Apple may give the iPhone 14 a whopping 2TB of storage, double the maximum 1TB that the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max can carry.
The rumor comes from Chinese website MyDrivers, which adds that Apple will switch to QLC flash storage to make this change possible. We are skeptical of this information, given that Apple has been stingy with storage in the past and the new iPad mini 6 only comes with 64GB of storage in its base specs.
However, the rumor that the iPhone 13 will have 1TB of storage was true, at least for the Pro model. So perhaps there is a nugget of truth here.
DigiTimes agrees with the rumor that Apple is considering switching to a "cost-effective QLC NAND flash solution," but has yet to repeat the 2TB claim.
MyDrivers offers no explanation as to why Apple would increase capacity so dramatically, other than the fact that QLC flash storage is cheaper than what it currently uses. Still, Apple could justify the move by supporting ProRes video files on the Pro models.
Likewise, 2TB seems unreasonable just one year after the adoption of 1TB.
Apple is a cautious company when it comes to cell phone iterations, and it would be highly unlikely to rush ahead with a 2TB model when the 1TB iPhone 13 Pro Max has only been available for 8 days. 3 from iPhone Xs to iPhone 12 Considering that for the past two years, Apple's devices have been best at 512GB, just over a week of sales data is not enough to justify doubling the storage.
It is also worth taking a look at the competition. Samsung introduced a 1TB model in the Galaxy S10 Plus and Galaxy Note 10 Plus, but went back to 512GB in the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy 21. Reading between the lines, one has to assume that this was simply because they didn't sell well. As of this writing, only a handful of Android phones have 1TB of internal storage, and none have hit the 2TB mark that Apple is reportedly targeting for 2022.
Of course, there is an important difference here: while Android phones often support microSD storage expansion, iPhones have so far not Android phones often support microSD storage expansion, iPhones have not supported to date. Similarly, while internal storage is definitely on the way to increasingly more storage, it would be very surprising if the iPhone 14 is the first device to achieve 2 TB, possibly in 2023, and if the iPhone 14 is the first device to achieve 2 TB, it will be the first device to achieve 2 TB.
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