Andy Walker / Android Authority
I wholeheartedly believe that 128GB of base storage on modern Android flagships should be a thing of the past. It’s just too little at this point when system files and updates already block a sizeable chunk of it, and the remaining is taken up by the ever-ballooning app sizes — God knows what kind of data they are storing, because Excel has no business running into hundreds of MBs (or sometimes GBs). And did you see what a clown the newly launched Pixel 10 series looked like a clown when the iPhone 17 launched with a minimum of 256GB storage across the board?
While Google does offer 256GB as base storage in a handful of markets, in most countries, including the US, the Pixel 10 still starts with 128GB of storage. And if you’re already stuck with the latter or cannot stretch the budget for a higher capacity, Google has a lifesaver built right into your Pixel phone.
Would you rather trust your phone’s storage or cloud backups? 46 votes Keep it all local 24 % Cloud all the way 33 % Hybrid (best of both) 41 % Portable HDDs is my way! 2 %
Blame those three cameras on the back
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
As the number of camera lenses peeping from our phone’s back has gone up, so has the number of photos and videos we take — add to that 8K video size and all the additional color and depth data that the phone stores for editing in post. While apps sure take up a lot of space, thanks to the amount of data they generate and store on disk, media remains among the biggest contributors for most people.
Even if 128GB looks fine right now, if you plan on using your phone for another four years, that storage will fill up sooner than you anticipated. That’s when you will have to desperately find ways to move your media to a portable SSD or rent more cloud space in Google One to back it all up in full quality. A simple yet smart solution to this very real problem has been around on iPhones.
iPhone’s storage optimization
Joe Maring / Android Authority
Folks on the other side of the fence have a neat little tool to manage the available space on their phones. iPhone users who back up their media to iCloud Photos get an additional option that saves space on the phone. iCloud’s settings on the iPhone have an option called Optimize iPhone Storage that does the trick.
What it basically does is that when your iPhone is running low on storage, it will automatically stop storing full-res copies locally. While iCloud has high-res versions backed up, the offline ones are replaced with storage-saver copies or sometimes just thumbnails to keep as much storage as possible free for other purposes. And those photos can be downloaded instantly from the cloud when needed anyway, so it’s a win-win.
Pixels have had it without even knowing
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
In contrast to iPhone’s storage optimization feature, Google Photos lets you delete the media from your phone that has already been backed up — there is no nuance to it, and you have to do it manually ever so often. Meh, we need something better!
Say hello to Smart storage. Don’t beat yourself up for not knowing about it, because there’s a good chance Google too has forgotten about it. One reason you may not have heard of it is because it doesn’t live in Google Photos or Google One apps — but in the Files by Google app.
If you forgive Google for the feature’s placement, it’s actually quite a handy tool, much more thoughtful and nuanced than what even iPhones have. Once turned on, the feature will automatically delete your media from the phone in two cases: if the photos are still stored offline for over 60 days after being backed up, or if the phone’s storage is less than 25%.
Smart storage is actually quite a handy tool, much more thoughtful and nuanced than what even iPhones have.
That’s ample time to keep full-quality images offline for sharing them with your family or friends or referring to them in case they are receipts. And that storage limit also seems reasonable, keeping your Pixel from feeling slow when the storage is bottlenecked.
And this is how you can enable it. In the Files by Google app on your Pixel, tap the hamburger menu on the left and go to Settings. Once in, you will find the Smart storage option under the Clean head — tap on the toggle against it. On the pop-up window, tap OK, and you’re done.
After this, your Pixel will keep your storage tidy by keeping your offline storage from clogging up while your old media lives safely in the cloud. That’s quite a lifesaver if you take lots of photos, making 128GB of storage a lot more usable in the long run. And why only 128GB? People with higher storage capacity can also optimize their phone storage to maximize usability this way.
There’s always some room for improvement
Andy Walker / Android Authority
As you can see, neither implementation, be it Google’s or Apple’s, is perfect, with both leaving a lot of room for improvement. But if you noticed, I mentioned just Pixels in reference to Smart storage, because that’s actually the case. The feature is available only for Pixel users, even though the Files app is often available as a separate download or the default file manager on almost all Android phones.
But more importantly, I feel that the experience is broken. Back in the day, when Files Go — the version designed for low-cost, low-end phones — was around, it had a bunch of storage-saving features. So, it made sense to have Smart storage in the Files app. But it’s been a few years since then, and things can now be a bit more thoughtful and accessible — accessible enough that people know about their existence at the very least.
A good trick would be to integrate the feature into Google Photos’ own backup settings — you know, where everyone would actually go to look for these options. People have failed to find it as things stand, and that’s a good sign for Google to act on it and make this handy feature more widely usable. Maybe that’s the magic trick people need to make the most of their 128GB Pixel 10.
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