Is a 16GB iPhone 5S enough to handle iOS8?

[perkedel]

I have no music synced, 53 apps, 1,300 photos, 11 (short) videos, and I have 3.89 GB remaining. Apps are becoming more and more advanced and taking up more and more space.
16GB is not ideal, at all.

16GB is not ideal for you. This really depends on the use. I have no music, 4 apps, 300 ish photos and 0 videos. For my purpose, it works for me. Would I pay another $100 for the next one up in size, probably not.
If Apple would start coming out with 32GB as the baseline for the same price as the 16GB, by all means I welcome it.

 

[C DM]

When thinking of space, it's funny, but how many think of the space APPS take? Nowadays, take a look at how big most app updates are when you're updating them. Facebook alone is something like 67MB. That's 1 app.

I have a 16GB 5S and for any future purchases, I finally feel as if I need a higher size. I've had every version of the iPhone so far except the 6's and I've always had 16GB and always had enough space.

I have no music synced, 53 apps, 1,300 photos, 11 (short) videos, and I have 3.89 GB remaining. Apps are becoming more and more advanced and taking up more and more space. With just 2 pages of apps it is by far the biggest memory hogger of the categories.

16GB is not ideal, at all.

I generally have over 150 apps and have had 16 GB iPhones up until now and have usually had about 3 GB free. It all depends on what apps you have and use (some games can certainly be more than 1 GB), and what else you store on the phone. I have some photos and videos, but usually offload them off the phone and store/backup a lot of them into online and local storage (as I don't really need to have hundreds or thousands of photos with me all the time). So it all depends on personal use and needs.

 

[adamhenry]

Is 16GB ideal for running IOS 8? Maybe yes, maybe no. I have a 16GB 5s and I get by fine. But I watch the amount of music I keep on my phone and I keep very few pictures.

 

[dk001]

For OTA updates it seems like iOS 8.1.3 had a change in it to address that part.

That has yet to be really tested - someone going from 7 to 8.1.3
What concerns me now is the increase in the size of "Other" eating up even more of the mem. Just backed up and restored my 32GB Mini as it had over 6GB of other that didn't seem to want to go away.

8.1.3 may help with size, but .....

 

[Woochifer]

I have the 32 GB 5s, and could manage on 16 GB. The primary issue would be if you store media files on your phone, or if you use gaming apps. If you use a 16 GB phone, you'll have to keep a tight watch over the storage, because things like app and system caches can pare down the capacity in a hurry. Games are especially bad at gobbling up huge chunks of storage as you play more. You might have to periodically restore your phone as new, and then reload your apps and settings from a backup, in order to flush out the caches and junk data and keep the storage usable. As the phone gets close to capacity, the performance can noticeably deteriorate.

a iphone 6 starts off at 200 bucks... 200 bucks is not costly dude not in america and not in a third world country

didnt know people actually buy phones off contract

$200 is a subsidized price. The costs are hidden, so you pay more in the long run. You're paying for it every month with higher priced plans, and it forces you into a two-year upgrade cycle, because when the contract's up, your monthly rate does not go down.

Buying off-contract lets you pick and choose from different carriers and plans, and you can switch whenever you want. If you'd locked yourself into a contract two years ago, you would have missed out on all the new plan options and cost savings that opened up after T-Mobile got rid of contracts. The cost savings on the new plans would more than pay for the cost difference in buying the phone off-contract.

I paid $750 for my 32 GB 5s in September 2013. It's $450 more than the subsidized $300 charge. But, I use T-Mobile's $30 prepaid plan, so I'm saving more than $60 a month compared to the contract options that AT&T and Verizon were offering at that time for the amount of data that I use. The contract-free phone paid for itself in less than 8 months.

And since that time, all of the major carriers have introduced new contract-free options, and device upgrade plans that separate the device cost from the monthly plan. Do the math. Contract-free is the way to go.

 

[robertsawicki]

With a little over a years usage with the 5S, I ended up running out of storage. iOS takes way too much space and I had to delete most of my 200 songs on iTunes then play it through WiFi to save some space. I had over a thousand photos which took up the most amount of storage compared to the rest of the phone.

