Thoroughly confused by built-in file management/me

[ackthbbft]

I've had this phone for 10 months, and still feel like a complete noob. I love Android, and I'm definitely tech-savvy, yet I gotta say the lack of consistency is proving frustrating.

I have ICS on my GS2-E4GT, and was notified this morning that I have 10 apps with updates available. When I try to run the updates, I am getting "Insufficient storage available."

So, I try to check my phone's available space. Here's where the confusion starts.

Going into the "My Files" app (which I assume to be the TouchWiz file manager), it lists the various files and folders under "/sdcard", and seems to list everything on my phone, regardless of where stuff is actually being stored.

On the other hand, when I go into System Settings/Storage, it tells me my "Device memory" is 1.97GB with only 205MB available, then "USB storage" has total space of 11.50GB with 6.82GB available, and "SD card" has total space of 14.83GB with 14.49GB available.

How exactly could I have all that available space, and yet "Insufficient storage available"? Why does "MyFiles" list everything under "/sdcard" when "SD card" appears to be completely empty?

I would like to move stuff off the main phone ("Device memory"?) storage so I can update my apps, but even that does not seem to be very intuitive.

Any insight?

 

[thenameisnigel]

Not important enough

 

[88cavalierz24]

device memory is just for apps thats it, on newer phones like the gs3 they got ride of that 2gb partition and used all the internal memory for apps and everything else, sd card is where your phone downloads stuff to or pics/video are saved too, external sd is your microsd card. I have 80 apps and use 900mb of the 1.97 allowed, I also have all the apps able to be moved to the sd card(external) moved there.

 

[ackthbbft]

Here's an interesting tidbit, when I try updating Facebook, which only requires 11MB, it fails. When I updated Angry Birds Space, which requires 28MB, it succeeded. Very inconsistent.

Even then, 205MB should be plenty for it to update my apps, so I don't see why I should be getting the "Insufficient storage available" message to begin with.

 

[thenameisnigel]

Here's an interesting tidbit, when I try updating Facebook, which only requires 11MB, it fails. When I updated Angry Birds Space, which requires 28MB, it succeeded. Very inconsistent.

Even then, 205MB should be plenty for it to update my apps, so I don't see why I should be getting the "Insufficient storage available" message to begin with.

I see you didn't follow my instructions. Don't worry, I'll just clean up that post and pretend like I never said it. I've had this problem many times before, but NOO, ignore the messenger.

 

[ackthbbft]

I see you didn't follow my instructions. Don't worry, I'll just clean up that post and pretend like I never said it. I've had this problem many times before, but NOO, ignore the messenger.

From what I recall, you said to clear all my apps and reload them off Google Play, does that sound about right?