Help Low on Space

[Chuck1906]

Most of us have seen the notification for Low Space on Phone. I am even getting a notification that says Text Memory is full. Apps that can be moved to my SD Card have already been moved over. Now another thing I find annoying is that I have about 20 apps that need to be updated. So I updated 5 of them today. Then all the sudden the phone is out of space and it won't download the update! I had to go and delete a bunch of big text message threads and deleted some photos and a couple videos out of my gallery then the Low on Space icon went away.

A while back someone suggested that I go through my apps and hit CLEAR CACHE. Well all my Clear Cache buttons are greyed out and not clickable. What happens if I clicked CLEAR DATA instead? Is that the same thing? Will that give me more internal phone storage space????

I have an app called Quick System Info but am not 100% sure how to use it to help my situation out.

I am just getting tired of seeing this Low on Space notification popping up.

 

[teddyearp]

I must be a minority as I have never had a 'low space' notification on my phone.

Is it saying where you are low on space? You said you deleted some pics and stuff, those usually reside on your sdcard. How much free space do you have on yours (sdcard)? I try to keep mine at a point where I have a least 5gig free. Is your phone rooted?

 

[Chuck1906]

No my phone is not rooted. Your right about the pics and videos being on the SD card but when I delete them off, the Low on Space icon goes away so I dunno...Nope that is the biggest complaint I have had with that icon, it doesn't say what exactly is eating up the space.

 

[johnlgalt]

You can see how much space you have available for apps and such by going to Settings --> Applications --> Manage Applications in FroYo-based phones. Once the list populates, give it another minute, and then you can hit the menu/B] softkey and then sort by size - and it will tell you which app is taking all your space.

If you use the "All" tab, it will include system apps as well (those that are a part of the system) like the SMS app.

 

[Chuck1906]

I have a Cache Cleaner and that seems to work sometimes. Tonight I kept getting a notification that my Text memory is full and it wouldn't allow any text messages to come through. I went and I cleared out all my big threads and took almost 5 minutes before it allowed texts to start coming through again! So I am thinking its either big text message threads or emails that are in my trash can on the phone that are eating my phone's space. I try to stay on top of closing apps that are running in the background for no reason. Actually many of those apps that are running in the background I have moved to my SD card. Its hard to tell what is on the phone that is eating up space. I can hardly update my apps without the LOW ON SPACE notification coming on! I have about 30 apps that need an update and I can't update them!

 

[icecold]

If you use the "All" tab, it will include system apps as well (those that are a part of the system) like the SMS app.

Any SMS and MMS will show up under your Dialer Storage, so if that is a huge file, you may need to go in and start deleting text messages...

Chuck, what showed up when you looked under Manage Applications?

Also, you didn't change the boot animation? That would also diminish your phone storage... What is it showing for available memory under SD Card and Phone Storage?

Worse case scenario, you have to delete some apps. Even if you delete PAID apps, you can always install them later on, and they will remain in the android market.

 

[Chuck1906]

I have an app that is called Quick System Info that gives me a lot of options like CLEAR CACHE is one I have been using lately. I am not sure what the boot animation is so as far as I know I have not changed that. I used to have live wall papers but I have since took that off. Memory for SD card is 14.83gb total, 13.10gb Free; Internal Storage: Total 262mb, 26.83mb FREE; System Storage: 140mb total and 14.1mb Free; System Cache: 96.62mb and 64.12 Free.

Yea I deleted a couple apps that I wasn't using that much and that helped a little.

Under Manage Applications, I have it sorted by size:

K-9 Mail 12.79mb
Adobe Flash Player 12.40mb
Maps 11.49mb
Qik 9.73mb
NFL Mobile 9.50mb (i could probably get rid of this till football starts back up IF it starts up with the talk of the possible lockouts)

The rest of my apps start to get lower in (mb) after this point. I will also add that almost more than half of my apps have been moved over to my SD card though.

