It's been rumbling on for months and has caused many people to give up with Windows Phone 8 and, presumably, many more to avoid phones running the operating system.
Yup...it's the old "other" storage problem where the "other" section of devices' in-built storage continues to grow and grow and, for some with small in-built storage, making their devices throw up a running-out-of-storage warning and stop working properly .
The "other" storage, as far as we understand, is home to temporary files, installer files and some stuff you need, like email attachments and copies of photos being backed up to SkyDrive.
Again as far as we know, it should clear itself out at critical times when space needs to be reclaimed, but it hasn't been doing this efficiently.
On the plus side, it's also thought that having this "other" space helps make WP8 the smooth and responsive operating system it is even on devices with lower RAM.
At the weekend, Microsoft's Windows Phone boss Joe Belfiore tweeted that the WP8 update GDR2 - currently being slowly rolled out - fixes the problem on the new Nokia Lumia 1020, which has it already installed.
But he failed to tell us if the update will fix things for other devices when they get it.
He's now tweeted again:
OK. That give us a little more information. It seems GDR2 will make WP8 properly clean up the "other" files.
So can owners of WP8 phones who're seeing "other" increase to up to 3GB or 4GB or more now rest easy and wait for GDR2 to solve their storage problems?
No, they can't.
We still have not had a proper explanation of what the problem is...and, more importantly, exactly what Microsoft is doing about it.
The odd tweet here and there from Belfiore is not a proper or informative way of Microsoft owning up to the bug and telling us in detail what the fix is and how successful it is.
Worry over this problem has been going on for too long - ever since WP8 was released.
It's about time Microsoft came clean...and not just in 140 characters.
(Source: Joe Belfiore on Twitter)
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