Turns out 64GB in an iPhone probably is enough after all

Three weeks ago I put my head into the lion's mouth by asking a simple question: "Is 64GB in an iPhone enough?" I thought it was, and I set about explaining why. There was also a poll to ask the opinions of everyone reading. We'll get to that in a moment.

I started that original post out with a sentence explaining that I'd been contemplating something along those lines for a while. The reason for my trepidation was simple. The internet seems to be full of people – many of them colleagues and contemporaries – who are absolutely convinced that in 2019 nobody should be selling a phone with less than 128GB of storage in it.

Readers, viewers, and listeners are told that unless a phone has globs of storage, it's a rip-off. And I expected most of them to be of the same opinion. I expected a tongue – or keyboard – lashing. But it never came. And I'm both grateful and surprised. I'm yet to decide which of those came first.

Which brings us neatly onto the poll results from three weeks ago. All I asked was "Is 64GB enough for you?" with three options for people to click. The results weren't what I expected.

At the time of writing, almost 1,000 people have voted with a resounding 59% saying that they use an iPhone with 64GB of storage and that it's plenty for their needs. 33% said that they couldn't live with fewer than 128GB, but the more interesting number is 8%. That's the number of people with 64GB who find that they need more space to play with.

What this tells us is that those who choose a 64GB iPhone are generally fine with that. Very few find that they need to opt for more storage when upgrade time rolls around. And that's perhaps one of the reasons that Apple continues to offer 64GB as the lowest capacity iPhone.

I'm sure Apple has statistics on which capacities people are using and how full they are. It will no doubt be making storage decisions based on that information and if Apple's numbers are even close to ours it makes tones of sense to keep 64GB around. At least for now. Especially with all of the storage-saving features I wrote about earlier this month.

But having said all that, I won't be complaining if Apple can sell me a 128GB iPhone 12 Pro at the same price as this year's 64GB model!