iOS 11 GM - Optimize iPhone Storage not working

[embotix]

On my 64GB iPhone SE, I keep hitting the storage limit and am constantly getting the "Low Storage" warning dialog.

Photos is currently up to 39.86 GB -- and climbing (it was at ~21 GB when I updated to the GM build).

Basically, instead of creating more available space by removing sync'd photos & videos, it seems to be trying to download more and more photos & videos off of iCloud, perhaps in an effort to try and run AI/machine learning algorithms locally on the device?

Very annoying - have left it connected to power overnight and put to sleep while in the Photos app in the hope it would do it's thing and eventually clean itself up, but no luck so far.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Hasn't been an issue on my iPad Pro 10.5, though. Maybe it's an SE thing. UI has been very sluggish at times, I suspect due to running of background processes combined with the fact it has little to no local storage available.

When I reluctantly delete apps/data to make more space, Photos keeps swallowing up the available space.

 

[embotix]

iPhone SE became unusable due to this issue (could no longer use apps, iMessage, Mail, etc. without being prompted to clear more space).

I ended up doing a Erase All Content and Settings and planned to do an iCloud backup restore (and if that didn't work, I had planned to set it up from scratch).

Interestingly, as I was doing this with my iPad Pro 10.5 nearby, where it normally asks you for your Apple ID to begin the iCloud restore, I got a prompt on my iPad asking if I wanted to setup my iPhone in combination with iCloud restore!

I would guess this is something new to iOS 11? Can't recall hearing about this with iOS 10.

The nice thing is, I didn't have to re-enter all my account passwords - so it seemed to act like an encrypted backup restore?!

And most importantly, performance was restored as expected (very smooth). Without opening it (I don't dare), the Photos app is not gobbling up all my disk space. I won't be able to avoid using the Photos app indefinitely, so, once that happens I will monitor and report back if the issue re-occurs.