Low on space/No more storage for SMS/MMS

[RunamuckRez]

Good morning all, I'm new to the forums, android and smart phones in general so please bare with me. I've been lurking for the last two months and following some real solid threads (mostly stuff on task killers and 2.1 updates,) and trying to take the great advice that I see on here. I'm by no means a power user (I don't even use social networking of any kind, mostly using music apps like pandora and last.fm) so the notification that I received this morning kinda threw me for a loop. I got the low on space/no more storage for sms/mms notifications. I guess my first boneheaded question..what the heck is an sms/mms. Second, what can I do about this?

I stopped running a task killer based on the topics I've read about it and I've been hitting the back key to get out of everything. I checked the internal phone storage (368k available, was 0 but I removed a sound board app). I've also gone through settings> apps> manage apps to see if anything was hogging up internal storage and everything seemed to be closed (mail aside). HTC Mail does seem to come up first when I sort things by size and its the only one that gives me the option to force stop. Other then that, the only performance issues I've noticed recently (esp since I stopped using the taskkiller) is the menu key seems to lag a moment before it registers and the phone key does the same. I wouldn't say my phone is screamingly fast but it gets the job done for the most part.

Anyone have any thoughts on what I should do?

~Rez

 

[Frisco]

Hello, Runamuck Rez (great username ). Welcome to these forums. I am relatively new here, too.

The first thing I began to wonder about when finishing reading your post there is, how many text messages do you have stored in your device?

I clear mine about once a week and notice that the Eris stays snappy and fast by doing that instead of letting them build up into the hundreds.

 

[smacky]

SMS and MMS are texts and picture/video messages, respectively. Sounds like you have A LOT of them. I had close to 3000 a week ago from the past two months and finally got them all deleted. I'll just say that your phone will bog down for about five minutes as it deletes that many texts, but they'll be gone at the end of it all.

 

[Frisco]

SMS and MMS are texts and picture/video messages, respectively.

I neglected to point that out in my response to Rez.

Yep, house cleaning is the big factor, in my opinion, in keeping the device from getting sluggish. Heck, I even clear my browser cache right before shutting down the device at the end of the day.

 

[Bswartz95]

I try to delete my sms (text) threads before they reach 100 in length. It usually takes about 20 seconds to delete a thread at that length. I've found anything over 100, tends to take a few minutes.

 

[RunamuckRez]

Thanks everyone, I checked my txt messages and had roughly just over 400. I deleted them and then checked the internal memory again and I now have 1 mb free. Still have the low on space notification though. I also deleted a bunch of emails earlier but that didn't seem to do much. What would be the next best thing to check?

~Rez

p.s. Runamuck Rez was a highschool nickname...my core group of guys all had one (like all groups of close nit guys around the world). The fact that I actually remembered it 15 years later surprises me

 

[Frisco]

Runamuck Rez was a highschool nickname...my core group of guys all had one (like all groups of close nit guys around the world). The fact that I actually remembered it 15 years later surprises me

Same here (except for the mere 15 years between h.s. and now you mention ). There was a style of jeans back when I was in h.s. called "friscos" which captured my imagination enough to the point that I began to get called "the frisco dude" by friends.

It stuck, Frisco basically took over my real name.

There's a guy here named Smacky, gotta ask him about that.

 

[moutaindewdope]

Sounds like ur application Cache night be using up all your storage... (Cache being temporary files stored by programs for a variety of different reasons.)

Goto Settings > Applications > Manage applications >

Give it a minute or two to compute the Sizes of the applications then press the menu button and sort by size.

Nothing really should be above 3 MB really, as there has only been one android app Ive seen above this and that is documents to go and that was 9MB.

For anything above 2 MB ish click on it then click "Clear Cache." Do NOT click "Clear Data" as this will erase settings and/or other important user data on for that app.

If the the clear cache button isnt lit up, that program has no cache, simple hit back and move to the next application.

If after all the Bigger ones are cleared, u still have memory issues, consider uninstalling the bigger apps on that list. If they are that big... they may not be worth keeping IMHO.

Look for the free "Internal Memory Widget" on the market. Simple little widget to tell you wour free space on the phone.

 

[Bswartz95]

Thanks everyone, I checked my txt messages and had roughly just over 400. I deleted them and then checked the internal memory again and I now have 1 mb free. Still have the low on space notification though. I also deleted a bunch of emails earlier but that didn't seem to do much. What would be the next best thing to check?

~Rez

p.s. Runamuck Rez was a highschool nickname...my core group of guys all had one (like all groups of close nit guys around the world). The fact that I actually remembered it 15 years later surprises me

How many apps do you have? How many photos? Have you tried clearing cache of your programs?


