The Guide to Coping with a 16GB iPhone
Or should I say 11.7 GB?
For those of you that don’t know, Apple just announced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus. I plan on purchasing one of these phones but I’m tasked with the decision of picking between the two phones. As of now, I’m leaning towards the 16GB iPhone 6 Plus. If you’re like me, you’re struggling with the thought of dealing with the limits brought on with being limited to 16GB, so I’ll show you how I’ve done if for years and how you can do it too.
Photos
The iPhone is a fantastic camera in that it is always with you. I have several hundred photos stored on my iPhone, but I’ve also had to delete several hundred in order to free up space. Obviously, I’d like to access those photos at some point, so I’ve been backing up all of my photos and videos to Dropbox using Camersync for iPhone. If you find that you need more space than what Dropbox gives you for free, you can get Dropbox Pro which gives you 1TB of cloud storage. You can also backup your Camera Roll using the Dropbox app for iPhone, it just has less features than CameraSync.
Another app, Shutter, gives you unlimited cloud storage space for photos and videos. The catch is that you have to take the photos in their app for the photos to be uploaded and stored. I’ve never tried it, but it seems like a viable option.
Apple is also working on a photo management and editing app called Photos for Yosemite and iOS 8 that may allow for backup-like functionality but I’m not entirely clear on all the details yet (the Yosemite version of photos isn’t out until early 2015). As of now, you can backup photos to iCloud, so Photos may be able to access these backups.
Once you’ve backed up your photos, you can delete the locally stored copies. I suggest verifying that the backup worked as planned before deleting
Apps
Typically, apps aren’t much of a problem with most of them coming in at least than 100 MB. You can check the size of every app by going to Settings, General, then Usage. However, the apps that can regularly download and present information like Spotify, Podcast apps, and Twitter clients can take up more space as “Documents and Data”.
I used to download my entire Spotify library to my iPhone, but I’ve since added too many songs for that to work on my device. Nonetheless, Spotify takes up an additional 378 MB on my iPhone because of its cache, or temporary files still on my device. For most apps, you can’t delete the cache on your device without deleting the app, but I have tried a method to deleting the cache via a computer for the Spotify app and so far nothing has exploded. As always, be careful.
Games
I’m by no means a big gamer, but I do have a folder full of games. All of them come in at less than 200 MB so I’m good to go. What I do for larger games is I download them to my iPad and delete them from my iPhone. It too is 16GB, but doesn’t house many of the apps and photos my iPhone carries.
I understand that not everyone has an iPad to siphon large games on to, but most people do have another device besides their iPhone capable of running high-performance games, like a Mac, Xbox, or Nintendo DS. I have 10 games on my iPhone and they don’t take up much room but they’re still fun. I’ve recently been playing Slingshot Racing and Quadropus Ramage if that interests you. If you can’t go without Infinity Blade or Real Racing, find a way to make it work. I believe in you.
Music
Even if you have a nice sized iTunes music library, you can keep your iTunes purchased songs in the cloud and simply steam them.
I know not all of you have your entire music library purchased on iTunes. I’m sure you used a completely-100%-not-pirated-or-otherwise-illegal method of obtaining these songs, so I’d recommend paying $25/year for the handy dandy iTunes Match. It’ll take all of the songs in your library, match them with the iTunes version and it’ll even give you a higher quality version if it exists. How nice. You’ll then be able to stream songs on your iPhone, which saves space.
Buuuuut, if you’re like me, you stream your music via Spotify, Rdio, Beats, Google Play Music, or some other streaming service. If so, don’t download too many songs and keep an eye on that cache and you should be good to go. I’d also recommend decreasing the download quality of songs, something most streaming apps support. Just go to the settings for that app.
If you don’t listen to music at all, I’m sorry. On the bright side, you don’t have to worry about this mess.
Movies
If you don’t have room, Netflix. If it isn’t on Netflix, use another device or make room. I suppose you could download the standard definition version of movies, but what kind of monster would do that on a retina device?
Messages
If you open up your Messages app, you’ll see all the different conversations currently on your device. If you and your friends are in the habit of sending GIFs to eachother as a way of expressing feelings (yes, I know people like that and it’s actually fun), just know that each otter GIF is taking up some space. If your Messages app gets a little unruly, delete some conversations. If you’re too sentimental for that, consider writing every single message down.
Additional Tips
Having only 16GB of storage is annoying, I know. I really wish Apple would make 32GB the standard for the iPhone 6 Plus but I digress. I just found this neat little utility called PhoneClean for Mac and Windows that says I can free about 1.3GBs of data if I pay at least $20 for it by deleting caches and whatnot that have been building up for years. I’ll try it if I have to, but you can also manually do this with iFunBox.
You can also buy a device that adds storage either wirelessly or via a connection. The Mophie Space Pack adds 16–64GB of storage plus extra battery life.
Preparing for the iPhone 6
I’ll be buying the iPhone 6 Plus when it comes out. The 16GB version. For the first time, I’ll be one of the crazies lining up outside the Apple Store. It’s about the experience, right? Yeah.
I highly recommend backing up your iPhone using iCloud. It’s amazing. To enable it, go to Settings, iCloud, Storage & Backup.
iCloud backups will start automatically in the background, so you set it and forget it. Not only that, it’ll also make it super easy to get your iPhone 6 to the same state your previous iPhone was in. Apps and all. After waiting for everything to download, of course.
I hope you found this guide helpful and that it even saved you the extra $100+tax you would’ve spent on a higher capacity iPhone. If you have the extra $100, I’d say go for it and get the 64GB iPhone 6. Quadruple your space. But if you’re a college student like me, you’re trying to get a nice piece of hardware at the cheapest price and making it work for now. Good luck.