So I am wondering if my problem has to do with excessive text messages or emails. I have Mail that came with the phone and I have my AOL account connected to that. I also have K-9 Mail where I have 2 accounts connected to that and I also have Gmail where I only have 1 account. Now my inboxes are never super full and I clear them out daily. I then go and try to clear out messages that are in the trash can too to see if that helps opening up some space on the phone. Text message threads that have photos in them get deleted regularly too. I figured the photo is probably eating up space.

Hope all this info means something to you and you can help me better.

Thanks in advance!
Chuck

 

[johnlgalt]

Internal Storage: Total 262mb, 26.83mb FREE;
System Storage: 140mb total and 14.1mb Free;
System Cache: 96.62mb and 64.12 Free.

The red's are getting critical. I don't see how you can have only 26.83 mb free when I have like 100+ apps installed and still have well over 56. OK, I actually can - I have some of my largest apps moved to the SDCard an refuse to use the widgets that come with them - I'd rather have app storage space than widgets.

System storage - 14 MB is dicing it really really close, as the Android System panel (system settings) app alone usually takes around 12-18 mb by itself when it is running. How many apps do you have that are running automatically? How many widgets do you have on your homescreen?

System Cache is only using 32MB, just at 1/3 of total, so that really isn't a problem.

As for emails, if you move them to the trash can, *delete* them / empty the trashcan. If you can set it to do it automatically, then do so.

As for lots of SMS, well, a couple of choices (these are not the only two, just the two that come to my mind first and foremost):

1) Use an alternate, like GV, for SMS, save your phone memory for MMS (since GV cannot do MMS).

2) Use a backup app like SMS Backup & Restore by Ritesh Sahu to make weekly backups of SMS that you can then delete out of your phone's memory, freeing up some space.

Generally, over 200 SMS will start to affect heavily-used phones, so time your backups to when you're approaching ~180 SMS to keep the phone running smoothly. The cool thing is that you can name the backups, and you can easily restore them as well - it takes very little time, unless you enable checking for duplicates. If you're getting more like 200 a week, backup ~weekly. If it is more like 200 a month, then backup ~monthly.

 

[Chuck1906]

I have widgets on each of the 4 screens. 2 of the 4 are completely filled and the other 2 only have a couple on them. So if I go and remove all those widgets from those screens are you saying that will help free up phone space?

I do have the SMS backup and restore. I am going to look into having my emails deleted or have the trashcan emptied automatically. I remember this was a major complaint at one point with a lot of Droid owners...well the Mail that comes with the phone. I try to use K-9 Mail for my daily email needs.

 

[johnlgalt]

Widgets = apps that are continuously running in the background. This is RAM. You need RAM for apps to run. So, removing widgets that you do not really need / use on a regular basis should help a lot in freeing up the System storage space. I think.

I need to look a little more into the app that you are using - let me install it on my DROID and see what it reports versus what I know about my phone and report back. I may be wrong in thinking that system storage is RAM, when in fact it is the space being used by your cache files and SMS and such....

 

[johnlgalt]

OK, looking at the screenshot, I see it now. System Storage is not something that you can really do anything about - it's system storage for a reason. lol. I'm such a goofball....

Internal storage is your application storage - I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think this includes caches. I'm going to test it right now.

 

[johnlgalt]

OK, I checked the info in that app and compared it with what I see in my Cache Cleaner app - your cache files are stored in Internal storage. The system storage you'll not really be able to do anything about. So, it is your internal storage that you need to worry about.

Also, you left one off - Memory that is going to be the other critical one.

 

[icecold]

Under Manage Applications, I have it sorted by size:

K-9 Mail 12.79mb
Adobe Flash Player 12.40mb
Maps 11.49mb
Qik 9.73mb
NFL Mobile 9.50mb (i could probably get rid of this till football starts back up IF it starts up with the talk of the possible lockouts)

Was this under downloaded or ALL tab on the top?

K-9 Mail, you can go under your folders, and delete the trash...that should clear up some of the MB.