Storage – how much is enough?

Thankfully, the days of 16GB iPhones are behind us – Apple held on to that storage option for far too long. These days you get much more generous capacity choices for your iPhone, but you still need to know which is right for you.

The iPhone 6s right through to the iPhone 7 Plus (including the SE) let you choose between 32GB and 128GB of storage space. For the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X, those options have been doubled to 64GB and 256GB.

Storage wars

If you’re a light user, don’t store much music or photos on your phone, and make use of cloud storage, 32GB may well be enough. However, we’d recommend getting at least 64GB of storage on your iPhone.

That’s because apps and games are getting bigger all the time as they become more complex and graphically impressive. And let’s not forget Apple’s push towards augmented reality – if you want to enjoy AR experiences on your iPhone, you may end up paying the storage space price.

As iPhones get more capable of recording high quality videos, the space taken up by your footage will also increase. Consider the iPhone 8: Even a short 4K video clip recorded at 60fps could eat up gigabytes of space, as can a super slow motion clip captured at 240fps.

That said, be sensible. Don’t overpay for storage you’re never likely to use. Think about how you use your current phone and how much space you’re using at the moment, and use that as a guideline.