Question What should be the bare minimum of internal phone storage? (Poll)

[Ink]

As new generations of flagship phones are released, their internal storage specs are bumped up to meet the demands of their matching hardware capabilities. However, some manufacturers are reluctant to increase internal storage for the sake of saving costs. Some consumers are conned into thinking they are saving money for a phone with less storage, than paying extra to cover them for the next 4 years.

What do you consider to be the bare minimum of internal phone storage?

 

[Zero Knowledge]

Normal phone 128GB. You have enough space for a nice Mp3 collection + space for some pics/movies + apps. Premium phone I'd say 512GB.

 

[Trident]

256 GB for my needs but it can easily change. For example if camera megapixels are upped and photos become larger. And apps become larger and larger at all times.

 

[roger_m]

My Android phone only has 32GB of storage. It was plenty when I first bought the phone, but is not enough these days. I voted for 64GB as a minimum. But I think with 64GB, ideally you'd have a MicroSD card for storing photos and videos etc.

 

[Ink]

IMO, all phones should come with a base of 128GB. If consumers are planning on keeping their phones for 3+ years, then consider at least 256GB or more.

Why more may be better?

• Capturing high-resolution media such as photography and videography (or cinematography?) will eat up the internal storage space, and your cloud storage plan.
• Downloaded and cached media content from streaming apps is for most parts temporary, but also uses 10’s of GBs of storage space.
• Not all Android phones allow microSD card expansions, whereas iPhones don’t allow microSD cards.
• Peace of mind knowing you won’t reach the storage limits.

Although keeping offline backups are important, not everyone will have access to a PC or Portable SSD storage, at all times. Whilst the cloud is the most convenient option, be aware of the cost of compression and hidden fees when you reach your cloud storage quota.

Voted 256GB.

 

[Jonny Quest]

My Android phone only has 32GB of storage. It was plenty when I first bought the phone, but is not enough these days. I voted for 64GB as a minimum. But I think with 64GB, ideally you'd have a MicroSD card for storing photos and videos etc.

Sometimes the sticker shock of some of these phones can make it hard to pay the additional cost for the next step up in storage, and it can be cheaper to buy a MicroSD card.
My S22e came with 128GB, I've only used 58GB so far over the last year, but at times I have been at 85+ GB used, so I voted for 128 being the minimum.

edit: corrected word, storage.

 

[eXDj]

i buy only 12 gb/512 gb phone

 

[MuzzMelbourne]

...Capturing high-resolution media such as photography and videography (or cinematography?) will eat up the internal storage space...

Just bought a new 128Gb iPhone and later found out it cannot take video at maximum speed/resolution in cinematic mode that its capable of, not because of a storage problem, but a video file processing issue. Minimum 256Gb device for that level of performance. Though I have zero need for cinematic video at any spec., it was an interesting performance 'throttling' for such a premium product, and not overly well publicised by Apple I might add.

As it is, I buy the largest storage capacity device I can afford, not because I need the space, but because they usually hold the greater resale attractiveness value.

 

[Ink]

i buy only 12 gb/512 gb phone

More RAM tends to come with the higher storage options, consider it a bonus. Might not be true for non-Pro iPhone users.

 

[Trident]

consider it a bonus

A bonus well paid for

 

[simmerskool]

my current iphone 11 has 256gb with 180 available, but I'd rather have more than not enough.

 

[Balrog]

I have a Samsung A54 5G and it comes with 128gb, that's enough for me. I added a 256gb SD card and that's fine.

 

[Tume]

Bare minimum: 128GB
My needs: 256

 

[Digmor Crusher]

128 gb is enough for me as I do not store any music on my phone nor do I have thousands of photos on it. I refuse to take selfies.

 

[n8chavez]

For me, I need larger storage capacities. Since new phones don't come with mSD cards anymore and I like to have room for music and video. The cloud is fine for backups, but I don't trust it as my main multimedia server.