What is the "other" shown in the iPhone capacity bar?

[jpoyzner]

yeah...try 3.22 GB of "Other"

I also had this 200MB of other show up after the recent iPhone and iTunes updates, which I assumed were firmware additions; however, shortly after, I tried checking and unchecking the option "Manually manage music and videos" just to see how to use it, and when I synced the iPhone it turned the 3.22 GB of music that I had on my iPhone into "Other"...now there's absolutely no way to get rid of it. I've tried everything. Even restoring to system settings doesn't work because it craps out in the middle with some error. When I connect to other iTunes on other computers they all see this 3 gigabyte chunk of "Other" and they think it's actual data that's taking up space so I can't use it at all. damn, my iPhone went from about 7.7GB of space to about 4.5GB. I was about to drive down to the "Genius" section of an Apple store till I saw this thread, hopefully I'll find a way to get rid of this orange chunk, what do you think?

 

[psylichon]

hopefully I'll find a way to get rid of this orange chunk, what do you think?

Are you unable to sync all of your stuff now? (Or at least 7.whatever gigs of it)

I ask because (and you may be in a unique situation, but...) I've found my "other" size shrinks if I load my phone up with media and need the space. In other words, my "other" allocation seems to be dynamic.

 

[Popdevil]

And how do I get rid of it? It wasn't there before I updated to 1.1.3!

I'm taking a WILD guess here but you use your iPhone to listen to music?

 

[jpoyzner]

well

Are you unable to sync all of your stuff now? (Or at least 7.whatever gigs of it)

I ask because (and you may be in a unique situation, but...) I've found my "other" size shrinks if I load my phone up with media and need the space. In other words, my "other" allocation seems to be dynamic.

Actually I thought this would be the case also, however it just says there's not enough spaces (it's already assuming the "Other" chunk is music)...

here's the funny part, after a week of having this problem, I was pleasantly surprised when I did my last sync yesterday and the "Other" for some reason shrank back to the original ~200MB. Sweet!

The only thing that was different this time was that iTunes crashed when I synced it right before that and so I forced iTunes to close, then restarted it and synced and voila! I'm so excited but can't explain it in any way!

 

[Ezekiel2517]

wow, i cant believe so many people are crying over this kind of stuff. i mean is it really THAT important that you need as much space as possible for music or whatever? and its only 200MB thats nothing!

ive bearly even used up half of my storage, and i have a 4GB! (ok, j/k i have a 8GB, but still )

 

[acosmichippo]

wow, i cant believe so many people are crying over this kind of stuff. i mean is it really THAT important that you need as much space as possible for music or whatever? and its only 200MB thats nothing!

ive bearly even used up half of my storage, and i have a 4GB! (ok, j/k i have a 8GB, but still )

the reason it's such a big deal is not because it's an inconvenience to be out 200MBs of space (especially on an 8GB phone), but because it offers a clue as to how the iPhone and iTunes manage the memory.

it's good to know how your things work.

 

[Hondamaker]

I know this has been covered before, but I can't get rid of the 467 MB of storage-hogs on my iPhone. Anyone know some of that stuff is necessary, but how can I clean it up? What files (and where) can I delete?

 

[x666x]

Did you use BossTool to clean up your primary partition using the Free Disk space feature? It might knock that bloated "others" down a bit.

Additionally, something to consider is that stuff like album covers for your iTunes also get thrown into that "other" category as well.

A bone stock 1.1.3 iPhone has 195 megs in "others" compared to the less than 20 megs 1.1.2 had. Dunno what the difference was, but I was surprised to see that stock phones got hit with the bloat too in 1.1.3.

 

[llrickman]

mine was over 400mb at one point i did a restore it went back to around 200 now about 2 or 3 weeks later im back to about 350mb its only done this since 1.1.3

 

[x666x]

i forgot to mention that if you have been using Mobile Finder to delete stuff that you have to delete those files twice. Once where the files reside normally, then again from the Trash folder.

Press the Apple icon in the top right of Finder, then look inside the trash bin. I had like 5 showtime vids there eating up nearly 200 megs. Anyway, you'll want to dump whatever is in there.

 

[Lincoln]

My jailbroken 1.13 has about 250MB; my stock 1.13 had about 180MB. My jailbroken 1.12 had 15MB, and my stock 1.12 had 10MB.

- John

 

[bunkery2k]

Never looked before now but mines 44meg on a stock 1.12 uk

 

[acosmichippo]

i think the consensus is that the extra "other" is something like memory dedicated to the OS... like page files. The thing is, if you load enough music and stuff onto your phone, when it gets to the point of being full, it will cut down the "other" as much as it can to accommodate the files you want to store. So it's not really keeping you from doing anything less than before... just more orange.

i like orange.

that said, 467 does seem a bit high. i think 200-300 is about normal.

 

[guest0320]

I'm not so sure about the "extra" being "internal" things.

I went through my phone and deleted numerous 3rd party apps (I am jailbroken 1.1.2) and went from 450MB down to 310MB.

I think (if the phone is jailbroken) at least some of the MB are the apps.

Just my opinion.

Dana

 

[IphoneTony]

could the other be the stuff that we deleted like old email or photos that we delete

 

[acosmichippo]

I'm not so sure about the "extra" being "internal" things.

I went through my phone and deleted numerous 3rd party apps (I am jailbroken 1.1.2) and went from 450MB down to 310MB.

I think (if the phone is jailbroken) at least some of the MB are the apps.

Just my opinion.

Dana

yeah, I don't think all of it is for the OS either. my point was that is probablythe reason for the increase between 1.1.2 to 1.1.3.

 

[Doby45]

We got a lot of "other" when they released the phone in Europe and they came out with 1.1.2 (or maybe 1.1.1) which had the additional langauges. The additional langauges include additional keyboards and so forth. When I was on 1.1.2 I went thorough my phone with WinSCP and deleted every directory that referenced French, German and whatever other langauge they pack on there.

 

[JEWISH_GOAT]

My jailbroken 1.13 has about 250MB; my stock 1.13 had about 180MB. My jailbroken 1.12 had 15MB, and my stock 1.12 had 10MB.

- John

I thought you were against jailbreaking? Whend'ja convert?

 

[kdarling]

Some of the other could be bad blocks in the flash memory.

I believe that up to 200MB per 8GB can be unusable and the chip will still pass factory specs. Sort of like bad sectors on a hard drive.

 

[acosmichippo]

Some of the other could be bad blocks in the flash memory.

I believe that up to 200MB per 8GB can be unusable and the chip will still pass factory specs. Sort of like bad sectors on a hard drive.

i would think that would be reflected more in the maximum capacity listed rather than the "Other".