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desertmac · Jul 3, 2007, 06:02 PM

I am trying to decide between 4gb and 8gb. I don't imagine using the iPhone as an iPod. I have 2k contacts, and a fairly complex calendar. Will the 4gb be enough for this? Is there any limit on web surfing imposed by the 4gb? Caches, etc.?

Any reflections about the disadvantages of the 4gb model if I am not using it as an iPod would be helpful.

Thanks for any guidance you can provide.

mduell · Jul 3, 2007, 06:12 PM

2k contacts... hundreds of kilobytes, maybe a megabyte at most.
Complex calendar... a couple megabytes, maybe tens of megabytes (assuming the calendar items don't have massive attachments).
Web surfing cache... again, megabytes or tens of megabytes.

Even if you consider resale value, I don't think the 8 will be worth $100 more than the 4 in a few years.

Mrjinglesusa · Jul 3, 2007, 06:16 PM

I would think 4GB would be plenty big enough if you are not going to load much music or video content on it. I got an 8GB and still have 6.8GB left after loading some music, a few videos and all my calendar stuff.

desertmac · Jul 3, 2007, 06:21 PM

Thanks to you both. Just what I needed to know.

John

icruise · Jul 3, 2007, 07:17 PM

If you seriously have no intention of using it for music or video, the 4GB model is more than enough. Photos can also take up a fair amount of space, but you can still get thousands into 4GB.

lavar78 · Jul 3, 2007, 07:47 PM

Have you actually used an iPhone? I have an almost-full 80-GB iPod, so I didn't imagine using the iPhone as an iPod. However, once I started trying it out, that idea seemed more and more plausible. I wouldn't advise dismissing the iPod/video features without trying it out first.

desertmac · Jul 4, 2007, 06:24 AM

I am trying it out now. Have gotten the 4gb and am testing the phone covereage and other features. If it turns out that I really love the iPod features, I'll return it and exchange for the 8gb model before the 14 day period is up, and chalk up the 10% restocking fee to R&D.

But I have the 80 gb video as well, and my music alone takes up almost 50 gb, so it's not likely that I would use it for music. The question might be videos on long plane trips.

bjk · Jul 5, 2007, 12:19 AM

I have the 4gb. I have contemplated exchanging it for an 8gb as well, but then I'm not sure I really need to bother. In terms of purely music, 4gb is a non-issue. I only have like 20 songs at best on my iPod right now. I don't have any interest in videos at all, so that's a non-issue. I will probably add a few pictures, but again not whirls, especially as I have tons loaded on one of my other pda devices.
My only question mark about the 4gb is what factor this will be with regard to the eventual programs that will come available. I can see myself wanting to add some things there. Then again, I have both Palm and Windows PDA phones that are loaded with a royal ton of programs, I mean, I have A LOT of programs on these and I have never run out of internal memory nor used up even a 1gb storage card. I have pictures stored too, tons of games, etc on the card as well. So with my other devices, I clearly am not using anywhere near 4GB at all between both internal & storage card memory. Hence, off the bat, this would make me figure that I should be fine with the 4GB, assuming it is an analogous enough comparison. But I don't know how much memory any iPhone program add-ons will be, since this is a different OS.
Any ideas, thoughts on this?

icruise · Jul 5, 2007, 12:45 AM

There's no way any add-on programs are going to come anywhere close to using up that much space. The only thing the extra space is good for is music, videos, and pictures, basically. For basic functionality, either model has much more memory than you would ever need.

seaofcrap · Jul 5, 2007, 03:02 AM

I have the 4gb and it's fine for my needs. I have a little more than 4gb of music, yet a lot of videos, podcasts, and such. If I had the 8gb that would be enough to fit ALL of my music and more, but I don't think it's worth the extra 100$. Even though the iPod function on the iPhone is advanced, I still feel squirmish about using the iPhone as my primary music player. Just because I'm scared of wasting battery life, etc. No matter what, I carry my iPod where ever I go anyway.

bjk · Jul 5, 2007, 09:20 AM

Thanks for the feedback so far!!!
I just loaded some songs on to my iPhone just to have some of the full experience of the device's capabilities. It's neat to see the graphics with it, and it's a nice music player. But I do also have an iPod already which I use only every so often as it is and like you seaofcrap, I'd be skittish about using up battery too. I use my phone regularly throughout the day, but a few minutes here, a few minutes there, not like an hour straight or anything.
And icruise-yeah, that was kind of what my feeling is-the eventual programs still won't likely use up all the space. I can see why some people want the 8gb model who really have it loaded up with music and videos etc, but that's not me. I tend to worry, and yet I managed internal memory space just fine on my earier PDAs that had less, and with 1gb cards on my current ones still have anywhere from 30-50% free at any given time despite a load of programs on it.

icruise · Jul 5, 2007, 09:24 AM

I'm not sure battery life is a real concern, since it can get 24 hours of battery life playing music (some testers actually found it got several hours more). If you charge it up at night, you'll be fine.

bjk · Jul 6, 2007, 11:59 PM

hi icruise:
I noticed on another thread that you ended up returning your 4gb for the 8. What ended up being your final determining factor? I had been contemplating this as well, but decided not to, as I sized up my memory usage history with other devices. Enjoy! I'm glad your wife was able to get that for you.
I have to laugh because I loaded up a little bit of songs on my iPhone, just about the amount I would bother with at any given time, and it doesn't even put a dent in it. (I'm more of a radio music person-I love my XM in the car!!)

icruise · Jul 7, 2007, 12:26 AM

I have converted a lot of TV shows and movies for watching on the iPod and I enjoy doing that, so I felt restricted by the 4GB. That was the main reason. I wanted to be able to have a fair number of videos on there, along with a reasonable number of albums and pictures. Personally, I'm glad I decided to switch because the extra space has been nice. Of course I probably appreciate it more now having used the 4GB for a week. But as I said earlier, for normal use of the phone and its programs, 4GB is plenty.

quesera · Jul 7, 2007, 08:37 PM

So how much space does an average half-hour tv show, hour long show or two hour movie take up?

quesera · Jul 7, 2007, 08:40 PM

Okay, I just looked up info on some of my itunes video purchases. About 250 mg per 20 minutes sound about right?

icruise · Jul 7, 2007, 08:51 PM

The only video I buy from the iTunes store is the Daily Show, but that seems to be about what you mentioned. The video that I have converted myself with handbrake is MUCH smaller in size. It's around 55-60MB for a half hour show (so 23 minutes or so without commercials) and 250-300MB for the average movie. When played on the original video iPod, the difference in video quality is negligible -- the screen is just too small to be able to see much of a difference. The iPhone's bigger screen means that you can see a difference between mine and the iTS files, but I think being able to fit around 4x as much video on the device is worth the minor difference in quality. And besides, I don't feel like redoing it all.