So you know you're getting an iPhone 4S, and you've chosen which carrier to get it on, now you need to decide which storage capacity you wish -- 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB?

No problem. Let's break it down, shall we?

It would be nice if we could just walk into the Apple store, find a demo iPhone 4S, and say "Siri, based on my exact needs, which size iPhone 4S should I get?" but sadly even Siri isn't that artificially intelligent... yet. There are a few things we can look at, however, to help decide.

Price for storage

The current US prices for iPhone 4, with full carrier subsidies are:

• 16GB: $199 or $12.44 a GB
• 32GB: $299 or $9.34 a GB
• 64GB: $399 or $6.23 a GB

It looks like you can pay 2x the price for 4x the storage, a pretty sweet deal, but it doesn't really work out like that. After $199, Apple is basically getting you to pay a $100 premium for an addition 16GB of storage (check out how much a 16GB SD card or thumb drive costs by way of comparison). The $200 premium for an additional 48GB of storage is more interesting if only because the double density NAND Flash Apple is using to reach that size is probably a bit more expensive for them. But $200 more expensive? (Hey, that's where Apple's fat margins come from.)

So if you're looking at this purely from a "how can I pay Apple as little as possible" perspective, the baseline 16GB model is usually the way to go. Of course, there are a lot of other factors to consider.

iCloud

iCloud promises to give us all unlimited online storage for iTunes purchased content -- iBooks, music, movies, TV shows, and apps, and 5GB of additional storage for backups, data, etc. You can also purchase more iCloud storage for the following yearly fees:

• 10GB: $20/year
• 20GB: $40/year
• 50GB: $100/year

This might make it tempting to save some $$$ up front on onboard storage and make up for it with the free 5GB iCloud, with the option to buy more storage as a safety blanket.

It's not a crazy idea but it's important to remember that online storage isn't always as available, fast, and convenient as onboard storage. For example, you can't just play a movie from iCloud, you have to download it at the same time you watch it, which means you have to have enough space available on your iPhone 4S to handle the download. If you want to watch a lot of movies, you may have to watch, delete, watch, delete, over and over again.

iCloud isn't as open as things like Dropbox, so you can only really store what Apple lets you. If your movies and videos don't come from iTunes, that's an important consideration. Also, in our tests iCloud's free 5GB could get filled up pretty quickly by photos and especially videos.

Bottom line, iCloud means you can get away with managing more content on your device, but you still want to have enough local storage for what you need, when you need it.

8mp photos and 1080p video

iPhone 4S can take 8 megapixel photos and shoot 1080p video and those can be some big files. Justin Horn of When Will Apple did the math on the videos and worked out:

iPhone 4S 1080p video takes up about 2.5 times as much space as the iPhone 4. So using a more moderate estimate of keeping 60 minutes of video on your camera roll you are looking at 10.4 GB of storage vs 4.6 GB for the iPhone 4, so that can add up quick.

I take a ton of photos and videos on my iPhone 4 16GB and run out of space all the time. It's a pain in the butt to have to go through and figure out what to delete if I'm not near my computer and can't sync stuff of, so if you're really into the camera, that's something you need to consider.

Content

The other thing that can fill up our iPhone quickly is content.

• Games can be big, and with iPhone 4S' Apple A5 processor, we might see even bigger ones with more textures and richer environments. Infinity Blade is 600MB, for example. How big will Infinity Blade 2 be?

• iTunes movies can be 1-3GB in size for SD depending on the length. If you prefer watching HD, they can be 3-5GB.

• iTunes TV shows can be a quarter to half the size of movies, but more than make up for it by the number of episodes typically available.

• If you get your movies and TV shows from somewhere other than iTunes, you're still looking at about 400MB an hour for SD and over 1GB (sometimes way over) an hour for HD.

• Music files are generally quite small but can add up as well, especially if you have lots and lots of albums you want to keep with you everywhere.

Who should get 16GB

If you don't use a lot of apps, if you don't want to have a lot of movies and TV shows, or a huge amount of music, if you don't intend to shoot and keep very much 8mp photos or 1080p video on your iPhone, you'll probably be okay with 16GB.

Some people like to keep their iPhones light and do all their gaming and media on their iPad, and some people manage their photos and videos very well, transferring them to their computers regularly and reliably.

If you keep your iPhone lean, you can probably save yourself some cash and get by on 16GB.

Who should get 32GB

If the iPhone is your primary device, if you play games on it and watch movies and TV shows on it, if you have a decent sized music collection you want to keep with you, and if you shoot an average amount of photos and videos, 32GB is probably your sweet spot.

