I Found a Better Way to Extend My iPhone’s Storage—and It Doesn’t Involve iCloud

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you’re on vacation, taking countless photos and videos, and your iPhone hits you with the dreaded low storage warning. I’ve been in this position more times than I’d like, and I often end up spending precious downtime cleaning up my photo gallery and offloading it to the cloud on patchy WiFi. Besides, the increasing size of high-res media inevitably sends me back to square one.

But what if you could extend your iPhone’s storage whenever you need to?

That’s what Sharge’s new Disk Pro accessory promises. It’s a credit card-sized SSD that plugs into any of your devices, like your iPhone, and lets you easily move files between them. Over the last few weeks, whenever I’ve been close to running out of space on my iPhone, I’ve simply been able to relocate loads of photos and videos I didn’t need to the Disk Pro.

And unlike other similar external drives, I didn’t have to carry the Disk Pro around in my pocket or my hands at all times while transferring data. The magnetic ring on its rear allowed me to snap it to the back of my iPhone and continue using it normally. Its slim and lightweight design (5.3 oz) also meant I hardly ever noticed it.

The Disk Pro comes from the Chinese accessory maker, Sharge, a brand that rarely conforms to typical design trends, and its new SSD is no exception. It looks like it belongs inside a computer, featuring a see-through shell that lets you peer into the circuitry. I’ve lost count of the times people have asked me about it in public, but it’s a double-edged sword: it also raises eyebrows at airport security.

More than the aesthetics, however, I found the Disk Pro’s design thoughtful and practical. A short USB-C cable, for example, juts out from one of its corners, so that you don’t have to carry one separately, and when idle, neatly tucks into the SSD’s built-in USB-C port. Speaking of which, the Disk Pro doubles as a multi-port hub for your computer, with a pair of USB-A slots, a standard HDMI, and a USB-C.

The highlight for me, and what makes the Disk Pro particularly stand out, is its built-in cooling fan. It kicks in during long transfers and prevents the drive, as well as your iPhone, from overheating. There’s also a button on the drive, with which you can push the fan into a turbo mode for heavier workloads. It comes in three storage variants: 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB.