A 2 TB iPhone Pro

We took the rumors of a 2 TB iPhone 16 Pro with a massive grain of salt simply because it’s one that we keep hearing over and over again. One of these days, Apple will probably release a higher-capacity iPhone, and these reports will be proven right, in the same way that a stopped clock is accurate at least once a day.

Rumors of a 2 TB model began less than a month after the iPhone 13 Pro pushed the top capacity to 1 TB. Several pundits assumed a 2 TB model would quickly follow, but that was a stretch considering how rarely Apple shakes up its storage lineup. That 1 TB jump came after three years of 512 GB Pro models that began with the iPhone XS, preceded by a two-year run of 256 GB iPhones: the iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X.

Based on that timeline, a 2 TB iPhone 14 Pro would have been premature, but it also wasn’t unreasonable to assume that the iPhone 16 Pro would be the right point for Apple to make the jump. Support for ultra-high-quality ProRes video recording demands more storage, but thus far, Apple’s solution has been to push content creators to external USB-C-attached storage devices. ProRes 4K/60fps footage can only be saved to external storage, likely because the internal NAND flash isn’t fast enough, and that’s the Triple-Level-Cell (TLC) NAND chips that Apple is using now. The Quad-Level-Cell (QLC) NAND required for a 2 TB iPhone is even slower, so it’s unlikely we’ll see a 2 TB iPhone until newer technology delivers improved performance.