Really depends on the person. I have never managed to fill up a 128 gigabyte phone, but that is because I am blind, so I am not taking pictures in 4K videos. The biggest thing on my phone is my music collection, which only takes about 5 gigs or so. This phone that I have now is a 64 gigabyte phone and while it’s mostly full, it’s still not there yet. According to the Android settings, I still have about 23 gigabytes left on this 64 gig phone. It says I have used about 64% and if this were a 128 gig phone, that would be about 32% or so.
Partly a mismanagement issue, but my music library at home is more than 120gb. I’d rather just carry my full library - why not? Storage is cheap.
Then there’s video. I prefer pulling video on wifi, rather than stream and burn data. Again, why not? Storage is WAY cheaper than cell data. And I’m being a good neighbor by leaving bandwidth available for other uses.
Me. I am basically trying to squeeze the desktop (PC) out of my phone, so there’s a lot of “unnecessary” stuff.
For example, I am currently deciding whether to keep the 110GB of DVD ISO files which I can stream from my phone using VLC (on client side) which are served by nginx server from my phone (this way I still get all menus, just like with a physical DVD) or delete it and replace it with equally sized 110GB EN Wikipedia maxi .zim package, install kiwix-tools on Termux and set up nginx on Termux to serve as revese proxy to kiwix-serve so I could also host a mirror of the whole English Wikipedia, including (downscaled) images on my phone. I guess that sounds cooler than DVDs.
Or I should get a 512GB SD card and keep both.
I can’t afford 1TB one.
But yeah, that’s just one example. My 256GB SD card is about to pop while my video and music collection (The latter of which which is also served using Navidrome server in Termux 🙂. For videos I just use nginx with material fancyindex theme.) keeps growing.
I already have to keep some stuff on phone’s internal storage.
Termux is godsent. Otherwise I’d absolutely have to get a PinePhone as I couldn’t live with something as locked down as Android or even iOS without a nice terminal emulator.
Alternatively, I could benefit from pocket-sized passively cooled laptop.
I’m not deleting them. They’re uploaded to the cloud at the time of creation. I also move them off my phone to my computer every 6 months or so - I do this just in case the upload to the cloud has ever silently failed. I deduplicate the images, so I don’t have multiple versions of the same image with different file names.
For me it’s not entirely about space. I rarely let the device get more than 2/3rds full. It’s also about speed. If I want to pull a photo/video off my phone, it seems sluggish when there are thousandths of files in that one directory.
Ah, yea, I see. Makes sense. Minimizes your risk while also minimizing your effort to manage them.
Yea, I don’t mind having photos on my phone, but managing them is far easier on a pc. So like you, mine all sync to my PC instantly, then when I feel like it I spend some time there cleaning them up (and the changes sync back).
Since the PC has Crashplan for backup, and a NAS it syncs too, I feel pretty comfortable my stuff is safe.
Who need that much storage on their phone? Honestly asking.
This isn’t about phones. It’s mainly about cameras recording 4k/8k video, and devices such as the steamdeck storing lots of games.
That make sense. Thanks.
Unfortunately, the card mentioned in the article is far too slow to record high resolution, high bit-rate video from even older “pro” cameras.
Cameras recording high bitrate video generally use a better format than SD
Storage needs kind of grow to the size of their container. Like a goldfish.
Really depends on the person. I have never managed to fill up a 128 gigabyte phone, but that is because I am blind, so I am not taking pictures in 4K videos. The biggest thing on my phone is my music collection, which only takes about 5 gigs or so. This phone that I have now is a 64 gigabyte phone and while it’s mostly full, it’s still not there yet. According to the Android settings, I still have about 23 gigabytes left on this 64 gig phone. It says I have used about 64% and if this were a 128 gig phone, that would be about 32% or so.
I have 128gb SD on my phone and it’s alway full.
Partly a mismanagement issue, but my music library at home is more than 120gb. I’d rather just carry my full library - why not? Storage is cheap.
Then there’s video. I prefer pulling video on wifi, rather than stream and burn data. Again, why not? Storage is WAY cheaper than cell data. And I’m being a good neighbor by leaving bandwidth available for other uses.
Me. I am basically trying to squeeze the desktop (PC) out of my phone, so there’s a lot of “unnecessary” stuff.
For example, I am currently deciding whether to keep the 110GB of DVD ISO files which I can stream from my phone using VLC (on client side) which are served by nginx server from my phone (this way I still get all menus, just like with a physical DVD) or delete it and replace it with equally sized 110GB EN Wikipedia maxi .zim package, install kiwix-tools on Termux and set up nginx on Termux to serve as revese proxy to kiwix-serve so I could also host a mirror of the whole English Wikipedia, including (downscaled) images on my phone. I guess that sounds cooler than DVDs.
Or I should get a 512GB SD card and keep both.
I can’t afford 1TB one.
But yeah, that’s just one example. My 256GB SD card is about to pop while my video and music collection (The latter of which which is also served using Navidrome server in Termux 🙂. For videos I just use nginx with material fancyindex theme.) keeps growing.
I already have to keep some stuff on phone’s internal storage.
Termux is godsent. Otherwise I’d absolutely have to get a PinePhone as I couldn’t live with something as locked down as Android or even iOS without a nice terminal emulator.
Alternatively, I could benefit from pocket-sized passively cooled laptop.
Thanks. That sounds pretty cool.
Phones don’t have (full size) SD card slots, this is for cameras and such.
Well I mean, 640KB of memory ought to be enough for anybody.
I won’t mind that much storage, the 256GB I have are nearly full.
I’m using a 128GB phone and it’s never full. But I export photos And videos off it once every 6 months. If I didn’t I’d need 1TB phone.
Once every 6 months?
So at any one time you could lose 6 months of photos?
Or do you have a regular sync to somewhere, and this is just space freeing?
I’m not deleting them. They’re uploaded to the cloud at the time of creation. I also move them off my phone to my computer every 6 months or so - I do this just in case the upload to the cloud has ever silently failed. I deduplicate the images, so I don’t have multiple versions of the same image with different file names.
For me it’s not entirely about space. I rarely let the device get more than 2/3rds full. It’s also about speed. If I want to pull a photo/video off my phone, it seems sluggish when there are thousandths of files in that one directory.
Ah, yea, I see. Makes sense. Minimizes your risk while also minimizing your effort to manage them.
Yea, I don’t mind having photos on my phone, but managing them is far easier on a pc. So like you, mine all sync to my PC instantly, then when I feel like it I spend some time there cleaning them up (and the changes sync back).
Since the PC has Crashplan for backup, and a NAS it syncs too, I feel pretty comfortable my stuff is safe.
Same. I should have gotten a 512GB Micro SD. “I could never use that much storage.” Yeah, I could.
What do you use all that storage for?
Apps, photos, audio books, and the OS.
PinePhone?
Nope just plain old Android, haven’t gotten around to using something better