HTC Mail Memory Leak/Bug ("Phone Storage Getting Low")

[Putts]

If I were to say "clear data" for Contacts Storage would I lose all my contacts? Clearing cache hasn't seemed to work.

This is giving me a headache even though it hasn't given me issues yet. That said, I'd obviously prefer to take care of it before my phone locks up and I'm forced to do a factory reset.

I just got the low storage message for the first time yesterday, plenty of free space on the phone, never used the HTC mail program. Tried uninstalling a few different things, made the message go away a few times, but it was always back within the hour. Eventually, I wasn't even able to open the phone dialer or my Contacts list. I began to suspect that the new Facebook update might have been causing problems, so I uninstalled it. That didn't fix the problem either, so I finally ended up clearing my Contacts Storage, that did the trick and I haven't seen the notification since.

To answer your question, anything that is stored as a "phone contact" will be wiped out, and I wasn't able to recover those with Verizon's Backup Assistant. Any contacts stored on your Google account are safe as they will just be resynced to your phone, as will your Facebook contacts (obviously). Fortunately, I still have my old LG dumbphone with contact list intact, I was able to grab that list using Bitpim and import it into my Google account. Save yourself some trouble though before you wipe your contacts...go to People, Menu, Import/Export, Export to SD card, Phone, and hit OK, and your local phonebook will be there for you to reimport after your contact list is wiped.

I can't confirm or deny that the new Facebook update was the initial cause of the problems, but I'm not taking any chances at this point, I'm leaving it uninstalled.

 

[wjoelsmith]

I just got the low storage message for the first time yesterday, plenty of free space on the phone, never used the HTC mail program. Tried uninstalling a few different things, made the message go away a few times, but it was always back within the hour. Eventually, I wasn't even able to open the phone dialer or my Contacts list. I began to suspect that the new Facebook update might have been causing problems, so I uninstalled it. That didn't fix the problem either, so I finally ended up clearing my Contacts Storage, that did the trick and I haven't seen the notification since.

To answer your question, anything that is stored as a "phone contact" will be wiped out, and I wasn't able to recover those with Verizon's Backup Assistant. Any contacts stored on your Google account are safe as they will just be resynced to your phone, as will your Facebook contacts (obviously). Fortunately, I still have my old LG dumbphone with contact list intact, I was able to grab that list using Bitpim and import it into my Google account. Save yourself some trouble though before you wipe your contacts...go to People, Menu, Import/Export, Export to SD card, Phone, and hit OK, and your local phonebook will be there for you to reimport after your phone is wiped.

I can't confirm or deny that the new Facebook update was the initial cause of the problems, but I'm not taking any chances at this point, I'm leaving it uninstalled.

This sounds like my situation.

I used the HTC Mail app for about an hour when I first set up my phone three months ago, but then immediately stopped and removed my account. I didn't start getting the memory error until the last couple weeks. I use Handcent for SMS, and only use Gmail for mail. I also don't use FriendStream. The cache and data are empty for the FriendStream, Mail, Peep, and Messages apps.

I started getting the error shortly after installing the v1.3 Facebook update, so I uninstalled that but still have been getting the error. I have 4.52 GB available SD card space, 1.87 available internal hard drive, and 590 MB available phone memory. The low storage notification isn't currently showing, but seems to at random times and my storage is always at similar levels when it does. So I can't see how this is related to the HTC Mail app, or any other HTC social app. I haven't hard resetted yet, because I have a lot of stuff installed that I don't want to have to restore, but I may do it anyway.

The low storage message hasn't actually caused me any problems, by the way, other than making me nervous.

 

[letsunitetonight]

I just got the low storage message for the first time yesterday, plenty of free space on the phone, never used the HTC mail program. Tried uninstalling a few different things, made the message go away a few times, but it was always back within the hour. Eventually, I wasn't even able to open the phone dialer or my Contacts list. I began to suspect that the new Facebook update might have been causing problems, so I uninstalled it. That didn't fix the problem either, so I finally ended up clearing my Contacts Storage, that did the trick and I haven't seen the notification since.

To answer your question, anything that is stored as a "phone contact" will be wiped out, and I wasn't able to recover those with Verizon's Backup Assistant. Any contacts stored on your Google account are safe as they will just be resynced to your phone, as will your Facebook contacts (obviously). Fortunately, I still have my old LG dumbphone with contact list intact, I was able to grab that list using Bitpim and import it into my Google account. Save yourself some trouble though before you wipe your contacts...go to People, Menu, Import/Export, Export to SD card, Phone, and hit OK, and your local phonebook will be there for you to reimport after your contact list is wiped.

