The freshly unveiled Galaxy S24 lineup comes with a multitude of storage options, with the Galaxy S24 Plus and Galaxy S24 Ultra both offering 256GB of capacity in their base models. But a new report suggests that Apple could be looking to top Samsung, at least when it comes to the upper end of storage.
When the iPhone 16 Pro arrives this fall, it could offer as much as 2TB of on-board storage. That's according to a blog post from yeux1122, who provides that sort of pre-release information.
That would be quite a boost from what the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max currently offer. Each phone tops out at 1TB of storage, though the iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with more storage in its base unit (256GB to 128GB for the iPhone 15 Pro.)
More significantly, a 2TB iPhone 16 Pro would also double the maximum capacity of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which comes in 256GB, 512GB and 1TB configurations.
This apparent increase in the storage capacity is down to the rumored change to a higher density Quad Level Cell (QLC) NAND Flash drive over the more expensive Triple-level Cell (TLC) NAND. However, there are some potential downsides to making this change — namely the QLC having slower read and write speed as well as being slightly less durable.
The big question would be how much a 2TB iPhone 16 Pro might cost. Maximizing the storage on the iPhone 15 Pro to 1TB raises the price of your phone to $1,499 — $500 more than the base cost of the iPhone 15 Pro. You'd have to imagine that 2TB of storage would be even more expensive.
A 1TB Galaxy S24 Ultra model costs only $360 more than its 256GB base model. But Samsung just raised the price on the Ultra model by $100 over last year's version. A current Galaxy S24 preorder deal at Samsung lets you upgrade your storage without the cost of moving up one tier — that is, getting a 1TB model for the cost ofa 512GB version.
Storage may not wind up being the biggest concern of iPhone Pro shoppers, though it is important for people who shoot a lot of video and photos on their device. More significant additions to the iPhone 16 Pro could be an upgraded telephoto lens, a new A17 chipset and the addition of AI capabilities through the iOS 18 software update.
Before you start making plans to get a 2TB iPhone this fall, remember that this isn't the first time we've heard such a rumor. Similar forecasts had the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro offering a 2 TB storage option, but that didn't come to pass. We'll see if the third time winds up being the charm for this particular rumor.
