new iPhone iOS 18 will likely make these devices unusable
Update: below, kinda resolved. Or at least better understood
Upgrading to the developer beta of iOS 18 requires over 10GB of free space to complete the upgrade. You’re good to go…right? Think twice, you’ll probably need WAY more than the official 11gb for iOS to store all the essential Apple software components.
Even after freeing up the necessary space, something seemed amiss for me. The upgrade process had to be restarted twice to free up additional space. I managed to get everything working after offloading all rarely used apps, deleting old ones, and entirely removing Apple Maps and Google Maps, with a plan to reinstall them later.
Cut to the chase: My somewhat dated iPhone 11 with 64GB of storage managed to complete the update. Yay!
However, a little later, I received the dreaded ‘device full’ warning. It appears that my iCloud photos are filling up any available space. Each time I delete another app, the space is quickly filled again. I’m not entirely sure what is filling it up.
Apple says that iOS 18 is compatible with these iPhone models: iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPhone SE (3rd generation), and iPhone SE (2nd generation).
If you have a storage capacity of 32GB or 64GB, I would expect you to encounter significant difficulties.In other words, if you have an older non-Pro version, check first. The iPhone X, 11, and 12 are the models most at risk, especially if, like me, you have the 64GB version.
So is it time for an iPhone upgrade instead? If you haven’t replaced your battery it’ll likely be on its last legs in any case. All you have to do now is find about $1000 for a decent iPhone replacement for a phone bought less than 3 years ago from an Apple store and that’s what I’m doing today! #Sigh I got £130 ($150) trade-in for a very good condition iPhone 11 64gb, which effectively gave me the bump from 128gb to 256gb (£140 was the max, I guess they docked a bit for tiny surface scratches and the battery being at 77% longevity)
I bought a 256Gb iPhone 15 Pro
I bought a 256Gb iPhone 15 Pro to resolve the problem. Initially, it appeared to. However the following day I woke up to find that was full. Again it was full of over 200Gb of system data. Desperation and exasperation ensued. I spoke to Apple support who got their ‘proper’ offline tech people involved and they helpfully concluded that “something in the backup” had caused it.
I had traded my iPhone 11 in and there were no older backups to revert to. so I was stuck. the only option was to wipe the phone and rebuild all the apps and passwords from scratch. That was the Apple solution, #pathetic.
However, I noticed that the system space would fluctuate up and down by a couple of gigs, making it intermittently useful. With the device full message appearing and going away and reappeaering.
So much data was being sent that I assume TalkTalk (my fibre 150 provider) throttled my connection to certain kinds of traffic to apple.com, meaning everything took forever.
A few more days later everything has settled down and is ok. I’m back down to 30gigs of system storage (or whatever the actual amount is, right now)..anyway, nowhere near 200gigs!! so I’m happy.
What I think is happening is that certain files are being processed for new formats and new features. Maybe my photos are being analysed and categorised for the new photos app??? IDK but that extra system space is doing something temporary and, luckily for me, it eventually finishes whatever it is doing and settles down.
Thus my original iPhone 11 may have also been OK after a week or so. I had much less space to play with and as a result it may have taken longer to finish whatever it was doing. Even so, it would still have been left with only a small amount of space, so I guess I had to upgrade.
I searched around on the net for solutions and this problem reoccurs historically on many iOS versions and many iPhone models. Previous solutions involved putting the iPhone into aeroplane mode and changing the date forward a year, presumably to make cached items appear very old and be automatically deleted. That did NOT work for me.
My solution: give the upgrade a week and see what happens. Please share your experience below as this post is getting quite a few hits so obviously others are having the same problem – or don’t upgrade in the first place.
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Wonderful review. I will now be waiting for the official version of iOS 18. Thank you for the time and effort. You have likely saved me from going crazy.
yes but I’m going crazy 😉
Thank you for the info.
thanks for info.