Short version
-iPhone continuously loses memory even when not receiving/downloading or taking photos and auto update off
-delete 200-300mb but will lose all of that a few hours later
-back up, factory setting and then restore becomes 6gb
-had 21k photos/videos but end up with 3k only and now phone have 6gb
-4-5 days later finish my memory already while taking only less than 20 photos

I am using an iPhone 8 64gb and iPhone 11 Pro 64gb. The former is mainly for work which I use WhatsApp for and the latter for photos, social media and surfing the web. With the iPhone 8 I am using it to keep in touch with thousands of my customers so that phone is very crucial.

I am always out of storage. I can have 1gb today and the next morning when I wake up around 100mb where I will struggle to open WhatsApp for work.So I need to spend around an hour deleting and deleting stuffs almost on a daily basis. It is driving me crazy. It never adds up. I calculated all the memory that I am using and I should have at least 5gb free storage but I have none.

So I decided to back up and then update my phone. But in order to update phone I needed 5gb. So I spent days deleting photos and videos both from the camera roll + whatsapp media but as usual I never got back my memory.

I keep on deleting photos and videos both from the camera roll + whatsapp media. But I never got my memory storage back. So last resort was to delete all the apps (Waze, gMail & YouTube and some other small apps like parking apps). I just managed to get the 2.4gb needed to update. Granted I had 21k photos back then.
 
So I backed up my phone and then update to iOS16. But after a few failures I had to to restore it. Wasted 2-3 days of work just to solve this issue. I seem to have lost loads of photos from my album. I went from 21k to only 3k photos. At this point I don't care, I just want memory and WhatsApp back.

Media from 21k to 3k.
Phone storage from 100mb to 6gb.
I am a happy man.

Now 4-5 days later I am back to square ONE where I have no memory to even open WhatsApp.

It is absolutely ridiculous. Today I spent more than 2 hours clearing my WhatsApp media and I am supposed to have a few gigabytes back but I only got 500mb back. How I know is because when I delete something from WhatsApp it shows how many mb has been deleted from a file but on the WhatsApp memory storage counter the memory keeps on increasing instead of reducing.


1) Why is this happening? Why do I keep on losing memory? I have tons of screenshots (because I want to keep track) where I have 1gb and within a minute I've lost hundreds of mb's. And now the most crazy thing, I lost nearly 6gb with barely anything done to the phone. This is beyond ridiculous.

2) on iTunes it says that "other" (which all this while I assumed is WhatsApp) is 38gb but my WhatsApp is now at 28gb. So where did all the rest of the 10gb come from?


3) Documents & data is at 4.82gb (now 3.77gb only) so based on this alone I should have an additional 1gb storage right?


4) on iTunes it says that I have 2.99gb (after typing this message it went up to 3.38gb) free storage but on my phone barely anything. And if you top up from the additional 1gb from "documents & date" this doesn't add up.

5) Even when I add everything up based on my Itunes calculation, I have used 54gb max. So where is the rest?

Thank you

Go to setting, iphone storage and check which app using the most memory.

photo/video and whatsapp can used alot of memory especially if you have sync to ur account. And you said you're using 64gb one, IOS normally taken up 2-5gb. Plus minus the IOS itself need some memory to operate the phone.

Others included any sort of data, not only whatsapp. Like you browsing/ using siri/ or any other thing which save alot of cache into ur phone.

Best is you switch off all the auto-backup & auto sync option, and see how it goes.

Thanks for the reply.
I did turn off the auto backup and auto sync.
Really drives me nuts.

For example last night before sleeping;
28.24gb whatsapp used and 456mb free memory.


Next morning I wake up
28.13gb and I had 381mb free memory.
Deleted around 500-600mb.


This is what I got;
28.07gb used and 386.11mb free.
How does it make sense?


And by noon I've lost all my memory to the point where I can't even open my WhatsApp anymore.
How can I lose minimum 500mb memory while reducing the photos and media from whatsapp and camera album?

hmm, really no idea which apps consume all your data.
Btw, go to your iphone settings, not whatsapp setting

Settings --> General --> iPhone Storage, see which app keep increasing in size.

Best is restore as new, since your whatsapp is sync to iCloud. Can be restore later in the app.

Try disable all sync process after restore as new, den install whatsapp only and restore it. And see if the culprit is whatsapp, try disable auto download in whatsapp if possible. Especially if you got many groups

Delete those unwanted more than 5mb video and also those forward many times video and photo. iPhone can also detect duplicate video or photo and let you merge them, thus saving space

thanks.

i have just done a back up just a few weeks back using iTunes. Was stressful as it wasted 3 days cause it kept on failing.
I prefer to back up using iTunes because my iCloud is full even though I've upgraded to 50gb.
My WhatsApp is really important as it contains thousands of contacts information.
Can never lose it.

Went to iPhone storage
31.61gb - WhatsApp (in the app itself it says 27gb)
7.11 - Photos
2.45 - Voice memo
1.06 - Safari
449.8mb - Twitter
382 - gMail
325.3 - Notes
215.3 - Waze
195.9 - Contacts
192.3 - Messages
136.5 -TnGWallet
77.3 - ASNB
75 - GoogleKeep
57.2 - Shazam
56.8 - Health
55.2mb - FlexiParking
46.9 - SmartSelangor
36.9 - JomParking
31.9 - Mail
31.3 - AeonWallet
27.6 -MySejahtera
22.7 - Music
15.9 - Reminders
8.7 - Calendar
6.2 - now it is gone
2.1 - iCloud drive
1.3 - Translate

iOS- 8.01gb

TOTAL = 52.691gb

Now look at my iTunes
Other is taking up 39.7g6gb (WhatsApp is 27gb on App and 31.61gb in Settings so still don't know where the balance comes from perhaps iOS)

Free 3gb according to iTunes but I dont have any free memory

64gb memory is simply not enough for todays standard.
it's better to get bigger memory handphone & save yourself the headache.

If you got alot of media (Photo/ Video), actually they will have a cache too in IOS. Which you can browse/ load it faster the next time when you looking for it. It is like your web browser, it will save a cache so the next time you browse back the same page will be faster.

So there's nothing you can do about it, perhaps you need to prioritize which media is important and which can be clear in your whatsapp. Otherwise I would suggest you to upgrade your phone to bigger memory or nowadays you can transfer the media to an USB drive for IOS too

I suggest get a new phone with bigger storage to replace your Iphone 8 which is the one you said is very important as you have thousand of customers.

If the data in the phone is the most important then time to get something new with bigger storage for it. Your Iphone 8 is clearly not working properly and you tried to solve the issue but its still there so time to get a new phone.

Also suggest you download whatsapp app on your computer if you have one so in the unfortunate event that something unwanted happen to your phone you can still text and read whatsapp messages.

This post has been edited by PhalanxID: Feb 3 2023, 06:37 AM