What do you guys use such huge storage for?

roadrash99 said:
Storage will have no effect on how long the phone lasts though.
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Well, it does.

Apps and files get larger in size. I remember apps used to be 20-30 MBs now they cross 300MBs each on their own.

We can install and store many apps and photos and videos respectively, not feeling the need to worry about space, especially since these phones are limited by storage.

Also, space getting over does slow down app and UI responses.

Finally, after you have spent almost double the price of the base model for space, you are gonna use it for twice as long at least.;)
 
mayank11280 said:
Well, it does.

Apps and files get larger in size. I remember apps used to be 20-30 MBs now they cross 300MBs each on their own.

We can install and store many apps and photos and videos respectively, not feeling the need to worry about space, especially since these phones are limited by storage.

Also, space getting over does slow down app and UI responses.

Finally, after you have spent almost double the price of the base model for space, you are gonna use it for twice as long at least.;)
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This hasn't been a problem for me since at least 2018-ish. Even if you have a 128gb phone and each app is a GB, you still have a hundred apps. I just don't see this being a problem unless the person has zero cloud storage and their catalog of images and videos from many years ago is taking up space, a problem easily solved by 5k/year of cloud storage (for the whole family)
 
I for one, appreciate extra storage, even if it's more than I need. I've been through enough 'running out of storage' warnings, especially when I bought my first Android (a Galaxy Y) in 2011. Had to juggle apps, constantly.
 
roadrash99 said:
This hasn't been a problem for me since at least 2018-ish. Even if you have a 128gb phone and each app is a GB, you still have a hundred apps. I just don't see this being a problem unless the person has zero cloud storage and their catalog of images and videos from many years ago is taking up space, a problem easily solved by 5k/year of cloud storage (for the whole family)
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Yes. The space on phones tend to be limited and cloud is required but that’s one of different adaptive responses.

Local storage has additional advantages like not relying on internet for accessing files. Ability to capture longer 4KHD videos. Local file processing as some people like to Vlog and as such. It also creates another redundancy in case cloud goes kaput during rains (/s).

I myself don’t wanna spend much for local storage but there are advantages. And as usual it all boils down to use case and cost-benefit analysis.
 
I used to know a girl who had a folder called "Me" on her phone, filled with 3,000+ selfies of herself. It suffices to say, she was a little bit narcissistic by my standards. And this was not even counting the rest of the massive folders of photos she had.

I wouldn't underestimate the average person's ability to fill up their phone's storage, no matter how large, especially taking into account high megapixel RAW files, 4k video etc.

Hell, there is probably an uncle somewhere who has 50+ gigs of whatsapp good morning images.
 
Storage needs tend to creep up over time, and this really hasn't stopped happening yet despite processing power needs seemingly maturing in the past few years.

The biggest contributor these days is probably the fact that phones have better cameras, and better cameras take larger photos.

Game assets are getting larger as well, as we see higher quality games getting released on mobile platforms. I don't remember this perfectly, but didn't qualcomm implement something similar to direct storage for streaming assets directly to the gpu from storage?

I personally have been somewhat successful with cheaping out on phone storage. Apple's flash storage is worth significantly more than its weight in gold, and thus I use a 64gb phone. I use immich to back my photos up, and have a samba share to stream any other content over should I need to access it on a phone, tablet, or VR headset.
I dislike the idea of offloading my storage to a cloud server, since a hard drive costs a very similar amount to me vs. to a cloud provider. Using my own storage ends up being way cheaper.
 
Apps these days are taking huge occupancy & media aren't getting smaller either.
If we can offload both of these completely to cloud, which we certainly can but not everyone has this general tendency yet; there wouldn't be need to phones with 512/1 tb internal storage
 
I am yet to Max out my 128GB phone that I have been using for 2 years, and a 128GB tablet that I have been using since 2019. Since I do not consume media and rarely if ever listen to music, I guess I am not a regular user. Neither my phone nor my tablet has a single OTT, Music, or Streaming app installed.

Also, I regularly use SDMaid to make sure that any errant app databases are deleted or kept in check. I do not even back-up my whatsapp chats all that much.
 
Have a 512GB phone I've been using since 2023 and currently it has about 192GB free/320GB used. Storage breakup of relevant stuff:
  • Videos: 87GB
  • Images: 74GB
  • Music library: 74GB
  • Apps: 58GB
WhatsApp tells me that it occupies 2.7GB, Telegram about 3GB, and Signal with another 6.5GB. So while there is a non-trivial amount of photos and videos from my chat apps, still only about 12GB out of 512GB. Rest of the media is just me carrying over my entire photo and video library whenever I change phones; so my current phone has photos taken as far back as 2016. I have also carried over the Download folder from my first Android phone till now since it has a lot of images. Yes, realistically, I am probably never going to need them again. Then again, I like having access to stuff and since I have the option - why not?

I also don't use cloud storage to backup any personal stuff (unlike my professional and academic stuff which is backed up to multiple cloud accounts); but I have multiple backups of all my personal files (including all photos taken on my camera in both JPEG and RAW format since 2018) on one of my laptop's SSDs and an external HDD. Not quite the recommended 3-2-1 thumb rule for backups, but at 2-2-1 it's close enough ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
While I aim to backup my phone every couple of months, realistically, I get around to it only once every 4-6 months or so.

I guess I just like having things available locally compared to streaming and/or downloading them, and I'm sure that someone else has the exact opposite preferences. One thing I have noticed is the massive file size of videos taken from my phone camera, even with HEVC file format. I shoot at 4K30 since it has the best quality, and I'm glad that I got 512GB for that reason alone. It also gives on the flexibility to use one's phone as a bit of a replacement for portable drives (I always carry USB 3 speed type C cables in my backpack and I get about 150MB/s R/W speed on average which is pretty decent imo). I also know people who bought higher capacity phone because they use their phone to torrent stuff in the background and obviously more space would be better for that.

In the end, everyone has their preferences (and budget constraints in some companies cases *cough* Apple *cough*) and it's interesting to see others'. Thanks for creating this thread!
 
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