How much storage does your phone really need in 2026? Probably less than you think

When most people buy a new phone, they focus on things like the camera, the screen, or the latest AI features. Over the past several years though, an arms race of sorts has risen, and phones are getting massive amounts of storage – all the way up to 1TB.

A huge amount of storage sounds nice, and many people pick flagship phones because of it, but do you really need all that? Probably not.

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Aside from apps, videos are probably the single biggest storage hog. And thanks to the ease of cloud storage services, it's never been easier to free up this space on your phone. Unless you're downloading a lot of intensive apps and keeping videos locally instead of the cloud, you probably need less storage than you think.

This is the absolute minimum for storage in 2026. Most manufacturers haven't made a phone with just 64GB in several years, and there are only a few very budget models even available (like the Motorola Moto G Play and the BLU View 5). At this level, you have room for only a handful of apps.

Who needs 64GB of storage on their phone? People who are only using their phone as a simple communication device to call and text and don't install many apps or take pictures and video.

Most modern phones start with 128GB of storage as a baseline. While it might seem small, it's enough for many (maybe even most) people. It's enough for around 100 casual apps or more, several thousand photos, and some videos. You might run into storage issues after a year or two, but you can probably manage by deleting old things.

I have 128GB on my Pixel 9 Pro XL , and while I'm nearly full (113GB used), that includes over 300 apps (many of which I don't use) and 12GB of photos and videos that are in the cloud as well, I just haven't deleted them.

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Who needs 128GB of storage on their phone? People who download casual apps, take mostly photos, stream content instead of downloading, aren't afraid to use cloud storage, don't mind deleting old things, or upgrade their device often.

This is the sweet spot for most phone releases today. 256GB lets you shoot plenty of videos and photos, download hundreds of apps (including some graphics-heavy games), update your phone on the regular, and rarely worry about storage. You can probably go a while without purging apps or files. The majority of people don't need more than this.