How to survive an iPhone with only 16GB of storage
Let's all agree that Apple continues to be cruel
by equipping its entry-level iPhones with only 16GB of storage. Surely
the company could afford to make 32GB the baseline without negatively
impacting its bottom line.
That said, we can also agree that, for a
variety of reasons, you might be among the countless users who end up
with a 16GB iPhone. Maybe it was all you could afford, or there was a deal that was too good to pass up. Perhaps you simply misjudged how much storage you'd need once you started shooting HD video or downloading YouTube vids for offline viewing.
Whatever
the case, it's possible to lead a normal and productive iPhone life
even with such a paltry amount of space. You'll just need to make a few
adjustments, and maybe throw a few bucks at the problem.
1. Know your space hogs
With
space at a premium, it's crucial you learn what's consuming the most of
it so you can act accordingly. Here are the biggest offenders:
- Photos and videos
- Music and podcasts
- Games
Needless
to say, the more unnecessary apps and media you can delete, the more
space you'll have for the stuff you do want. To get a precise snapshot
of your iPhone's space hogs, tap the Settings app and then choose General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage. In a moment you'll see the likes of this:
Lara
Croft Go takes 1.1GB?! And I hardly ever play it? Sorry, Lara, you
gotta go. I can always download you again when the mood strikes. And
that's a good thing to remember: You can install games and other apps on
as-needed basis; not everything requires permanent residence.
What's
more, consider Web-based alternatives to space-hogging apps. On my
iPhone, for example, Facebook puts me in the hole a whopping 660MB. It's
also a battery hog, so deleting the app in favor of the browser version will help me on two fronts.
2. Consider your pixels
With
every new iPhone, Apple touts higher-resolution sensors for capturing
photos and videos. That's good news for quality, bad news for storage:
More pixels means larger files.
The irony is that most of our
photos get viewed on our phones or shared via Facebook or Instagram,
where mammoth megapixel counts aren't necessary. Heck, even 1080p video
is overkill for viewing on a phone or tablet; your mini-movies would look nearly as good (and consume less space) at 720p.
To that end, consider venturing into Settings > Photos & Camera, scrolling down to the Camera section and tapping the Record Video
option. If you were shooting at 4K or 1080p/60fps, try downshifting to
1080p/30fps or even 720p. Chances are good you won't notice much
difference -- you will save a lot of storage.
Unfortunately,
Apple's Camera app doesn't let you take lower-resolution photos. For
that, look to third-party camera apps like perennial favorite Camera+.
3. Put the cloud to work
As
noted above, photos and videos will fill up your 16GB faster than
Taylor Swift can fill up a stadium. Fortunately, iOS can help: its
Optimize iPhone Storage feature offloads your photos to your iCloud
account, keeping "optimized" (read: low-resolution) versions on your
phone while storing the full-resolution originals online.
To
enable this feature (which, in slightly vague terms, kicks in only "if
your iPhone is low on space"), tap the Settings app and then choose iCloud > Photos. Make sure your iCloud Photo Library is toggled on, then tap Optimize iPhone Storage.
It may take some time before this optimization is complete, and it's
hard to say what it'll net you, space-wise, but this is a helpful
feature when you're out of room and desperately need to snap some
photos.
One
consideration, though: The free 5GB iCloud account Apple gives you will
probably prove insufficient to house all your media. Fortunately, it's
not expensive to expand that storage, with Apple charging 99 cents, 79p
or AU$1.49 monthly for a tenfold increase (50GB).
Of course, if
you're already paying for cloud storage elsewhere, apps such as Dropbox,
Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive can sync your photos to your cloud
account, allowing you to delete them outright from your iPhone. In fact,
Flickr gives you a whopping 1TB of free storage for your iPhone Camera
Roll.
When you deploy one of these apps, however, make sure you
enable the "background upload" setting (which is usually disabled by
default) so that photos get synced even when you're doing other things.
Unfortunately, this option may require location services to be enabled
for that app, which can impact battery life.
4. Try a magic trick
If you're so low on space you can barely even snap a photo, let alone install a new app or update iOS, there's a weird trick that might help you reclaim hundreds of megabytes, or even a few gigabytes.
In
a nutshell, it works like this: You're going to try renting (and
downloading) a movie that your phone doesn't have space for. Then you're
going to try it again, and perhaps even a few more times. As evidenced
by the reader comments in my original post, to say nothing of my own
experience, this really works.
Why? Call it an oddity of iOS. A space oddity, if you will. (See what I did there?)
5. Add external storage
As
we've already established, Apple is cruel -- which helps explain why
iPhones don't have memory-card slots. That means if you want to offload
photos and videos or carry around a large library of music and/or
movies, you're sunk. Right?
Wrong. You can indeed add extra storage to an iPhone (or iPad)
-- it just has to be external. This can take the form of a plug-in
drive (not unlike a USB flash drive) or a wireless media hub. Each has
its own pros and cons.
Take the Leef iAccess,
a $50, AU$65 or £38 microSD card reader that plugs into your iPhone's
Lightning port and wraps around the rear (to better accommodate cases).
It can read and write to cards as large as 128GB, a considerable amount
of extra space for any iDevice. And it lets you capture photos and
videos directly to a card, bypassing your storage-strapped phone
altogether. (Another option, the slightly less versatile Leef iBridge,
comes with a fixed amount of storage. It starts at $60 or £40 for 16GB.)
Similar solutions include the HooToo iPhone Flash Drive
($50, AU$90 for 32GB), which includes a USB 3.0 plug at the opposite
end for easy media transfers from your PC, and the SanDisk iExpand.
These drives offer two key benefits: They're plug-and-play simple and
they don't need to be charged.
However, they leave a plug sticking
out of your phone. If you don't want that added bulk, consider a
wireless media hub. Same idea (onboard or memory-card storage), but with
a Wi-Fi rather than Lightning connection.
For example, the
Western Digital MyPassport Wireless comes in 1TB and 2TB flavors. It can
back up your iPhone photos and lets you access music, videos and other
media. But prices start at around $150, AU$200 or £130, and it's a bit
too bulky to carry in a pocket.
If
you want a more mobile-friendly solution, check out something like the
Ravpower Filehub, a wireless SD-card and USB-drive reader that sells for
$30-$40, AU$90 or £30. As an added bonus, it's also a Wi-Fi hotspot and
mobile charger.
Just take note of a key limitation with all these
options: You can't play DRM-protected music or videos, of the kind you
might purchase from iTunes or download from Spotify. External storage works only with your own media.
6. Fly to China
Hey,
hackers, makers and everyone else who's handy with a soldering iron:
Why can't you pry open an iPhone and replace the memory chips with
higher-capacity versions?
Apparently there's at least one shop in China offering to do exactly that. A couple months ago, a story made the rounds about a 16GB-to-128GB upgrade that cost only about $60.
Just one problem: The exact location of this shop wasn't identified,
and there doesn't seem to be a way to get this service without actually
going to China.
I suspect if this process worked reliably and was
truly affordable, we'd see it in iPhone repair shops closer to home. But
I've found no evidence of any service anywhere that will let you drop
off (or ship) an iPhone and get more internal storage. Which is too bad,
because I suspect any enterprising tinkerer could make a small fortune
off that.
If you've found any other ways to survive a 16GB iPhone, share them in the comments!
EmoticonEmoticon