What's the "other" in phone storage?

[anonymous123456987]

from Nokia discussions:

The Other category consists mostly of various operating system caches (temporary files), Maps and 3rd party application data. Also email, calendar, contacts and Office application data counts towards this figure, but are typically smaller contributors.

The figure shows how much content, downloaded through normal use of the phone, remains available for re-use. For example, when the phone is used to browse the Internet, or install applications and application updates, the caches related to these functions grow in size correspondingly. Another contributor to growth of this category is Maps data, whether it is downloaded on-demand when browsing around in Nokia Maps or when you download the maps of entire countries or other regions for off-line use. Furthermore, Photos, Music and Video create an index that grows with number the files located in Phone memory and in any inserted micro-SD card.

the link: Re: What is "Other" under Storage? - Nokia Support Discussions

 

[MMFF77]

Nobody can say how to resolve this situation I'm in the other 10gb

 

[travisel]

My other is 6GB what would use that crazy amount? Is it just reserved memory? We should be able to set OTHER amount limit!
2GB would be plenty for SMS, MMS and Email ...and when the limit is reached the OS should tell you!

 

[1101x10]

from Nokia discussions:

The Other category consists mostly of various operating system caches (temporary files), Maps and 3rd party application data...

the link: Re: What is "Other" under Storage? - Nokia Support Discussions

That seems strange as all the 3rd party apps store their data within their own folder so the storage should just be included in the apps figure.

 

[RuleOfSines]

I don't have enough stuff on my phone to test it, but if it is really be used as a cache, perhaps WP8 would automatically purge old data as space is required. Rather than constantly checking and clearing cache files it waits until it is necessary to do so, similar to how it manages memory if you don't back out of apps.

Has anyone with a huge "Other" category tried deliberately using up all the remaining space to see what happens?

 

[Bilal_Fakih]

my god how many threads about the "other" storage... where are the admins i mean please guys search the forums before posting threads!

 

[kcpr_raffaEl]

Did you tried this:

Shrink Storage | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

I'll try it and let you know what happened...

 

[KHROMAsynthetik]

I think one of these 'Other storage' threads should be stickied, as there seem to be a handful floating about.

 

[kcpr_raffaEl]

Ok, I've tried this Shrink Storage Program and it worked for me.

Got back all my free space on SD.

Used on HTC 8S.

 

[AskaLangly]

Did you know that Portico wiped 1~2GB of Other for me?

 

[YoHarry72]

I used the "Shrink Storage" app without any significant result..

My "Other" storage is at around 1.6 GB and growing each day...I did a complete phone reset several times and it still grows each day..

I have purged most Apps (I thought the idea of a smart phone is to actually HAVE apps) to see if that makes any difference...nope

This has taken on the definition of dating_>>> Repeating the same thing while expecting different results (otherwise known as a definition of insanity)
in conclusion: my phone looks good, feels good but comes with a lot of baggage while becoming increasingly disfunctional.


so, the only option to me at this point is to switch the platform..too bad, I actually enjoy this OS

 

[tyler1000]

The phone will notify it is short of storage, keep poping up the notification, and it doesn't tell you how to solve it. The phone will be very slow, and you have to do the fatory reset. it is very annoying. I think WP8 is not matrure enough to launch in market.

 

[Jithinmjose]

i am tired waiting for the update from microsoft. huh... my others folder is taking 7gb and im tired of seeeing low disc space in my mob.. this is really annoying after spending 40k INR.

 

[Jewels22185]

Because there is already a "System" that takes up space and my "other" is 13gb OF MY 14GB on the phone

 

[daniel_sherlock]

Just reset my phone and got the other file down to less than 300MB. Come on Microsoft PATCH THIS NOW

 

[Mohak Adav]

Same thing is happening with my Lumia 720 .
The other storage and Apps size are increasing day by day. I'm worried because of that.

 

[Vikash K]

I also ran into this issue lately. After waiting for several month for a fix from the vendor, I decided to go for a phone reset. Back up my stuff to the SD card and did the reset. After doing the reset my other folder came to like 135mb and after installing skype, configuring mails, wifi,...it came to 400mb.

To not ran into this mess again, I put some movies on my phone memory (like 4-5 movies amounting to 4gb). So that next time the phone eats up all the phone memory, I know I can delete those movies progressively to free up some space and buy some time till that fix from MS comes. I need not to worry about phone memory too much as long as I have gigs of space on my SD card. But you need to keep enough memory on the phone to run the applications, like 500mb minimum.

Also, turned off SkyDrive and if you have Bing photos as lock screens disabled that too, to minimize any risks after the reset.

 

[Kevin Rush]

I have 6.7 GB of "Other" internal memory! This leaves 600 MB of free space on my Nokia Lumia 822 on Verizon. I don't want to do a factory reset to eliminate most of the "Other". I keep hoping MicroSoft will issue a fix so I won't have to spend my time resetting and restoring my phone.

 

[TOrsha Desai]

i tried to do that!! but it doesn't show anything!! :angry: i am unable to get my phone update!!!