If you're currently on the fence about whether you should plunk down for a cheaper 16GB iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, we'll help you make up your mind:
Don't. Never, ever, buy a 16GB smartphone—especially not an iPhone, and especially not an iPhone that will soon have a feature that doubles the amount of space pictures take up on the device.
We're speaking, of course, about Apple's recently announced "Live Photos" features for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. (It's unclear whether the feature will ever make it to lesser devices like the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, but they should be viewable on any device running the most modern version of iOS or OS X.)
How Live Photos works is pretty simple. Whenever you take a photo with the feature enabled (we're assuming you can disable it), your iOS device will also capture a three-second video surrounding the time when said photo is taken. That's it.
"A still photo captures an instant frozen in time. With Live Photos, you can turn those instants into unforgettable living memories. At the heart of a Live Photo is a beautiful 12‑megapixel photo. But together with that photo are the moments just before and after it was taken, captured with movement and sound," reads Apple's description.
According to TechCrunch, the three-second video—supplemental data accompanying the photo itself—should take up the size of roughly one 12-megapixel image. Mash that together with the photo itself, another 12-megapixel image, and you get double the data of a typical photo whenever you shoot a Live Photo.
Given that a typical 16GB iPhone likely has around 12GB of usable space or so (give or take), you're already limited in the number of total photos you can stash on your device. And all those videos, apps, downloaded movies, iBooks, and other content will eat into your photo storage capacity, too.
Now that this already-meager total will be halved if you want to try out Apple's new feature, we just don't see a very compelling reason to even consider a 16GB iPhone anymore. No, dumping photos to the cloud isn't a reasonable alternative (your poor data plan and/or wallet, based on how much storage you'll be purchasing from Apple or your favorite third-party cloud service).
As you might expect, some are already concerned about the concept of Live Photos themselves—the notion that your iPhone could be constantly recording what it sees just in case you start tapping the camera button. That's true, Apple said in statement to TechCrunch, but it's not that big of a deal.
"Although the camera is 'recording' while you're in Live Photo mode, the device will not save the 1.5 seconds before until you press the camera button. The pre-captured images are not saved to the user's device nor are they sent off the device," reads Apple's statement.
Source: pcmag.com
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