Help Low on Internal Memory

[elchief2000]

I have moved all my apps to the sd card but there is still no internal memory left. I only have about 20 apps and if I try to download anything else I have to make space by deleting something. Every app still takes up some internal memory.

I have about 15-20 Mb of internal memory left. What do you guys recommend to get around thus issue?

 

[RobertB-DC]

I was constantly hovering around the 20MB mark, so much that the phone wouldn't let me send/receive SMS because of low memory. I finally broke down and rooted the phone so that I could get rid of the bloatware. I made a lot of surprising discoveries, and documented them all in the "Bloatware must die!" thread in the "All Things Root" subforum.

Bottom line: rooting my phone and using the free version of Titanium Backup gave me twice the phone I had before. (And upgrading Titanium to paid made it even better.)

 

[elchief2000]

My phone is already rooted. How will Titanium Backup help me free up internal memory?

 

[aap]

My phone is already rooted. How will Titanium Backup help me free up internal memory?

You can uninstall some of the bloatware from the system partition... back it up first if you like. Then with the paid version you can incorporate updates into the ROM -- which means the newest Google Maps replaces the one on the system partition, instead of taking up extra space on the user partition.

 

[RobertB-DC]

A couple of other space-savers:

* You can forcibly move other apps to SD, even if they don't have the "move to SD" bit set. (The usual caveats apply about widgets, etc -- "App 2 SD" details why you shouldn't have moved an app to SD, once you've done it!)

* The Pro version has a function to clear the Dalvik cache, which on my phone had balooned up to several megs (thanks to bloatware apps that I'd deleted, I think).

"aap", I didn't realize what the "Integrate updates into ROM" feature was on Titanium until you said that. Now I know why the apps I've moved to System are noted as "updated". I'll go through and integrate the updates now! I was wondering why my space was trending back down to the 20MB mark.

Side note: Does anyone else feel like it's a strange thing, to say we're going to "update the ROM"... when ROM stands for Read Only Memory?

 

[RobertB-DC]

Whoa, I just got a scare, integrating updates into ROM (which was already making me nervous). I was merrily going along, integrating like the National Guard in the 1950s, when all of a sudden Android told me I was running out of space! Sure enough, I'd dropped from ~25MB to 18MB. WTF?

Turns out that the apps had left their Dalvik caches behind. Titanium Backup reports 10MB in Dalvik to clean up... where I'd just checked before these moves and found nothing to fix. And the 7 files it said it was going to clean out corresponds pretty well with the number of apps I'd integrated.

I'll add this interesting tidbit to my "Bloatware/rooting journal" thread, once I'm sure there's nothing else to discover.

 

[elchief2000]

I've already used apps2sd to move all the apps I can to the sd card. But how can Titanium Backup help? All it's doing is creating a backup of all the apps on the SD card, it's not taking anything off the internal memory... Clearing the cache with apps2sd didn't really help much either.

This is my current memory situation as per Titanium backup:
System ROM: 199 MB (49.0 MB free)
Internal: 209 MB (21.6 MB free)
SD card: 7.92 GB (6.02 GB free)

I'm not sure what you guys mean by updating or integrating the ROM...
It's ridiculous having all this space on my sd card but I can't get more apps due to this internal memory issue.

I flashed the RevoidOptt ROM, I wonder if by switching to another rom I may gain more internal memory space... There really isn't much bloatware I can take off the system at this point...

 

[elchief2000]

Ok I now undstand what you guys mean by the system partition and the user partition... But I don't feel like forking up the $5.99 for the Pro version of Titanium Backup ...at least not just yet!

I have cleaned a thing or two from the system apps and brought the space there up to 50 MB.... Then I rebooted into recovery mode... My custom rom has a convenient option for this when you hold down the power button. I went to wipe the Davlik cache and when I rebooted back I was showing I had 41 MB of space in my user partition!! ...So right when I was going to get back here to share my triumph, I checked again ... And what?? It went down to 28 MB after a minute!

Robert, I was reading your journal and saw that you had been able to keep the memory after wiping the Davlik. It looks like this was not the case for me. It was at least a small gain though. Maybe I should try again...

Anyways, it would be nice to have access to those 50 MB on the system partition but $5.99 is almost what my sd card cost me!! Lol ...the syncing and backup to Dropbox sounds good though (no wasting sd card space). If I purchase it can I still download Pro on another phone with my account? I should be ale to right? ...I'm just experimenting with all this on my Optimus T. I got a mytouch 4g but I don't want to risk any mishaps on there yet Thank god that one has a MUCH larger internal Memory. But hey, I may get to this situation again at some point.

 

[RobertB-DC]

I have cleaned a thing or two from the system apps and brought the space there up to 50 MB.... Then I rebooted into recovery mode... My custom rom has a convenient option for this when you hold down the power button. I went to wipe the Davlik cache and when I rebooted back I was showing I had 41 MB of space in my user partition!! ...So right when I was going to get back here to share my triumph, I checked again ... And what?? It went down to 28 MB after a minute!

Robert, I was reading your journal and saw that you had been able to keep the memory after wiping the Davlik. It looks like this was not the case for me. It was at least a small gain though. Maybe I should try again...

If I recall correctly, the Dalvik cache is used by all installed applications. If you just nuke it, the Android OS will merrily rebuild it in the background for each app. Titanium's Dalvik cleanup seems to be more intelligent: apparently, it looks for orphaned caches and only gets rid of them. So you won't see any benefit from a Dalvik cleanout unless you've uninstalled something (or changed it to/from a System app, I think).

