Can you live with a 16 GB smartphone?

In the day and age of technology we live in is it possible to live with a 16 GB smartphone? This question reared itself in my life recently when I switched from my 64 GB capacity smartphone to a 16 GB one. And to be totally honest…I’ve been miserable attempting to cope. This article is going to cover some of my headaches and realizations of living with a 16 GB smartphone

OS size on the device

Firstly, when evaluating this idea of living with a 16 GB smartphone you must keep in mind that the advertised 16 GB capacity is the total capacity of the device and that the Operating System (OS) takes up some of that space before you even begin using it. So on my iPhone 6S that I recently switched to I only have 11.75 GB of usable space, according to iTunes. This is very disappointing to me. Even before you load a single app or take a single picture or download a single song or movie the manufacturer is crippling you in the area of storage capacity.

App sizes

Apps — Those things that you need on your smartphone to make it useful. Yeah, this is another issue you’ll most likely run into when using a 16 GB smartphone. These apps that make your smartphone more handy and beneficial to have take up space — and sometimes A LOT of space, especially if you want to play games on your smartphone. There is even an app that is 3.8 GB!! (Don’t believe me check it out HERE.) Most apps aren’t that large, but if you get very many of them they will add up quick.

Messages

“WHAT?! You mean to tell me that all those text and picture messages I send back and forth with my friends take up space on my phone?” Yes, they do. And from my experience they take up a lot more space than you would expect. I would consider myself a moderate texter. I tend to find myself drawn to that form of quick communication over a phone call. But when I look at the usage information on my phone my text messages tend to be the first or second item on the list (sometimes beating out my photos). Each message you send and receive, whether it is simply text or multimedia — photo, video, GIF, etc. — stays stored in your messaging app for you to see later taking up your precious space.

Photos & Videos

The obvious “Elephant in the Room” when it comes to storage capacity is Photos & Videos. Smartphone cameras keep improving. These improvements bring with it the benefit of awesome photo and video capabilities, but also larger and larger file sizes. A simple photo taken on my iPhone 6S is 2.11 MB. My wife’s Galaxy S7 3.94 MB. These MB vary by picture, but they add up to GB real fast, especially considering settings like burst mode, HDR, and others.

Video is particularly cruel to you when it comes to file sizes. I mean just one minute of video can be upwards of 1/3 of a GB depending on the resolution in which you want your video to be recorded. And we all know that we want that treasured video of our pet cat, Mr. Fluffy, to be viewed in all its high quality resolution for many years to come.

Conclusion

There probably are other glaring issues with trying to live with a 16 GB smartphone, but these were the main ones that stuck out to me in my transition to the smaller capacity device. There are ways to get around these issues, but should we have to? Smartphone manufacturers should realize the market and use cases for their products and adjust to make their product more appealing to consumers, rather than try to goad them into paying for their cloud storage solution in order to store their data and keep their phones from getting clogged up (Yes, I’m looking at you Apple).

Now don’t get all bent out of shape. I’m still an iPhone user and probably will stay there till something drastically better in every way comes along. And yes, I am aware of other manufacturers who handle some of the issues I mentioned better. But that was not the premise for this article.

So…can you live with a 16 GB smartphone? The answer is — Yes. Will it be the best experience of your life? Probably not, but you can make it work. I will continue to try to use my 16 GB smartphone — at least till the next phone comes out. We’ll see if I can manage to make it that long. :-)

Photo credit: iFixit via Cnet