What Is Filling Up My Internal Storage?

[Android Central Question]

I have a Galaxy S5 Neo (model # SM-G903W) with 16 GB of built in storage on Android version 7.0. I have no idea how much of that matters.

I've looked in my internal storage and none of the visible files account for all the space it says has been used. I'm currently at 0.99 GB remaining out of 11 GB. I don't know where the other 5 GBs of my 16 GB storage is, but I assume it's floating around somewhere being used by the OS and other such mandatory files.

When I use the file explorer or plug my phone into my PC, this is what I see in internal storage:

Android (6839 files, 534 folders) ... 352 MB
Books (0 files, 0 folders) ... 0 bytes
DCIM (334 files, 6 folders) ... 1.03 GB
Download (50 files, 0 folders) ... 50.5 MB
Kindle (0 files, 0 folders) ... 0 bytes
Mob (0 files, 2 folders) ... 0 bytes
Music (385 files, 23 folders) ... 2.37 GB
Pictures (7 files, 3 folders) ... 6.47 MB
Playlists (0 files, 0 folders) ... 0 bytes
Samsung (0 files, 0 folders) ... 0 bytes
Wear (0 files, 0 folders) ... 0 bytes

And according to Device Maintenance, I have 2.17 GB of apps installed (though that probably does not count the ridiculous bloatware included on Samsung phones).

All that adds up to about 6 GB. So what mysterious things are secretly on my phone? I'd be glad to clear them out!

Things I've Done:
Turned it off and back on again
Taken out the battery
Updated my phone
Made hidden files visible
Cleared out my cache
Done my best to locate and clear out temp file dumps

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! The 5 GB is taken up by the OS and preinstalled bloatware. You can never use every single GB of a phone's internal storage -- some part of it will always be taken up by the OS and preinstalled apps. On average, a 16 GB device will have around 11-12 GB free to the user.

 

[chanchan05]

That's pretty normal for any device. I mean buy any laptop and you'd see anywhere from 20-50GB of the hard drive used up by the OS. Same goes for phones.