And just to nudge you... either you paid a couple hundred bucks for your phone, or you'll be paying a couple hundred bucks to T-Mobile (or AT&T&T) over the next couple of years for your "free" phone. You've given a pound of flesh for the phone... don't begrudge the Titanium folks their ounce of blood.

 

[elchief2000]

What I ended up doing what partitioning the SD card in order to give me more memory space for apps... Even with Titanium Pro that would've only been about 50 MB of free internal space. By partitioning I was able to get much more space (I did 512 MB) and still did not have to spend the $5.99... Nothing against the folks at Titanium but I still don't require their Pro services just yet. But their option to backup on the cloud through Dropbox is a lot cheaper than paying a monthly fee for backup providers like Lookout. So it's definitely worth the 6 bucks... And you can use the location service and contact backup for free with Lookout. Plus the virus/spyware protection.

About my phone (myTouch 4g), I got it off of EBay for $160... I got the optimus T for $70. Sure, I could get them cheaper with a 2 year contract... But on the contract you end up paying more than $700 (not including taxes) over the 2-year period as opposed to getting T-Mobile's prepaid plan. This is the best deal since on the contract you get a discount on the phone but you end up paying a lot more in the long run.

 

[RobertB-DC]

Tell me more about partitioning the SD card? Were you able to name a partition in such a way that the phone would put apps on it, where it otherwise wouldn't? Sounds interesting... I'm about to run out of SD space (getting podcast happy, oops), and partitioning a new card seems like a logical first step. (Of course, the first thing I always do with a new PC is partition its hard drive into two or ten partitions.)

And I'm with ya on the so-called "free" phones. I love(d) T-Mobile's Even More Plus, where I pay for phone service and buy the phone separately (on a 20-month no-interest plan). Keeping that sort of plan motivated me to go ahead and sign a 2-year enslavement agreement with T-Mo (first contract in years) before they get absorbed by the Death Star.

 

[elchief2000]

Hi Robert, to partition my SD card I used the ROM Manager app... I believe your phone must be rooted for this. I think I read that your phone wasn't rooted so you would have to do this... (not a bit deal, just download Z4 Root off the web and run it and hit the permanent root option).

Then you want to download Rom Manager from the market... This will let you create system backups on the sd in case anything happens and you need to restore everything back to the way it was. That's mostly useful if you decide to try flashing different ROMs but for partitioning it won't be an issue since it only deals with the SD card memory (I still recommend having a backup though).

*You will have to transfer all your information from your SD card to your computer since doing the partition will format the card and wipe everything.... After partitioning you can go ahead and move everything back... pretty simple but don't forget this.

Once you open ROM Manager you will have an option in the interface to partition your sd card... You can follow that which is pretty simple and lets you create a 2nd partition for up to 512 MB. You can also choose to reboot into Recovery Mode which will launch their Clockwork Recovery... This will let you go into recovery mode which also has the option to partition the SD card from there. From there it gives you more options to create larger partitions if you want to go over the 512 MB.

After selecting the partition size it will ask you for a SWAP size... as I understand this creates more RAM memory available from the sd card if needed. I've read that 32 MB or 64 MB is good enough but that you shouldn't go higher.. it might even slow things down. Anyways, I just ended up choosing 0 MB because I didn't feel the need for it.

I think that's pretty much it... I'm doing this from memory. There's one point where you select the type of partitions which will be FAT32 for your general data and then EXT(2, 3, or 4) for the apps... I chose EXT3.

The process will take a few minutes and you basically reboot and transfer all your stuff back to the sd card from your computer.

Next step is going to the android market and downloading Link2SD... this program will create the link with the 2nd partition so you can save your apps there. When you launch the app you want to select the option that I believe says "create mount scripts". Here you will select EXT3 or whichever type you selected for the partition. And once that is done you've created the link and you're basically set. The app works a lot like Apps2SD and you basically go through your apps and link them to your SD. This will save them over to the 2nd partition which will free up some of your internal user memory and allow you to have a lot more space for new apps!

I'm no expert but I did it... this should get you through

 

[RobertB-DC]

Awesome info! I don't know if I'll go to that much trouble -- this phone is occasionally flaky when it comes to SD card access, so I've had to make sure that I only use SD for things I can do without in a pinch.

I like the idea of formatting as ext3 for apps, though. It seems like the Linux-based Android OS might be more efficient with something more modern than FAT.

 

[elchief2000]

Honestly, I don't know the advantages and disadvantages of ext3 and FAT... Or even Linux for that matter... Lol

What I do know is I would definitely recommend rooting the Optimus T... RevoidOptt is the only Rom I have been able to successfully install and the difference is night and day. It really became a much better phone! Much more responsive and snappier with the processor slightly overclocked to about 825 MHz. You don't get all the lag that comes with the original software.

Even though I got the mytouch, I wouldn't mind having the Optimus T as my primary phone now... I really enjoy just flipping between the home screens lol.

 

[yoshikun1980]

I have learned about an app called Data2SD which is to compliment the App2SD. When you move the App to the SD card, it still leaves the required data on the phone's ROM. So, Data2SD moves the data as well as the app.

I wonder, however, if it is at all possible to find a higher capacity memory chip to put in in its place. I think it would be nice, if I could open up my phone, yank its guts out and put a bigger brain in it.

Has anyone else ever tried that? (Wildfire S [cdma HTC a510c] Sprint VM)

 

[lukeinmpls]

I followed the instructions and ROM Manager seems to have bricked my Galaxy Ace.
Whether I manage to get it working again, or have to buy another, I have learned a valuable and painful lesson.
Crap!

 

[dangermouse353]

Is there any way to partition the SD card? I've tried numerous times via recovery mod. It wipes the SD card clean, but does not partition. Any help would be greatly appreciated.