on my iPhone and 109gb on my iPad Pro. Of this, I have 11.5gb of photos and videos, and am using up about 40gb of iCloud storage for syncing photos, backing up my iOS devices some other misc stuff. All the photos on my devices are the full res versions; iCloud is there primarily to sync my photos and videos across all my apple devices, not as a way of trying to work around inadequate storage on their devices.

It's also good to do some digital detox every now and then and look through your devices and cloud storage and delete stuff you don't need.

If I need to store 1tb of media on a phone, I will get a phone with 1tb of storage. So in my case, I both own and rent?

 

[TheMountainLife]

Its the sweet spot for a corporate phone. When I worked for IBM we were given iPhone 6s plus 32GB I believe.

 

[throAU]

Depends entirely if you're using it for content creation or not.

 

[JamesMay82]

I'm not a fan of iCloud storage as I simply don't trust it so I hope we start getting more internal storage across all apple products and at reasonable prices.

I shudder to think of how many people solely rely on iCloud for their "photo backups"

 

[ksec]

Not necessarily. The key here is WhatsApp. People use it for EVERYTHING. It is their phone, text, etc. app. And then they want to save it all.

Whatsapp doesn't use iCloud, but iCloud Drive. It backs up separately and it needs to keep a copy of the back up on the phone and in iCloud Drive. If someone has a 5gb WhatsApp file (and that is a small one, I've seen 30 and 40 gigs when videos are included), you need almost double the space on the phone to make the initial backup file.

So, someone has a 64gb phone, and they have 10gb of free space. They have 7gb of WhatsApp data... boom.. they do have enough space on their phone to back all that up. They need to start deleting stuff to make room.

I remember a customer in that situation, except that WhatsApp wants an insane 30GB of space for a backup. They had less than 5gb available. We started looking at the app. They had conversations that started AND ended 10 years prior! The customer goes off to another table and her and her husband start cleaning out the app. They come back, WhatsApp now needed just 1gb of space. They deleted almost everything.

128gb is good for a large number of people, but 256gb is really becoming more of a standard as people have more and more apps on their phones and the size of photo and video files become larger. (Yes, they do go to the cloud, but you need the space, especially for video, while you're shooting.)

Worst part is Whatsapp and Photos are separate storage. So you have your Photos stored in your Album while another copy inside Whatsapp.

The default backup for Whatsapp uses iCloud Drive yes. But when you backup your iPhone Whatsapp will be backed up *again*. This will double the storage and people are paying more iCloud storage because of it.

 

[arkitect]

400 GB’s of photos? I miss the film days when people had to learn to take good shots that count. These days many take 10 photos of a fence and 9 are terrible and they keep all of them.

Hallo. Thanks awfully for your helpful comment.

You do realise of course that this 400gb includes photos I have taken over the last 50 years and have had scanned. So... Yeah. It adds up.

I only have to look at your several posts in the Photography forum to realise I'm being taken to task by a true master of the art. 🙄

FFS.

 

[skottichan]

For me, 128GB is perfectly fine (15 Pro). Looking at my storage, I'm only using about 88GB with the largest part being music (53GB). Everything else are food and transportation apps, with my photos and the like are optimized for the cloud.

 

[PFnove]

i guess if you're storing photos taken at a quarter of the resolution compared to the competition then only a quarter of the storage should be enough (4k video (3840x2160, 8mp) vs 8k video (around 32mp), 48mp vs 200mp, list goes on)

 

[hans1972]

Even the fastest solid-state storage costs only $100 per TB at best, or $10 per 100 GB. Don’t fall for Apple’s artificial storage pricing.

What's real is the prices Apple charges. It's nothing artificial going on there.

You seem to arguing a dream.

 

[truthsteve]

or don't bother giving any at all.

that would be terrible. no apps would adopt iCloud syncing for simple data then. I literally have over 20 apps that I can think of off the top of my head that uses iCloud