When you’re choosing a new smartphone, how much attention should you pay to its onboard capacity? How much of a dealbreaker is it if, say, your iPhone 16 Plus has 128 GB or 256 GB or 512 GB of storage? It depends on what you’re doing with the device, says tech journalist Nafisa Akabor, and even then, onboard storage isn’t such a big deal anymore.
Speaking on the Tech Talk with Vodacom podcast, Akabor said: “Because we have 5G and fibre now, I feel like storage on a device is not that crucial, purely because if you back up all your photos to the Cloud, then you don’t necessarily have to go higher up. For me, 256 GB on a phone is ideal. I don’t need 512 GB. Currently, all of my photos are sitting on the cloud, not on my device.”
The Rise of Cloud Storage
That tracks with a long-term shift away from physical data storage and onto the cloud. A recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures predicted that the total amount of data stored in the cloud would reach 100 zettabytes by 2025. That’s about 50% of the world’s data, up from about 25% stored in the cloud in 2015. When we tell you that 100 zettabytes is equal to 100 trillion gigabytes, you’ll get an idea of how much data we’re all storing.
We’re just not storing it on our phones, flash drives, thumb drives or external hard drives anymore. It’s going to the cloud instead. And that’s good news, for a few reasons.
Why Cloud Storage Beats Physical Storage
For one, physical storage is fragile. External hard drives get knocked or dropped. Phones get lost, stolen, or dropped down the stairs. Flash drives go missing or get damaged. These things happen – and when they go, they take their data with them. Cloud storage, meanwhile, has back-ups and fail-safe mechanisms that keep your information secure and prevent data loss.
Another challenge with physical storage is one you’ll have experienced if ever you set your phone camera to “Burst”: the capacity is limited. So while, yes, you can store your photos on your phone, you’ll also have to delete a whole bunch when your storage space starts running low. By automatically backing up your data to the cloud, like Akabor described, you’ll avoid that problem.
Cloud storage is easy, accessible and affordable – so much so that Vodacom recently launched a cloud-based feature phone. The Mobicel S4 Cloud Phone comes standard with popular apps like YouTube, TikTok and Facebook – all of which are accessed via the cloud. At its launch, it was the only 4G-enabled phone available in South Africa for under R399 (it actually costs half that: R199). Its onboard storage? Just 128 MB.
What This Means for Your Next Device
You might prefer a smartphone or a more premium device. And that’s okay: Vodacom has plenty of options. But when you’re making your choice, remember that storage space isn’t as important as it used to be. Your photos, files and documents can now live safely in the cloud. Also, backing up your phone to the cloud regularly requires a stable internet connection. Check out some of these Vodacom Fibre deals to ensure you back up your phone to the cloud without issues.
