iPhone Storage & Photo Statistics

Headline figures for 2026

If you only need a handful of numbers, these are the ones most often quoted from our data. Each links through to the full entry with its original source.

• The average iPhone user keeps 2,400–2,795 photos on the device, using roughly 5–12 GB.
• Around 5.3 billion photos are taken worldwide every day, and iPhones capture about a quarter of all smartphone photos.
• 256 GB is the most common storage tier in 2026 and the base capacity on iPhone 17.
• Roughly 15–20% of a typical camera roll is duplicate or near-duplicate images.
• iCloud's free tier has stayed at 5 GB since 2011, and most users pass it within 6–12 months.
• One minute of 4K 60fps video costs about 400 MB; Dolby Vision pushes that to roughly 700 MB.

Using this data

Everything we publish here is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, which means you may quote, chart, or republish any figure as long as you credit DB Labs and link to the source page. We would rather you cite us accurately than paraphrase us loosely, so both reports ship with machine-readable downloads:

• Statistics dataset (JSON) and CSV — 121 records with metric, value, note and source.
• Photo Habits Study (JSON) and CSV — the seven data tables behind our original research.

Where a figure comes from a third party we name them in the entry, so please cite the original source rather than us for those. Figures marked as DB Labs analysis come from aggregated, anonymised Swype Photo Cleaner sessions. Journalists and researchers can request the methodology or a specific breakdown at dblabsapps@gmail.com.

How we compile these numbers

Every figure falls into one of three buckets, and we label which in each entry. Third-party research comes from named analysts such as Counterpoint, Statista, or Photutorial, and we cite them so you can go to the original. Apple's own disclosures come from developer documentation, Newsroom posts, and quarterly results. DB Labs analysis comes from aggregated, anonymised sessions in Swype Photo Cleaner, which tells us things like real duplicate rates and how much space a typical cleanup recovers.

We review the full set twice a year and after each September iPhone launch, since capacities, camera resolutions, and file sizes all shift at once. Figures that we cannot re-verify get removed rather than carried forward, which is why the count changes between revisions. If you spot something that looks stale or wrong, tell us and we will check it.