This clever iPhone upgrade gives you massive storage without the Apple price

I've never regretted buying an iPhone, but I've often regretted buying one with too-small storage. If you take a lot of photos or videos, especially in higher resolution formats, you'll soon become familiar with no more space messages.

Western Digital has an excellent solution – a compact, fast SSD that adds high-speed storage to your iPhone 15 and iPhone 16.

Announced during CES 2025, the SanDisk Creator Phone SSD is available in two sizes – 1TB and 2TB. It's designed to fit snugly on the back of your iPhone, attaching strongly via MagSafe, and it then connects via USB-C.

SanDisk Creator Phone SSD: key features and pricing

Unlike some USB-C storage, the Creator Phone SSD is made for pro-spec work. It can deliver read speeds of up to 1,000MB/s and write speeds of up to 950MB/s. That's fast enough to record 4K at 60fps in ProRes format directly to the storage device.

Western Digital has clearly given some thought to this, because the device has been made rugged to cope with the lumps and bumps of outdoor shooting. It's built with a tough silicone shell, has IP65 water and dust resistance, and it's been drop tested to three metres.

Pricing for the 2TB variant hasn't been announced just yet, but the 1TB model will be £91.99 in the UK and $109.99 in the US.

That's an excellent price – if you're buying a new iPhone 16 Pro, upping the storage from 128GB to 1TB increases the price by £500 – and that's the most internal storage you can get. Adding an external SanDisk Creator Phone SSD may not be as elegant, but it's a lot cheaper.

Apple owners aren't the only demanding storage users that SanDisk is catering for. It's also announced Creator microSD cards for Android and computers.

They're available in capacities up to 1TB and prices start at £14.99 for 128GB.

Pricing for the 1TB model hasn't been confirmed just yet but it'll be announced – and available – very soon.