What data is in the other category when I back up my phone?

Hello Everyone,
Like most, my iphone/16gb 4s is bursting at the seams with apps, audio and such. When I look at the categories of data on my phone via itunes and the color bar at the bottom I see photos, apps, audio, etc... I have one large category titled "other". Does anyone know what exactly that is and how can I manage it???
Many thanks for your time!
steve

Hi ambropoetica,
Welcome to the Support Communities!
The article below may be able to help you with this. Click on the link to see more details and screenshots.
iPhone, iPad, and iPod: Understanding capacity
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1867
iOS: "Not enough free space" alert when trying to sync
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1503?viewlocale=en_US
Orphaned files may remain on your iOS device if it is physically disconnected while syncing music, podcasts, videos, or photos. This can prevent iTunes from syncing the iOS device on subsequent sync sessions. When this happens, the Capacity indicator in iTunes may report a large amount of "Other" disk usage for the iOS device. To resolve this issue:
Turn off the music or photo sync option in iTunes for the device.
Click Apply to sync the changes to the device.
Turn the music and photo sync options for the device on again.
Click Apply again to try to sync the device to iTunes.
If the 'Not enough free space' alert appears, continue to step 5.
Turn off the automatic syncing functions for the iOS device. To do this:
Select the iOS device from the iTunes window and click the Summary tab.
Deselect "Automatically sync when this device is connected" and select the "Sync only checked songs and videos" checkbox.
Click Apply to sync the changes to the device.
Reduce the amount of data that is being synced to the device and resync the device. For example, if syncing your Music library exceeds the memory capacity of the device, choose "Selected playlists" to transfer rather than "All songs and playlists" under the Music tab in iTunes.
If the 'Not enough free space' alert appears, continue to step 6.
Restore using iTunes.
Cheers,
- Judy

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when looking at the storage space available on my iphone, there is a large amount of space taken up by "other" (almost 2 GB an dI only have 16 GB). I want to add other things to my phone, but I don't have enough space. The "Other" category only seems to grow and doesn't decrease (like when I delete apps and music, it seems to stay close to the same while apps and music go way down). How can I remove some of this "other" stuff?

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Contacts
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I am trying to find out what is included in the yellow "other" category on my iPad. I have more space taken up by that than anything else.

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Message was edited by: lcivic048678

OK,
I checked my prefernces and you were right, the applications weren't checked. Thank you.
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Go to:
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Now for me, I have about 6GB of music on mine. What I did was select music, Now Left swipe the All Music row and press delete. After that I opened up my phone on iTunes and synced it like normal. The other data was gone after that.
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"Other" data is real data that you put on your phone by using the built in apps. It is not music, not videos, not pictures and not App Store app data. It is "OTHER" meaning everything that does not fall into these categories. Such as:
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Reminders
Calendar entries
Contacts
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iMessages
MMS messages and attachments
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Music cover art
Music library database index (but not the music itself)
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What data is in the other category when I back up my phone?

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