I guess they have more information about usage patterns than we do. Anecdotally, I have a 256GB iPhone, and I use it consistently for a whole variety of things, and my usage is just under 94GB. I'd bet that my 'normal' family members use a good bit less than that.
I got the 512GB model and have been using it without any regard for storage for a couple of years. All my music is downloaded locally in lossless formats. I keep full-res versions of all my vacation pictures/videos and I also download a ton of crap, from videogames to movies.
I'm at 285GB right now.
The breakdown is 81GB for music, 56GB for pictures, ~40GB of download content on TV/Youtube/Audible and ~23GB of games.
I could _easily_ cut down on that. There's games I haven't played in a while, movies I've already watched, or even music I don't really listen to frequently enough to have it downloaded.
I'm at 166 GB out of 256 GB. Every time I upgrade my iPhone (average every 5 years), I get the most storage available (after learning my lesson on the iPhone 4) and it ends up being 4x bigger than before.
iPod touch (32GB), if you ignore this
iPhone 4 (16GB), 2010
iPhone 6 (64GB), 2014
iPhone SE 2nd gen (256GB), 2020
iPhone 16 (1 TB)?, 2024
Every time, I think "that's probably way more than I'll need", but I guess in 6 years or so I'll upgrade to the 4 TB model. Or wait for next year's model, maybe another SE will come out...
I wonder if storage needs have a very bimodal distribution.
Both my parents barely use the 64GB on their phone. The one that does photography, probably can't store all their photos on any iPhone, because it measures in the multi-TB.
I usually overbuy storage but after three years, I'm removing things like music and podcasts because it's completely full.
Every time I upgrade, I go and look at my storage and see that I’m close to my 256 limit, then I take a closer look and realize it’s my audiobook in podcast app taking up 40 to 50 gigs each. That plus a bunch of apps that I don’t actually use and could easily delete off my phone.
I'm going to downvote you because I don't know what you're talking about. My kids have 128GB phones and don't have any issues at all. They're also on our family plan with Google One for shared storage and we're still -- as a family of five where I personally have contributed about 100,000 photos (and some videos) over the past 15 years -- only at 1.2TB of consumed storage.
What are your kids doing that consumes so much local storage?
I see it was clear enough. We, my wife and I take many pictures and videos (4K 30fps) of our kids. My kids don’t use phones at their age. So our phone storage is always scary high.
Yep. I'm in my early 40's, recently self-hosted Immich, imported the archive of photos and videos my wife and I have created since 2000, and we're sitting at 216,000 photos, 5000 videos, 650gb+ of data. 2000-2011ish was point-and-shoot digital + DSLR, then 2012-2024 has been the output of TWO CELL PHONES.
We aren't photographers, we just goof around, and our almost-teenaged son doesn't factor into those numbers.
The sheer volume of data created is just .. it's nuts. And there's another 300gb of data generated from all the metadata, sidecar, smart search, face detection! Imagine all that plus much more that Apple Intelligence generates.
Long gone are the days of just putting JPGs into a folder!
Why is that shocking? Delivering a base model with minimal specs and upcharging for the specs that power-users need is Apple's standard way of doing business. If you want to store more, you pay more, either by buying more expensive models, or by subscribing to iCloud.
This pricing strategy is intentional in the way it is limiting to encourage people to buy more expensive models.
They don't offer 128gb as the base tier because they think it will meet everyone's needs. They offer that as the base tier because they think it won't meet everyone's needs. An ideal pricing strategy captures as many sales as possible while also upcharging as many people as possible who would be willing to pay more.
With iCloud and music streaming 128GB is enough for a lot of people. I know I still have quite a bit of room left on my 128GB iPhone 12, even with taking tons of photos and videos.
Why would a storage capacity exceeding 128 GB be necessary? If more than 128 GB of storage is required, why not utilize an SD card or other storage solutions (e.g. HDD / SSD used for your desktop) for storing large files? Is there a practical use case where data needs to be stored and actively accessed on a device with such large storage? For instance, I have a collection of videos totaling approximately 30 GB in size. I should consider transferring these files to my HDD or SSD rather than seeking a device with higher internal storage capacity.
I still prefer the smaller form factor. Easier one-handed use, and less bulk in my pocket. I wasn’t going to upgrade this cycle anyway, but the larger size of both pro models has removed any inkling of the “well maaaaaybe” feeling that I usually get.
