SanDisk iXpand solves your iOS storage woes

Apple’s iPhones and iPads may be lovely things, but Apple has never been that keen on letting you expand the onboard storage. If you want to store lots of photos, music and films on your phone or tablet, this leaves you with little choice but to spend a frankly outrageous amount on the higher-capacity models.

Fortunately, flash memory supremo SanDisk has come to the rescue, with its iXpand Flash Drive. This is a matchbox-sized unit with a USB 2.0 connector and a flip-up Lightning plug for your iDevice. You plug the iXpand into your phone or tablet, and it will automatically copy all photos and videos from your internal storage to the drive. You can then copy them to your computer, or even over to another iPhone or iPad, all without messing around with iTunes.

As iOS devices don’t have file managers, this is all done through SanDisk’s own iXpand Sync app; rather than copy files over individually, you tell the app what you want to sync. This could be a problem if you just need to copy over a handful of files, as the device will tend to sync large numbers of photos each time you plug it in. The fast Lightning connection should mean you’re not left hanging around too long, but you’ll need to make sure you buy a big enough iXpand drive; it’s available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions.

There are a couple of extras alongside the sync. You can use the iXpand Sync app to play video and audio straight from the drive, which could be handy if you’re low on space on your phone or tablet, and you can also encrypt files with a password.

There’s no UK pricing as yet for the iXpand Flash Drive, but seeing as iOS 8 seems to gobble up storage like a hungry Sarlacc, it could be a godsend for Apple fans.