 

[C DM]

That has yet to be really tested - someone going from 7 to 8.1.3
What concerns me now is the increase in the size of "Other" eating up even more of the mem. Just backed up and restored my 32GB Mini as it had over 6GB of other that didn't seem to want to go away.

8.1.3 may help with size, but .....

My "Other" space has generally been anywhere between 1 and 2 GB on the 16 GB iPhones I've had (last one being iPhone 5).

----------

I have the 32 GB 5s, and could manage on 16 GB. The primary issue would be if you store media files on your phone, or if you use gaming apps. If you use a 16 GB phone, you'll have to keep a tight watch over the storage, because things like app and system caches can pare down the capacity in a hurry. Games are especially bad at gobbling up huge chunks of storage as you play more. You might have to periodically restore your phone as new, and then reload your apps and settings from a backup, in order to flush out the caches and junk data and keep the storage usable. As the phone gets close to capacity, the performance can noticeably deteriorate.



$200 is a subsidized price. The costs are hidden, so you pay more in the long run. You're paying for it every month with higher priced plans, and it forces you into a two-year upgrade cycle, because when the contract's up, your monthly rate does not go down.

Buying off-contract lets you pick and choose from different carriers and plans, and you can switch whenever you want. If you'd locked yourself into a contract two years ago, you would have missed out on all the new plan options and cost savings that opened up after T-Mobile got rid of contracts. The cost savings on the new plans would more than pay for the cost difference in buying the phone off-contract.

I paid $750 for my 32 GB 5s in September 2013. It's $450 more than the subsidized $300 charge. But, I use T-Mobile's $30 prepaid plan, so I'm saving more than $60 a month compared to the contract options that AT&T and Verizon were offering at that time for the amount of data that I use. The contract-free phone paid for itself in less than 8 months.

And since that time, all of the major carriers have introduced new contract-free options, and device upgrade plans that separate the device cost from the monthly plan. Do the math. Contract-free is the way to go.

With AT&T and Verizon at least you can get discounts for out-of-contract/owned phones on current plans.

Contracts can make sense for quite a few people depending on what carrier they are with, what plan they have, and what their needs/wants are.

 

[Trahearne]

I have been using my 16GB 5s since Apr 14, and currently it still has 6.74GB free. Apps take 2.57GB; Music takes around 300 MB as it's only a very small subset of my iPod library; Photos take another 0.6GB (<400 photos); and the rest is those application cache files (2GB) and system files.

I would say as long as you are not a enthusiast in taking a shot of everything, not installing loads of games, not saving your videos and not placing your entire music library on to you iPhone, 16GB is fairly enough even with some spaces reserved for application caches.

 

[bransoj]

As long as you are content with remaining married to iTunes .... physically.

I did the iOS8 update OTA when it was released, just tidied my phone up first and was fine. Only reason its been connected to iTunes since was when i did a restore to tidy things up. I've done all the 8.whatever updates OTA since then as well.

Facebook alone is something like 67MB. That's 1 app.

Most apps are not that bad but Facebook isnt a great example. Its awful at dealing with its cache so consistently gets up to 300mb\400mb in not long. I often remove and reinstall it to get a bit of space back or just to tidy it up.

The big killer is some of the games that are out there....Real Racing 3 is 1.8Gb so i have that on my iPad but not my iPhone.

 

[Narcaz]

I have been using my 16GB 5s since Apr 14, and currently it still has 6.74GB free. Apps take 2.57GB; Music takes around 300 MB as it's only a very small subset of my iPod library; Photos take another 0.6GB (<400 photos); and the rest is those application cache files (2GB) and system files.

I would say as long as you are not a enthusiast in taking a shot of everything, not installing loads of games, not saving your videos and not placing your entire music library on to you iPhone, 16GB is fairly enough even with some spaces reserved for application caches.

No offense, everyone has a different usage case, but you are basically suggesting not to use some of the core functionalities of an iPhone like video recording, listening to music and playing games. Ok you can stream some stuff now, but 16GB is getting tight for "normal" users. I would only recommend it for light usage cases like yours. The biggest problem appears when you change your habits. Then you are stuck. There is no easy way to upgrade the memory.

 

[s2mikey]

With a little over a years usage with the 5S, I ended up running out of storage. iOS takes way too much space and I had to delete most of my 200 songs on iTunes then play it through WiFi to save some space. I had over a thousand photos which took up the most amount of storage compared to the rest of the phone.

Did you really need all 1000 of those photos on the phone though at the same time? I wonder if people just refuse to properly manage their media and photo files and that's why they run out of space so quickly. Delete apps you haven't used in weeks. Get rid of bad photos or at least push them up to a cloud or back them up somewhere. Not that hard, IMO.

I don't own an iPhone but managing one isn't any different than a tablet or whatever. I think people are just lazy and don't want to take a few minutes to manage their storage better. They just keep getting more apps, taking more useless photos, etc, etc.

I dunno.

 

[wproct]

I have a 16G 5s and am running the latest version of IOS 8. I keep like 225 songs on it as well as a little over 200 photos and I still have over 8 GB of storage left. 16G is just about right for my usage, sure I would take more, but I wouldn't really use it.

 

[jkauff]

Since I bought my FiiO X3 hi-res portable music player (64GB), I don't keep any music on my 16GB 5S. I have a few movies on there, and a few photos, but the only thing I could use more memory for would be recording live video. My friends have a band, and I wish I could record a complete show, but I get by with a few selected songs.

Apple memory prices are obscene. 32GB should be the low end, and 128GB the high end. They could double the price of a comparable microSD flash card, still make plenty of profit, and pass the savings on to loyal customers. Come on, Apple, you're a $700 billion dollar company, don't gouge us on memory.

 

[C DM]

Since I bought my FiiO X3 hi-res portable music player (64GB), I don't keep any music on my 16GB 5S. I have a few movies on there, and a few photos, but the only thing I could use more memory for would be recording live video. My friends have a band, and I wish I could record a complete show, but I get by with a few selected songs.

Apple memory prices are obscene. 32GB should be the low end, and 128GB the high end. They could double the price of a comparable microSD flash card, still make plenty of profit, and pass the savings on to loyal customers. Come on, Apple, you're a $700 billion dollar company, don't gouge us on memory.

So it sounds like the prices of 64 GB and 128 GB aren't ridiculous then. Just that people simply wish that 32 GB became the low end instead of 16 GB.

 

[Trahearne]

No offense, everyone has a different usage case, but you are basically suggesting not to use some of the core functionalities of an iPhone like video recording, listening to music and playing games. Ok you can stream some stuff now, but 16GB is getting tight for "normal" users. I would only recommend it for light usage cases like yours. The biggest problem appears when you change your habits. Then you are stuck. There is no easy way to upgrade the memory.

That's why I didn't say words like "for sure it is sufficient", and sure one would have taken the risk of changes in habit if they go along this route. But for most of the time, we are stuck in the loop of "we think we need it but it turns out we don't" loop. Let's say those "core functionalities" - they are nice to have for sure, but for people like my family and me, we don't not weigh it high enough to justify the steep storage price step.

Having said that, in the world of consumer products, if you can afford it and consider it superior, you are likely buying it anyway. So these "in case A and B it is enough" words are for people who need to make trade-offs.

 

[robertsawicki]

Did you really need all 1000 of those photos on the phone though at the same time? I wonder if people just refuse to properly manage their media and photo files and that's why they run out of space so quickly. Delete apps you haven't used in weeks. Get rid of bad photos or at least push them up to a cloud or back them up somewhere. Not that hard, IMO.

I don't own an iPhone but managing one isn't any different than a tablet or whatever. I think people are just lazy and don't want to take a few minutes to manage their storage better. They just keep getting more apps, taking more useless photos, etc, etc.

I dunno.

