ZDNET Urges Buyers to Skip $600 Phone Storage Upsells and Cut Cloud Costs
Updated
Updated · ZDNet · Aug 18
ZDNET Urges Buyers to Skip $600 Phone Storage Upsells and Cut Cloud Costs
1 articles · Updated · ZDNet · Aug 18
Summary
ZDNET says smartphone buyers can avoid unnecessary storage spending by judging upgrades in dollars per gigabyte, not headline capacity, and by cleaning up files before paying for larger phones or cloud plans.
Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro Max storage tiers show the math: 256GB to 512GB costs $200, or about $0.78 per added gigabyte, while jumps to 1TB and 2TB work out to roughly $0.39/GB.
A single gigabyte disappears quickly — about 300 low-resolution photos, 150 high-quality shots, or under two minutes of higher-end video — while apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp can consume large chunks of space.
ZDNET recommends deleting duplicates and bad photos, offloading unused apps, disabling automatic media downloads in chat apps, streaming instead of downloading when possible, and using USB-C external drives as a cheaper alternative to cloud storage.
The broader argument is that soldered storage and shrinking microSD support let phone makers profit twice — first on device upgrades, then again when cluttered users subscribe to backup services.