Mysterious Memory Blob Gobbles Space on Some iPhones

There seems to be a memory leak with some iPhones that quickly gobbles up the device’s storage space.
A <a href=”http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5025646�’>discussion thread</a> on Apple’s support forums details the iPhone’s “Other” memory category growing to several gigabyte in some cases. (The “Other” category is shown in the iTunes screenshot above)
The source of the memory blob is mysterious, but one sufferer suggests that Google Maps may be causing the problem. The Google widget may be caching every map that’s loaded.
The only way to clear the growing memory blog is to wipe the device and start from scratch. One reader reports that upgrading to 1.1.1 did not free a memory blog that had grown to 1.6GB, but wiping and restoring the phone dropped it to a reasonable 14MB.
Thanks Adrian!


Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: 