This year too, like every year before this, Apple pushed the boundaries of smartphone technology with the launch of two new flagship iPhones – the 6S and 6S Plus. While they are simply the best iPhones ever and it’s hard to find any fault in them, we do have one grudge – the huge compromise that Apple has made yet again in offering storage.
We’ve always felt that 16GB is too limited and have been hoping against hope that Apple would someday swap it out for a 32GB base model. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, we got features that greedily hogged up all the storage, making the base models of the new iPhones totally impractical.
The basic model of 6S still is a 16GB one:
When you have a wonderful device like an iPhone in your pocket, you’d definitely want to make the most of it – listen to high quality songs, watch 1080p movies on the go, or fire up the graphics and play an action packed game. But unfortunately, in the 16GB model, the storage plays a spoilsport to all that fun.
In the world of high-def media, 16GB phones have always been a joke. They have become the CDs of the smartphone industry: they may be functional, but no one wants them. In this case, we aren’t too sure how functional the 16GB versions of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are. In fact, we’d go out on a limb and declare them practically useless. And the reasons are many:
- Each year, the iPhones become more and more feature rich. And the problem of storage gets compounded with each new feature that’s added. For example, meet Mr. 4K Videos – just your friendly neighbour who doesn’t think twice before violating your (proverbial) space.
- Just to give you an idea, 1 minute of a 1080p video shot from your iPhone takes up 130 MB of space. The same clip shot in 4K will be 375 MB! And when you make a two-and-a-half minute video of your cute little niece singing the latest Honey Singh song, you can say goodbye to 1GB of space on your iPhone.
- Then there’s this cool new feature Live Photos. Even with all the “special algorithm” that Apple will be using to save space on your phone, this feature is still expected to take up at least double the size of a normal photo. And now that both the new iPhones sport an advanced 12MP camera, it’s safe to assume that each pic will be upwards of 3MB. That makes each Live Photos 6-7MB each. So the 150 photos you take of your day trip to Neemrana will set you back 1GB. That’s a lot of space!
- Now we come to flagship features like iCloud Photo Library and Apple Music that will store your entire media collection on the phone. And although Phil Schiller said the storage will be done “in a space-efficient way, so they don’t take up much more room”, we can still be pretty certain that they will use up a significant amount of space.
- Want more space guzzlers? How about games and movies? Any good game will be upwards of 1GB for sure. Same thing with movies. Who watches movies in low resolution nowadays? But those HD movies will gobble up storage in a matter of seconds. And the quality, along with the size, is only increasing with each passing day.
Why then is Apple even selling a 16GB version?
Well if you pay attention you’ll notice that there is no 32 GB model available. Which means that the most logical step – even if slightly unwilling – will be to get the 64GB version. In doing so Apple is tricking you into spending an extra 10K and opt for the model that will be most profitable for Apple itself.
Not cool Apple, not cool. It’s a cheap trick you are trying to pull off! And the sad part is that there’s no way around it. If you use up space like the devil, it’s better to go in for a 64GB model. Yes, you have to shell out an extra Rs. 10,000 for an already expensive smartphone; but trust us, you will be thanking us for the advice in the near future. So, start saving up right away, because there’s no way that 16GB will be enough for your needs.
