Is 256 GB enough for an iPhone? Here’s When You Should Go Bigger

New iPhones are on the way and upgrading can be tempting, especially with Apple’s first foldable phone on the way. But choosing the right model is not just about choosing between shades of space gray. Storage is also important, and choosing the wrong capacity is a headache you’ll live with for years. Deleting vacation photos just to make room for new ones quickly becomes obsolete. The same goes for monitoring an iOS update, as there are three apps that need to run first.

Most new iPhones now start at 256GB, which is more than enough for many people. A single photo takes up about 3MB, so some envelope math suggests a 256GB phone has room for about 70,000 of them, more than most people will ever take. The issue appears when storing 4K videos or larger AAA games. This is usually when it’s worth paying extra for more storage instead of fighting your phone every few months.

Although 4K video offers incredible definition, it’s also the fastest way to use up your storage space. A minute of standard 4K footage is about 440 MB. However, upgrade to a codec like Apple ProRes, and that same minute can grow to 6 GB. At that rate, it doesn’t take long to fill a 256 GB iPhone. RAW photos also take up a lot more space than regular photos and can be up to 50 MB each.

Gamers have their own reasons for paying for extra storage. Resident Evil 4 eats up over 30GB alone. Now imagine downloading five or six games like that. Going bigger also means no longer deleting your favorite games to make room for new releases. This matters most when you’re traveling and can’t rely on a solid connection to re-download anything.

Then there are the things you don’t really see or think about. iOS itself takes up up to 24GB of space right out of the box, and that number increases when the system downloads additional content such as AI models and offline maps.

Choosing iPhone storage also depends a lot on how you prefer to manage your data. Maybe you agree to pay for an iCloud plan and stream most of your music and movies. 256 GB is ideal when you can store everything in the cloud. iCloud subscribers can even enable an option to automatically offload old photos and videos, so only the newest ones are saved in high resolution on your device for offline access. You can also clear the cache of certain apps on your iPhone to save storage space.

However, if you’re the type of person who hates relying on the cloud, or if you frequently travel to places with weak or no internet connection, having more local storage is essential for keeping an offline copy of all your content. If you want to have your entire photo library with you, record lots of 4K videos, or download lots of large games, you definitely need to spend the extra money to upgrade to 512GB or more.