iTunes 8.xx was perfectly happy to let me load up my iPhone until there was only around 600Mb of free space. I just tried removing a few tunes so I could add 110Mb of photos, and repeatedly got the message 'no photos uploaded because there's not enough free space on your iPhone', and it wouldn't play the game until there was 1Gb of free space. This is still in iPhone OS 3.0.1.

I haven't updated my phone's OS yet because I'm waiting to be able to keep it jailbroken - too many indispensable apps on it now, such as the 5-Row QWERTY keyboard (and a 5-icon dock), and a quick scroller, and iRealSMS - a way better SMS/MMS app than the built-in Messages.

*update* - ah, weel that explains it then - the folder of photos I was adding was 1.3Gb, not 110Mb.

Oh, now I see what's going on. My big folder of photos really is only 110Mb, but it's around 1500 not very large photos - average 80Kb (portraits of all the folks in my Buddhist Order around the world). But for each photo that goes on the iPhone, iTunes creates a thumbnail in the iPhone cache - and each one of these is 672Kb. So suddenly there's an extra 1Gb of thumbnails for only 110Mb of photos!

Oh well, it all sort of fits. Come next March when my contract permits it, I'll get the iPhone 7GSTUV with 128Gb of SSD and she'll be apples.

Hah - I start scrolling through those 1500 photos on the phone, and the OS can't handle it and crashes the app. I'll have to wait and see whether OS 3.1 is any better at it.

Isn't that like 1,375 shaved heads that all look the same?

Nope, not a monastic order. Bloody diverse bunch of men and women from 5 continents: coiffed, bald, bearded, ponytailed, you name it. Blessedly few moustaches, or I'd consider resigning.