^^mountaindewdope beat me to it.^^

 

[RunamuckRez]

So I have my application manager open and the top handful of items in order of size are HTC Mail (104MB?!) Myspace (4.20MB odd considering I never use it), Crystallightfree(2.97MB), Astro(2.48), Browser (2.35MB) and Google Maps(2.24mb). None of them are giving me the option to clear out the cache, but the force stop option is coming up.

As far as apps go, I don't think I have all that many...mmm maybe not my app list is about 200 including everything that came with the phone. Right now the phone is really lagging badly and I'm getting a lot of force close errors...and just now htc sense force closed on me. I also have roughly about 40 photos on the phone. Ugh..this is quickly becoming my Sunday project.

 

[Scynthetic78]

So I have my application manager open and the top handful of items in order of size are HTC Mail (104MB?!) Myspace (4.20MB odd considering I never use it), Crystallightfree(2.97MB), Astro(2.48), Browser (2.35MB) and Google Maps(2.24mb). None of them are giving me the option to clear out the cache, but the force stop option is coming up.

As far as apps go, I don't think I have all that many...mmm maybe not my app list is about 200 including everything that came with the phone. Right now the phone is really lagging badly and I'm getting a lot of force close errors...and just now htc sense force closed on me. I also have roughly about 40 photos on the phone. Ugh..this is quickly becoming my Sunday project.

200 is quite a few. You might want to start getting rid of the ones that you don't need or use very often.

 

[zenman]

HTC mail is 104mb? Wow, my biggest is dolphin browser and that's only 2.92mb. It was around 9mb but I just cleared the cache. Mail is my third biggest at 2.56 mb but I don't even use it. I just use the gmail app and that is very small.

My available space on the sd card is 7554mb and internal phone storage is 121mb.

I haven't loaded any music yet and have very few pictures and texts. It sounds like your problem is the htc mail. But I don't know very much about this stuff.

 

[Doit2it]

I try to delete my sms (text) threads before they reach 100 in length. It usually takes about 20 seconds to delete a thread at that length. I've found anything over 100, tends to take a few minutes.

Really. I just deleted about 225 messages and it only took about 13 seconds. You must have a lot of apps installed. I've got 70, which includes the native apps on the HTC Eris. About 42 of those are are downloads. The most free Physical memory I have is 88Mb to 95Mb after a fresh reboot. Average free PM is 40mb to 60Mb.

 

[RunamuckRez]

I mis counted, its around 60 (not entirely sure how I got 200). I did find the problem though, it was my mail. I cleared it out and suddenly I have over 100 mb available. Why was mail being such a hog?

 

[Scynthetic78]

Also, like Zen said, there's something really strange about your HTC mail. I know there are a few apps that use memory for cache storage and this ends up being listed as data instead of cache. The HTC mail app could be doing the same thing. You might want to try clearing the data on that one.

 

[superchaos]

On the settings in the mail menu, there is an option to save the attachments to External Storage. Sounds like you have it set to save to Internal Storage.

 

[Doit2it]

Why was mail being such a hog?

Mail with attachments (ie - photos, etc)

 

[Frisco]

On the settings in the mail menu, there is an option to save the attachments to External Storage. Sounds like you have it set to save to Internal Storage.

Very good. I'd made that mistake at first, too. Forgot about that.

 

[RunamuckRez]

I just checked it and mail has been saving to external storage.Not to mention I don't get much in the way of attachments. That said I was downloading new mail every 15 min or so...and set for the last three days. Would that bump my internal mem usage up?

 

[Frisco]

I just checked it and mail has been saving to external storage.Not to mention I don't get much in the way of attachments. That said I was downloading new mail every 15 min or so...and set for the last three days. Would that bump my internal mem usage up?

Good gosh, do you get a lot of spam? New mail every 15 minutes?

You need a humungus(sp) storage device, not the Eris; I think the max capacity is 16 (that's what's in mine).

 

[RunamuckRez]

Alright, thanks all for the help with this little issue. After clearing the data from my HTC mail and setting it back up I now have just over 100MB free according to the settings. The thing I can't seem to figure out is why it was using so much memory in the first place. Last night my Eris was working just fine, not quiet as snappy as it used to be(bit of momentary lag with the menus), but no real issues. This morning is when all the problems started. I didn't change any of the settings for mail or anything else. I've pretty much always had it syncing with hotmail every 15 min (I just changed it to once an hour) and I typically delete the spam (yes I do get a fair amount of spam). There are a few other programs using up some mem for no reason that I can figure out (myspace which I use once in a while, and shop savy are using 4 and 2 MB respectively.)
How else can I speed this thing up and free up space? Is force closing o.k. to do to various running programs?

 

[Frisco]

There almost has to be something running in the background to eat up memory and cpu.

Try de-installing one app at a time that you've added.

I'd also be suspicious of the spam.. rogue program in a spam email? Just guessing.