I can't confirm or deny that the new Facebook update was the initial cause of the problems, but I'm not taking any chances at this point, I'm leaving it uninstalled.

This sounds exactly like what I just went through. Wiped my contacts storage and the notification went away. I lost all my contacts but I still have my old phone so it wasn't too big a deal.. backup assistant really sucks.

 

[demondread]

I got this problem on my Hero. I tried deleting the account, clear the cache and mail was still taking up 34 mb.

I started digging through the internal filesystem and found 2 files in /data/data/com.htc.android.mail/app_mail_temp

they were approx 15mb each... these existed after account was removed and the phone said it was deleting mail.... I deleted both files, re-added my account and started syncing... After initial sync mail is using 3.4 mb... Just for fun i stayed in ssh and watched they file sizes as i sent a 2 mb email from the phone. That temp file grew from 3.0 mb to 5.2 mb and then shrank back down after the send completed.

So it looks like the bug doesn't always happen. I wish i knew what triggered it....

anyway that was a fix for me without doing a data wipe. hope it helps someone else.

wish HTC would fix this...

Edit:

Maybe if i have sometime this week i'll see if i can write an app that clears that folder.

 

[TucsonChuck]

Reset + 85 days (08/09)

Internal phone memory 6.60 total, 5.95 avail
Phone Memory 748 total, 639 avail
HTC mail 28.70 down from 32.71 (24.18 + 4.52) cache

 

[ChuckMRN]

I have followed this thread for about 65 days now with no problems. I have TuconChuck's set-up after having to reset my phone 3 times. Thanks Chuck

 

[ic31420]

I am having the Low Memory problem with my HTC Desire.

Seems related to the HTC Mail app as the file is 50Mb.

One thing that i have noticed is that despite having deleted the files from my email account, if i use the magnifying glass search button on the front of my desire and type in some words from the subject of a past deleted email the search results, click on that and the email is displayed so obviously it is still storing the emails but where and how to get rid is evading me!

 

[cbrpunk]

following other info in this thread

i did the following

installed a term emulator
enabled root access using unrevoked3 (easy!)

dropped to a terminal using iddy bitty keys.


su
#
cd /data/data/com.htc.android.mail/app_mail
ls
rm * -rf
let the sucker run, its going to take a minute

rebooted, low space is history, screw that hard reset crap. may work on making a .sh script to do this in the future, ive been a incredible user on verizon for 4 months, blackberry for 7 years before this, and the dreaded windows mobile device user before that...

hope this helps others, if so, please post if this has resolved your issues.

-ohio

 

[TucsonChuck]

I have followed this thread for about 65 days now with no problems. I have TuconChuck's set-up after having to reset my phone 3 times. Thanks Chuck

Glad it's working for you too. After my wife's reset, her Dinc has been issue free also.

 

[CharlesA03]

Someone please help me with this.

I am an idiot when it comes to all things "techy." Most of this thread hasn't even made sense to me honestly.

Am I going to have to wipe my phone to fix this? I've had my DInc since the release date, and this problem just came up today.

Is HTC Mail just the native Mail app? I use that with Exchange.



BTW: I haven't noticed any performance issues at all thus far.

 

[CharlesA03]

So I had downloaded some baseball game earlier today....this was right before the memory notification came up.

Now I just deleted it and the notification is gone.

I have had plenty of memory left this entire time.



I have no idea what is going on with this phone.

 

[TucsonChuck]

Someone please help me with this.

I am an idiot when it comes to all things "techy." Most of this thread hasn't even made sense to me honestly.

Am I going to have to wipe my phone to fix this? I've had my DInc since the release date, and this problem just came up today.

Is HTC Mail just the native Mail app? I use that with Exchange.



BTW: I haven't noticed any performance issues at all thus far.

It's not Exchange, it's HTC Mail, Go into you mail setting and set your "Download Options" to the fewest days you can stand(Mine is set for 3 days) My "Mail Size" is set at 25kb... That cleared it up for me(I did have to do a reset)

Try those setting and see if it helps. If you do a reset put those setting in and hopefully it issue wont return.

 

[woodheat]

New to this forum - but I have the DI HTC Mail Memory Leak bug - I was using multiple POP accounts on HTC Mail and after about two weeks the phone storage low message started. Research brought me to this forum and as a stop gap I deleted all of the mail accounts and all of the mail messages and stopped using HTC mail. Still it appeared in the Manage Applications as holding on to 101 Mb of internal (most precious) phone storage. K9 mail was the replacement app for the POP accounts but I was still left with the huge memory block of unrecoverable internal storage - plus the phone was having trouble loading apps and I was having to delete all cache and emails every day - sometime twice a day - BAD.
So - being a Linux/Unix SU from way back in the pre-everything days - I decided to go bug hunting - What follows is a NOT SAFE FOR NOOBIES OR NON UNIX ROOT HEAD process to free up the HTC Mail memory block - and i do mean NOT SAFE.

