How can I free up space storage on my Galaxy S4?

[Sean Harman]

Confused about Galaxy S4 storage...

I bought a 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4 back in November of 2013. As most people have noticed, at least 6GB of the phone's internal storage are reserved for miscellaneous Android files and bloatware. However, when I go to my phone's storage settings, it says my Applications take up 8.56GB, but when I actually click on Applications to see a list, it only shows 7.3GB being used. My bigger apps only take up about 3.5GB of those 7.3GB, so it's kind of pointless to try and remove all the smaller ones. I guess my main question is: if the Applications setting says that I have 2.4GB free, why does the Storage setting say I only have 663MB free? Is the Applications setting including my cached data? I've moved everything I possibly can think of to my external memory card, but I'm constantly having to remove apps just to be able to update my current ones.

I still have 10 months left on my contract at Verizon and I can't afford to pay $600 for a new phone with more internal storage right now. Should I try to learn how to root my phone so I can get rid of the unnecessary stuff? Or is there something I can delete for a temporary fix?

 

[Rukbat]

Re: Confused about Galaxy S4 storage...

1) You can't "pay for more internal storage" without buying a new phone. Phone storage isn't expandable. (The SD card is for data storage, but it won't replace internal storage unless someone's written a ROM that mounts it as internal storage.)

2) Applications include those you turned off, hidden applications, everything on the phone. The sizes you're dding up are of visible enabled apps.

3) A lot of space can be taken by Miscellaneous - that's where apps store their data.

4) There's not much you cn do except clear the system cache, clear all the app caches, try Low on Space? Dump logcat, move more to the SD card and/or live with it. (Apps keep getting larger, which is why phones do - and apps keep getting larger because phones do. It's like an arms race. With some developers it's "hey, if it fits in the latest X phone, it's small enough. Not like in the 80s, when we used single letters as variable names in interpreted languages to save a couple of bytes. "a" is one byte, "on" is two, so use "a" and keep a paper list that "a" indicates whether this function is enabled. You can always "expand" paper.)

 

[extraclass]

Re: Confused about Galaxy S4 storage...

Do a search here for SD CARD. you will find lots of ways to work around this limitation. Move all pictures, videos, music and documents to the SD Card and you will have room for hundreds of apps!