Actually yes. I take a lot of pictures and save a quite bit of pictures. Every once in a while I go back and get rid of uselese/blurry/etc. photos. I think I managed quite well. No games, barely two pages of apps that I only used, and all of my music was on the cloud. So no I'm not lazy just 16GB for me is a a little over a year's use. That's why I got a 64GB 6 plus now

 

[Narcaz]

That's why I didn't say words like "for sure it is sufficient", and sure one would have taken the risk of changes in habit if they go along this route. But for most of the time, we are stuck in the loop of "we think we need it but it turns out we don't" loop. Let's say those "core functionalities" - they are nice to have for sure, but for people like my family and me, we don't not weigh it high enough to justify the steep storage price step.

Having said that, in the world of consumer products, if you can afford it and consider it superior, you are likely buying it anyway. So these "in case A and B it is enough" words are for people who need to make trade-offs.

We just have different opinions. I just wanted to highlight, that buying the 16GB model goes hand in hand with highly restricted possibilities and the need for clever storage management. What you consider nice to have is maybe essential for another user. And even if you don't to these things, 6,7GB free space isn't very much these days. Just install 1-2 gaming apps, record 2-3 min of video and add 4-5 of your favorite music albums and the device is full.

I know this discussion would be superfluous if Apple stopped their annoying upselling strategy. I think the 16GB models only exist at the moment to push more people to a higher storage model. Back in 2009(!) the 16GB base model was way easier to handle: smaller apps/fotos, no hd videos, smaller iOS footprint etc.

 

[C DM]

We just have different opinions. I just wanted to highlight, that buying the 16GB model goes hand in hand with highly restricted possibilities and the need for clever storage management. What you consider nice to have is maybe essential for another user. And even if you don't to these things, 6,7GB free space isn't very much these days. Just install 1-2 gaming apps, record 2-3 min of video and add 4-5 of your favorite music albums and the device is full.

I know this discussion would be superfluous if Apple stopped their annoying upselling strategy. I think the 16GB models only exist at the moment to push more people to a higher storage model. Back in 2009(!) the 16GB base model was way easier to handle: smaller apps/fotos, no hd videos, smaller iOS footprint etc.

The bottom line is its different for everyone. For many they don't need any of that and don't need to manage anything and simply use their phone and barely fill up half of that 16 GB space anyway. For others some management might be needed at times and they are just fine with it over saving $100. And for others it might be too hard or just essentially impossible to do that so get a device with more storage.

 

[jhfenton]

My iPhone 6 was issued to me by work, so I didn't have any choice but the 16GB model. I make it work without too much difficulty. I'm selective about apps I install. The 3 Office apps (currently 436-454MB) plus Pages (385MB) and Numbers (373MB) take up a lot of space, but those are my 5 largest apps. (I ditched Keynote because I never use it.) I stream iTunes music instead of storing it on the phone. I only keep 1 or 2 Audible books on my phone at a time, and only a handful of Kindle books at a time.

I usually have 500MB-1.5GB free. Right now it's 918MB.

The only time it's limiting is when I want to shoot video. I only have space for a few minutes. (I delete Pages and Numbers and Powerpoint first when I need to clear up room for video.) I have a 64GB iPad Air 2, so I think that makes it easier to be selective in what I keep on my phone.

So it's manageable. But, when I was spending our money, I bought my wife a 64GB iPhone 6. It means that she doesn't have to micromanage her storage space.

 

[nfl46]

16GB works for me. Of course not everyone can say the same thing. I've had 64GB phones and had like 57GB of space left every time.

 

[Freshmen]

I have the 32 GB 5s, and could manage on 16 GB. The primary issue would be if you store media files on your phone, or if you use gaming apps. If you use a 16 GB phone, you'll have to keep a tight watch over the storage, because things like app and system caches can pare down the capacity in a hurry. Games are especially bad at gobbling up huge chunks of storage as you play more. You might have to periodically restore your phone as new, and then reload your apps and settings from a backup, in order to flush out the caches and junk data and keep the storage usable. As the phone gets close to capacity, the performance can noticeably deteriorate.



$200 is a subsidized price. The costs are hidden, so you pay more in the long run. You're paying for it every month with higher priced plans, and it forces you into a two-year upgrade cycle, because when the contract's up, your monthly rate does not go down.

