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Old 12-21-2012, 11:06 PM
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Arrow 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,
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Old 12-22-2012, 02:49 AM
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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.
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Old 12-22-2012, 07:42 PM
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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.
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Old 12-23-2012, 08:23 PM
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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.
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Old 12-24-2012, 12:38 AM
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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
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