I tried to put emphasis on the personal nature of the question in the title. I’m not asking for myself or the average individual. I also mean ideal in the way where cost is still a factor. The iPhone 16 Pro has a 1TB model but it’s around $500 more expensive than the 128GB version.

I imagine answers are going to vary significantly depending on an individuals approach like relying on cloud storage, SD cards, or a Magsafe NVMe drive for example.

I found 1TB (512GB on the phone and on the SD card) was ideal for me. I could keep the things I wanted for “just in case scenarios” like the files needed for the source ports of Diablo, Half Life, and Morrowind in case I want to play a game or some ebooks if I have time to read. I never needed to uninstall applications and shuffle things. I even had plenty of breathing room.

Another question I’d be interested in hearing people’s answers to is what is the minimum storage capacity you would consider for a phone. I don’t think I would buy a device with less than 256GB of potential storage. If it has an SD card slot that opens up the potential a significantly.

  • @[email protected]English
    5•1 month ago

    The ideal amount of storage is enough that I literally never need to think about it, never need to delete anything, and never need to use cloud services for things that could realistically be local.

    It’s hard to say what that would be because I’ve never had a phone that even came close.

    The largest phone I’ve owned was 256GB. That was “fine”, but it was NOT big enough that I could fundamentally change my habits. For example, I don’t carry my entire music collection on my phone. I don’t even do that on my laptop anymore since the advent of SSDs.

    I have a 128GB phone now and it sucks. I’ve set up a one-way copy to my home desktop with Syncthing so I can safely delete photos, videos, and screen recordings from my phone. I need to do this frequently.

    With the standard price-gouging in the industry, I will probably settle for 256 with my next phone. If prices were reasonable, I’d go for 1TB at least.

    I miss SD cards but there are no viable options with slots anymore.