Here’s why you should not buy the 16GB iPhone.
We live in 2015.
And if you haven’t been living under a rock, you would know by now that the iPhone 6S has been announced. However, if you haven’t been living under a rock, you should also know that 16GB of storage is not enough for your smartphone (if you plan on actually using it).
The entry-level iPhone 6S still comes with 16GB of storage.
I find that ridiculous. Samsung, Sony, LG and Apple’s other competitors have all bumped up their base models to have 32GB of storage – without even increasing the pricing.
In 2015, with the sheer number of apps that we use and how essential our smartphones are to us, 16GB is by no means enough for the average user. Unless you are my dad who uses his smartphone for WhatsApp only, you most likely need more than 16GB of storage for all the photos, videos and apps you’re going to keep on your phone. And even if you use your smartphone for Whatsapp only, you can still find the 16GB storage filling up really quickly.
With a 16GB iPhone 6S, be prepared to have to delete one app to install another. Delete that game so I can play this game. There are plenty of times I have run into a situation where I have to delete older photos and videos so that I can continue filming when using devices with such low storage sizes.
This issue is further worsened by the new capabilities that the iPhone 6S has. The iPhone 6S can record 4K videos (which are huge) and its “Live Photos” feature takes photos which are 2 or 3 times the size of normal photos. And a 12MP photo is definitely larger than a 8MP photo. So everything in the iPhone 6S is bigger and better – except for the storage.
Unless you have some unlimited data plan and are going to store everything in the cloud (rather unlikely), please do not get yourself (or someone else) a 16GB iPhone 6S. The only reason you might get one is purely financial, but then again there are far better options if you’re looking to save a few bucks.
And that’s where there is another issue. Going from 16GB to 64GB of storage costs an additional $148 (off-contract prices). That’s around $3.50 per gigabyte of storage – plain daylight robbery. For reference, Solid State Drives (SSDs) which use the same flash storage technology seen in smartphones, cost approximately just $0.59 per gigabyte of additional storage. That’s almost 7 times cheaper than what Apple (or many other smartphone manufacturers even) are charging.
I feel that enough is enough. If we, the public, stop purchasing 16GB models, manufacturers will also cut back on supply – that’s basic economics. This might finally push Apple to remove the 16GB model entirely, and hopefully replace the base storage model with 32 or 64GB of storage.
Come on Apple, the age of 16GB is dead. It’s time for something larger now.