Disconnect: Apple’s iPhone storage options are a pathetic rip-off

Disconnect is a weekly column in which Tech in Asia’s Charlie Custer pokes at holes, plays devil’s advocate, or otherwise attempts to rain on the tech industry’s parade.

As I’m sure you’re already aware, “small” was the theme of Apple’s press event this week. The company unveiled a new, smaller iPhone (the iPhone SE) and a new version of its smaller-sized (but not mini) 9.7-inch iPad. But as is its tradition, the company also went small in another way: storage space.

Yes, the iPhone SE is yet another iPhone with a minimum storage capacity of 16 GB. And if you want to upgrade, it’ll cost you an extra US$100 to get up to 64 GB. Unfortunately, Apple’s in-house audience of sycophants didn’t boo when those numbers were announced, but I can assure you that I was booing at home, and you should be too.

A 16 GB base with absurd upgrade cost is standard practice for Apple phones, of course. It’s even the default for the iPhone 6s. Yes, the base model of what Apple considers the best and most advanced phone in the world – a phone that’ll cost you US$650 or more – comes with a pathetic 16 GB of storage.

A $15 64 GB flash drive. With Apple’s pricing scheme, this would run you $100.

You can upgrade, of course, but the price you pay per gigabyte with an Apple device is astronomical, absurd, and frankly offensive given current market prices for solid-state storage. A decent 64 GB flash drive costs US$15. What could Apple possibly be bringing to the table that makes its 64 GB flash storage worth seven times that?

The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing. It’s just a rip-off. Apple knows you want a phone with iOS, and since nobody else makes them and their phones aren’t moddable or upgradeable, they can charge whatever they want. And when people keep paying these prices, who can blame them?

But let’s forget about the upgrade costs for a second. 16 GB shouldn’t be the default/base option anyway, because 16 GB of storage is simply not enough. There was a 16 GB version of the original iPhone, which came out almost a decade ago. Ten years’ worth of camera upgrades, bloating app options and increasingly expansive mobile games later, why on earth does Apple think 16 GB is still a reasonable storage size to offer? The iPhone SE and 6s have a 12 megapixel camera that shoots 4K video. You could easily fill up the 16 GB version’s storage in a single afternoon of video and photo shooting, even if you haven’t installed a single app beyond the undeletable iOS defaults.

Stop buying iPhones until Apple sees reason.

For most users, who will want to load music, podcasts, and games onto their phones as well as take photos and shoot video, 16 GB is woefully inadequate. And it would cost Apple very little to upgrade its minimum storage space to 32 or even 64 GB. A 64 GB flash drive, for example, costs under US$15. It reportedly costs Apple around US$17 to make the jump from 16 GB to 64 GB in an iPhone 6s. Apple’s profits-per-phone are among the highest in the industry; the company could easily eat that US$17 and start offering phones with reasonable flash storage capacity if it wanted to.

Remember when Apple made this thing? It’s not related to the storage issues, but it’s also terrible and I wanted to remind you of it.