iPhone 16Gb and iPod touch 32Gb now available!
Apple has just refreshed their line up of the iPhone and iPod touch, increasing their capacity to store data by double the amount available yesterday.
iPod touch 32Gb
The iPhone has been available since late-June 2007 and debuted in both 4Gb and 8Gb models. The 4Gb was quickly shelved for the larger 8Gb capacity, presumably because sales of the 4Gb were so poor, and now about 8 months later the 8Gb is being replaced by the 16Gb model.
The iPod touch’s story is a bit different. It debuted only 5 months ago and rang in at 8Gb and 16Gb models. Today, the lineup added, not replaced, a new size of 32Gb. My thinking is that Apple still has a fairly large stock of 8 and 16 gigabyte hard drives - and so they’ll work through those until the 8 gigabyte is gone.
Presumably both the iPhone and the iPod touch use the same 16Gb hard drives, so my guess it that we can expect to see the iPod touch available in 16Gb for as long as they offer the iPhone at that capacity.
A note about Apple’s Gigs
Something I’ve found different about the capacities of the iPhone and iPod touch when compared to the original iPod is how Apple is scaling them. The path that the iPhone and iPod touch is taking is slightly different than the original iPod - and I’m wondering if this trend will continue.
If you remember the original iPod was debuted at 5 and 10 gigabytes. The iPhone debuted at 4 and 8 gigabytes. The iPod was then bumped in factors of 10: 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, 80, and finally 160 gigabytes. The iPhone just received a bump to 16Gb while the iPod touch is now available as a 32Gb model.
If I may take a moment to look through the looking glass and see the future; should I predict 32Gb, 64Gb, and 128Gb models of the iPhone and iPod touch? I think a 32Gb iPhone is “a given”, being that the iPod touch is already available in this size and I see no reason (other than price) not to have an iPhone be made available at the same size. However, I do not see this trend continuing beyond the 64Gb models. Call me crazy, but there is nothing sexy about a 128Gb or 256Gb (a capacity not even available for the iPod yet) models of the iPhone or iPod touch. I think once Apple releases a 64Gb iPod touch, they will make the iPhone available as 32GB and they may stop there as far as size is concerned. I do not think that the iPhone, or the iPod touch, will ever have the same storage capacities as the “classic” iPods will.
Looking even farther into the future, when the iPhone is as slim as a credit card and as sturdy as titanium - we may have storage capacities in the 250 or 500 gigabyte range (especially now with the iTunes Music Store allowing rentals that take up a fair amount of disk space). In other words, after 64Gb - we’ll start to see the storage capacities be rounded to at least the nearest multiples of 20 or 50.
So, who is upgrading?
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I see no reason why they’d stop the iPhone at 32GB. With the new push toward video, they’re going to need all the capacity they can get. I have no desire to carry a phone and an iPod any longer than necessary. An 8 gig iPhone is totally inadequate for me, and my 30 gig iPod is just about right, but I can’t keep nearly as much video as I’d like to. Apple needs to keep pushing up the capacity as fast as they can. Their competitors aren’t going to simply stop increasing storage. The iPod Touch will likely always have more storage than the iPhone, simply because they don’t have to cram a cell phone in there too.
Illtron on February 5th, 2008 12:31 pm
Illtron: Maybe my thoughts on the iPhone’s capacity having some sort of short-term ceiling is incorrect… I just doubt we’ll see any really large capacity iPhones in the very near future.
If the current iPhone model ever hits anything about 100Gb I’ll be very surprised. Again, if it does though, I think it will be an entirely new iPhone - one that we don’t have in our hands right now.
And, the classic iPod will probably be nearing the terabyte range at that point.
Perhaps I separate a phone from a video watching device too much. Yes, my iPhone can store video - but I wouldn’t want to have to pay gobs of cash in order to use it as a video storage device.
Colin Devroe on February 5th, 2008 12:39 pm
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Higher-capacity iPhones will happen when the respective flash chips are available from Samsung. Apple just takes the chips and puts then in the iPhone. They can’t pull higher capacity out of thin air. Someone has to fab the chips.
The current iPhone design uses a single NAND flash chip in the 48-pin TSOP package.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=1PYQB3RYT5FIGQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=200001811
It used to be that the highest-density chip available in that footprint was 8 GBytes. In January, Samsung began mass production of a 16 GByte chip. Hence, the iPhone got a capacity bump.
Myron A. Semack on February 5th, 2008 10:09 pm
Oh, one other thing to add: The iPod touch has 2 flash chips in it (same 48-pin TSOP as the iPhone), so it is always capable of 2x the capacity of the iPhone.
Myron A. Semack on February 5th, 2008 10:25 pm
“In other words, after 64Gb - we’ll start to see the storage capacities be rounded to at least the nearest multiples of 20 or 50.”
FYI, that’s not exactly correct. As long as the device is flash-based, the capacity will always be a power of 2 (4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, etc). Notice that the iPod Nano also comes in power of 2 capacities. Flash chip density is always a power of two, just like RAM.
The original iPod was hard-drive based. Hard drives are mechanical, so they don’t follow the “power of 2″ convention.
Myron A. Semack on February 6th, 2008 5:09 pm
Myron: Thanks for all of the information. I figured the number change had to do something with the type of drives, but I’m still unclear as to why flash drives need to be calculated to the power of 2?
Also nice to note that by design the iPod touch has the ability to always have double the storage capacity of the iPhone.
Colin Devroe on February 7th, 2008 9:50 am
i think they make a 320 gb ipod classic
but i dont think that often
timmy!!! on February 7th, 2008 7:33 pm
u can get the 320 gb ipod by purchasing 2 of the 160 classics
or by simply adding an additional 0 to the end of the new 32 gb touch
either way, it is available
timmy!!! on February 7th, 2008 7:37 pm
Colin,
A flash chip (and a RAM chip) is basically a 2D grid of bits. The “columns” of the grid is are typically in a x8 configuration (byte access). In that case, the number of “rows” in the grid specify how many bytes the device can store.
The row number in the device is specified by address pins. (In multi-core type flash devices, there are also chip enable pins, but they work like address pins.)
To read-write a location in the flash chip, you must put a certain value on the address pins. Each address pin has two possible values (high or low). The bigger the device, the more address pins it has.
A device with 1 address pin has 2 rows in it. A device with 2 address pins has 4 rows in it (2^2 possible values of the address pins). 3 address pins = 8 rows (2^3 possible values).
I am oversimplifying a lot, but I think it gets the point across.
Myron A. Semack on February 8th, 2008 4:19 pm