25 MB Free - That's right.

[dkaufman1]

My G1 had been having major force close issues with pretty much every app. It would take 90 second for the wallpaper to appear and then another 30-45 for all icons and widgets to appear on the home screen. And orientation had stopped working. All of this was getting frustrating.

I had about 8MB free on my internal memory (just above the persistent notification threshold). I cleared it out to 16MB but no change.

So I called Customer Care (CC). I got some great info I thought I would share.

The G1 needs 20-25 MB of free internal memory or things go haywire. My CC rep reported phone ringing issues (which I had been having) data disappearing and more.

I mentioned how this wasn't documented and she agreed. The only option I had was to wipe the phone. (There are many threads on how to do this, and the steps to take prior, so as to not lose everything.)

I have since been using the phone with no issue, everything is working and I only uploaded essentials and sit at about 40MB free at the moment. It was a pain to re-associate ringtones and other small personalizations but many things returned as expected.

I hope this helps some folks who are running their phone to capacity like I was and growing frustrated. I also hope we see bigger memory, stronger processors and the ability to use the card.

I do use ASTRO which was a lifesaver in this wipe and reboot. Hope this helps some people.

 

[justjimjpc]

My G1 had been having major force close issues with pretty much every app. It would take 90 second for the wallpaper to appear and then another 30-45 for all icons and widgets to appear on the home screen. And orientation had stopped working. All of this was getting frustrating.

I had about 8MB free on my internal memory (just above the persistent notification threshold). I cleared it out to 16MB but no change.

So I called Customer Care (CC). I got some great info I thought I would share.

The G1 needs 20-25 MB of free internal memory or things go haywire. My CC rep reported phone ringing issues (which I had been having) data disappearing and more.

I mentioned how this wasn't documented and she agreed. The only option I had was to wipe the phone. (There are many threads on how to do this, and the steps to take prior, so as to not lose everything.)

I have since been using the phone with no issue, everything is working and I only uploaded essentials and sit at about 40MB free at the moment. It was a pain to re-associate ringtones and other small personalizations but many things returned as expected.

I hope this helps some folks who are running their phone to capacity like I was and growing frustrated. I also hope we see bigger memory, stronger processors and the ability to use the card.

I do use ASTRO which was a lifesaver in this wipe and reboot. Hope this helps some people.

There is a much better app "MyBackup PRO" You can backup Apps and all the Phone's Settings .... Save the backupfile with a date_time as part of the backup name and you can keep track of which file was for what ...

You can select just specifics apps or settings sms, phone log ..whatever ...

I always do Select All for both Apps & Data ....

there are other options for doing scheduled backups ... but i have not used that feature ...

 

[dkaufman1]

There is a much better app "MyBackup PRO" You can backup Apps and all the Phone's Settings .... Save the backupfile with a date_time as part of the backup name and you can keep track of which file was for what ...

You can select just specifics apps or settings sms, phone log ..whatever ...

I always do Select All for both Apps & Data ....

there are other options for doing scheduled backups ... but i have not used that feature ...

Jim - that is a good follow up post. I could see where that type of app would be very useful.

I know you keep your device pretty full, what is your normal on board free storage space look like?

 

[justjimjpc]

Jim - that is a good follow up post. I could see where that type of app would be very useful.

I know you keep your device pretty full, what is your normal on board free storage space look like?

Internal phone : 55MB with Ext3 available 648 295 Apps

 

[noonehereyet]

Internal space 78mb available, EXT3 available 465mb

 

[punkzanyj]

there's a great program called "App Manager" that could be helpful in this situation. I don't know what would happen if you wiped the phone and reloaded the manager (whether it would recognize the backed up apps or not) but it works pretty good so far.

I've been "collecting" apps, so to speak, since october. If I don't like an app, I ditch it after a week (another reason not to pay for any apps). If I like it, but don't use it, I make sure it's backed up to the SD Card using App Manager and then I uninstall it. I can install it again from my SD Card at a later date.

This is good because:

1. Sometimes some apps disappear from the market, like FBook, ABlogger
2. Sometimes a dev decides to steal functionality from the free version so that you're more likely to pay for the full version.
3. You may want/need the app in a situation where you don't have access to the market: out of range, underground, data outage.

App Manager doesn't appear to run by itself and seems to not have any force close issues that I've seen.

I would also recommmend

SMS Backup - Routinely backs up your texts to your gmail account with "SMS" label
BookmarkBR - Backs up your browser bookmarks

 

[dkaufman1]

there's a great program called "App Manager" that could be helpful in this situation. I don't know what would happen if you wiped the phone and reloaded the manager (whether it would recognize the backed up apps or not) but it works pretty good so far.

I've been "collecting" apps, so to speak, since october. If I don't like an app, I ditch it after a week (another reason not to pay for any apps). If I like it, but don't use it, I make sure it's backed up to the SD Card using App Manager and then I uninstall it. I can install it again from my SD Card at a later date.

This is good because:

1. Sometimes some apps disappear from the market, like FBook, ABlogger
2. Sometimes a dev decides to steal functionality from the free version so that you're more likely to pay for the full version.
3. You may want/need the app in a situation where you don't have access to the market: out of range, underground, data outage.

App Manager doesn't appear to run by itself and seems to not have any force close issues that I've seen.

I would also recommmend

SMS Backup - Routinely backs up your texts to your gmail account with "SMS" label
BookmarkBR - Backs up your browser bookmarks

ASTRO's app manager seems to do this as well and I love that.

 

[dkaufman1]

Internal space 78mb available, EXT3 available 465mb

Jim this is for you too...

What does EXT3 mean? I get the internal space quote.

Both of you have very impressive internal space btw. Unreal. I am done to 37 MB. Sigh.

 

[justjimjpc]

Jim this is for you too...

What does EXT3 mean? I get the internal space quote.

Both of you have very impressive internal space btw. Unreal. I am done to 37 MB. Sigh.

I am not sure the diff in ext2/ext3/ext4 (linux world stuff) but since I am rooted with a Build that will automatically do Apps2SD and it will upgrade the older ext2 to ext3 ... I just formatted my new class 6 - 8GB sdcard to ext3 and then i just moved the files from the older SD to the New ...

My total internal space is the 88-89 MB (seen this spec to vary) and I have had as high as 74-75 MB free (internal) ...

The ext3 partition i did was around 885 MB and the remainder of the sdcard was FAT32 ... so probably never use that 885MB but there in case the system was to need it ...

 

[dkaufman1]

I am not sure the diff in ext2/ext3/ext4 (linux world stuff) but since I am rooted with a Build that will automatically do Apps2SD and it will upgrade the older ext2 to ext3 ... I just formatted my new class 6 - 8GB sdcard to ext3 and then i just moved the files from the older SD to the New ...

My total internal space is the 88-89 MB (seen this spec to vary) and I have had as high as 74-75 MB free (internal) ...

The ext3 partition i did was around 885 MB and the remainder of the sdcard was FAT32 ... so probably never use that 885MB but there in case the system was to need it ...

So that means you are using the EXT3 as a faked internal memory? Essentially?

Is that how you keep the internal memory so clean?

And this all cause you root?

 

[justjimjpc]

So that means you are using the EXT3 as a faked internal memory? Essentially?

Is that how you keep the internal memory so clean?

And this all cause you root?

Exactly ... I want to ask a dev about using that extra fast Internal memory as a place to store most often used apps (like a list from Launcher) and that way you get the load speed of internal from most used apps and still the extra memory for swap/multi tasking