It’s been more than half a year since the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus went on the market, and presumably most users’ phones are now stuffed with various things. If your iPhone has a minimum capacity of 16GB, you probably don’t have much storage left. But don’t worry, here are 6 ways to get more space on your iPhone.
1. Wireless multimedia streamer
Wireless multimedia streamers can be used as your iPhone’s wireless hard drive, and these devices are very portable and work on only the battery. Although it doesn’t have storage capacity on its own, you can insert your SD or microSD card into it, or use it to connect a portable hard drive or USB flash drive. On the same Wi-Fi network, you can use your iPhone to connect to it and access the data on your storage media. In addition, one of the great advantages of these devices is the ability to connect multiple devices at the same time, which also makes file sharing easier and easier.
There are many excellent wireless multimedia streamers on the market, such as SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive (US$80, about 497 yuan), Verbatim Media Share (US$37, about 230 yuan) and Kingston MobileLite Wireless G2 (US$30, about 186 yuan).
2. Wireless hard disk
If you want to connect directly to physical storage media, but don’t want to be tied to data cables, then wireless hard drives or USB sticks are ideal. For larger storage needs, wireless drives are the most economical choice.
Like multimedia streamers, many wireless hard drives support connecting multiple devices at the same time, the exact number varies depending on the model, generally between 5-10.
Wireless hard drives vary in price and capacity, and the more well-known models on the market include Western Digital MyPassport wireless hard drives (2TB, 199 US dollars, about 1235 yuan), LaCie Fuel (2TB, 220 US dollars, about 1366 yuan), Seagate Wireless Mobile Storage (500GB, 99 US dollars, about 615 yuan), Seagate Wireless Plus ( 2TB, 190 US dollars, about 1180 yuan).
If you want faster read and write speeds and higher stability, wireless SSDs are a good choice, such as the 128GB Toshiba Canvio AreoMobile Wireless ($150, about 931 yuan).
In addition to wireless hard disks, you can also choose to use wireless USB flash drives, such as SanDisk Wireless Connect Flash Drive (32GB, $40, about 248 yuan). Just like a regular USB flash drive, you can insert a wireless USB flash drive into your computer to access the files stored in it. If you want to connect a wireless device, just connect your iPhone/iPad to the Wi-Fi Direct network of the USB stick.
3. Lightning interface U disk
At present, many U disks have been equipped with USB and Lightning dual interfaces. This way, you can not only connect it to a PC via USB, but also connect it to an iPhone/iPad using the Lightning interface. Among the more outstanding products in this category include SanDisk iXpand (16GB, $68, about 422 yuan), Leef iBridge (16GB, $59, about 366 yuan) and Sanho Hyperdrive iStick (8GB, $79, about 490 yuan).
If you want to connect your SD/microSD card to an iPhone or iPad in this way, there are similar products on the market that can meet your requirements, such as the Aizbo i-Flash Drive (28 US dollars, about 174 yuan). The device doesn’t have built-in storage, but it’s cheaper, and users can insert an SD card into it and use their iPhone to retrieve data from it.
4. Protective cover
Mophie, a well-known accessory manufacturer, has a distinctive iPhone case called Space Pack. This case adds an SSD to the Mophie Juice Pack, which not only charges the iPhone, but also provides additional storage.
Space Pack connects to the iPhone through the Lightning interface, and users can use the companion app to read and write data. It is divided into two storage capacities, 32GB and 128GB, and the price is 149/299 US dollars (about 925/1856 yuan) respectively. Considering that the price of Juice Pack itself is already $100 (about 621 yuan), the cost of users to obtain these additional storage spaces is actually not high.
5. Cloud services
Cloud services are also one of the common ways to expand iPhone storage. Although this method will consume you additional data, it does not require any external hardware to be connected, so it is much more convenient.
There are many types of cloud services on the market, the most well-known of which include Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and of course, Apple’s own iCloud. These services all provide a certain amount of free storage space to meet the needs of users to store small files such as photos and documents. If you don’t have enough free space, you can also pay for more storage.
It should be noted that when processing large files, cloud services may not perform as well as physical storage media due to network bandwidth limitations.
6、NAS
If you’re not comfortable handing over your data to a third party, you can also try setting up your own private cloud. The process of setting up a private cloud is now very simple, users only need to buy the relevant hardware (NAS) and hard disk, and then connect it to your router.
When on the same Wi-Fi network, NAS can provide fairly decent data read and write speeds. But if you plan to do remote access, the network bandwidth requirements will be high.
You can add multiple hard drives to your NAS to get a lot of storage. While the initial investment may be high, many people may find a one-time investment more cost-effective than paying for a monthly subscription.
There are many NAS devices available on the market, such as Western Digital MyCloud (2TB, US$150, about 931 yuan) and Seagate Personal Cloud (3TB, US$170, about 1055 yuan). If you don’t mind changing your router, you can also buy Apple’s Time Capsule (2TB, $299, about 1856 yuan).