iPad Mini Question From an iOS Newbie

As a disclaimer, this might be a really dumb or obvious question, but bear with me.

I only got my iPad Mini a few months ago, but I like RPGs & some other games that end up with big file sizes. I still have 10 gigs free (with music/comics/ebooks I can take out), but at the alarming rate space is getting eaten up, I wanted to ask you guys for help. Am I doing something wrong? I poked around on Google and couldn't find anything about this specifically.

There are plenty of people here with tons of games, how do you manage them? I know there's iCloud, but I'm still not entirely sure how helpful it can be (I have a PC and my only other iDevice is my iPhone 4) for this specific thing. I know deleting games removes all data, is there any way to simply move an app off of my device without deleting it/losing progress in the game?

I feel kinda dense not knowing the answer to this, but I figured someone here would, so.. help, please?

We just carefully ration our games

A lot of games coming out now have iCloud saves, so we can delete/reinstall at our leisure. Make sure iCloud is turn on for your idevice and check the AppStore description.

There is a way to save game's progress that doesn't have iCloud when deleting, however it's a pain and if you're not jailbroken requires a computer.

Using iFunbox (free, just search on cnet) open up your iDevice's file system. Navigate to the game you want to back up. There will be two folders we're interested in : "documents" and "library". Save them by dragging to your desktop or copy/pasting. There you go! Delete the game, then reinstall later and overwrite the library/doc folders with the saved ones on your PC and your save files will reappear.

I'm speaking entirely from memory; some folder names might have changed (I doubt it) or with iOS 6 Apple might have gotten rid of this, don't think so though.

I just delete games when I finish with them. I have one folder for games, and that is usually enough. I've gone through probably 500-1000 since I got my first iPhone, but I delete stuff like crazy.

Space on mobile devices is pretty shoddy I think yet it seems most tech forums are full of people defending 8gb and 16gb options and screaming nobody will ever need more than 32gb.

I have 80gb on my cell phone completely full thanks to a Micro SD, 64gb on my iPod completely full, 32gb on my Vita completely full, 32gb on my Nexus 7 completely full, you can get the picture.

Basicly if you actually use your device the space will never be enough in my opinion.

I don't mind more space as memory naturally becomes cheaper to implement over time, but I don't need to go out of my way to make space, ever. I've got a 32GB iPad which is only ever half full and an 8GB iPhone with about 6GB still free. I use my iPad daily, constantly downloading apps, but the fact is I don't need them all. When I get bored of one I delete it.

It's almost physically impossible to fill an iOS device with apps and actually use every one of them constantly. If you use it for something like graphic design or music creation on the other hand... then it's more of a problem, and you need some backup/export tools at your disposal.

Either way, I've got a couple thousand game downloads under my belt now, but only about 30 on my device. If I want to play another one again I'll just download it.

Yeah, disk space is the biggest issue for almost all of us. I got 64 gb and it sucks. I need about 256 gb. So everyday is a struggle deleting and reinstalling and stuff. Sucks.

And I got an icade joystick and gameloft joystick, which makes things worse, cause I gotta try to keep those games on my system too. And gameloft games are HUGE!

Icloud saves helps a little, but only a couple of games have it. Ifunbox saves can help, but it's a hassle. Everyone has a different style of getting around this issue, but for the most part no one is happy, and there is little that can really be done.

Wish Apple would let us hook up usb drives to my ipad or have an sd card slot, but you know apple, they love making $100 on an extra 16 gb of disk space. So sad, but now that android and the microsoft surface have come out, apple will have to do something, or people will go to the other camps.

The next ipad I buy, I really want at least 256 gb unless of course they add a usb drive or sd card. So maybe I will wait for the ipad 6. But yeah, it is a constant headache, and the more you fill it up like I do, the slower it gets, and the more prone to problems and memory issues.

So, in short, I feel your pain.

Hope the iPad mini 2 has a 128 gb option.
I'm finally upgrading