Apple iOS has had a serious problem for a very long time, and it seems to be getting worse, or is at least for me. There is a space on iOS devices that is listed as other, and is supposed to be data, be that document data, caches, saves or other things from applications, but it quickly becomes bloated with random crap and can actually completely fill up your device very quickly. In fact I have hit the point where iTunes is in fact reporting that I have more other space than anything else, and enough other to actually not allow my iPhone to sync! Now that is a lot of other data, especially when I last restored my iPhone only a week ago (and a complete restore in iTunes, when you wipe it, re-install the OS and then restore your data and apps from a backup seems to be the only solution to this issue.
Now here is the space on my iPhone.
And here is what iTunes is reporting when I connect my iPhone.
Over 20 GB’s over capacity!
Here is the other space specifically.
And by contrast the Apps and Music space.
Now this is nuts. This is a fresh install of IOS with a restore of my Apps, and I heavily pruned them to make space for more music (as my iPod Classic bit it recently, the horror!).
Now my iPhone won’t even sync because iTunes reports it as over capacity, and yet I have 2 GB free on my iPhone. Now as I said the only real solution is to once again do a backup and restore in iTunes, but this is an imperfect process at best. First off it doesn’t even work from iCloud (I lost 4 months of data when I tried that and had to go back to my last non-cloud backup) and my first restore of my iPhone managed to forget all of my folders and randomly install my Apps until it filled all the pages and stopped installing (though I had more apps on my iPhone before). Another restore fixed this, but it still leaves issues.
You have to re-enter all passwords. And even worse much app data is lost. Google Authenticator will be empty (even with a safe local backup to my computer) so restoring both iOS devices at once is not a good idea, as getting into the things with 2 step authentication without your second password is a huge pain! And apps like SIZER to keep your friends and family clothing sizes just loses all of it data and you have to get it again! And don’t forget to re-log into to your settings for Messages or you will be getting different parts of conversations on different devices!
So just to do a restore, not only does it take at least overnight on your computer, but then you have to spend a good deal of time getting everything working again! Honestly when I backup my iPhone I expect a full backup onto my computer (I can understand a cloud backup being only partial), not a partial backup! Why not make a disc image of the whole install, so a restore literally restores it?
Apple, you need to fix the restore, and especially fix why this Other space bloats to begin with! It has done this since iOS 1, and the problem is only worse now as Apps get bigger and people take more photos and expect to carry more music!