what is in the iPhone contents category other

Settings, email, text messages, application data, calendar, contacts, etc.

"Other" is anything iTunes can't recognize. A few hundred MB of "other" is normal and nothing to be concrned about. If you have more than 1 GB of "other" it might represent corrupted data from an interrupted sync or some other anomaly.

If you have excessive "other", you can sync another song to your phone and you might get lucky and clear up the problem.

Most likely, you will have to do a restore to fix it. Follow the instructions in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414 to restore from backup.

I did a full restore (from backup) and still have nearly 8GB of "other" data. I've tried every trick I can find on google, but to no avail!

HELP!

I did a factory restore and it solved the problem, but what a pain

Could it be mail & contacts from my work email that is taking up so much room?

It's hard to imagine that email could take up that much space.

This is a very good question without a straight forward answer! I searched high & low & even went to the apple store to get it figured out. there are many ways to recover some other but 30+gig ? I have a 4s 64gig phone with 30+gig of other & no one could tell me what other is or how to remove it without a clean wipe of the phone, which does not get to the bottom of the issue anyway.

I have been really angry with apple on this subject. Well today I figured out what my 30+gig Other was 🙂 It is anything that itunes & or iphoto cannot control or chooses not to control size wise. I'm not sure how big the files need to be before Itunes & Iphoto crap out but I use my I phone like a universal utility tool. Today I found 2 camera video files that itunes & Iphoto would and or could not recognize or download = other files Geeeeezzzz are you kidding me??? Anyways I had to use an app to remove these files from my phone & bammm I got my 30+gig back 🙂

this is the app I used (iMacsoft iPhone to Mac Transfer.app) since apple Iphoto, Itunes & image capture could not 😟 POS!

What app did you use to remove the files?

Thanks

I believe the "other" category is where email messages are stored, in addition to temporary internet files, etc. The size fluctuates as they are saved or deleted per the rules set up in your email account. My phone is set to sync automatically with our exchange server and will only store 2 weeks worth of messages so that folder, while large, never gets out of hand. If your email is set up to download attachments, the "other" category could get quite large rather quickly with a flurry of email exchanges.

Correct. "Other" is actually where data for all of the built in apps is stored: email, SMS, MMS, Weather & stocks (not much), album art, operating system data, maps, Safari cache, sent images from MMS, iMessage and email, etc.

I also think that when you delete something from the phone (like an app) its data goes into Other until the next sync. I've noticed that Other will grow when I delete something, and then shrink again the next time I sync.

How can i get rid of application data without deleting hte app entirely? I don't want to lost the progress on my games.

I have listed a reply on this thread already, but I'm unsure of what a restore will do to my phone. I don't want to lose the progress in my games but I have nothing else it could be! I have very little contacts, do not have my email accout set up on my phone, deleted my call logs and most of my texts, but still have over half of my space on other (4.4GB out of my small 8GB phone). I'm afraid that if I delete these games (my only two I play are campus life and candy crush) that i will lose all of my progress. But I seem to be able to take less and less photos everytime I move all of my photos to my computer to clear up space.. Any help with these problems would be great. I don't really understand all of this, and don't have another upgrade for my phone for antoher year, or I'd just get a bigger one.

There is no Easy answer for Other! but 1 way to find it is look under settings / general / usage You can find the culprit & decide if you want to delet the app & reinstall or not. Some apps keep all data even after deleting. Splice is one of those apps that i need to delete & reinstall every now & again.

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