I tried to put emphasis on the personal nature of the question in the title. I’m not asking for myself or the average individual. I also mean ideal in the way where cost is still a factor. The iPhone 16 Pro has a 1TB model but it’s around $500 more expensive than the 128GB version.
I imagine answers are going to vary significantly depending on an individuals approach like relying on cloud storage, SD cards, or a Magsafe NVMe drive for example.
I found 1TB (512GB on the phone and on the SD card) was ideal for me. I could keep the things I wanted for “just in case scenarios” like the files needed for the source ports of Diablo, Half Life, and Morrowind in case I want to play a game or some ebooks if I have time to read. I never needed to uninstall applications and shuffle things. I even had plenty of breathing room.
Another question I’d be interested in hearing people’s answers to is what is the minimum storage capacity you would consider for a phone. I don’t think I would buy a device with less than 256GB of potential storage. If it has an SD card slot that opens up the potential a significantly.
Depending on the needs. I have 32gb internal storage and its more than enough for me. But if I were recording lot of high quality videos and install lot of games, then this would be easily not enough anymore. But in today’s day and age a 512gb micro sd card is cheap. There is no problem for me being limited by space.
It’s insane to me how expensive the new top phones like iPhone are and how much space they offer. Man 500 Dollar for a 1TB internal space is insanity. For 500 Dollar I could buy a Steam Deck or Switch or Playstation 5, if I was interested into gaming and still would have the same iphone 16 Pro with 128gb storage instead. Yes I know its not the same when comparing stuff like that, but this shows how insane the prices are. And Apple can keep the price this high, because they don’t give you the option to use micro sd cards and you support this buy buying the most expensive version. So they keep doing it.
The maximum storage capacity for internal storage I would consider depends on the price. I would not limit myself to 32gb if the price for 1tb was the same. I’m not a heavy phone user and would consider 32gb with my next purchase, if it was considerably cheaper. But a micro sd card slot is required for that.