I have an iPhone 5S running iOS 8.1.3. I have removed all photos from the phone (i.e. the Camera Roll is empty). However, under Settings -> General -> Usage -> Manage Storage, it reports that 1.9 GB is still in use for Photos & Camera. Specifically, underneath that, it reports that 1.9 GB is being used for the Photo Library (which is ostensibly empty). This is a large chunk of the storage on my 16 GB phone!
I have tried doing a factory reset of the phone and restoring from backup, with no effect; it still reports the excessive storage usage. I've checked the following:
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The Photo Library (and Recently Deleted) is empty.
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Photo Stream is not enabled.
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iCloud "Photos" is not enabled.
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There is no photo sharing of any kind enabled.
Is there anything else that I should look at to determine why the incorrect amount of usage is being reported?
Best Answer
apparently the "recently deleted"-feature in iOS8 is broken. Photos you've deleted don't disappear after 30 days, they're just hidden on your device. The storage being used isn't "phantom usage", since the photos are still safely stored. The easiest short term solution is to set back your date on the phone month by month (until the release of iOS8), and your deleted photos will reappear in the "recently deleted"-folder. There you can manually and permanently delete them.
As long you regularly delete all "recently deleted" images, your storage won't clog up.
If you want to get an overview of the photos on your iphone just download iexplorer. There you'll see all of them, even those you can't see on your iphone.
Here's a blog post about the issue: https://blog.tmoehle.de/ios-photo-problem/
Cheers,