About a week ago I replaced my aging 8100 with a 8320. I've always been pretty anal about my free memory and was always in the mid to upper 20's (usually 23-26 megabytes) free with my pearl. That was with lots of apps, games, and themes installed. (At least 6 games, 4 themes, Opera Mini, Viigo, Google maps, BB Weather).

Now I have my curve. Went through the sames steps when I set it up, deleting all the unnecessary stuff. So far besides the basics that the phone requires to function I have Google Maps, Opera Mini, Viigo, and two themes installed. There are maybe 10-15 e-mails, no texts, pictures, etc. That's it. But my phone is showing only 20.9 megabytes free and I haven't even synched my calendar yet!

In the application loader it shows 33,556KB of programs installed.

Assuming the phone should have ~64megs that means I should have ~30 megs minus any application data free. I know I haven't amassed almost 9 megs of e-mails, calendar appointments, pictures, etc yet on the phone. I battery pulled to see if that would free anything up and it didn't. Where/how can I find what what is going on with this ~9 megs of memory that's currently in a black hole?

64 is total memory. You are sitting in the mid 50s for actually available. say 55mb - 33.5mb - 21.5mb, so not far off of your 20.9 and these are just round numbers. Browser cache, installed apps should make up the rest.

BlackBerry FAQ - Where Did my Memory Go?

That makes sence. File total 56.0mb - 33.5mb.

Does the curve just use more memory the the pearl? My pearl had way more free memory with more apps installed.

Wirelessly posted (Verizon 8830)

What affect would the newer OS have on this?

Well I found a 5mb chunk in the "Content Store" database. Backed it up and cleared it out. Now back up to 25mb. Not sure what was in the content store but it's gone now :D