256gb v 512gb in your phone

Hardware
1

My last two phones (14 Pro Max and 16 Pro Max) have both had 256 GB of storage.

I take a lot of music (currently about 75GB) and podcasts (about 20GB. I have a massive backlog of The Rest is History, 99 PI, Cautionary Tales, and It was what it was) on my phone so I can listen whenever I want without using Mobile data. and I’m regularly over 90% full. I had to offload a lot of music to ensure I wasn’t running out.

For the first time since stepping up to 256GB I’m running out of space on a semi regular basis. I’m really hoping that the 512 option for the 18 Pro Max is not prohibitively expensive.

How full is your phone % what are your major space hogs?

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2

256 GB, about 70% full.

41.42 GB for photos, 37 GB for Music, surprisingly only 2 GB Podcasts, 5 GB WhatsApp (:person_shrugging:)…

I never had issues with 256 GB, but my use of the storage has increased significantly within the last year. So, this may change eventually.

3

I only have the most recent photos on my phone as I can’t store my whole library, so it uses about 11GB at the moment.

4

Yes, that is something I may have to look into in the future, too.

Or 512 GB.

But I am not so sure about that. Given the announced price increases and the lack of new OS features in the EU, I may skip buying a new iPhone. :slight_smile:

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5

256GB, music 24GB, Photos 20GB. Overall, about 60% of capacity.

I bought an iPad 13" Pro last year with 1TB of storage, of which I probably use 10%. Not the best decision.

Katie

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6

256 GB. Music 22GB. Photos, Health, Podcasts, and mail/maps adds another 4.5GB.

I have an iPhone 16P, before than an iPhone 11. I may not upgrade again for 2 or 3 years.

Correction: I have about 65% free.

According to some, Apple’s cost for ram & storage is up 4X

7

iPhone 16. 128 GB. Current available space around 89 GB.

My phone is a phone. Photos get off-loaded. Music is streamed not stored.

Old school I guess.

–
JJW

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8

My wife just got an iPhone 17 pro 512 last week, she went from a phone 16 256. Honestly she may have been fine with 256 for the 17, but I was nervous after hearing the new iOS takes a lot of memory. I don’t have a problem buying more, I rather go with more.

Now some of you might say why not just wait till September to get her a new phone. I couldn’t take her complaining that the camera on the 16 is so bad. I finally said let’s go get it. And the camera actually seems very nice on the 17 pro.

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9

I have a 256GB iPhone 17 Pro. Currently using 176GB.

I keep contemplating jumping to the 512GB but so far I’ve been able to do ok with the 256. I don’t have a lot of places to go to cut back though. I see Fitness has about 14GB so I could probably find some downloaded classes and remove them. Photos is only 12GB (optimize storage on). Music has 11GB. The rest is just a bunch of smaller apps that all add up.

10

I’m sitting around 130GB with the largest amount being applications/application data (DEVONthink databases and the like.) I used to find 128GB vs 256GB a bit agonizing. Guessing it’ll be several years before I need 512GB unless I need to keep all photos offline or I start shooting short films with it (a possibility.)

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11

I have a 1TB phone. I ordered it because it was the only size I could get in orange in time for the iPhone 17 Pro launch day.

Most of the time, I have around 250gb used. But when I need to prop the phone on a tripod and record 4K24 ProRes, which I do a lot for work these days (B roll for my marketing efforts), I can easily fill up that 1TB.

But otherwise 512gb would be extremely comfortable, very spacious.

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On the other extreme, my iPhone 16 with 128GB has 44GB available. I basically use it only as a communications device, news reader, and maps (mostly Waze). Since I listen to podcasts while driving, Overcast is the biggest data memory user (9GB) although I am conscientious about deleting listened to recordings.

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13

Whenever I buy a new iPhone one of the things I do is reassess how much storage to buy. I was at 256 GB for the previous 2 iPhones, but I realized I was having to go in and manage the storage more often so decided to go for 512 GB when I bought the iPhone 17 Pro. Right now I’m at 223 GB, so comfortably under 512, but also confirming that my decision to double the size was correct.

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14

Do you have optimize storage turned on for Photos? I find that setting adds a question mark to a lot of analysis because it will take up more space if there is more space. Curious your experience.

15

I moved from an iPhone 13 Pro to an iPhone 17 Pro Max a few months ago. I stayed with 256GB because the old phone was only about half full. I have intermittent cell service and a slow connection at home so I never stream or offload.

I’m currently at 40% used on the new phone. The major hoglets are: 16GB podcasts, 13GB audiobooks, 4 GB eBooks/scanned documents, 2GB photos (photos are offloaded to an external machine shortly after I take them), and probably too many apps. I must have had about 15GB of music on the last phone but I haven’t gotten around to loading any of it back on yet.

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I do have it turned on, my Photos library is 446 GB and I see it is only taking up 17 GB on my iPhone. It seems to be doing a good job of minimizing the space.

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Thank you! I was wondering how aggressive it would be at filling more of your phone. I find it encouraging that it’s keeping the on-device storage to a reasonable number!

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