The iPhone 6S Really Starts at $299 ..
Here’s a little lie Apple told you yesterday: The iPhone 6S starts at $199 and the iPhone 6S Plus at $299. OK, it’s technically true. But those prices are for 16GB models, and there’s a very strong case against ever buying those.
The apps (especially games) are getting bigger and more storage-hungry, and if you’re getting an iPhone on a two-year contract (an eternity in smartphone terms; remember, the original iPhone came out a mere eight years ago) you don’t want to be stuck with a phone with only 16GB of storage.
I own a 16GB iPhone 6 Plus, and I’ve coped with the constant “not enough storage” messages more or less successfully. I don’t use that many apps, and I only have a dozen or so of albums on it — I would like more, but I don’t really need it. It’s doable, but…
Let’s face it: 16GB is low for a flagship smartphone that was launched in 2014. And despite the rumors, we at Mashable just could not believe Apple would pull the same stunt in 2015.
Well, Apple did, and it paints a picture of greed. Using a 32GB flash storage chip instead of a 16GB one would cost Apple a few dollars — not negligible when you sell many millions of iPhones, but still manageable with Apple’s healthy profit margins.
With this strategy, Apple is strongly encouraging users to buy the 64GB or the 128GB iPhone variant. No one’s being forced to do anything, you know, but unless you want your iPhone experience to be sort of painful, here are options B and C. Apple can do this cause users love the iPhone — they love it so much that they’re willing to dish out the extra cash, or even live a life in Lowstorageville. But today — and remember, this new iPhone will be the company’s flagship for most of 2016 — it just feels sleazy.
The argument has been made that iOS 9, which is coming in September, will be much better at optimizing the iDevices’ memory. While that may be true, Apple can’t really do much about the size of third-party apps. Apple doubled the size limit of iOS apps from 2GB to 4GB in February, and guess what — that beautiful iPhone game that you like is either already near that limit or will get there in the next few iterations.
There’s a subset of users who might be able to enjoy a 16GB iPhone 6S or 6S Plus — the folks that don’t play games or use many apps at all, but simply want the latest and greatest device from Apple, either for its speed, novelty or the bling factor. But some of that bling factor might wear off when their friends laugh at them, whipping out their mid-range Android from 2014 with 32GB of storage, plus another 64GB on a memory card.
I will not be buying the 16GB iPhone 6S, and though it’s likely a very capable phone (we’ll see about that in Mashable‘s review, coming soon), I don’t recommend it to anyone. The storage size is ridiculous, it’s damn near insulting, and it’s simply too limiting for a high-end smartphone.
The next available variant, with 64GB of storage memory, starts at $299 and $399 for the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, respectively. If you want a new iPhone, you should probably look at those. As for the 16GB iPhone, let’s just pretend we didn’t see it.
