[AC Question]

Ok, here is my issue and has always been my issue. The question is, is there a difference between clearing something on your phone and deleting something in a folder on your phone?

This may sound like the stupidest question ever, (remember there's no such thing as a stupid question if you don't ask, right?) but I have a good reason for asking. You see, many up and coming device apps that offer anything pertaining to getting rid of something to make your phone move faster from browsing or either prevention of apps running in the background all the time, the app will offer to "clear" some type of folder. It actually says "clear". But then there are apps that offer to "delete" stuff in a folder. I get freaked out because of course I need to "clear" my cache, but when an app like CCleaner or SD Maid offers to "clear" my important folders like my Downloads folders or Images folders, I'm like "Whoa!", I don't want to "clear" these because I'm confused and scared these apps actually mean "delete" what's in them.

My advice: If apps are offering to "clear" something, they may as well just come right out and say "delete" because it's very confusing.

For example, right now my phone was and is sluggish, running hot, battery dies within an hour and everything. I had Clean Master which offers all of this "junk" to help control everything but in reality it doesn't because after I ran all of their services, I go back and double check to see it's done its job and of course mostly everything is still there! I was constantly hitting that little widget and recharging my phone every half hour. So I uninstalled it. I installed CCleaner which offers all of these similar but more interesting tools and I ran the ones that seemed less threatening like of course the cache and what not. Then went back and checked and yes, it had done its job. But then it offered to "clean" several other things like pictures, music duplicates and stuff like that. I hesitantly did so, then found out that some of these things had gone missing, but I have no idea which one's, all I know is that they disappeared. I have not uninstalled the CCleaner app because I keep hearing all of these great things about it, I just want to keep it around a little longer until I find out how to use it.

Now, without either app running I feel naked and afraid. I feel like all of this stuff is just building up on my phone. Yes I know how to clear my cache without an app which seems hectic having to go into the applications manager and do them one by one, I know how to clear away background web pages and apps and clear the memory by swiping one or all using the menu key on my Galaxy Note 3, but now I'm still constantly wondering "What did I miss? What else am I missing? Did I do everything manually that Clean Master claimed that it did?" But other than that I am petrified of using any app that tells me to "clear" anything.

Right now I am in my Samsung GalaXy Note 3 Settings: -General-Storage-Clear Cache > "yes of course."
Then when I go to Settings-General-Storage-Used Space-Downloads> at the bottom it says SORT BY DATE and "CLEAR" list. I thinking, "Umm.. Noo" that is where all of my 3000, 157MB of downloaded images, pdf, videos, and stuff are and why would I want to intentionally "delete/clear" these things? I don't know, maybe I'm a hoarder....Hahaha!

Please help me and clarify

Thanks in advance,
T

[Golfdriver97]

I view the two terms as interchangeable. You should be able to easily back up any of your media. Plug into a PC and drag and drop. I would back everything up anyway.

[raptir]

To get more to the issue here... deleting files on your SD card is not going to improve your battery life or stop your phone from running hot. It sounds like you have a misbehaving app that is running too often in the background. You need to identify that app by uninstalling recently installed apps until the problem is fixed.

[FriendlyPear]

Use Dropbox or similar service to hold your personal stuff in the cloud, including photo upload. In that way, even if you lose the phone, you still have your personal stuff available.