Some people like to have one device that, while it doesn't do everything all the time, it's capable enough to do most things most of the time. As long as there's some extra space to give extra time to managing apps and content, like Goldilocks it feels just right.

If you do a fair but not overwhelming amount of stuff on your iPhone, your probably better off going for 32GB.

Who should get 64GB

If you're a power user who wants to keep as much as possible for as long as possible, if you have a large amount of apps and games, TV and movies, and a huge music collection you simply have to have with you all the time, or you shoot photos and video almost non stop and don't want to have to bother transferring it all the time... we'll, you've probably been waiting for a 64GB option for a while now!

Some people really do want their iPhone to do everything, all of the time, and never (or rarely) have to worry about running out of space. They probably want 128GB -- or even 256GB if they could get it! -- but they'll use the most they can, whenever they can.

If you really feel like you need it, you probably didn't need me to tell you so, and you've already decided you're getting 64GB. Enjoy!

What if you choose the wrong size?

Remember, in most places you have time to try out your new iPhone 4S and return it if you don't like it. Make sure, as soon as possible, you put your iPhone 4S to realistic use. Load up all the apps and games you want with you, load up your movies and TV shows, go out and take some photos and shoot some video. Give it a complete and thorough workout and see.

If it feels like you got too much storage, say 64GB and you haven't even gone past 2GB, or if you got too little, say you're already at 15GB of 16GB, then take your iPhone 4S back and exchange it for one that better suits your needs.

If you come to this realization too late, after the exchange period is over, remember you can buy additional iCloud storage, or look at other options like Dropbox which will let you keep your stuff available online and potentially free up some much needed space on your iPhone.

Any questions?

If you're still not sure, hit up our iPhone 4S Forums to get the help you need to make up your mind.

Engadget's reporting that we won't see just two new iPhones, not just three, but a whopping four next-generation iPhones coming soon!

we're hearing from a trusted source that new iPhones in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities just garnered approval by the PCS Type Review Certification Board, the standards body responsible for certificating handsets for use with some carriers (AT&T, for instance).

Only a week remains before WWDC 2009, so we're deep behind crazy lines here, people, and anything is possible. But four new models? What about the CDMA version for China? The iPhone nano and iTablet for Verizon? The flying model that oinks?

We'll find out next Monday!

[Thanks to Jeffdc5 for the head's up!]

Curiouser and crazier is our motto of the moment, as we get what could be our third (3rd!) carrier leak of the day, following the T-Mobile Austria faux pas highlight an iPhone 32GB and the Vodafone Australia early EOL notice for the 16GB.

This one, according to PhoneArena.com, comes courtesy of and AT&T, which -- if accurate -- is offering to take in your as yet non-existent iPhone 32GB and give you $355.00 towards a trade in for last year's BlackBerry Bold.

Okay...

Colossal blunder to be sure, but is it a blunder in content, or was it just made live before it was finished and authorized? Are we seeing the first signs of a real, honest-to-Jobs iPhone 32G? Decide for yourselves, though Engadget reminds us that the original iPhone was prematurely posted by T-Mo Germany two years ago. Could this be the double d'oh!?

(But really, T-Mo, you couldn't have used a faded out, stock photo of an iPhone 3G there? My eyes. Ouch. My eyes...)

[via AreaMobile]

DigiTimes (via Engadget) is reporting that Apple is once again draining the world dry of NAND Flash memory chips ahead of an anticipated summer iPhone hardware refresh.

The iPhone 3G has one NAND Flash memory slot, currently maxing out at the 16GB density. So, if Apple is planning to take it to 32GB, higher density chips will of course be required. Will supply and pricing allow that by the summer? If it does, it also means the dual-slotted iPod touch could hit a whopping 64GB by its next refresh cycle in the fall.

Anyone out there itching to load that much data on a multi-touch device?

Apple is perhaps the most gluttonous consumer of flash RAM chips on the planet, what with most iPod's flash memory based and still selling in the multiple tens of millions and -- oh yeah -- the iPhone and iPod touch. 14 million iPhone 3Gs were sold last year alone and this year? According to Apple Insider, they's waddled the chair up and parked it right at the buffet:

The iPhone maker has bought out Samsung's entire available supply, putting the world's largest producer of flash memory on allocation until April 2009, according to the report. Samsung makes just over 40% of the world's NAND Flash RAM.

There was no indication, however, whether or not Apple has switched to the double-capacity chips they'll need to take the iPhone to 32GB. Due to the communications radios, previous iPhones have only 1 RAM slot as opposed the 2 in the iPod touch.

But we kind of want 32GB in our iPhones, right?

