General Aviation and Smartphones
 

Hello all,

I am in the market for an iPhone. But, I have no idea if I should get the 16GB, 32GB or 64GB. I am not big in the IT world, so I am turning to you guys who are phone geeks or just have some experience with smartphones and flying. How much memory do you recommend?


Thanks,

I'm an IT guy who flies GA. I have an iPhone4s with 64GB. Here's the breakdown of storage:

Audio 4.5GB with 530 songs
Photos 175 MB with 100 photos
Video 0MB for 0 Vids
Apps 500 MB for 20 Apps (only 4 aviation apps: DTC DUAT, iDispatch, METARspk, and AOPA's FLYq)
Other (OS?) 800 MB

Leaving me with 51GB free. I could squeeze and get by with the 16G model, would feel comfortable with 32, and have 64 cause it's an i-Hand-Me-Down from the wife (also IT) and she has to have the bleeding edge (excepting husbands).

I primarily use a PC for all aviation related stuff (wx, planning routes, printing plates, etc), the iPhones apps allow me to monitor.

Hope that helps.

I'm an IT guy and I use an iPhone 4S 32GB & an iPad3 32GB. I have quite a few pictures & videos stored but not much music. For flying I use ForeFlight which IMO is the best flying app I've ever seen. It was $150/year and came with full Geo Ref approach plates/terminal procedures & taxi diagrams (moving map gps overlay). Another great feature anytime your on the ground it speaks and flashes a warning as you approach a runway. Then another alert once you actually enter the runway.

On my iPad I've downloaded all the the VFR sectionals, low altitude IFR enroute charts, approach plates/terminal procedures, and AFD/airport info for about 40 states.

On the iPad I've used around 16GB of my 32. Took around 10GB for all my ForeFlight charts etc that I downloaded...

So.. If you can afford the 64, go for it.. I'm happy with my 32. But don't get the 16.

It all depends on you.

My father barely uses any memory (has a 16gb and uses a little over 8gb of it) while I use every bit of memory I have in pretty much all my devices.

So...what will you do with it. If you just want a smartphone for apps and flight functions, 16gb will be plenty. If you want to put music or movies one it, I would consider more.

I'm not an IT guy. 16GB on my iPhone isn't enough. Not much music, but I take a lot of pictures and videos, and I have the AOPA and Foreflight apps, plus quite a few games :)