Why don't I have any storage left?

[AC Question]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 and I've had it for about a year. A few weeks ago I started getting notifications telling me to delete my text messages to free up space, I did this, and deleted my photos and I'm still getting these notifications. I'm being told my storage space is running out. The device memory total is 1.97GB and only has 185MB left. However the USB storage has a total of 11.50GB and still has 9.03GB left. I believe the device memory must be the issue as the other has plenty of space. How do I fix this? Can I put everything into the USB storage somehow?
Thank you!

 

[Rukbat]

Email and apps go to internal storage, so you have 185MB of storage for email and apps - and that's about "out of space".

You can move files, not apps, to USB storage - pictures, music, ringtones, notification tones, alarm tones, videos, documents - data. Most apps won't run from USB storage. Those that will ... some can have only parts moved to USB storage. And there's a pointer added to phone storage pointing to where the app or part of it is in USB storage.

Apps keep getting larger (mainly due to poor programming practices - it's easier to add a huge class file to your app than to write a few tight lines of code which is all you're using that class for), and there are more and more apps we want on our phones - which is why people upgrade their phones every 2 years. It's not only a marketing ploy by the carriers. (Try running your current laptop programs on a computer built to run Windows 95. The best hardware back then wasn't as good as the cheapest used computer you can buy today. My phone is more powerful than the first network server I was admin of - and the server, installed, cost over $16,000, but couldn't run the equivalent of Maps.)