MacRumors is passing on... well... rumors from MacBlogz of a 32GB iPhone! Says MacRumors:

The reason the largest iPhone (16GB) currently has 1/2 the memory of the largest iPod touch (32GB) is that the iPhone can only house a single NAND Flash chip while the iPod touch can accommodate two. The additional space in the iPhone is taken up by its communication hardware. In August, Toshiba announced that they would begin mass production of higher density 32GB chips in the 4th quarter of 2008.

Intel, they go on to say, may well bump the capacity even further -- to a startling 64GB -- by early next year. Sound crazy? Heh. With Macworld coming in just over a month, we ain't seen nothing yet on the rumor front.

Still, 32GB is drool worthy, and something we here at TiPb are predicting for next year as part of a third generation iPhone HD, so you know we wants it.

How about you? Is 16GB enough, or is it always going to be a case of the more, the better?

Without fail, the moment Apple launches a great product or new revision, within moments talk quickly shifts back to "what's next?!" Last month it was the iPod and iTunes. This month it's the MacBook. But with Macworld slowly ramping up, and competitors slowly turning iClones into specced out SuperClones, the blogsphere spotlight will inevitably turn back to the iPhone, and just what device they'll dent our universe with next.

What if it's an iPhone HD?

The Next Big Thing. The Paradigm Shift. The Mobile Computing Platform. All of these monickers have been applied to the iPhone, it's multi-touch interface and it's mobile OS X implementation. Rightly so. While other companies have fragmented their mobile strategies among many different form factors, from different manufacturers, some even running different versions of the OS itself, Apple has remained remarkably consistent and ingeniously integrated.

The result? What worked on the original iPhone 2G and iPod Touch also works flawlessly on the second generation iPhone 3G and iPod Touch. Four devices spanning tens of millions of users, all with unprecedented unity and utility.

Apple accomplished this via 2008 revisions that were relatively minor in terms of the platform, yet simultaneously crucial in terms of the feature set. The iPhone really needed 3G and GPS to be competitive internationally, and to a lesser extent the iPod Touch really needed external volume and speakers to cross over into serious entertainment and gaming.

This gave consumers an utterly painless upgrade path, and removed from developers the burden of having to worry about whether any specific device might have a touchscreen or not, a keyboard or not, a trackball or not, etc. If you have an iPhone 2G as opposed to 3G, your internet experience is the same, just slower. If you don't have GPS, your location services are the same, just less precise. This is one of the less discussed but most important advantages of the current iPhone roadmap.

But what's next? What similar revision can Apple do in 2009 to further expand the iPhone platform without breaking compatibility at the same time?

Simple. HD. High Definition video.

The current iPhone and iPod Touch line features what was a very impressive 480x320 screen, and Apple has shown they can deliver that screen at a whopping 202dpi on the last generation iPod Nano.

back at Macworld 2008 (one year after introducing the original iPhone 2G), Apple announced HD movie rentals for the Apple TV and this September, they announced HD TV Shows. The world is moving inexorably towards HD and Apple and iTunes are pretty much keeping pace with it. Not only that, they're laying the pipes. Gizmodo even revealed that the exiting iPhone can already handle HD signals "just fine".

Competitively speaking, RIM is launching a slightly higher resolution screen on their Blackberry Storm, at 480x360, and at the small sizes of handset displays, every pixel matters.

Meanwhile, the HTC Touch HD is flaunting a massive 800x480p screen, and though it may not be hitting North American shores any time soon, HTC is clearly readying even more high density handsets, likely for both Windows Mobile and Google's Android.

Of course, these devices are plagued with either outdated OS or fragmented hardware, which will be limiting factors going forward, but they serve to send Apple a powerful message as to where the technology is going, and what Apple can do to continue leading the way.

Announced with pre-requisite BOOM! by Steve Jobs on stage at Macworld 2009 -- or WWDC in June -- with an 800x480p display at 202dpi-like density would move the platform forward an could do so in the same, unified way as the iPhone 3G.

Resolution independence in the iPhone SDK -- the same type talked about for years in Mac OS X -- and simple things like using vector/PDF icons, buttons, and other GUI elements, rather than non-scalable bitmaps could keep development focused and users from worrying which device what App might work on. If you have an iPhone 3G (or 2G) your visual experience is the same, just lower resolution than the HD. (i.e. the same icon takes up the same physical space on your Home screen, just isn't rendered with as many physical pixels on the screen).

