If your iPhone is very slow, it may be due to the storage. We show you how to check this and also tell you how to solve it.
iPhone storage slow: this is how you test the speed
When your iPhone feels slow, you quickly think it is due to the processor. After all, almost every new iPhone gets a new, faster processor and everything feels nice and fast again. Consider, for example, the A16 chip in the iPhone 15. That is currently one of Apple’s fastest chips for the iPhone. Only the one in the iPhone 15 Pro (Max) is faster.
But an older chip does not always make your iPhone feel slow. This could have many more causes. One of them is your iPhone’s storage, because that can also make everything run sluggish and slow.
When buying a new iPhone, many people opt for the device with the least storage. After all, storage is quite expensive and the iPhone already costs a lot of money. You then run into the problem that your iPhone quickly becomes chock full of apps, photos and more. If your storage is so full, it can slow down your iPhone. A second problem is the speed of storage itself. After all, it can also be slow. The storage of older iPhones in particular can be quite slow.
Do you want to know how slow (or fast) your iPhone’s storage is? You can check this with the Antutu app. We must add a small comment here: due to the working memory (and the smart cache) of your iPhone, the write and read speed of your iPhone is not always displayed correctly. You may therefore not see the same values ​​with other apps. It is also smart to perform the test a number of times and then take the average.
Test the speed of the internal storage in the iPhone
- Start the Antutu app;
- Tap ‘Home > Storage Test’;
- Tap ‘Test immediately’;
- The results appear at ‘Sequence Read’ and ‘Sequence Write’.
In recent years, Apple has been packing faster and faster storage into the iPhone. When we compare the iPhone 15 Pro Max with an iPhone 11, we also see a striking difference. An iPhone 15 Pro Max (with 1 TB storage) has an average write speed of 1668 MB/s and a read speed of 1704 MB/s. The iPhone 11’s storage was quite slow, with a write speed of 160 MB/s and a read speed of 706 MB/s.
Is the low speed with the iPhone 11 also a problem? Not for some users. But if, for example, you work a lot with large video files or photos on your iPhone, you will notice that everything is a lot slower. In combination with the slower processor in the older iPhone, you will certainly notice this.
Storage slow on iPhone and iPad: this is how you solve it
As an iPhone or iPad owner, you are quite limited when you want to improve the speed of your device. The most important thing is to make sure that the storage is not too full and that there is enough space available. As a rule of thumb, you should keep about ten percent of the maximum available storage free. For an iPhone with 128 GB of storage, that is about 13 GB.
If your iPhone’s storage is too full, your iPhone’s cache cannot do its job properly and, among other things, saving large videos becomes a lot slower. As a test, we took the iPhone 11 again. An iPhone 11 with 64 GB of storage (and 21 GB of free space) has a write speed of 160 MB/s. If we fill the storage with more data, the write speed drops to 60 MB/s. It was striking that the reading speed remained approximately the same.
More Apple tips
-
iPhone tips: do more with the handy music app Shazam!
-
Connect AirPods to Google Chromecast: this is how you do it
-
This iPhone feature drains your battery – turn it off!
-
Hide photos on your iPhone: with this app they are really safe
-
Control your iPhone remotely with your Apple Watch (how to do it)