just randomly wondering really - at the risk of answering my own question, i can imagine any bigger and you're looking at power consumption issues maybe ?

I theoretically had 72gb before when I had my 8gb S3 and a 64gb Memory card, but i'd certainly like to know why nobody has even tried to prototype a phone with bigger storage ?

Book mark this thread. Come back in 7 years when phones all have 1TB

What flagpole said

What flagpole and daclick said

The Meizu MX3 is a great phone that comes with 128GB built in storage.

With cloud storage on everything now,there probably wont be much need.

Please no cloud storage and no need in the same sentence when talking about storage. There is every need. I store loads of video on my SD card for my daily commute and no way am I eating my data allowance on streaming and no way I can do that on the tube anyway.

+1

Exact reason why i imported the Korean version of the LG G2.
Unlike the International version, the Korean version has 32GB onboard storage, a Micro SD card slot and a removable battery.

No and anyone who thinks this is deluded.

No, however, I don't think we'll go much higher than 256GB until many years to come when applications need it.

4G and eventually 5G speeds mean it is ridiculously quick to upload files that you may store.

I could go with 8 or even 4gb. And yes bookmark this page. In 7 years time cloud storage will have triumphed. If we have 1tb on a phone we will have failed. Effective cloud means have super fast connectivity everywhere.

I can dream. But hey 7 years ago who could have dreamt that the iPhone screen had increased from 3.5 inches to 4.

Just because you can have cloud storage doesn't mean you have to rely on it all the time and not have a decent amount of local storage.

I've a fibre connection at home but I'd certainly not want to rely on it for all my storage needs.

Hadn't heard of that model - looks very impressive, although with the specifications of it, i suspect it must absolutely cream the battery each day ..

Interesting replies though. I don't actually mind the notion of cloud storage, but I think the connectivity of the whole mobile network would have to be drastically improved to provide a seamless experience. You'd have to effectively eliminate all blindspots and make sure every part of the country had connectivity if you're going to go down the cloud route.

It does seem strange though that no company, apart from apparently Meizu, has tried to increase onboard storage though. The focus seems to have been on increasing processing power and performance rather than memory.

I would have though that with access to more memory, the notion of having the mobile device as your sole device for everything would be a lot closer to reality.

That is what phone manufactures will think and no doubt they will do it as it cut costs. Look at the amount of phones that don't have a Sd card slot now.

Any photos I take with my phone, which is not that many i must admit, I wait until I get home or to a friends place and upload them to my computer. I have uploaded the odd one up to dropbox, just to try it out, but I would not rely on it.

Surely you only need, what half a dozen hours of video stored locally? not every video you've ever bought....

back in '96 when we were all on 56kbps dial-up internet with 256MB hard disks nobody said hard disks probably wouldn't need to go over a couple of GB because of the on coming 100,000kbps cable broadband.

and if they had said that, they would have been wrong.

I know I have my entire music collection on my 4s, which is over 8,300 songs at just under 48gb, so from that respect I can certainly understand the desire to have everything in one place.

But then if i'm streaming that off the cloud, i'd expect an experience similar to what i get from listening to it stored locally - and at the same audio quality as well.

You can do that already now with iTunes purchases on your iPhone.
Just delete an album and it remains in your list.
I've used it a few times while walking the dog, just select and press play and it sounds no different to it being stored locally.

I can appreciate that, but I think if you're in a part of the country with poor reception or even in a network blind spot, it kind of negates the idea.

Just randomly thinking though.. a 128gb SSD drive currently retails for around £80 quid, so obviously it's probably relatively cheap to produce. I wonder if the same technology could be used in mobile phones ?

Two words:

I'm not certain myself. There isn't enough ace in a phone to just to add more of the cheaper lower density storage chips and those with more space that could fit in a phone are currently too expensive to really make it viable.

It needs a demand to drag these prices down and keep development of even greater storage sizes but the cloud is going to keep reducing the need for such large amounts of storage which is going to keep demands growth pegged back.

At the very least the increase in sizes isn't going to happen as quickly as it would have in the past and if 4G roll outs go well around the world and if more firms start offering affordable unlimited data plans it could really slow the progress of local storage

Some good points. I suppose you also have to have a network that's going to be able to cope with a massively increased demand and still offer the same stable speeds - something I assume 4G can do.

If you're going to have everyone streaming everything, there's bound to be a knock on effect of reliability unless the network is able to cope.

I suppose if 4G becomes the norm then the prices could go down to make it more viable overall.

it is the same technology.

the development of nand flash and dram are closely linked too. you can switch over a factory between the two quite quickly. there are lithographic improvements at the same rate. and SSD drive is basically a controller and some flash chips soldered to a board.

basically look at the physical size of a 64GB micro sd card.

we'll more than likely see 128GB next year for sure.

Just companies are not moving so fast because of all this cloud storage these days and some mobile providers giving unlimited data.

Rolling forward 10 years when the whole country will have at a minimum 4G/5G technology and there is a big roll out of public wifi, then I personally believe we'll all use cloud storage more and more.

I appreciate that based on the situation as we are now this seems unlikely, but look how far we've already come in the last decade, so there's no reason to think we can't continue to improve download speed and coverage over the next decade.

For me, when I upgrade my phone next I will have a serious debate as to whether I actually need 32GB or can I live on 16GB. My entire music collection and purchased films live quite happily in the cloud. The only barrier is coverage and that will get better and better as time goes on.