I recently heard a rumor that the iPhone 16 Pro might discontinue the 128GB model and come standard with 256GB of storage; I often feel that 128GB is not very enough anymore, and I have reached the point where I need to offload some files to the cloud to free up space on my phone to the point where I need to offload some files to the cloud to free up space on my phone.

This is not the first time I have had to deal with this issue. This is the second time I have had to free up space on my current Google Pixel 6 Pro, and it has happened several times on the phones I used before that. Going back a few more years, though, it was no longer an issue because phones still had microSD cards and seemingly unlimited capacity.

It is painfully obvious that 128 GB of storage is rapidly becoming obsolete. At least, this is true for flagship models and premium phones in the higher price ranges, for the same reason that you don't launch models with 32GB or 64GB of storage at the lowest prices: modern cell phone usage has reached the point where 128GB of space is just not very enough.

The biggest problem for me has always been photos and videos. As of this writing, the Google Photos app takes up 41.36 GB of space on my phone, and miscellaneous photos and videos take up another 13.3 GB, for a total of 54.66 GB.

The Pixel 6 Pro has only 112GB of available storage thanks to 16GB being reserved for the Android system, which means that photos and videos take up more than half of my phone's storage capacity. This does not include the numerous photos that I have already offloaded to Google Photos because I ran out of space on my phone last year.

Do I need all the files, including the lazy memes? Do I need to take so many photos of my dog to fill up all those precious megabytes? Probably not, but it is not the meaningless little files that take up the most space. It's the files of photos and videos you took yourself that are taking up so much space, and thanks to 4K resolution, higher frame rates, HDR, etc., there are far more of them than ever before.

Needless to say, apps can also eat up storage. In particular, it can be a hassle to re-download them every time they might be useful, though not necessarily necessary on a regular basis. Media apps allow you to download content to your phone so that you can watch it even when you are not connected to the Internet. There are plenty of them, especially if you are preparing to travel somewhere.

Here's where I miss the usefulness of the microSD card: it's a place where I can offload extra files while accessing them whenever I want. More importantly, you only have to pay once.

There are many ways to ensure that you always have free space on your phone. The main one is to buy a phone with extra storage, and storage options usually cost $100 more than the previous one. There are also the best cloud storage services. They are more or less everywhere these days, as all major platform holders maintain their own cloud storage platforms.

The problem with these options is that people always have to keep paying. Whether it's to maintain a cloud subscription with a sufficient amount of storage, or because they have to keep buying expensive storage options every time they upgrade their phones; in the days of microSD cards, they didn't have to.

Buy one card with enough storage capacity and you can carry it around for years. As of this writing, SanDisk's Extreme Pro microSDXC card with 1TB of storage is priced at $118. This is considerably cheaper than buying a cell phone with 1TB of storage, and in the unlikely event that you ever need to replace your cell phone, you can simply take the card out and plug it into the next model.

The same applies if you run out of space or need a new card; just swap the card in whenever you want. That is, of course, if there is a way to transfer files between the two cards. Needless to say, there are countless microSD card manufacturers competing for your money.

Indeed, I know why microSD cards were discontinued. Aside from the obvious fact that cell phone companies make more money selling storage than they do siphoning off profits to companies like SanDisk and Samsung, microSD cards have some pretty major drawbacks.

The first is that the speed of a microSD card is inferior to that of a phone's internal storage. UFS 4.0 storage, which has been around for several generations, has a read speed of 4,300 MBps and a write speed of 4,000 MBps, twice as fast as UFS 3.1, which is still used on 128GB storage cards.

The fastest microSD card I have sold is the SanDisk Extreme Pro, with a read speed of 200 MBps and write speed of 140 MBps. This is 182% slower, meaning that microSD cards can only be used for long-term storage of individual files. There is no way to play games from a microSD card without performance degradation.

Needless to say, it is no great surprise that microSD expansion is currently limited to budget and a handful of mid-range models, not ultra-high-end flagships.

Similarly, transferring files from one card to another is not a simple process. Since the card readers for cell phones are of rather poor quality, we found it easier (and faster) to use a laptop computer as an intermediary. In any case, the process is very cumbersome, time consuming, and always requires a physical connection. This is something many people may not have the means to do.

At least in the cloud, a cloud server can act as the intermediary, wirelessly backing up and downloading files from one device to another. Moreover, it is often done in the background, leaving you free to do other things. Still, I can't help but miss the days when cloud servers were an option, especially one that didn't require multiple ongoing payments to maintain.

Needless to say, I won't be buying a 128GB phone anytime soon. Then again, there will come a day when 256GB will suddenly not be enough capacity - although I hope this is not for a very long time. But my issues with 128GB phones have made me miss the days of microSD cards. But I didn't like it when the transition was happening, and I still don't like the idea of having to re-buy storage every time I get a new phone. But most of all, I like being able to dump all my large files somewhere out of the way and not have to worry about choosing between strict file management or paying to store extra stuff in the cloud.