How to resolve iCloud photo syncing problems on iPhone SE?

"iphone does not offload photos to icloud: I have ios 18.4.1; optimized storage turned on; when i look at my profile in photos and check the syncing profile cess its finised; i have 2 TB space in iCloud, only 292 GB used; very frustrating that all the photos and videos stay on my phone and dont offload to iCloud. When i check older photos of 2 years ago, they are still original size. I cant download new ios cause i need 11 gb and i only have 1,5. Pls help"

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Uploading Photos to iCloud:

A. Download All of iCloud Drive:

You can down iCloud to an external drive, and then perform this upgrade. Once downloaded to the drive, verify you can access these. Once verified, trash was is in iCloud Drive. From there, upload these to iCloud. Use my user tip: Getting a Quick and Direct "iCloud Drive-to-External Hard Drive" Download - User Tip

B. Troubleshooting iPhone Storage:

Clear up space, so that you can install the update. Internal storage cannot be upgraded. It is what it is. So, the maximum internal storage capacity never increases, even if you upgraded your iCloud plan. Learn More here: What's the Difference Between Device Storage and iCloud Storage? Apple Support

So, what to do...

Clear Space Using my User Tips:

• How to Clear Space from your Mobile Device, and What to Clear: - User Tip
• How to Clear "Other" in your iPhone's Storage - Use Backup - User Tip

As TheLittles suggests, 1½ GB free is pretty much nothing, and you are in danger of losing valuable stuff. It's even possible, as you seem to be experiencing, that there's not enough free space on your phone to even delete things to make more room! You've got to fix that before you do anything else, and you may not be able to do it in Photos, because there's not enough room. Delete apps. (You can get them back, later.) You may have to delete apps' data. Check the Files app and see if you can off load stuff from there.

The Tips that TheLittles provided have good advice.

Edit,

Perform this upload.

Make space in iCloud to have access to all of these. I Cloud Drive doesn’t use Photos app. So, this 292GB would allow for lots of space —apparently 1.708GB of photos. So, make room in iCloud and have Photos enabled in the iCloud Drive, and all these would upload to it, and then removed from local storage.