It’s graduation season and vacation time is just around the corner. One thing guaranteed to get
a good workout is the camera on your smartphone.

Smartphones are now the primary camera for most people. It’s also the primary way we listen to music, watch videos, send and receive photos, and play games. All that eats up storage, so you see this when we go to take a picture or record a video. Before you go on vacation or attend
graduation, you should know how much space you’ll need.

Photos are usually around 2 MB, this 22-second video takes up 163 MB of storage. It could be much higher if you shoot photos in RAW and videos in 4K.

You may want to delete photos and videos, but don’t be hasty. On iPhones, photos are stored in the iCloud. If you’re not careful, deleting them from your phone will also delete them from the cloud, so you’ll lose them forever. It happens to a lot of people.

Before you delete photos and videos from an iPhone, turn off iCloud. Never mind the pop-up warning. This will delete the photos from your phone but keep them in the cloud. On this phone,
photos take up over 4 and a half gigabytes. Deleting them here won’t affect them in the cloud, you can download them again on any device. Once you’re finished, turn iCloud backup back on.

On an Android device, just make sure the backup is turned on. All the photos get uploaded to Google Photos, so you can safely delete them from the phone.

You can also connect an iPhone or Android device to a computer and download the photos to a hard drive for safekeeping.

Check apps. Facebook and Instagram can take up tons of space. If you need some space for photos, delete the apps from your phone and download them again, which will clear the storage.
Your Facebook and Instagram won’t be affected.

Delete and re-install streaming apps, and if there are apps you haven’t used in a long time, delete them. Especially free games that can not only take up space but drain the battery, even
when you’re not using them.

You should always back up your most important photos and videos onto a hard drive for safekeeping. Just connect the smartphone to a computer with the charging cable you have and
download them.