Limited storage on phone hinders fewer Indian users in 2018

With better quality comes bigger file sizes and according to research done by SanDisk, storage is an issue for smartphone users in India. Their report claims that 29 percent of consumers run out of space once a week and it happens to 62 percent at least every three months.

This number is actually down from 2016 when 83 percent of smartphone users complained that they had to delete apps to free up storage on their phone. Even users that ran out of memory every week was as high as 60 percent. 

This shows that smartphone companies are keeping up with the trend of bigger file sizes with phones like the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S sporting 256GB ROM and mid-range phones shifting towards 64GB variants. 

According to the report by SanDisk in 2016, 65 percent of users were hindered by the fact that the storage capacity of their phone's was 16GB or less. In today's day and age, there's hardly a phone that comes with less than 16GB ROM. In addition to which, a lot of phones also give users the option to expand the device's memory if they should choose to do so.

The current report states that this predicament leads to 46 percent of people having to delete files or data off of their primary devices in order to make space, while 77 percent of users have to do this at least once a month.

In 2016, the percentage of users having to delete data to make space on their devices was as high as 83 percent. At 46 percent in 2018, there's a 37 percent drop in the number of people having to clear their phones in the span of two years.

In addition to running out of space, security is another paramount concern with users according to the 2018 SanDisk report. 67 percent of the people that participated said that they were worried about product malfunction causing loss of files and data.

A correlation can be drawn between security corners and the fact that 64 percent of users said that, they had been through an experience where they’d lost an important photo or video from their device because their files weren’t backed.

Despite this, less than 46 percent of Indian smartphone users backup their files manually whereas 6 percent don’t indulge in any kind of backup at all, automatic or otherwise.

The independent survey done by SanDisk pan-India also shows that an average person takes around 31 photos and 14 video recordings a week on their smartphone. With the quality of images and videos becoming better, the files sizes have also increased in proportion but storage space has not, which is why devices soon fill up.

All-in-all

The numbers may still seem like they're high, but original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have done a decent for providing customers will higher storage capacities to accommodate the larger file and content size these days.

Consumers have also realized that there are many storage options available to them with respect to cloud storage and automatic data syncs. 6 percent is a very low number of users not using any back up at all indicating that most people do take care of their data and files. 

Even Apple now has the option of storage up to 256GB with their iPhone X, albeit, at a very premium price tag.

• Scared to lose your data? These are the best 'free' back up software of 2018, so that you can protect your most important files.
• Or follow this 'how-to' on protecting your files using Google Backup and Sync.
• iPhone users should peruse through how to backup their iPhone on to an external drive.