Help Galaxy S Internal Memory Problem

[mystii]

Ok, so this happened a few weeks ago now, but I've only just got around to trying to sort it out.

So, I got the Galaxy S i9000 at the beginning of December 2010. I installed quite a few apps, and always downloaded the updates. My internal SD Card got down to around 2.2GB, and my Internal Phone Storage got to 1.62GB. (I also have a 16GB external SD card with 473MB remaining, but I don't think that's relevant). Anyway, aabout a month ago, I downloaded Angry Birds from the market, but it was taking a LONG time to download. It was doing like, 1% every 5-10 seconds, whereas it usually downloads really quickly). So I cancelled the download, and tried re-downloading it a few hours later. This time, the download happened fast, and it successfully installed.

Cut to a few weeks ago...

I opened my camera (I save my pictures to the phone SD card, not my external SD card), and it came up with a message saying "Warning: Not enough memory". Before this, in the corner where it tells you how many pictures you can take/save, I know for a fact that it was WELL over 2000. Now, all of a sudden it went down to 0, and that warning message came up. So, I went in and checked my memory, and under Internal SD Card, it said 0.0GB free. I have NO idea how I lost 2GB of memory, and I have no idea how to get it back. I uninstalled some apps, deleted a lot of photos, cleared my Downloads folder, but I can still only ever get it up to around 50MB or below.

Can anyone explain what went wrong? Or how to get back the GBs that were lost? I'm really not very technical minded, and messing around with phone setting generally scares me, incase I break it even more! So if anyone has any clear advice that will help me out, I'd appreciate it!

Also, I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it or not, but since this memory thing started happening, I've had to charge my phone a lot more. Before, I'd only need to charge it once every 24-26 hours. Now, I need to charge it every 14-16 hours. I've tried optimizing the power by turning the brightness way down low, putting the screen timeout to 15 seconds, turning on power saving mode... but it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. That mostly only buys me an hour or 2 of extra power.

Thanks.

 

[mystii]

Here are some more details:
I currently have 58 apps installed.
I had 48 emails in googlemail, 43 with picture attachments.
I use the internet on here a LOT. I always leave wifi turned on, because I use it so much.

I just deleted all of my emails, but the Internal SD Card is still saying that I only have 2.91MB of room; exactly what it said before I deleted them.

Oh, I'm using Android 2.1, by the way. I'm not interested in upgrading to 2.2 right now. :}

This is exactly what I'm seeing, under SD Card And Phone Storage...

External SD Card
Total Space: 14.83GB
Available Space: 473MB (This is right - It's a 16GB card, but I'm thinking of upgrading to a 32GB card, lol)
Unmount SD Card
Format SD Card (greyed out until I unmount the SD card, which I know is normal)

Internal SD Card (This is where apps are installed to, right?)
Total Space: 5.78GB
Available Space: 2.91MB
Unmount SD Card
Mount SD Card (greyed out, because it is mounted already, lol)
Format SD Card (greyed out until I unmount the card)

Internal Phone Storage (This is the RAM, right?)
Available Space: 1.63GB

Now, I know that I haven't used up 5GB worth of space with apps, because before I downloaded Angry Birds, my Internal SD Card was saying that I have 2.2GB of space left. Then all of a sudden, it dipped to the space that I have now.

 

[mystii]

Ok, so I cleared the Data and Cache for the Internet, and after that, the Internal Phone Storage said 1.64GB, instead of the previous 1.63GB. The Internal SD Card amount stayed the same.

I deleted some pictures from the DCIM folder, cleared the internet Data and Cache again and also done something in recovery mode (volume up key + home key + power key), but I have no idea what! My original intention was to do a Factory Reset (or whatever it's called), but I think I took my finger off one of the buttons too early. Instead, I got a message that said something like 'Rebooting phone', and then the phone went through the usual startup. Everything was still on there (apps, messages, contacts etc), so I know that I didn't actually do the factory reset.

Anyway, after all of that, the Internal SD Card amount said 120MB -that's the most it's said in weeks. So, I then went ahead and deleted 5 apps, but instead of the amount of room going up, it went down. It now says 103MB. Which, is obviously better than the 2.91MB that I had the other day, but it's still nowhere near the 2.2GB that I did have.

Would a Factory Reset help me with this situation? If it would, how do I go about it (step by step would be very helpful), and how hard is it to do, for someone that doesn't know a lot about the technical side of phones?

 

[Kalle99]

What I know from digital camera experience is that it is recommended that, after backing up/offloading their contents, you reformat the card. This recaptures storage space lost to the inefficiencies of the indexing system. Haven't tried this with the phone though.

 

[mystii]

How would I go about reformatting the Internal SD Card for this phone? Do you think that thid would solve my issue?