The news fell a few days ago and our colleagues from Genbeta commented on it: WhatsApp has extended the maximum file size you can send through its service from 100MB to 2GB. At the moment they are testing it in Argentina, but it is not difficult to think that it will soon be something available worldwide.
WhatsApp seeks to be able to compete with Telegram, which has allowed files of this size to be sent since July 2020. It makes sense to seek to match this size, but there is a problem: this change can spell disaster for many WhatsApp users.
An express recipe for the saturation of millions of iPhones
The reason I say this is because of the way chat storage is handled. Telegram uses a cloud in which (for now) all our chat history is saved. Indefinitely and forever, without limits, for several GB of information you send or receive. This service has a very simple way to control that all this information does not clutter our iPhone: in its settings we can choose how many GB we want to dedicate to local storage for chats.
The minimum is 5GB, something perfectly acceptable in all iPhones of recent years. By simply adjusting this option, you already solve any storage problem that Telegram may cause. You choose how much information remains downloaded to the iPhone, while the rest remains accessible from your cloud:
The same does not happen with WhatsApp. This other courier stores all data locally, on the phone, and it never alerts us to how much space it takes up. And at the rate at which we use WhatsApp in countries like Europe, where some users are constantly receiving videos and personal jokes, this space can be a lot in a few days.
Little by little, the options to free up space in WhatsApp have improved, but it’s not enough. There are no alarms, no way for a general user to realize how much space their conversations are taking up. And this causes record situations like the ones I assure you have seen in client terminals: WhatsApps that occupy 30, 50 or even 70 GB. I saw the absolute record just two weeks ago with a WhatsApp that occupied 187 GB an iPhone 13 Pro Max 512 GB. 187 GB!
Imagining all the WhatsApp storage problems multiplied by twenty makes me shiver
As a professional who helps drain these WhatsApps of many unsuspecting users, this jump from 100MB to 2GB is sending cold sweats down my spine. Because it is no longer just all this local space that is occupied: is this also added to iCloud backup. And believe me when I tell you that you don’t want to take on the burden of transferring all the information from such a saturated phone to a newer one.
Now imagine this scenario, with iPhones of all general users who don’t know how to control WhatsApp storage… multiplied by twenty. All those videos sent in bulk via WhatsApp can last longer and be sent in much higher quality. Never mind that the upcoming iPhone 14 has 2TB of storage. It wouldn’t take long to saturate.
My warning to everyone, especially if this change is coming, is clear: keep an eye on the storage occupied by your WhatsApp history and those of your relatives with less technical knowledge. It is much better to prevent a saturation than not to have to solve it. If you don’t know how to do it, you can learn it in this tutorial. If you’ve never done it before, take action before it’s too late.
And if anyone in charge of WhatsApp reads this, please: change the way information is stored in the service. It’s starting to get urgent.
