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

indianajonze · 09:18 AM

I have reason to believe that HTC Mail has a significant memory leak or bug which is causing all of the "Phone storage is getting low" messages. I've had the phone for 2 weeks as of this thursday. my setup is 4 pop3 email accounts configured during the initial setup in HTC Mail. I've noticed during the two weeks that the HTC Mail app has been steadily ballooning in size. it starts out small enough, just a few megs, but after a day or so jumps to 40-50megs. After that jumps to 80megs, 90megs, 100megs, 110megs etc.

At around 110-115 megs it triggers the "phone storage low" messages, and soon thereafter the phone essentially becomes non-functioning. the problem is that as far as i can tell, there's no way to reduce the file size of this HTC mail app once this process has started. i've deleted every shred of email, all inboxes, all sent, all trash all everything from every mail folder for every account - no reduction in app size. then i set about actually deleting the email accounts themselves one by one - no reduction in app size.

i trashed every shred of email from the system, and the HTC mail app still hovered around 110megs (and the phone storage low indicators continuing). after researching the issue online and piecing 2+2 together i realized that the only solution is to wipe the phone. the issue there is that there are no guarantees that the issue wouldn't resurface again (actually it's quite likely).

so after wiping the phone last night, i did NOT setup HTC mail, but rather switched to K9 (just using gmail exclusively is also an option). so far zero issues. obviously 12 hours or so is too small a sample size to make definitive conclusions, but after all of the research i've done i'm confident the "phone storage is getting low" errors will not return.

bottom line: HTC mail seems to have a very significant memory leak or bug that causes it to blow through its allocated memory at an alarming pace, and there is very little that can be done to stop it once it's started. i would strongly recommend to those of you with the above issues to NOT use HTC mail after wiping the phone...

EDIT: oh, one small added bonus- after wiping the phone, google earth appears in the android market

buckifvr · 05-12-2010, 09:19 AM

I've had my Incredible for about the same amount of time, and I haven't noticed an issue with HTC mail.

indianajonze · 05-12-2010, 09:22 AM

yeah a lot of people havent. but a lot of people have as well. are you using HTC mail with pop3 accounts exclusively? how many? also, what is your HTC mail file size right now?

tpc · 05-12-2010, 09:59 AM

I have comcast and yahoo mail set up on my phone, it seems like they are handled by the htc mail process. The total size of my htc mail is 1.96 mb, out of which 1.9 mb is just data I guess. The cache size says 60.00 kb, so the numbers seem to add up.

I have yet to receive any email on yahoo, but i hardly use yahoo. Comcast, I get one or two emails every other day or so, so minimal usage. Do you use more?

I'm just wondering if this is happening to a specific set of phones or across the board (assuming higher usage than me).

socalguy · 05-12-2010, 10:09 AM

There is already a thread about this problem, I had 2 pop email accounts and I wiped the phone and now have those accounts going to my gmail and I only have the gmail account now active on the phone. I will see if this stops the problem.

rpfarrah · 05-12-2010, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by indianajonze

yeah a lot of people havent. but a lot of people have as well. are you using HTC mail with pop3 accounts exclusively? how many? also, what is your HTC mail file size right now?

How do you check the file size?

indianajonze · 05-12-2010, 10:29 AM

settings-applications-manage applications-then you can either view manually or sort by size. you may have to wait a few seconds for it to calculate file sizes

indianajonze · 05-12-2010, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by socalguy

There is already a thread about this problem, I had 2 pop email accounts and I wiped the phone and now have those accounts going to my gmail and I only have the gmail account now active on the phone. I will see if this stops the problem.

this thread is about what i believe is a specific issue with the htc mail application. the phone storage low issue (which is what that other thread is about) is a symptom of that. so i thought it was a different thread topic

rpfarrah · 05-12-2010, 10:43 AM

About 40 MB with just one POP account plus gmail. After I cleared my email (which I do regularly) I had the same. Then I cleared the folders: Sent, Trash, Drafts. Still had 15 MB. Cleared the cache and I still have 8.29 MB.

Hmmmmmmmm.