MAXIMISING MEMORY ON YOUR IPHONE IN FIVE SIMPLE STEPS

While everything else on the iPhone is great, one aspect that we look to for improvement is that of internal storage space. Even though we know that for security purposes, the micro SD card option has been removed from iPhone units, there are sometimes that we wish the Cupertino-based company were not so big on security and they would just let us have our way. Whether you rock the 16GB variant, or you’re one that has the 64GB memory option to themselves, there is still the fear of that “Storage Almost Full” prompt lurking at the back of your mind.

What you might not know, then, is that there are a few tricks and tips that you can embrace to make sure that the storage on your unit lasts longer than expected, and we would be touching some of such options here. In the bid to make sure your iPhone storage lasts longer…

1 CUT BACK ON THE HIGH-RES VIDEOS

It’s not every day that you should whip out your unit and start to shoot videos in high resolution. There are a lot of other video shooting options there and iPhone being the Apple product we know; they would even turn out finer than what you would get on some other devices. Taking your small skits every day in the highest of resolutions available would drain up your space faster than anything you know.

You can correct this by heading over to your Settings >> Photos and Camera >> Record Video options. From here, you can simply choose the 720p at 30fps options. Whenever you want to shoot a higher res video, just switch it again

2 DELETE THOSE MESSAGES

It is in the default settings of any iPhone unit to save all of your messages – including the text and multimedia content – automatically and forever. It is very unlikely that you have the sudden urge to read your MMS, SMS, or iMessage correspondence after years, which means you have to do away with them and free up that space. Once again, head over to Settings >> Messages >> Message History. From this point, you would be able to delete messages after a certain timeframe, from as little as 30 days to 1 year.

3 SHOOT HDR, KEEP ONLY HDR

When taking pictures in the HDR mode of your iPhone, the device has been automatically set to save the pictures in both the normal mode and then, the created HDR mode. Since what you were going for is the HDR version of your picture, there is really no need for the Normal variant which would just be hogging space otherwise. Want to get rid of this too? Access your Settings >> Photos and Camera >> Keep Normal Photo and then, toggle off the bar.

4 DISABLE AUTO DOWNLOAD FROM OTHER I DEVICES

If you have more than one device from Apple, a default setting comes with the pack which would allow you share your content across each and every device that you have connected to the same account. This goes to say that when you make a purchase on one of your iDevices, you have been setup to automatically get that same purchase on every other account linked to your iTunes wallet. While there would be some applications and purchases that you would want to keep multiples of, this would not be the case for all you get, and this is the point when they start to take up valuable space.

Like every other space hogger we have been talking about, a simple visit to the Settings panel would clear you of this issue. From the Settings dashboard, go to “iTunes and App Store” and then toggle off the options you don’t want to be shared automatically across your devices. You have the option of toggling off on music, apps, books and other updated too.

5 GOT THE CLOUD? USE IT

We have talked about high-resolution videos, but we all know that the iPhone is capable of taking some high-resolution pictures too. If you are the picture loving type, you would be surprised to see the iPhone storage run out on you before you could run 100 miles with a steam engine. However, things are made easy if you have keyed into the Apple iCloud Photo Library service. With this option on your phone, you can enable it to keep your pictures instead and save you a lot of storage headache.

The option is to ‘Optimize iPhone Storage,’ and what it does is save your full resolution pictures to the cloud. You would still be able to access the pictures and videos in the Camera Roll folder, but they would be smaller than usual. To get this option up and running, go to Settings >> iCloud >> Photos >> Optimise iPhone Storage, and you are set for life.

While all of these options are just to make sure you get the best out of your storage space, they do not ensure that you would never run out of space. Far from it. If you are an average user, these tips will work for you across any model, but for the heavy memory users, we advise that you take the first step by going for a higher memory variant on a purchase.