Storage issues on iOS 11.1 after update

Hey all,

My trusty old iphone 5 16GB was showing signs of ageing and so I got an SE 32Gb to replace it with.
Out of the box the SE was still on 10.3.x, my 5 was at the same version.
I updated my itunes to the latest version too (I prefer using that for updates/backups along with the icloud backup option).

Activating the SE worked like a bliss, restoring my fresh icloud backup too. All seemed well...

I instructed itunes to download the software update tot iOS 11.1 and from then on the problems started.
Initially itunes wouldn't install the update because of error 4000. Trying again made it continue and it appeared to be installed.

Soon after that I started getting notifications about low storage space.
You might understand my surprise since it has double the storage space and of all problems I'd expect, this wasn't one of them..

I checked where the problem sat and it appeared to be in the podcast app. I listen to podcasts a lot but since the limited storage space on my 16GB model I'd set restrictions to the channels I subscribed to (like deleting after listening and restricting it to only the 2 newest episodes, stuff like that).

On my SE though I noticed the podcast app had a huge list of pending downloads. May of episodes from years back that were certainly not on my 5 beforehand.

I went into the settings of podcasts/subscriptions and they were all the same (eg.: the same restrictions should be active).Well they weren't: I couldn't even stop the downloads (I could swipe them left and cancel but they would reappear again out of nothing).

Out of some sort of desperation I decided to delete the podcast app alltogether to see if that'd reset it.

Nope sir/madam: my SE kept nagging about the storage space and when I went to settings>storage I noticed a big grey bar that took about 80% of the entire thing. Scrolling down on that page showed that "System" was taking 29,7 GB of the total space.

Up until this point I haven't been able to solve it. Restarting/forced restarting, deleting podcasts from library and/or removing other apps: nothing gave me back the storage space.

My next step will be a reinstall to see if that helps. I'm planning on restoring my icloud backup and might have to tinker around with the new restore-settings.

If that results in the same issue, I might have to bypass my whole backup but suffice to say, that will be the final solution since it will take "some" time to restore and setup everything manually. Especially since the new itunes lost the option to sync apps (which I used prefereably) since my WiFi ain't all that great here.

This message is primarely intended as a "shared experience" but of course I would appreciate any suggestions or similar experiences from my fellow apple users.

It's not meant to critisize in any way, I just want my beautiful SE to work and now it doesn't so I felt the urge to share that with you all.

My "attack plan" is as follows:

(with Transfer content from your previous iOS device to your new iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support aside for reference)

- Delete settings and data from iphone through settings menu.

- Setup my SE to restore the most recent iCloud backup again (but now it's on iOS 11 instead of 10.3.3 as before).

- See if it works, if not: repeat and tinker with restore settings.

- Restore as new device if all else fails.

I'll keep you all posted.