According to Alex’s recent post regarding the release of iOS 6.1 beta 5, there’s also a rumor that has surfaced that suggests that Apple may be releasing another iOS device that has 128GB of storage. We already know that iPod (Classic) got all the way up to 160GB of memory, but would people use that much memory in a phone?

I understand why the iPod Classic supported so much memory. You could add music, movies, and photos to the device and it would probably take you a decent amount of time to fill it up – maybe even more than a few years. But that’s okay, because you likely bought that iPod with the intention of keeping it for a pretty long time. As long as it still worked, it was good to go. However, when it comes to phones we purchase them with the intention of (more than likely) replacing them after just two years. Is two years enough to warrant buying a device with so much memory?

It’s a possibility. While I never even near filled up my iPod Classic with more than 10GB of music in the time that I had it, I also didn’t use it very often because my phone essentially took its place. My phone is something I use frequently throughout the day. I’m always on the lookout for new apps, taking pictures, recording videos, etc. and the numbers quickly add up. A few years ago I never thought I would need anything bigger than 512MB of memory; then I was allotted 2GB of memory, and then 4, and then 8, now 16. Guess what? My phone is almost out of memory. The memory would be long gone by now if I hadn’t deleted a lot of things on my phone. The point here is if I’m given the memory, I will use it.

I think the one thing that caught me off-guard about my memory usage was that it wasn’t all music and photos that took up my memory; I was surprised to learn just how much memory some apps use. Spotify and my GPS of choice are what take up the bulk of my memory app-wise, but I have so many other apps on my phone that combined they use a good chunk of memory. On my very first smartphone, an Android, I remember having to be very careful about how many apps I downloaded because it didn’t take long for the phone to let me know that I’d run out of memory. Once I got around to a phone like my HTC EVO 4G, I had 8 whole gigabytes at my disposal and I just went crazy downloading apps and importing music because I thought I could never possibly use that much memory. Alas, it didn’t take long for that device to tell me, “Hey, you’ve reached your limit.” Then I get a 16GB iPhone 4S because if I ran out of 8GB, surely 16GB would be enough to cover me. Nope, wrong again.

So while it might seem like 128GB of memory is an awful lot of memory for a phone, maybe even too much, I imagine there are probably a lot of people who are like me. If the memory is at their disposal, they’ll use it until they can’t use it anymore. I know there are people that have been ‘smartphoning’ longer than I have and they might have already discovered this increased memory usage when given a 32GB or a 64GB device and they’re ready for the next step up; it seems like such a big jump in storage amount is probably inevitable. After all, with better cameras on the way they’re bound to take up more memory for pictures and videos.

Readers, where are you at in regards to memory usage? Is your device full or do you have room to spare? Is 128GB necessary at this point in time? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!