Remember the days when the “Can’t Take Photo, Not enough storage” error message popping up on your iPhone was the story of your life? Well, Apple has finally managed to sort out the iPhone storage issues, if only partially.
First, by eliminating the 16 GB model, and now, by launching iOS 11. Those of you who haven’t upgraded to iOS 11 already, read on and you definitely will.
Apart from the subtle interface design changes, the new iOS 11 comes with a bunch of other handy features. But the one people are swooning over the most is something that’s not easily seen. Apple has added a much-needed self-cleaning feature on the new iPhones which helps save up space.
iOS 11 has been designed to learn your usage pattern and push most of the rarely used data to the cloud, thereby saving up precious iPhone storage. This new feature work across the board, covering almost all the apps. However, the most noticeable of the effect is on the Photos app.
Photos and Files make up nearly 95% of most data.
This is from my iPhone. Notice how Photos and Documents make up for nearly 35 GB of the 36 GB space used up. Even in this, Photos consumes nearly 20 GB! And I don’t even take those many photos! You can only imagine how the phone of those will look who are selfie addicts!
Until iOS 10, these photos and documents used to sit on my iPhone, using up precious space. On my 32 GB iPhone, I would have long run out of space!
My iPhone is suddenly free of clutter!
I have more than 4000 photos in my Photos library; and nearly 200 videos (most of which are 240 fps slow-mo videos)! And yet, the Photos app occupies only half a GB of my iPhone storage. Reason? Becuase all the photos and videos older than a few days have been pushed to the iCloud. I can still see them in my library, but they don’t stay on my phone. Only when I click on a photo, it downloads to my phone. And even then, it goes back to the iCloud after a few days of inaction.
This magic works on other apps as well.
Same is true of my files/documents. Apple is constantly pushing unused stuff to the cloud, freeing up your iPhone storage. You have a lot more options for individual apps to optimise the storage.
Other nifty features like “Offload Unused Apps” and the ability to send the older message to the cloud, all work in tandem to free up GB of storage on your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch.
The Catch (22)
With the introduction of this feature, Apple is practically forcing your hand to buy some iCloud storage. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that the 5 GB of free space that comes with Apple account is going to run out in no time. You would do well to take at least their basic plan of 50 GB of iCloud storage. Fortunately, Apple has priced the storage options very competitively. The basic version (that I am on) of 50 GB, comes at minimalal cost of INR 75 per month (GST inclusive).
And I don’t think that’s a lot to ask for by any stretch of the imagination.
Often, before buying any cloud space, we wonder: What am I going to do with the space!?
Well, now Apple has given you the answer!