Apple Adjusts iOS Device Storage Tiers and Prices
by Brandon Chester on September 7, 2016 8:25 PM EST
Today Apple made a number of announcements, including the year's major update to the iPhone in the form of the iPhone 7, and the second generation Apple Watch, known as the Apple Watch Series 2. One of the smaller announcements of the day was a shake-up of the prices and storage tiers on iOS devices. To a large extent this addresses one of the major criticisms of Apple's devices, which is that they've kept the base model at 16GB of internal storage for much longer than competing devices. I've compiled the changes that Apple has made to storage capacities and pricing across the iPhone and iPads lines in the charts below:
| Apple iPhone Line | |||
| Apple iPhone SE | Apple iPhone 6s | Apple iPhone 6s Plus | |
| Old Price | $399/499 16/64GB |
$649/749/849 16/64/128GB |
$749/849/949 16/64/128GB |
| New Price | $399/449 16/64GB |
$549/649 32/128GB |
$649/749 32/128GB |
| Apple iPad Line | |||||
| Apple iPad Mini 2 | Apple iPad Mini 4 | Apple iPad Air 2 | Apple iPad Pro 9.7 | Apple iPad Pro 12.9 | |
| Old Price | $269 16GB |
$399/499/599 16/64/128GB |
$399/499 16/64GB | $599/749/899 32/128/256GB |
$799/949/1099 32/128/256GB |
| New Price | $269 32GB |
$399/499 32/128GB |
$399/499 32/128GB |
$599/699/799 32/128/256GB |
$799/899/999 32/128/256GB |
There are two parts to the changes made today. The first is that Apple has eliminated the 16GB storage tier on every device except for the iPhone SE. It would have been really great to see 16GB removed from the whole lineup, but I suspect that the iPhone SE's margins are already lower than Apple would like. However, to keep the upgrade pricing in line with the other devices, the 64GB iPhone SE now only has a $50 premium over the 16GB model. On every other device, the 16GB storage tier has become 32GB, and 64GB has become 128GB, with prices being kept at the same point.
The second change pertains to the iPad Pro devices, where the storage already started at 32GB and had upgrade tiers of 128GB and 256GB which each required an additional $150 on top of the starting price. With these Apple has maintained the same base price and storage tiers, but the upgrade price has dropped to $100 to bring it in line with the rest of Apple's iOS devices.
While none of these changes are anything groundbreaking, it does address a longstanding problem with the iPhone and iPad. Even with cloud storage for music and other media, with new features like Live Photos and 4K video recording, the storage pressure on iOS devices has become much greater while storage capacities remained constant. Dropping prices on iPad storage upgrades also makes the larger capacity models more accessible, and bumping up capacities on the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 4 make them more useful as media devices.
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MacBAir - Wednesday, September 7, 2016 - link
Damn. Apple really hit their competitors hard. They now sell the 5 fastest phones on the Market, and are probably ahead on every single hardware component against any single OEM.Not to mention that iOS keeps getting stronger, with a much stronger ecosystem where users actually experience newer features and great new exclusive or iOS first apps.
No explosions needed. That A10.
amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, September 7, 2016 - link
best iOS 10 feature, emoji. ("We've asked for flying cars and we got twitter!")Welcome to the world where mobiles phones are becoming boring just like laptops are now.
Since most of the low hanging fruits are done, it'll take new/true innovation to take us to the next level.
MacBAir - Thursday, September 8, 2016 - link
Are you sure that the emergency feature isn't awesome? Or all the new APIs? Or having the best browser engine on the market?Michael Bay - Thursday, September 8, 2016 - link
>best browser engine on the marketAhahahahaha.
>muh apis for the apis god
Jesus, you`re serious!
StevoLincolnite - Friday, September 9, 2016 - link
I want whatever he/she/it is smoking.Probably paid by Apple because no one who is mentally stable is that daft.
fanofanand - Friday, September 9, 2016 - link
They are smoking Tim Cook's (insert expletive). When you see someone with a name like MacBAir they are obviously a paid shill and should be ignored. When a "consumer" pretends to get ridiculously excited over an API, and claims they have the best browser (demonstrably false) then you can dismiss their ramblings.dsumanik - Saturday, September 10, 2016 - link
Lol @ anandtech trying to help apple sell old iPhones.I mean, this is literally, completely an outright sales pitch.
It's funny you can always see a correlation when Apple stock price is falling and all of sudden these types of articles start hitting the web all over the place, panic mode @ Apple and their stock holders.
if you haven't already... Sell sell sell!!!
CloudWiz - Wednesday, September 7, 2016 - link
I really did not expect them to upgrade their entire lineup, only the 7. But was pleasantly surprised when I saw 32GB for the 6s as well.Yep, it's funny how the A9 blows away all competition in performance and the A10 is supposed to be almost 50% faster...good luck Snapdragon 830 and Exynos whatever-comes-after-8890.
jabber - Thursday, September 8, 2016 - link
And yet when I use a iPhone or top/mid end Android...they both perform the same to my eyes. Never take much stock in canned optimised benchmarks.ingwe - Thursday, September 8, 2016 - link
I am with you on this. I own an iPhone SE but don't see it as significantly different from a bunch of Android phones performance wise. I am happy to see Apple pushing hardware to be faster but given that we are entering (or perhaps have already entered) the era of "good enough" on smartphones, faster isn't really a game changer to me.