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Help Storage seems to never be good enough to install apps

Kenzou

Newbie
Feb 4, 2015
29
4
Hi,

I've only had this problem recently, but now I"m finding I delete app after app and programs(such as DI) refuse to install, saying there's insufficient space. By now I've freed up 250-500 MB at the very least, so this shouldnt' be an issue. Any idea why this might be happening? Thanks.
 
No it's a straight forward download and install from either location. You'll need the Amazon app store app though Oh, wait a minute... They've made some changes over there and I'm not to clear on what it's all about. The Amazon App Store app still works if it's on your device already but I can't find it on Google Play or Amazon anymore. Amazon has a new app called Amazon Underground for free apps but I'm still using the old app store so I don't now if DI is in the underground. It should be there though after all it is free.
 
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Ha, glad to hear it! I'd half forgotten about it and checked out several channels today.

Any other ideas for what I might be overlooking, or maybe a thread here that might have specific knowledge on situations like this? It seems really odd. Half suspecting malware--after all, my job requires me to go on shady websites via phone.
 
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I have a handful of tips that may or may not help you.

Generally speaking, deleting pictures won't free up space for apps.

Uninstalling apps can make more space for apps.
Clearing the cache of apps can make more space for apps.

Android is funky with too little storage kept clear.

If you have almost a gig of app space, and a 5-50meg app won't install.... I hate to suggest it, but might be time to start over.
 
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Bobby, how much space does this app take? And Kenzou, how much do you have free and in total? If unsure, running the "Storage Truth" app (see sticky thread on storage in this forum) will give all the information we need.

Apps install to the /data partition. Photos, if not on an actual sd card, will be in /sdcard (which on all but the oldest devices is part of the internal storage emulating an sd card). Now that sounds like they are different, but on most devices since Android 4.0 these 2 areas share the same space, so freeing space on one _does_ free space for the other. The exceptions are old devices (originally released before 4.0) and some, usually cheap Chinese devices, which for reasons nobody can figure out stuck to the old storage model. If you can run Storage Truth and post the results that will tell us exactly what we are dealing with.
 
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Bobby, how much space does this app take? And Kenzou, how much do you have free and in total? If unsure, running the "Storage Truth" app (see sticky thread on storage in this forum) will give all the information we need.

Apps install to the /data partition. Photos, if not on an actual sd card, will be in /sdcard (which on all but the oldest devices is part of the internal storage emulating an sd card). Now that sounds like they are different, but on most devices since Android 4.0 these 2 areas share the same space, so freeing space on one _does_ free space for the other. The exceptions are old devices (originally released before 4.0) and some, usually cheap Chinese devices, which for reasons nobody can figure out stuck to the old storage model. If you can run Storage Truth and post the results that will tell us exactly what we are dealing with.
Listen to Hadron. He didn't start on Chinese crapdroids.
 
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Bobby, how much space does this app take? And Kenzou, how much do you have free and in total? If unsure, running the "Storage Truth" app (see sticky thread on storage in this forum) will give all the information we need.

Apps install to the /data partition. Photos, if not on an actual sd card, will be in /sdcard (which on all but the oldest devices is part of the internal storage emulating an sd card). Now that sounds like they are different, but on most devices since Android 4.0 these 2 areas share the same space, so freeing space on one _does_ free space for the other. The exceptions are old devices (originally released before 4.0) and some, usually cheap Chinese devices, which for reasons nobody can figure out stuck to the old storage model. If you can run Storage Truth and post the results that will tell us exactly what we are dealing with.

Hadron, if you mean how much in /data, I have 2.1G with 1.8G used, with 276.8M free, making it seem even more odd that things usually don't install(though as you can see, Storage Truth did.)

BTW, my phone's an Alcatel A564C, which I'm near certain is Chinese...but is it specifically what you'd call a "cheap Chinese" model? If so, I can't do much about it as I have little reason to use something other than a Tracfone given my low phone/text usage.
 
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I think the problem with that phone isn't an old-style partitioning but that it's just got idiotically little storage in total. As far as I can tell it's a "4 GB" device, but since that 4GB includes the OS, firmware and system cache partitions as well as user storage then 2.1 GB is about the maximum that could be available to the user no matter how it is managed. And that 2.1 GB has to include all of your apps' internal data (whether system or user apps) as well as any apps you install yourself. Back in 2011 that would have been considered plenty (it's about the same that the Samsung Galaxy S2 had for /data), but with the size of apps and their data these days, not any more.

