Tablets

So how do you figure out how many GB you really need? I’m a huge gamer, so more space is always welcome. I currently have an Ipad 2 (older generation before they had Ipad Air) I have only the 16GB model. And for me, that’s plenty. I have over 40 IOS apps (games) installed right now. I do get alerts about my storage being full; and regularly I have to decide which apps to (temporarily) delete to make room for new cool games that I want to play.

But 40 games is a lot. I don’t even play half of those anywhere CLOSE to regularly (less than once a month, some I haven’t played in almost a year etc); I’d say I have MAYBE 12 apps (mostly all of them are games) that I play (almost) daily.

And it’s not like those apps disappear into oblivion – you can always redownload them – and since most of them sync your progress in their own servers (and require online play); you don’t have to lose all your progress each time you want to play it again either.

Now granted; I’m talking about an Ipad here; I’m not using it to take photos, videos, play my music etc; all things that I might do if I were using an Iphone instead of an Ipad.

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The Itunes store complicates the issue further, by not telling you the REAL file size for the apps you’re downloading. It shows a compressed size, and apps can be up to 3 or 4 times larger than that once they’re uncompressed, installed, and through updates they receive over time, etc. This always leaves you guessing as to just how large an app really is.

I also wonder if some of the performance issues I meet on my Ipad 2 could be due to the fact that I run it very full with very little, if any free space at any time.

As technology advances, the games will keep getting larger too; the same thing happened back in the days of the PC. I remember having a PC with 10GB and wondering how I would ever use that much space; now, I have a 1TB HD and I could not work with anything less than 500GB at least.

Are our phones and tablets heading that direction? Maybe so, but not at such a fast speed compared to the growth of their PC counterparts. It is true that apps are getting larger; however, many of the apps on my Ipad are 10MB or smaller; and the largest app I know of (not currently installed on my device) is around 5 GB.

One GB = 1,000 MB. If most of my games are 10MB or under I should be able to fit 100 games at once on my Ipad. However; that’s not true. as I mentioned I have somewhere between 40-50 apps installed right now.

Where does the other half of my storage go? I take a lot of screenshots within the apps of various games Im playing but not enough to count for 8gb of storage. According to this chart online; 8gb would be over 5,000 images when shot with a 4mp camera – but the Ipad 2 has only a meager 0.3 (front facing) or 0.7 MP (rear facing) camera. My Ipad starts complaining for me to delete photos after about 1 or 2 hundred. Even if shooting RAW; it should hold at least 500-600 photos (plus all of my games)

I assume that the operating system itself is taking up a chunk of my GB real estate, as well as certain “bloat ware” apps that I can’t delete such as Newsstand and FaceTime. I’m not sure how many GB exactly.

I do not have any music or videos on my Ipad 2 (but if you happen to be a heavy video/music user, the rule of thumb is 3MB per 1 second of HD video filmed with your Iphone according to this discussion on the official apple forums so a 5 minute video is going to eat up close to 1GB of your space, roughly 900MB. And as for music, according to this source here, the rule of thumb is 1 MB per minute; so if you have an hour long playlist, your music is taking up 60MB (which is pretty small) for it to reach a gig, you’d need about 16 hours of music on the device at all times. You could save space by swapping in and out songs when you grow tired of them, etc); But since I have neither video, nor music, the only other culprit is temporary internet files since I do browse the net a lot on my Ipad.

Still, I feel that I can live harmoniously with my 16 GB. When I finally do get to purchase a new Iphone or Ipad, I will most likely stick to my 16 GB as it’s served me well for the past 6 years and technology won’t outpace it to where I’m forced to upgrade to a larger device right away. Of course I’d love a 64gb or 128 ipad pro, with the apple pencil, especially for art and design work; but for now, I’m just fine with my ancient Ipad 2 16GB wifi only model. Your mileage may vary, but hopefully this gives you some insight into just how far that 16gb will take you, especially if you just mainly want the space for apps and don’t plan to record a lot of video.

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