A Simple iPhone – iCloud solution

A few years ago I bought a 256 gigabyte iphone because I wanted more space and for a long time it was great because it meant that I had plenty of room to grow into. The issue comes when you get to over 200 gigabytes of data stored in iCloud because you go from 3 CHF per month to 10 CHF per month. You go from 36 CHF per year to 120 CHF per year. That is a big increase.

I wouldn't mind paying this much, if it was easier to retrieve this data. Once data is on iCloud and plenty of services it is a nuissance to retrieve. If you think "I can expand it for a few weeks then you're right, you can. It's when you want to recover the data that you will get blocked. iCloud doesn't allow a photo library to be spread across multiple drives, so either you have everything on a single volume, or you're trapped paying for decades to come.

Now for the simple solution I hadn't considered until last night. A lower capacity iPhone. With a 256 gigabyte phone you need ten terabytes of storage to backup the entire phone, but with a 126 gigabyte phone you sneak under the 200 gigabyte limit with ease. The cost of a new phone is relatively high, but consider that you're saving 81 CHF per year, and several hundred francs on a mobile phone.

Next time you consider an iPhone consider the size of the phone compared to your laptop hard drive, as well as the cost of cloud storage and backup. The bigger the phone, the larger the yearly tax. Keep it to 200 gigabytes and the tax is 39 CHF per year, expand it to two terabytes and it's 120 CHF per year. Retrieving the data is not straight forward. I will stick to smaller capacity phones, to avoid hitting the 200 gigabyte limit in future.