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New 5s - 16 GB vs 32 GB

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FlyinHawaiian

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 12, 2014
3
0
Hey,

Buying the new iphone 5s - looking at the 16 GB vs the 32 GB version. Going from a 4s 16 GB.

Formerly 16 GB was enough, but I recently recovered my music library. Figure I could manage it by including only songs I want to access on the go, and it might even be better since it won't be to cluttered to choose from, but who knows.

Anyway, what do people recommend for the new one, not sure if the new camera will require more space for pictures.

$100 does seem like an awful lot to pay for only 16 GB, and I imagine they are only charging that much because people are willing to pay for the convenience or what not instead of the actual cost of the space.
 
If you're unsure of space, buy the largest capacity you can afford. Nobody here will know if 16, 32, or even if 64 will be enough for you.

Otherwise, yes, it only costs Apple a small fraction of what they charge for storage.
 
I have the 64GB. My pictures range between 4 to 5 MB each so far. So only a slight bigger than the ones the iPhone 4 took. You should be okay with the 32GB as long as you offload stuff from time to time.
 
It depends on your app/music/media library and how much you want with you on the go.

Personally, I don't understand how so many users on this site find 16 GB to be enough. I just restored my phone and reinstalled a minimum of my stuff I'm already at 15 GB and haven't added any videos yet.
 
Jimmy James said:
It depends on your app/music/media library and how much you want with you on the go.

Personally, I don't understand how so many users on this site find 16 GB to be enough. I just restored my phone and reinstalled a minimum of my stuff I'm already at 15 GB and haven't added any videos yet.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I don't understand how anyone would need more than 16 gigs. 16 gigs is more than enough. First get a Google Music account. You can upload up to 20,000 songs and stream them on your phone. If the average MP3 is 3 MB, that's 60 gigs of free storage. There's also tons of free cloud storage that you can save your pictures and files to. I have access to all my music and pictures and still have 10 gigs available on my 16 gig iPhone.
 
With any cloud service, it's going to eat up your data. If you have purchased a song then it makes much more sense to play it directly from the device, otherwise you are paying double. Radio streaming is a different case.
Having said that, I find 16 GB to be enough if you manage it well. I have 32 GB, but its usually 20GB full since I only sync selected songs from the library.
 
Lugnutz said:
Interesting. I don't understand how anyone would need more than 16 gigs. 16 gigs is more than enough. First get a Google Music account. You can upload up to 20,000 songs and stream them on your phone. If the average MP3 is 3 MB, that's 60 gigs of free storage. There's also tons of free cloud storage that you can save your pictures and files to. I have access to all my music and pictures and still have 10 gigs available on my 16 gig iPhone.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I guess I've used those services somewhat, but I usually upload photos to my mac (which is now running out of space). Dropbox comes with 2.5 GB of space I believe, google drive has 15 gb. Not a whole lot.

Looking into more ways to manage storage, haven't tried google play yet, but worried I might run into data usage issues over 3g (I'm on a 2 GB/mo plan).

Thinking I'll just spring for the 32 GB, as looking into this cloud storage stuff is causing a headache for me trying to figure it all out, even though they're probably gouging me for the extra storage there's probably a reason, since most people can't figure out how to set up all the cloud stuff.
 
Lugnutz said:
Interesting. I don't understand how anyone would need more than 16 gigs. 16 gigs is more than enough. First get a Google Music account. You can upload up to 20,000 songs and stream them on your phone. If the average MP3 is 3 MB, that's 60 gigs of free storage. There's also tons of free cloud storage that you can save your pictures and files to. I have access to all my music and pictures and still have 10 gigs available on my 16 gig iPhone.
Click to expand...
That only works if you've got unlimited data or easy access to wifi.
 
Lugnutz said:
Interesting. I don't understand how anyone would need more than 16 gigs. 16 gigs is more than enough. First get a Google Music account. You can upload up to 20,000 songs and stream them on your phone. If the average MP3 is 3 MB, that's 60 gigs of free storage. There's also tons of free cloud storage that you can save your pictures and files to. I have access to all my music and pictures and still have 10 gigs available on my 16 gig iPhone.
Click to expand...

Not everyone lives where data is affordable or even dependable for streaming music even if it was affordable.
 
Basically it depends on your circumstance. Since I travel a lot, I don't have access to reliable data or even data at all sometimes. Probably not even really that important of a point to be debating over too much, but I appreciate the help and info guys!
 
It depends on what you do with your phone. I almost got 32gb but my phone needs are relatively basic. I need apps, email, phone calls and texting. I do have a decent amount of apps but none of them eat up a lot of space. I only have 3 games on my phone and they are small time killers (iron pants, flappy bird and temple run 2). I have Google Play all access and stream most of my music from there. Photos are automatically backed up to the cloud and synced to my computer when I connect to wifi and thanks to my 75gb of Google Drive storage I won't have to worry about that for a while to come. I have an iPad and iPod Touch for anything larger I want stored locally and don't want or need on my phone. The iPod is where my music collection goes that I want stored locally.

If you're someone that uses large apps and games and likes to store all their media on their device I would definitely go with one of the larger capacities. But if you have multiple devices, can't afford more storage or simply don't need it, 16gb is enough. Will it be 2 more years down the road? Who knows.
 
I find 16GB to be plenty, but my uses are probably a little unusual. I love music, but it doesn't take up much storage because I pay for iTunes Match. I download the music I'm listening to at the time, I certainly don't need all my music at all times (when I listen to music, it's albums front-to-back, if you are more into playlists of new and old favorites, it'll be harder). I don't play very many games. Sometimes I get the itch, and I get addicted to a game, but after a while, I delete it and I'm done with it. Preserving my game info is not important to me. I don't store any videos on my phone, I don't really watch too much stuff, and when I do, it's a binge of something on my computer. I use my phone more than anything else for reading. I have maybe about 500 books in iBooks and I have all of them on my phone, and it only takes up about 1.5GB, definitely one of the most space efficient forms of media.
 
@FlyinHawaiian Don't forget that you have 4GB of that space for iOS. So you 16GB will be 14GB ish. What I did was wait for a sale too to save on the 32GB. The sale price was $229 and I had a few gift cards which dropped the price cheaper than the 5c. :cool: Best Buy has the 5s 32Gb right now for $250.


I have a 32GB iPod and went with the 32GB iPhone because like having music, some games, and occasionally I will throw on a movie when I travel. Plus I might get lazy and have all my photos on it. lol

There was a discussion on this earlier this year.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1701833/
 
I'd go with 32GB model. I always used 16GB, but then decided to not only take my music collection with me ( a few gigs, not much, but growing ☺ ) and to have a few apps installed.

Since I'm now in a situation where I have to take photos and videos, my former decision comes in handy. You never know what will come or what will happen, so be prepared! That's my advice. I never thought that I needed more than 16GB, but that changed rapidly.

And a small investment like this is worth it, more so because it also guarantees a higher resale value! So you do not lose .
 
Lugnutz said:
Interesting. I don't understand how anyone would need more than 16 gigs. 16 gigs is more than enough. First get a Google Music account. You can upload up to 20,000 songs and stream them on your phone. If the average MP3 is 3 MB, that's 60 gigs of free storage. There's also tons of free cloud storage that you can save your pictures and files to. I have access to all my music and pictures and still have 10 gigs available on my 16 gig iPhone.
Click to expand...

My limited data plan renders this ineffective. Also, I enjoy my phone most while travelling. International data charges are too prohibitive.
 
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