Buying off-contract lets you pick and choose from different carriers and plans, and you can switch whenever you want. If you'd locked yourself into a contract two years ago, you would have missed out on all the new plan options and cost savings that opened up after T-Mobile got rid of contracts. The cost savings on the new plans would more than pay for the cost difference in buying the phone off-contract.

I paid $750 for my 32 GB 5s in September 2013. It's $450 more than the subsidized $300 charge. But, I use T-Mobile's $30 prepaid plan, so I'm saving more than $60 a month compared to the contract options that AT&T and Verizon were offering at that time for the amount of data that I use. The contract-free phone paid for itself in less than 8 months.

And since that time, all of the major carriers have introduced new contract-free options, and device upgrade plans that separate the device cost from the monthly plan. Do the math. Contract-free is the way to go.

Somebody else pointed that out but my payment is the same regardless of if I'm on a contract or not. Dont know where you guys are getting your information from

 

[C DM]

Somebody else pointed that out but my payment is the same regardless of if I'm on a contract or not. Dont know where you guys are getting your information from

Depends on the carrier you are with and the plan you are on. Most of the bigger carriers offer a discount on their current plans for phones that are not on a contract.

 

[Woochifer]

Somebody else pointed that out but my payment is the same regardless of if I'm on a contract or not. Dont know where you guys are getting your information from

Contract plans are more expensive if they subsidize the cost of the device, and the cost doesn't go down after the contract term. This applies to any of the so-called "$199" iPhones, where you supposedly "buy" a phone that otherwise carries a $649 price tag. The terms basically force you to upgrade your phone every two years, since you pay the same monthly rate regardless of the contract status.

If you buy the device up front, or choose one of the device upgrade plans, your monthly service plan payment is separate from the device cost. With a device upgrade plan like AT&T Next, you pay the monthly installment for the device until it's paid off or you trade the phone in for an upgrade. That device charge is separate from the service plan, so if you pay off the phone and choose not to upgrade, your total payment will go down.

With a contract, your total payment starts high and remains high no matter what your do with your device. On AT&T, going off-contract deducts $15-$25 per month from the monthly bill right away. How you choose to pay for the device is separate from the cost of service.

This is a far more attraction option than what existed two years ago. If I had locked myself into a contract when I bought my iPhone, I would still be paying over $90 a month, with no option to switch over to the newer lower cost plans until September. Going off-contract means I can switch plans and/or carriers anytime I want.

 

[powerbook911]

Some users will find 16GB massive. Some will find it a total roadblock.

If you're only putting apps on the phone, I think 16GB is still a totally acceptable device. I do have a 128, but if I think about I truly need on the phone, it is probably not much more than a 16, if at all.

 

[C DM]

Contract plans are more expensive if they subsidize the cost of the device, and the cost doesn't go down after the contract term. This applies to any of the so-called "$199" iPhones, where you supposedly "buy" a phone that otherwise carries a $649 price tag. The terms basically force you to upgrade your phone every two years, since you pay the same monthly rate regardless of the contract status.

If you buy the device up front, or choose one of the device upgrade plans, your monthly service plan payment is separate from the device cost. With a device upgrade plan like AT&T Next, you pay the monthly installment for the device until it's paid off or you trade the phone in for an upgrade. That device charge is separate from the service plan, so if you pay off the phone and choose not to upgrade, your total payment will go down. With a contract, your total payment starts high and remains high no matter what your do with your device.

Well, it's more that for those bought devices or financed devices there's a discount that the carrier offers on the current plans, while there isn't one for contract phones, or for older plans.

What that means is that on older plans that don't offer that discount it's cheaper to buy a contract phone since they would be paying the same thing on a monthly basis whether they bought a discounted phone or paid full price for one. Even for some on current plans, depending on the discount they would get (since it can be as little as $15/month or as much as $25/month) it might still be less expensive to get a contract phone.

All of this applies mostly to AT&T and Verizon as those have fairly similarly structured plans and pricing.