Smartphone owners have had a lot of treats over the last 15 to 20 years. Their devices have grown in capacity remarkably since the first iPhone launched in late 2000, and even that was a revolution compared to what came before it. However, many users are now wondering whether the technology is really going to improve much more. Already batteries seem to be reaching their limit, and not many companies are talking about new technology on the horizon. The same is true for storage. While absolute numbers for storage are going up all the time, the quality of media means that phones need more on-board SSD space than ever before. So, what's going on here?
Base storage has actually risen significantly over recent years. In 2025, most mid-range and flagship smartphones will have between 128GB and 250GB as standard. Many flagship models produced by leading companies like Apple and Samsung now offer more than 256GB of native storage. Furthermore, going into 2026 around 70% of leading phones in each category will have more than 256GB of storage. This means that there may be some options that offer more than 1TB of internal storage which is something that is only available currently on the ASUS ROG phone and some Chinese models like Oppo Find.
Storage is, of course, expandable with Micro SD right now as well. For example, some Samsung models allow micro SD cards of up to 1TB which pushes theoretical storage limits up to 2TB, which is roughly the same as some desktop computers.
However, many users know that the average smartphone is not the same as the leading smartphones in the category. Most of these only have around 150GB of memory on board which probably isn't enough for most for high resolution games and videos.
How storage is evolving
“Storage has remained roughly the same on digital devices like smartphones for a long time now. Most companies we observe still use SSDs, and the technology has remained roughly the same over recent years,” according to JetCalculator, a platform offering a KB to MB tool and several others. “However, that state of affairs could be set to change – and rather soon.”
The platform is right. Technology involved in computer storage is changing significantly. Smartphones are now using more universal flash storage which is based on 3D NAND flash technology. These designs stack memory cells vertically, allowing manufacturers to put more memory in a single area on a PCB. Revisions to this, improving the on-chip speed, for example, UFS 4.0 and UFS 4.1 are doubling the speeds of read and write up to 4200 megabits per second, which is significantly faster than the older technology.
Then there are ongoing density enhancements. NAND layering is now allowing up to 200 layers for higher capacities for the same chip size. These mean that the new memory technologies can fit on slimmer phones. At present, the market is worth about $50 billion for these technologies, but it's likely to grow to over $100 billion by 2033 because of the desire for more onboard native storage.
“In the old days, people were worried about megabytes and gigabytes, but in the future, that is less likely to be a problem,” according to JetCalculator. “The reason for this is that NAND's technology will likely allow chip sizes that are so large that even the latest media (which maxes out display capabilities on flagship phones) won't be able to consume all of the memory that is available on these new devices.”
Industry analysts are today predicting what the improvements in smartphone storage technology might look like over the next five to ten years. The good news is that these improvements will be significant, but perhaps not as great as they've been over the last 10 years. For example, by the mid-2030s, perhaps 2TB will become the standard for internal memory on flagship phones. Many devices will have AI and 8K video capabilities, which will make this new storage standard essential.
However, NAND scaling will soon hit physical and quantum limits. Heat and reliability barriers will continue to play manufacturing and sales shrink even if NAND layers are laid on top of each other. In late 2025, there's also a chip storage shortage that's raising prices and slowing the democratization of NAND memory. This means that cheaper phones are unlikely to see improvements in the short-term. In the long term, the situation may improve itself, but it requires more globalization. If that's no longer present because of a breakdown of geopolitics between major countries, then an even bigger shift to the cloud is more likely.
Speaking of which, many manufacturers are now looking at how they can integrate their phones more with the cloud, like Google One and Apple's iCloud. These are cheaper ways to store photos and videos, and also presumably safer because they are in data centers and not on people's devices locally. With AI optimization, it becomes much easier for devices to also offload the data that they collect through daily use. Again, this reduces the need for massive local storage for a lot of people.
Ultimately, what this means is that future consumers may not need to worry about the absolute storage levels on their devices. It may be possible for them to simply outsource all of this storage to the cloud. The only people who will want to store locally will be those who are more concerned about privacy and don't want a tech firm controlling their data.
To conclude, it's not the case that phone storage is stagnating even though progress seems slow. Capacities are still rising gradually every year on average, especially in flagship devices. However, in the future, improvements are less likely to come from additional storage on chips themselves. Instead, manufacturers are much more likely to focus on integration with the cloud and make memory access faster. Raw capacity jumps are fun, but whether consumers really demand them in 2025 is a debatable topic. It would be nice to have infinite storage, but the costs may prove prohibitive.
