How Much Storage Do You Need On A Smartphone These Days?

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Memory is one of the big things to look at when you’re choosing a new smartphone, but how much do you really need?  The amount of storage space varies a lot on modern smartphones and more space usually means a higher price tag. Cloud storage options mean that you can often get away with less storage space on the phone itself, but are they always the best option? 

You need to find the right balance so you have enough space for everything you use the phone for, but you also need to avoid paying a lot of money for added storage that you don’t need. So, how much storage do you need on your phone?

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What Are The Options? 

Firstly, you need to know what your different storage options are. When looking for phones, there are a few different levels of storage you will come across: 

  • 516GB
  • 256GB
  • 128GB
  • 64GB
  • 32GB
  • 16GB
  • 8GB

8GB to 32GB phones are pretty rare these days, but you will still see the rest of these storage options available. Certain models will offer a choice of different storage options, like the iPhone 12, for example. The standard version is available with 64GB, 128GB or 256GB, all with different price points. However, there are multiple versions of the iPhone 12, and they each have different storage options with the more expensive models like the Pro giving you a 516GB storage option. You can read more detail about the different storage options and features available in the iPhone 12 range here, so you can get more of an idea about how storage affects price. Not all phones have this much choice when it comes to storage, but whenever you buy a phone, you will have quite a range of different storage options, and it can be tough to know which one is right for you. 

What About Cloud Storage? 

You might be thinking, why does anybody need a 516GB phone when they can just cloud storage? It’s easier and it allows you to transfer things over to your new phone seamlessly when you get an upgrade. However, using cloud storage isn’t quite as simple as that. 

Take Apple, for example. They give you a certain amount of storage for free but once you exceed this, you need to start paying a monthly fee for more storage space. So, you might save money by getting a phone with less built-in storage, but you have to calculate the added monthly cost for cloud storage. This model is becoming more common and even Pixel phones, for example, won’t have access to unlimited photo storage on Google Photos. 

The cost of these cloud services is not that high, but if you need a lot of extra storage space, it’s worth crunching the numbers to see whether it might be worth buying a phone with more storage instead. It’s also worth remembering that you only have access to files stored in the cloud when you are connected to the internet. So, if you like to listen to a lot of music or watch movies on your phone, you will quickly burn through all of your data if you don’t have wi-fi. 

How Do You Know What Storage You Need?

This is a tough question to answer and you need to think about how you are going to use your phone. 

If you like taking a lot of photos and videos, for example, you need enough storage. The good news is, photos don’t take up a huge amount of space. A 16GB phone can store around 4000 photos, which is more than enough for the average person, even if you do like to take a lot of photos. Videos, on the other hand, take up a lot more space. One hour of recorded video in good quality takes up around 1.5GB, so if you do a lot of filming on the phone, 16GB will be used up in no time. 

If you like downloading and watching movies on your phone while you travel, you should invest in a phone with lots of storage. The average HD movie takes up around 4GB of storage, so you will soon fill up a 16GB or 32GB phone. Music takes up quite a lot of space if you download it too, using around 2.5GB for every 500 songs. If you stream music when you’re connected to wifi, this isn’t too much of a problem, but if you like to download it so you can listen to it without the internet, you need more storage. 

Think about the kind of apps you download as well. Simple apps don’t take up much space and as long as you don’t download hundreds and hundreds, you should be fine. But if you download a lot of games, they will soon fill up your memory. 

If you consider all of these factors, you can work out how much space you need and avoid running out or paying for storage that you will never use. 

 

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