Lesson 2 of 6
Inside Your Phone: Where Does 128 GB Go?
Open up a typical phone's storage and see exactly what eats the gigabytes — photos, apps, games, messages and the OS itself.
Learn it
A typical phone comes with 128–256 GB of storage. But you don't get all of it: the operating system (iOS or Android) takes 10–20 GB before you install anything.
The biggest storage eaters on most phones: photos and videos (often 30–60 GB), big games (5–15 GB each), and social media apps caching videos (1–10 GB each).
A 4K video filmed for one minute takes about 350–400 MB. Ten minutes of 4K footage ≈ 4 GB — the size of an entire HD movie.
When your phone says 'Storage almost full', deleting old videos and offloading unused apps usually frees the most space the fastest.
Key terms
- Cache
- Temporary files apps keep to load faster — can grow to many GB.
- 4K video
- Ultra-HD video; ~400 MB per minute of footage.
- Cloud offloading
- Storing full files online and keeping only previews on the device.
Try it
Match each item to its realistic size on a phone:
Challenge
Storage detective: a friend's 64 GB phone is full. They have 2,000 photos (~3 MB each), 40 minutes of 4K video, 8 big games (~8 GB each), and 12 GB of apps. Work out the total and recommend what to delete or move first.
Pick whichever way suits you — every mode earns the same bonus XP.
Write at least 40 more characters to submit.
Mark your own work
Guided walkthrough — 0/3 clues revealed
- Clue 1 locked — reveal it only if you get stuck.
- Clue 2 locked — reveal it only if you get stuck.
- Clue 3 locked — reveal it only if you get stuck.
Each clue costs 3 XP (never below 13 XP). You'd earn 25 XP right now.