icloud storage

It is not possible to buy more storage for an iPhone; it will never have more than it did when you bought it. What you bought is iCloud+ storage that is used for backing up and also for syncing to other devices. Here is an explanation→What's the difference between device storage and iCloud storage? - Apple Support

iCloud+ has 2 independent functions. iCloud backups, and iCloud sync. It’s confusing because they both have the same name prefix. But they have no connection with each other. Go to Settings/[your name]/iCloud. You will see a bunch of switches (with iOS 16 also tap Show All). When you turn on a switch that data type will sync to iCloud. If you do this on multiple devices that share an Apple ID the selected data will sync to all of those devices. 

You can also turn on iCloud Backups. This will back up your phone every night if the phone is plugged in, connected to Wi-Fi and locked.

But note that anything that you sync by the first method will be excluded from the iCloud backups.

rhianna218 Said:

"iCloud storage: i have recently upgraded my storage to 200GB however when i go to iphone storage it says i have 38gb total and i’ve used 36gb. i don’t know what to do."

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38GB of Total Storage:

38GB is not an available amount of internal storage for an iCloud Plan, nor an iPhone. Where do you see this 38GB?