Next post is the process - requires ROOT access on your DI.

 

[woodheat]

OK - step one is root your DI - there are several good videos and scripts to do this already - a good link is here: unrevoked

Once you have root access - you need a way to explore the phone internal storage. We used the Android SDK terminal process - you have to grant it root access to be able to access the phone as su.

Now you are in - armed and dangerous - but not much closer to a solution... The main problem to overcome is WHERE in the HECK is the HTC Mail (Dragon) App keeping all of this memory...!

Finding this secret protected dir was non trivial and basically turned into a BFMI type excercise - all the while being extremely careful not to irrevocably f-up my DI by accidentally deleting something important.

A fancy grep and sort type script would likely have been helpful but the Android BASHish type shell was not conducive to this (and my regular expression skills were rusty) - so I hunted by instinct.

The most obvious culprit in root seemed to be the folder called /data - so cd in and look around - (need su to do this) and we are getting closer. In /data there is a protected dir called imaginatively /data/data (good job guys...) - in we go....

In here are dirs for every installed app on the internal storage - DANGER LEVEL high but we are aproaching the lair of the dragon. Careful inspection of the weird names leads us to the /data/data/com.htc.android.mail - entrance to dragons cave...

ls inside this dir - and the list shows interesting names - bufferfile (not too big but still significant) - interested us for a bit - also cache (but this was also too small ) - but the jackpot was entering into the app_mail dir - /data/data/com.htc.android.mail/app_mail - and we behold the dragons treasure....!

In this folder I found literally thousands of files - all relatively small - all of the mail I thought I had deleted - SAVED - with root only access (600 for you unix heads) - here was the origin of the inability to get rid of these files - they are assigned owner only access - and the owner is some random number (not root) - so even root has to chmod or chown in order to access them... BUG!

Just for fun we grab all of the files with the ADB - and then check the size of the uploaded folder - 101 Mb - bingo!

...but now we are here to save the day and free the captured memory - a quick chmod 777 *.* and also a chmod 777 * (to get those pesky files without extensions) - makes the files accessible - we also have to go up one - and chmod the /data/data/com.htc.android.mail/app_mail dir to 777 to allow us to perform the command in the dir (sorry reverse order).

...then - dragon slaying time - cd back into app_mail then rm * and rm *.* (BE CAREFUL!! - you are on your own if you F-up...) - now a quick DI check - Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications (Sort by size) and.....drum roll please) - ta-DAH - the top user is not HTC Mail with 101 mb - it is contacts with a much more reasonable 12.5 mb (ok I have a lot of contacts...so sue me... )

So - dragon slain - storage freed - phone working - no factory reset - and you have learned a little bit about Android FS in the process... hope this helps - and if you are not confident you can do this - DON'T - it really really is horribly dangerous....good luck....tl;dr; (Not n00bish safe - danger - root access - hunting dragons...)

 

[wjoelsmith]

I cleared the data from the Contacts Storage app (after exporting both phone and Google address books to my sdcard), and then reimported my contacts, and I haven't had the problem since.

Keep in mind I never used the HTC Mail app. So if you're having the low memory notification and haven't used the Mail app, try this, it seems to have done the trick for me.

 

[TucsonChuck]

Reset + 90 days (08/14)

Internal phone memory 6.60 total, 5.98 avail
Phone Memory 748 total, 638 avail
HTC mail 27.78 down from 28.70 (25.84 + 1.95) cache

 

[TucsonChuck]

Reset + 95 days (08/19)

Internal phone memory 6.60 total, 6.00 avail
Phone Memory 748 total, 638 avail
HTC mail 30.77 up from 27.78 (23.98 + 6.79 cache)

 

[Positronium]

I just had the same problem.

After sorting the apps by size I immediately saw the problem was from Pandora. It was taking up nearly 100MB of space!

Just thought I'd add one more app to the list of possible reasons why we get this notification, as I do not use HTC Mail or Peep (Gmail and no twitter for me). I do use Handcent SMS, but HTC Messaging clearly wasn't where the problem was.

 

[tvr172]

Has any one tried a replacement unit that did not have the same issue?

Just wondering if a common problem for all Incredibles or just some lemons. I have the exact issue with HTC Mail and wondering if I should just ask for a new one or go to a different phone.

 

[ic31420]

just wait for Froyo