GoKawiilSmartphones now ship with more RAM and storage to accommodate the heavier workloads, larger media files and expansive app libraries. If you're shopping for a new Android smartphone from a mainstream brand, you can expect it to ship with at least 128GB of internal storage. To some, this may be all the storage they'll ever need, but others may quickly find themselves running out of space.
In the past, expanding your phone's storage was as simple as buying an inexpensive microSD card and inserting it into the phone. You could then transfer photos, videos and larger files to make space for app installations on your phone's internal storage. Funnily enough, recent versions of Android now let you transfer installed apps to an SD card — you used to need third-party solutions to do that before. For the five phones around that still ship with a microSD card slot, this feature is a welcome addition.
For everyone else, cloud storage is the most readily available solution. If it's media files that are eating away at your phone's storage, consider subscribing to a Google One plan. Your photos and videos will automatically be synced via Google Photos, and you can offload any larger documents through Google Drive. Google accounts with a linked phone number get 15GB of free cloud storage, but this doesn't take a long time to fill up, especially now that Android backups will count toward your cloud storage. If you don't mind losing a bit of the ecosystem convenience and the seamless sync, you can always subscribe to cloud storage options that are more economical.