Sean Dempsey
macrumors 68000
The "Other" is where they are holding your Asperger medication. I suggest you take it.
Mysterious 200MB of "other" on my iPhone
- Thread starter bollweevil
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Let's look at this logically:
1. You upgrade from 1.x to 2.0, and 'others' increase to 200MB. What happen if you were to do a clean ( no backup ) restore on 2.0?
2. How about a brand new iPhone with 2.0. Does it come with 7.27GB free or 7.08GB?
If the answer to 1 is no 'others' if you do a clean restore, and a brand new iPhone 2.0 is 7.27GB free, then we can conclude/deduce that its a glitch/deficiency in iTunes. The latest iTunes can read the 2.0 directory structure and aggregate the diskspace correctly but is 'confused' when trying to do so on an upgraded phone as it has some junk directories. As such iTunes reported the junks as 'others'.
1. You upgrade from 1.x to 2.0, and 'others' increase to 200MB. What happen if you were to do a clean ( no backup ) restore on 2.0?
2. How about a brand new iPhone with 2.0. Does it come with 7.27GB free or 7.08GB?
If the answer to 1 is no 'others' if you do a clean restore, and a brand new iPhone 2.0 is 7.27GB free, then we can conclude/deduce that its a glitch/deficiency in iTunes. The latest iTunes can read the 2.0 directory structure and aggregate the diskspace correctly but is 'confused' when trying to do so on an upgraded phone as it has some junk directories. As such iTunes reported the junks as 'others'.
IgnatiusTheKing
macrumors 68040
I have a brand new iPhone 3G and my "other" is even higher than 200MB. I figure it's the OS, text messages, album artwork, contacts (and images associated with them), etc.
Pretty simple, really.
I think people are all looking at different locations for their phone capacity. The capacity is not going to be 8gb or 16gb it is going to be smaller than that, just like every storage device that exists and it is going to be a bigger difference the larger the "supposed" capacity is. It the settings -> about section of my 16GB 2G phone i have 14.6GB capacity. I think people are getting a little too worked up about this. All storage devices mislead the customer. For example my 1TB My Book has 800 something GB. That is 150+ GB missing.
bollweevil
macrumors 6502
No, it certainly is not just me and you. I have checked on one other iPhone original with 2.0 firmware - it also had 7.08 GB "capacity", just as I suspected. I have not seen a single iPhone original with 2.0 firmware that still had 7.27 GB. It had almost 200 MB of "other", in case anyone was interested.
My theory:
1.x firmware on a non-3G iPhone <---> 7.27 GB capacity
2.0 firmware on a non-3G iPhone <---> 7.08 GB capacity
No other factors impact capacity, only the firmware (aka OS)
Corollary:
"Other" is NOT the OS. "Other" is a variety of other things - isn't that intuitive? Yes, that does include your contacts and notes and calendars and stuff. It also happens to include...
Dark data! Dark data is analogous to dark matter - dark data often comprises the majority of the data in "other", but it defies explanation or observation. It can also be destroyed by simply replacing it with normal data, which is where the analogy with dark matter breaks down.
I have purged my iPhone of dark data and freed up almost 200 MB of space - space that I filled with songs! Carousel is a lie!
bollweevil
macrumors 6502
Any more ideas? Is anyone going to challenge my theory, or have I written the definitive work on this subject? Seriously, I would like to know what is going on.
kdarling
macrumors P6
1) According to an Apple employee on their forum...
"The iPhone 2.0 OS partition is a little larger than the previous versions. This applies to the original iPhone after the update as well."
2) The iPhone doesn't have a hard drive. It does not even have a flash drive, which consists of flash and a controller to make it look like a hard disk.
The iPhone uses raw, dumb, flash memory. That means an 8GB phone has a full 8GB before formatting. That's 8,589,934,592 bytes, not 8,000,000,000.
It also means that the OS has to implement a flash memory file system on its own and spend time erasing / rewriting blocks, handling blocks going bad, etc.
"The iPhone 2.0 OS partition is a little larger than the previous versions. This applies to the original iPhone after the update as well."
2) The iPhone doesn't have a hard drive. It does not even have a flash drive, which consists of flash and a controller to make it look like a hard disk.
The iPhone uses raw, dumb, flash memory. That means an 8GB phone has a full 8GB before formatting. That's 8,589,934,592 bytes, not 8,000,000,000.
It also means that the OS has to implement a flash memory file system on its own and spend time erasing / rewriting blocks, handling blocks going bad, etc.
I tried changing the size of the root partition with pwnage, and it does not change the amount of 'other'. I think 'other' is just temp files from google maps/mail/safari. The OS is much larger then 200mb. The iphone software you download is a zip file, so it is larger then the download once it gets put on the phone.
Geckotek
macrumors G3
I was going to say that often OSes reserve space for things OSes do. So it's probably some sort of reserved or temporary file space.
NeoMayhem's answer is also very plausible.
Seriously, why does it matter? Are you trying to become an iPhone OS architect? Move on.
iphonematt
Guest
iTunes doesn't have a gauge for application size so my best guess would be that "other" is apps and other stuff.
diamond.g
macrumors G5
Correct, apps show up under other.
michaelmaxwell2
macrumors regular
my 16gb is showing a capacity of 14.64gbs.
gibbz
macrumors 68030
This is a rather funny thread.
Perhaps people who are confused should read this on a MacRumors Guide page or here to fully understand why the true capacity is less than advertised.
Look, a computer sees a KB as 1024 Bytes (2^10), while the manufacturers use 1000 Bytes to be equal to a KB.
So basic math tells us that a "GB" according to manufacturers is 1000^3 = 1,000,000,000 Bytes. While a computer sees a GB as 1024^3 = 1,073,741,824 Bytes. That is exactly why there is roughly 7 - 8% less capacity than what the box claims. A side note: the actual term for a computer GB is Gibibyte (GiB). GB is simply used interchangeably, thus why people are confused or upset that they get less than advertised. See here for a description.
Let's translate this to my 16GB iPhone.
iPhone sees 16,000,000,000 Bytes.
Formatted amount is really 16,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 ~= 14.9.
Now subtract the roughly 225 MB of firmware and any additional system stuff, and there you get close to the 14.65 GB capacity that my iPhone tells me I have.
It certainly seems reasonable that firmware changes can account for the slight drop in the OP's capacity.
Perhaps people who are confused should read this on a MacRumors Guide page or here to fully understand why the true capacity is less than advertised.
Look, a computer sees a KB as 1024 Bytes (2^10), while the manufacturers use 1000 Bytes to be equal to a KB.
So basic math tells us that a "GB" according to manufacturers is 1000^3 = 1,000,000,000 Bytes. While a computer sees a GB as 1024^3 = 1,073,741,824 Bytes. That is exactly why there is roughly 7 - 8% less capacity than what the box claims. A side note: the actual term for a computer GB is Gibibyte (GiB). GB is simply used interchangeably, thus why people are confused or upset that they get less than advertised. See here for a description.
Let's translate this to my 16GB iPhone.
iPhone sees 16,000,000,000 Bytes.
Formatted amount is really 16,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 ~= 14.9.
Now subtract the roughly 225 MB of firmware and any additional system stuff, and there you get close to the 14.65 GB capacity that my iPhone tells me I have.
It certainly seems reasonable that firmware changes can account for the slight drop in the OP's capacity.