The only problem? HD is BIG. It takes up space. Even with H.264 compression, the size quickly adds up and the storage space rapidly disappears. The solution to this is one many people expect to see anyway: 32GB. The iPod Touch already has this option by virtue of having twice the NAND chip slots as the iPhone (since the iPod Touch doesn't need to save space for cellular or Blue Tooth radios). Double capacity NAND chips exist, however, and Apple will switch to them as soon as pricing and availability make it reasonable to do so. (Yes, that would also mean a 64GB iPod Touch -- more capacity than the original Apple TV shipped with!)

Add to this a better spatial speaker system and some form of virtualized surround sound out, combined with 720p video out through the already existing component cables available from Apple, and you have a compelling, and amazingly portable, HD offering as well. Scratch that. Add 802.11n WiFi and streaming to and from iTunes and the Apple TV, and you have a KILLER HD offering. (One that wouldn't even be bound by on-device storage any more.)

Along with the necessary 3.0 firmware update to enable all this HD goodness, 2009 could be another spectacular -- if evolutionary -- year for the iPhone.

It makes sense technological, and it's becoming increasingly important competitively. Just imagine, 802.11n streaming, 32GB iPhone HD, running firmware 3.0, in 2009.

Good news? Looks like there really is a new "Home" option for iPhone activation in the US. Bad news? Looks like it has nothing to do with the iPhone being sold unlocked. Apple Insider, who broke the rumor, updates as follows:

In order to service these customers, a special home pre-qualification web site has been set up so that users can find if they are qualified by AT&T for a phone unit subsidy. Users can set up their account at home so that everything is ready to go when they make their iPhone 3G purchase at a retail store. The new "Home" option that retail employees are seeing on their EasyPay terminals is designed to allow them to use this home pre-qualification step to accelerate the transaction of a new iPhone 3G. That also indicates there is no impending potential for unlocked iPhone 3G sales in the US, although this is expected at some point.

Apple Insider is also sticking to the 32GB SKU, but maybe only after the holidays (though presumably that means short term, not, you know, any point after the holidays and into future months/years...)

Magic 8-Ball?

• Unlocked iPhones in the US? Very Doubtful
• 32GB iPhone in the *near* future? It is certain

Interesting! Can't wait to see how this one pans out!

Apple Insider in reporting that a new option has popped up in US-based Apple (Retail) Stores: Home. Previously, the only options were Upgrade existing iPhone, New AT&T Single, New AT&T Family, and Additional AT&T Line. They conjecture this may mean a new, contract-free, unlocked take your iPhone 3G home and do what you want with it. They rightly point out that this is already an option in some countries which require unlocked handsets by law, though the price is typically as astronomic as the freedom that comes with it. Will this happen? And will it be "unlocked" meaning it can run on other US carriers only (i.e. T-Mobile), or truly SIM unlocked to run with any card, in any county, around the GSM world? We'd love it, but we've been learned not to let our expectations get ahead of corporate avarice before...

Also, they point to a possible capacity bump in time for the holidays. With 8GB supplies running low, they say, 32GB might just be on the horizon. This, of course, would require Apple to switch from the current NAND flash chips they're using, which max out at 16GB on the iPhone and 32GB on the iPod Touch (which lacks the radios and hence has double the space for the memory). Apple bought tons of the old NAND chips before the 3G slipped, and we haven't seen any rumblings of them ordering the higher capacity ones yet, but the same thing did happen last year, so...

Who wants an unlocked 32GB iPhone 3G (in Product Red, no doubt!) wrapped up for them this year? And who's got the probably close to $1K to drop on it?? Let us know!

No, that's not spring in the air, that's the rumor frenzy ramp-up to Apple's June World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), and here's the aptly titled MacRumors with a mother load:

A MacRumors reader ran across a very unusual .Mac web page yesterday and was kind enough to forward it on. The page contained promotional images for Apple products [...] including teasers for iTunes 8, a 32GB iPhone [in Australia!], and a WWDC launch date (June 10th).

Turns out, not so much. The images came courtesy of one of MacRumors own forum members (though MacRumors continues to maintain they were associated with a legit @apple.com account).

In general, a 32GB iPhone, at least for the current generation product, would require a 32GB NAND chip for the single slot (due to the cell radio and other components, unlike the iPod Touch which boasts 2 NAND slots, the iPhone only has room for 1 -- hence iPod Touch always offering twice the memory). If true, it may explain the price cuts on the 8GB models. iTunes 8 would only require some boosted features (App Store support?) and Apple's marketing desire to bump the rev a full number. Australia rumors have been building for a long time now, of course.

Also included were the first MacBook and MacBookPro case revs, going to aluminum and iMac-style black on aluminum respectively. (Both of which have also seen rampant rumor ramp ups -- say that ten times fast!)