Your problem is probably that Android needs to keep a certain amount of storage free as working space - without this apps would start crashing because they didn't have space to store their data (including temporary caches). The OS designers know this, so they set a minimum amount of storage the phone has to keep free. This is typically around 200 MB (in the old days, when phones didn't necessarily even have 200 MB of storage, it used to be 10% of your space - if you think I'm joking there I still have one of those in my drawer!). So what happens is that if installing an app will leave you with less space than that, the phone will refuse to install it. Storage Truth is tiny, but my guess is that the installed size of DI is too large for it to install without taking you below the minimum.

Does your phone give you the option of moving user-installed apps to SD (as in real SD card)? That was deprecated in Android 4.0, but some manufacturers retained it in some phones, and if I were releasing a phone with that little storage (which actually I wouldn't do these days) I'd make sure I included that option. Look in Settings > Apps > Downloaded, select an app and see if it has a "move to sd" button. If that button is not greyed-out (not all allow you to move them) give it a go. Don't move anything which includes a widget you use though, since the widget will stop working. If you do have this option it might give you a bit more headroom (though it only moves part of the app, and none of the app's internal data, so it's far from perfect).
 
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I see no "move to sd" button at all. This phone's been infuriating me as long as I've had it becuase it allows me to have a 32GB SD card, yet won't let me use it for apps, which would easily eliminate any real problems I have with it given I don't need that many apps. I'd probably try rooting it, but it sounds too risky and I can't afford to replace even this cheap Tracfone model.

Any other alternatives? I swear this thing wasn't so bad about storage until the past week or so. I've deleted about 5 apps that were 50MB or more and it's still doing this.
 
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Yeah, as I said moving apps to SD was deprecated in 4.0, so it's not a total surprise it's not there. Pity though, as it would have been useful. I think Google overestimated the manufacturers and assumed they would include enough storage to make the phones viable without it.

Try clearing caches - that's harmless, and will temporarily free some space, but caches do fill up again. Or look though your apps (all of them, system as well as user, and sorted by size if possible) and see whether there are any particularly large ones you don't need, and especially whether there are any that are storing vast amounts of data. I do wonder whether some app is just storing vast amounts of data, and using your limited space that way. There's another little app called DiskUsage that can give a graphical overview of how your storage is being used, which might be useful in identifying the cause.

Can you set it to store pictures, videos etc on the SD card (the real sd card)? If you ever take videos they will eat your space in no time if they store internally.
 
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Hadron: Right. There are only a few big users, but the thing is I've deleted so much already and it still won't install things that are a fraction of the space I freed up.

DeadDude: Strongly considering rooting, but I don't want to brick the phone, partly because I can't afford it and partly because it was a gift. How risky is it, exactly?
 
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Do you use Facebook? I've found that the app is a HUGE storage hog. Last I checked (before uninstalling it for good) it had almost 200 mb of data stored :eek:

Also, a few questions:
1) do you have automatic updating turned on in Google play?

2) have you uninstalled updates for (and disabled) system apps you don't use?

I find this to be the biggest cause of lost space. I only manually update apps that need it and disable the ones I don't use that I can't uninstall.

Check settings> applications (or apps or app manager, etc) > all (tab)

Play books, magazine, news & music (for example) are all huge apps that I never use. Uninstalling their updates freed up tons of space. YMMV
 
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Lordvincent: I tried uninstalling updates and disabling all the apps I don't use, and I don't know if it's taken care of the problem entirely(I won't know that until I reinstall a bunch of stuff,) but I was able to finally get DI up and running. My guess is that this has solved the problem, apart from the model having an idiotically low amount of storage. Thanks! I still may want to root, but that's likely a topic for another thread.

dontpanicbobby: which file are you referring to?
 
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Resurrecting this thread just to thank Hadron for confirming what I always suspected, that EVEN if you move apps to the SD card, it moves the app itself but not the Data it uses.

So, for example, if you have multiple chat apps (and who doesn't) like Skype, Wechat, Line etc, don't be surprised that the app itself is 5-10 MB, but the data can be 5-10 times that, depending on how much and for how long you've used it.

Time to delete some chat history :)
 
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