Replacement iPhone has less storage

Question

Replacement iPhone has less storage

Hi,

a couple of years ago I bought my wife an iPhone 6 with 128GB of
storage. The other day she went off to the local Carphone Warehouse to get
a new phone so that the old one can be gifted to our teenager wannabe daughter.
She came back with an iPhone 7 with 32GB of storage. This has brought into
sharp relief a problem that I guess has been brewing for a while.

In the last two years she has taken something over 7,000 photos or videos
and has a reasonably large amount of music on her phone. The 128GB is almost
full.

After she had removed most of the music I backed up the
old phone to her iTunes account and then restored the backup to the new
phone. Of course vast amounts of the photos did not come across to the new
phone and the storage on the new phone is instantly completely full before she
has even started using it.

No problem I said to her we can just use iCloud to put the photos on. She
went off and did some reading and came to say "no we can't"
apparently once you don't have the photos on your device they get deleted from
iCloud after 30 days.

"Nonsense" I said what would be the point of that. Who is ever going
to pay for extra storage on an iCloud account when it isn't extra storage at
all and anything you put there that you can't fit in your original storage gets
deleted. That makes no sense at all!

5 minutes later I had to accept that in fact she was perfectly right. Apple
has managed to get their users to buy extra storage from them that isn't
anything of the sort. How strange but great work from their marketing
department though.

So how then should a user of a limited storage device go about moving stuff
off the device so that they can carry on using it without having to lose the
precious family memories that are embodied in that stuff?

As far as I can see it, there isn't anything that Apple provide to address
this problem. This seems absolutely incredible to me. Apple, who manage, to get
people to pay for iCloud storage that isn't extra storage at all don't have a
service to get people to pay for something they do really need. Surely this
would be something that every iPhone user will someday really really want. It's
absolutely staggering that there isn't an Apple "storage extension in the
Cloud" service as well as an Apple "copy of what you already have on
your phone and your laptop iTunes in the cloud" service.

</rant>

So any advice on what she should do?

As a first step I guess she could move the photos off her MacBook so
that she doesn't have them repopulate the new phone every time she tries to
synch her phone to iTunes. I think that's doable with a separate hard drive
although the old Seagate one we have doesn't seem to work, whilst it works fine
with Windows the MacBook sees it as read only so we can't copy stuff to it but
presumably we'll find something that works for that but is that the best way
forward, it seems to me there must be something that's more effective than
that.

Whilst the way it's come to a head for us with the smaller storage on the
new phone can't be that common it must be that the basic issue of running out
of storage space on the device must be a problem that thousands of people
come up against every day in the Apple Community so could I get some feedback
on how others have solved this problem.

And if an Apple forum moderator happens to read this could you let us know
why there isn't something that addresses this available from Apple and when if
ever there might be?

Posted on Jul 22, 2018 4:19 AM

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Answer 1

SiHancox

Level 5

4,953 points

Jul 22, 2018 6:48 AM in response to frustratedfromoxted

I’m no expert regarding iCloud Storage because I tend to still keep everything on external drives, but this article may help.

https://www.imore.com/how-free-space-your-iphone-or-ipad-icloud-photo-library

I believe to get the benefit of on-device reduced storage you have to enable “Optimize iPhone Storage”, this off loads only the most recent (30 days or so) but still allows you access to all your content. How much cloud space you will need depends on your photo collection (so you may have to purchase more) and I’m not sure if you started your “clean up” prior to turning on optimized storage that some photo’s may also have been remove from cloud (someone else might know a little more about that).

Hopefully the article may give you a better idea, one last thought, if you have a large on device music collection you could look to Apple Music, again at the cost of a monthly subscription but you get back much needed space for Apps and other data, so you may consider it worth while (link below could be useful).

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/10/11/how-to-manage-and-optimize-downloaded-mu sic-storage-on-your-iphone-or-ipad/

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Answer 2

Jul 22, 2018 6:52 AM in response to frustratedfromoxted

iCloud photo stream and iCloud Photo Library are merely synchronization services, and always have been nothing more. They are not a backup nor an archive, and again, never have been.

iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

See the section:

“Back up your photos and videos

When you turn on iCloud Photo Library, your photos and videos automatically upload to iCloud. They're not duplicated in your iCloud backup, but you should keep backup copies of your library. You can download your photos and videos from iCloud.com to your computer and store them as a separate library, transfer them to another computer with Image Capture or Photos, or store them on a separate drive.

If you're on a device with iOS 11 or macOS High Sierra, the photos and videos you take are in HEIF and HEVC format. These formats use less storage, with the same quality.”

If the photos in question are archived on a Mac, then simply don’t sync them, or at least don’t sync them all to the new phone.

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Answer 3

Jul 22, 2018 7:39 AM in response to LACAllen

SiHancox,

Thank you for your response. That's a most helpful article and seems to possibly be the solution that I was looking for. I'm disappointed in myself for not uncovering that functionality anywhere in my reading on the Apple site.

As for the Apple Music thing I did in fact buy her an Apple Music subscription for her birthday back in November and she did finally get it do work work properly a couple of weeks ago after many, many calls with a nice chap at Apple Support. It's because of that that we were able to clear down the music collection before backing up the old phone originally. The real problem though is the two years of photographs and videos but hopefully the advice in that article will be the answer to that problem.

Many thanks.

LACAllen

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I hadn't appreciated that there was a bar to Apple themselves responding to matters raised in the user community and I apologise for assuming that that might have been the case no matter how ludicrous it might be to think a company would be interested in the kind of things their customers might be discussing about their services and products.

I also apologise for the length of my original question, I merely wished to offer background as to how I came to have the problem I was experiencing to demonstrate that it was, I thought, a not atypical experience.

You comment "You created the situation, not Apple or iCloud's lack of features".

In this matter however I do fail to see eye to eye with you. The situation was bought to a head by my wife purchasing a replacement device with less storage which is clearly outside of Apple's responsibility however the difficulty would have been experienced in due course anyway and the lack of an Apple feature to easily enable asynchronous uploading of content to their Cloud storage service is absolutely the thing that created the situation.

That "iCloud is a syncing service, not off device storage" is something that I do now appreciate. My question was essentially saying now that I do understand this, what do I do to get over the fact that it isn't what I initially thought it was and is there a user out there who can advise how best to overcome the lack of such service from Apple themselves?

"iCloud is a syncing service, not off device storage and is documented clearly that way"

It may well be documented that way but when I came to my incorrect assumption about it I had simply read the iCloud - Apple (UK) marketing which advised me that their "2TB Great for Families" service level would allow me to store "A lifetime of photos, videos and everything else" and that upgrading my iCloud storage would allow me to "keep even more of [my] photos, videos and documents safely stored in the iCloud". "Keep....stored", not "keep copied" or "keep synchronised with my device" but "keep stored". To my untrained eye that really did read as if I would be able to use it to store content.

Thanks anyway for your time.

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Answer 4

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Jul 22, 2018 6:41 AM in response to frustratedfromoxted

And if an Apple forum moderator happens to read this could you let us know
why there isn't something that addresses this available from Apple and when if
ever there might be?

This is not that type of resource. An Apple host will only contribute if no-one else does. This is a user to user community.

Why questions and forward looking speculative questions are also not allowed here.

IMO, your editorializing as part of your very long question may not get the response you are looking for.

You created the situation, not Apple or iCloud's lack of features.

iCloud is a syncing service, not off device storage and is documented clearly that way.

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Replacement iPhone has less storage

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