I don't think you're a luddite, though people do use their phones for different things, some of which are just naturally going to take up more space over time. Rich media like photographs and videos taken on your phone is going to take up a lot of space, especially when you don't have them sync to the cloud. Some apps like reddit clients, comic readers, or music apps can take a lot of space up with cached images, music, and other files. Games also take up a ton of space.

> Rich media like photographs and videos taken on your phone is going to take up a lot of space

Right, but this was a discussion on app sizes. Photos and videos aren't due to the size of the apps, and can easily go on an SD card.

> cached images, music, and other files

Good point about caches. Should be some global policy for that IMHO. One thing is things like map apps downloading regions on demand for offline use, but just plain old caching...

> Games also take up a ton of space.

True, that's an issue even on my desktop computer with a 1TB SSD. Though I don't consider those regular apps. Still, point taken.

Apps were 35GB for me. My work uses a lot of required apps that use lots of storage (OneDrive will eat up space).

10GB was OS, there rest was music, photos, videos.

> My work uses a lot of required apps that use lots of storage

Ah, that'll change the equation. I just use Teams and Outlook apps for work on my phone (besides calls and texts).

For me, iOS’s automatic offloading of apps seems to save me from having to do this, with the caveat that sometimes I try to access an app I haven’t touched in a while and have to wait to re-download in order to use.

I tried this, but the apps were big so it would churn. And the first time I arrived in a new country and didn’t have network and Apple had decided to offload Dropbox with my locally saved itinerary it really sucked.

I think that might with tons of apps that are rarely used. But it sucks if I have 10-20 apps that I frequently used.

> Do you actually use that many apps. Am I just a Luddite?

I bet you don’t have kids.

What does that mean? I have kids. My phone has around 2.5GB of apps.

I was referring to having 33 GB free. People with kids tend to always be running at the razor’s edge of their storage taking pics of their little one’s latest adventures.

In retrospect quoting that last piece, rather than the whole comment, made a lot more sense when I first wrote it than it does now.

> running at the razor’s edge of their storage taking pics

Well, I have SD cards for that... Regardless, the context was apps taking space. If I had used 80-90% of my storage for pics, then size of apps isn't the issue.

Yea, the capitalist "free market" that we have allows me to go buy the latest flagship phone with and root able bootloader that I can resign, replaceable batteries, expandable storage and dual Sim. Well you can in China but not the US.

This is why I think China has won. They are able to leverage free market dynamics without the ip/legal bloat here and then they just pull out the gun for national interest.