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Other Is there any benefit at all to having free storage on your iPhone?

Hieveryone

Hieveryone

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 11, 2014
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USA
I just spent about an hour deleting and moving pictures to my computer to make more space on my iPhone.

I have an iPhone X 64GB.

Currently says I have about 20 GBs of free storage

But then I started thinking...what's the point?

Might as well use it all up again haha.

Is there any benefit to having free storage?
 
C DM said:
So you can store more and have space for it.
Click to expand...

No but what I’m saying is that there’s no need to keep extra space. Like right now I got about 20GBs free space

Might as well download some apps like fortnite and feel free to snap photos all day bc no need to have that extra space.

Is that right? Like am I making sense?
 
Hieveryone said:
No but what I’m saying is that there’s no need to keep extra space. Like right now I got about 20GBs free space

Might as well download some apps like fortnite and feel free to snap photos all day bc no need to have that extra space.

Is that right? Like am I making sense?
Click to expand...
Everyone can do what they want with whatever free space they have and want to use. Not really sure where there's a question about something in it all.
 
C DM said:
Everyone can do what they want with whatever free space they have and want to use. Not really sure where there's a question about something in it all.
Click to expand...

No but what im saying is that there’s no benefit to having free space if you never use it right? Aside from knowing you COULD use it
 
Ralfi said:
You mean performance wise? Nah, you’ll be right.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Like my point is I just free'd up a bunch of space on my iPhone X.

Like I only had a few GBs left like maybe 5 GBs.

And now I have like around 20 GBs.

But then it hit me, I better fill it up again otherwise what's the use of having that extra space?

So I got fortnite, and just gonna download apps.
 
The point of free space is to fill it up. But once you’re there you can’t go beyond:)
 
Hieveryone said:
No but what I’m saying is that there’s no need to keep extra space. Like right now I got about 20GBs free space

Might as well download some apps like fortnite and feel free to snap photos all day bc no need to have that extra space.

Is that right? Like am I making sense?
Click to expand...
In my opinion, no.. there is no point in keeping free space just for the sake of having free space. If you're going to move files off the machine just so you can have free space, then that space isn't actually free because your mind is trying to keep it free instead of having it available for use. What's the point of having it if you refuse to actually use it?
 
The OS needs some free space for maintenance, updates and cache. Other than that there is no real benefit to having free space as long as the OS has what it needs. Other than having space for more photos/videos/content of course
 
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There is at least one benefit of filling up your storage space. It'll prevent the iOS update from downloading and therefore you will not get the nag-screen every night.

I try to keep my 16GB iPad around 500 MB for that reason alone.
 
ftaok said:
There is at least one benefit of filling up your storage space. It'll prevent the iOS update from downloading and therefore you will not get the nag-screen every night.

I try to keep my 16GB iPad around 500 MB for that reason alone.
Click to expand...
There's that, but then there's also that performance can be affected at times when there's not enough free space (and generally I've found that to be at least 1 - 2 GB).
 
Like if Someone bought a 256GB iPhone that’s great and all

But if they only use 50 or 60 then what would be the benefit?

Even if they used 70 I suppose there’d be no choice but still that extra free space is basically a waste
 
Hieveryone said:
Like if Someone bought a 256GB iPhone that’s great and all

But if they only use 50 or 60 then what would be the benefit?

Even if they used 70 I suppose there’d be no choice but still that extra free space is basically a waste
Click to expand...

Or it's future proofing for all the photos and videos someone is going to fill it up with on that awesome vacation where cloud offloading is not an option. I personally went for 256 GB because I know I will use more than 128 GB at some point during my ownership of this phone.
 
Hieveryone said:
Can you give an example?
Click to expand...

Example:
Aliens finally visit earth and you're the only human to witness it so you take out your phone to take 4k (or even 1080p) video of the event only to find out that ... you have no free storage to do so. Aliens leave in disgust. You are then forever shamed.


Price difference between the tiers isn't horrendous. I like having all the free space I can to use when I want to/need to. Other users mentioned future proofing.

Getting down to gritty details that probably won't affect most people - flash is a tiny bit faster when it's not loaded up. The wear leveling is better when there is more free space. Most people won't wear out the reads of the flash on their iPhones in a 5+ (or 50 year) lifetime. Bigger storage flash tends to be faster when it comes to SSDs (not entirely sure about iPhones there).
 
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One day you might want to film a long video or videos at 60FPS. Doing that can burn through all the storage on any iPhone until you can offload it.
Having free storage gives you freedom to do a lot more things. A full drive leaves you with no options.
 
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Historically, file system performance has always been impacted when at <10% free space. The closer one gets to 0%, the worst the performance impact.

What I don’t know is how this impacts iOS devices since Apple’s switch to APFS. I suspect it’s the same rule so I would suggest keeping at least 10% free.
 
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Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Example my phone starts stalling when storage is filled up not to mention when I’m snapping pics or recording video and I get the storage full message sucks.
 
My understanding is that when flash storage gets close to full, the system slows down considerably. If that's correct, there's a good reason right there. I've never experienced it because I've always had ample space.
 
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