Why is IOS taking up most of my storage?

Hi there,

I have an iPhone 12 updated to IOS 15.5 with 64GB of storage. I’ve only had this phone for 2 years and was assured that it would last me 7 when I purchased it from the Apple Store—which is starting to look like a scam considering the phone seems to be more trouble than it’s worth.

I’ve spent the past week going back and forth with customer service through chat and on the phone with an “expert” as to why IOS is taking up most of my storage, and didn’t really receive a clear answer as to why. The person I spoke with kept cutting me off when I was trying to ask specific questions, which leads me to believe that this is possibly a bug with the updates and not an issue with what’s actually on my phone. Here is what I’ve attempted thus far:

• I’ve followed every article on Apple’s support site that I could find on storage, including the main one titled, “How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch”
• I have a total of 12 apps downloaded and went through every single app to clear the caches
• I purchased an Amazon Photos subscription to store all my photos and videos on, as it’s cheaper than using iCloud. I currently have 0 photos or videos currently on my device
• I deleted all of mail in the trash folder
• I deleted any old contacts in the contacts app, so I only have 26 now
• I deleted all of my old notes, currently only leaving me with 11 folders with only a paragraph of text in each one
• I have no music currently downloaded
• I deleted all information on the Health app
• The reminders and books apps are offloaded
• I backed up and restored my iPhone with iTunes on my PC

I’ve done quite literally everything I can do to lower how much space IOS is taking up. I asked the Apple “expert” I spoke to why my phone indicates at the bottom that IOS is only taking up 8.87GB, when clearly it’s taking up so much more than that at the top. She went on to say that, “that’s what 8.87GB looks like.” Clearly, it’s not when all my apps added together should take up more space than 9GB. She added, “that’s just everything else on the phone and how the phone is,” and that, “20GB is still plenty of storage left.” Yet the past year I’ve had to go back every month and clean out every single app on my phone due to the annoying notification that my storage is low.

Although I’ve only ever owned Apple smartphones, I’m beginning to think I already need to trade in this phone for Samsung, as I can’t afford Apple’s high prices on their phones with higher storage. I haven’t even paid this phone off yet, which is just ridiculous to need to do—especially when I was assured that 64GB of storage was “perfect for me” when I bought it.

Is this a bug, or is there anything else I could possibly do to decrease how much storage IOS is taking up?

Any tips would be helpful, as I got no help from Apple support and have searched the internet for hours on end.