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Question from Judy: I’ll be going on a cruise in December and I have a question about using my phone while I’m on the ship.
Will I be able to use my iPhone 11 to take pictures without having to pay anything to take them?
I’d rather not pay anything extra if I don’t have to.
Rick’s answer: I have some great news for you, Judy. You’ll certainly be able to take pictures with your iPhone while you’re enjoying your cruise, and it won’t cost you a penny more than what you paid for your ticket.
However, the number of pictures you can take for free will likely be limited by the amount of internal storage that’s available in your iPhone.
Once the phone’s internal storage is maxed out you won’t be able to take any additional photos without first moving the existing photos to some other medium to make room for the additional pictures. And while you’re on your cruise you’ll likely have to pay a fee of some sort to do that.
Luckily, you’ll have several options for taking more photos than your iPhone can store at any given moment:
1 – You can use the ship’s WiFi network to upload the photos on your phone to a cloud storage service, then delete the photos from your phone to make room for new ones.
There are several excellent cloud storage services to choose from, and most of them will provide a nominal amount of storage space for free.
Since you’re using an iPhone you might want to consider using iCloud, but you could also use a third-party service like Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive.
I would recommend using a service that you already use (if you have one). Again, since you have an iPhone that’s likely to be iCloud.
Note: Depending on the terms of the cruise package you signed up for, you might have to pay extra for your WiFi usage. If so, keep that in mind as you’re out there taking photos.
2 – Use your smartphone’s cellular data connection to upload your photos to the cloud storage service of your choice, then delete the photos from your phone.
Note: Your phone will need a cellular signal in order to upload your photos to cloud storage using the phone’s cellular data connection.
There will likely be areas on the route of your cruise where there is no cellular signal, and even when there is a signal available you’ll likely be responsible for roaming charges. Just something else you need to be aware of.
3 – And finally, if neither of the first two options are free you can simply transfer your photos from your iPhone to an external flash drive and then delete the photos from your phone.
For example, this drive is an Amazon’s Choice item and it comes with 128GB of flash storage, which is enough space to store several thousand iPhone photos.
This is actually the method I recommend for moving the photos off your phone because you won’t have to worry about incurring any WiFi hidden usage fees or cellular roaming charges. And besides, you’ll always be able to use the drive for other purposes once you get back home from your cruise.
Bottom line: You won’t have to pay a cent to take as many pictures as your iPhone’s internal storage will hold, and you can easily augment that internal storage with some type of external storage solution.
I hope this helps, Judy. Good luck, and have a great time on your cruise!