Why 256 GB?

I like to keep some movies handy on there for when I have some down time or traveling and just have enough space that I don't have to ever worry about clearing up space like I saw my wife furiously doing during a concert the other night.

 

I'm guessing it's for people who use their iPhone as their primary source of media consumption and like to store a large library of music, photos and videos on there.
I've always gone for the middle storage option as the lowest has never been enough for my music and photos.
I'm excited for 128GB this year as it means for the first time I will have enough space to store my entire iCloud Photo Library on the phone instead of having to use the 'optomise for iPhone' option.
Knowing how much space I use when I don't store any video (films etc) locally on the device I can definitely see why 256GB would be desirable to those that do.
You also need to remember that the iPhones now record 4K video and the 7 can shoot in RAW. These two options guzzle space.

 

I, personally have a 64 GB iPhone. I never once thought I would even come close to using it all, but I am. I have 15 GB of music and 12 GB of photos/videos in my phone. Live Photos take up quite a bit of memory over time so I'm not too surprised they came out with a 256 GB iPhone. There are people out there who want as much memory as possible so they don't ever have to worry about running out of storage.

 

For me: movies, music, taking/saving videos and photos (raw files even bigger), audiobooks, gaming (large apps), & productivity apps can be large (office apps for examples).

 

Almost my entire music library is lossless, a lot of them 24-bit. I plan on finally unchecking the "convert all songs to 256 kbps" option in iTunes when my 256 GB 7+ arrives.

 

I travel a lot for work. So I enjoy having as much music as possible sync'd for offline play. I also need to constantly screen things for work and to do this while in flight I need the files stored locally, not online. I also need to take and hang on to a ton of photos and videos in the event there's issues later on. So I went with 256GB just to make sure I have no space issues.

 

Music, music, music. This will finally allow me to retire my 160gb iPod classic after many years of trusty and faithful service.

 

Music.

 

I have a 128 MacBook Air also and just realized that the 256 7Plus that I have coming is double the capacity. Amazing.

I currently have a 64 6 Plus and it's far from being filled up. I went with 256 on the 7 Plus because I had extra cash to spend and just figured why not go max.

 

I like to have access to as much of my music/podcasts as possible, instead of having to micromanage what I think I might want to listen to ahead of time.

Unfortunately my office has spotty wifi so streaming is not as appealing to me. I can stream over LTE if I need to but I'd rather not worry about data overages if I can just keep a bunch of stuff on my phone.

 

For me, it's the ability use Adobe DNG RAW files on the 7 Plus camera system via the LightRoom App. RAW files will be about 14 MB per photo and edits will increase that.

 

I prefer to store my entire music library for offline play. I'm also hoping that with the larger 256GB capacity I'll also be able to store my photo library on my iPhone once again. For me, the total between those two things alone is about 170GB, which on a 256GB iPhone would still leave plenty of rooms for apps and other stuff.

 

I'm not getting the 7 this year. Next year, I will likely get the 256GB model for the same reasons as everyone else. My music collection is 113GB, I have about 32GB in podcasts that I am going through and of course the apps take up room.

I have a 160GB Classic that I use in my car every day and the 256GB iPhone MIGHT make me leave the iPod at home.

 

First off you fixed the problem by not buying 256GB model and buying what works for you.
Other people have different needs. I have many users who found the 128 to be not big enough and run out of space.

 

THIS minus ever having checked "convert all songs to 256kbps" haha

 

Music for me is the main reason. I have about 120GB of music that I would like to store locally on the phone. The increase from 128GB to 256GB was only a $5 a month difference, but I was able to cut my phone bill in half by not requiring as much data to stream. Easy trade off for me. Also allows to be to store my iCloud photo library, all my apps, and room for movies as well. $5/month is worth it to me for that kind of freedom.

Edit: I also plan on going iPhone 7+ only for all of my computing needs. I will be selling my Macbook Pro and iPad Pro.

 

^^^this. However, rather than go 256 I got the 128 and a Transcend Go JetDrive (I got it free via tech review) to periodically move pictures and stuff off the phone. Plus I can load movies and stuff onto the drive and watch them on the phone without actually loading them to the phone. The only pics I keep perpetually on my phone are ones that I whip out to show family friends for whatever reason. Most landscape pics, etc get backed up onto this drive and then onto my NAS.

 

32 is more than enough if you utilize Google photos how it was intended. Unlimited free storage and it even provides a feature where it deletes all photos on your device that have already been uploaded to google photos.

 

Music, Photos, and 4K Videos. I use to just stream music and that was fine, but I fly a lot more often now so need it locally.

Like the OP, I always had 16GB phones...hell I had an 8GB nexus that I never filled. The way apple does cloud storage, pushing it locally to your device, is almost fake cloud storage.

 

My music collection and photo albums are only about 10GB combined. My video collection can go up to 1TB or higher with my Flud and TubeMate downloaders for my Android phones. So if I get a 256gb from any phone, it would be for like 200+ of my favorite movies. Maybe the entire series of Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and a bunch of other videos. I only like it at 720p.

I prefer watching or listening to a movie than I do with music. Songs tends to bore me rather quickly. Then I might flip flop videos if I run out of storage. My video collection could be endless if I wanted to. I can fill up as much as 4TB or 8TB thanks to torrent apps.

 

Since I ordered mine a couple days late all the iPhone Plus models were already into October. The 256 gb model had a shipping date a week or so earlier than the 128 gb....sooo basically that's why I went 256

 

I need the additional storage for Hi-Res music files and for downloading Tidal HiFi files to my device.

 

I've been seeing people ask this question since I bought my very first Mac back in the 90s. "Holy cow! You have a 128 megabyte drive? What in the world are you going to use all that space for? That's crazy!"

The amount of space you need is inversely related to the amount of space you have. ALWAYS get the most you can afford, because you WILL fill it up. Music, photos, apps...

In three years the 256 gig will look restricted and people will wonder how they ever managed with so little space.