What exactly is Device Memory and is it possible to see it's contents? I'm using Sony Xperia L (Non-Rooted, Stock OS) which shows me I have 1.52 GBs of Device Memory. "Apps and Media" are taking up 0.98 GB and ~240MB is remaining free. I don't understand where all that extra memory has gone to. 

So what exactly is this Device Memory? I read that it's "the memory where Android installs Apps". That doesn't really answer my question because I'm trying to get a better understanding of the missing space here and I hardly have Apps installed. So does anyone know:

1) What is the location on the Internal Memory that is considered as Device Memory? I mean is it a Folder?

2) How exactly does Android go about calculating that "Apps &amp; Media"

3) Is there any way of seeing the File/Folder contents of Device Memory?

If we go to Settings> Storage we have a section called Device Memory. Here is a screenshot from my phone. 

Notice how the space breakup doesn't add up here.
After a lot of searching around and trial and error I stumbled across the answer to this.


  1) What is the location on the Internal Memory that is considered as
  Device Memory? I mean is it a Folder?


Yes. Device Memory is calculated from the Data folder present under root.


  2) How exactly does Android go about calculating that "Apps &amp; Media"
  
  3) Is there any way of seeing the File/Folder contents of Device
  Memory?


The "Device Memory" includes all the contents of that /Data folder. 


Apps: (apps that are actually installed on my phone), 
Data: that is used by these installed apps, 
Core. I'm yet to find out about this.
Dalvik Cache: Which gets created for each app that is installed. There is a particular file that is taken from each apk file installed on the phone and put here on the Dalvik Cache.
Free Space: Finally the much needed answer to where all my free space went off too. It got consumed by the way "Device Memory" is architectured. So if you install around 400MB of apps that is enough to actually fill up 1.5GB of Data folder.


Hope this was of help. Here is a screenshot for reference.