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Comment by canuckintime | Hacker News Reader

My aunt bought a 'cheap' iPhone (SE, 16GB, $450) and ran out of storage the first month...

My wife once bought an 8 GB iPhone 4, and regretted it pretty much immediately. That was a horrible experience, and I was stunned that apple would sell such a thing.

So far I've learned it pans out this way for iOS devices:

- 16 GB: the bare minimum for any sort of user. Don't expect to be taking a lot of pictures or use a lot of apps without a lot of storage twiddling.

- 32 GB: fine for regular app use, avoid if you want to take a lot of pictures. I find this to be the sweet spot for coffee table iPads.

- 64 GB: the baseline for people who take a lot of pictures and videos. Anything less and there's too much storage management involved.

The number of people who discover this too late is absurd, and the fact that you can't jam a MicroSD in the iPhone, even if only for photo storage, is still incredibly dumb.

I had a 16GB iPhone 6 for years, and when I went to upgrade to an iPhone 8 recently, I was upset that the 16GB wasn't an option anymore. I have no need for 64GB of storage (the new minimum on the 8), because my phone is a phone, not a computer.

It's because the hardware isn't any cheaper for Apple to have manufactured. They still arbitrarily inflate the prices, which makes it seem like 16gb would be much cheaper to manufacture than 64gb, but that is only a facade.

Yeah I'm sort of boggling at this. I have a 16GB Android phone that I've used for about 2 years, and it's only half full.

Android itself takes up 9GB on my Pixel 2. 4.7GB is taken up by the apps and whatever they are storing (Chrome takes up the most, with 1GB). I also have 4GB in music.

I don't consider myself a heavy storage user but 16GB is a really easy bar to cross.

I've noticed on my iOS devices that the more storage available, even with the same amount of apps and data, more storage is taken up.

I believe it's due to the fact that apps don't clear caches as often if there's plenty of space left.

That would make sense. I believe many apps, including Chrome and Firefox, do the same thing with RAM. If it's there, might as well use it.

Exceedingly difficult these days now that movies, music, photos and videos, and even unused apps can be offloaded to iCloud.

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