Internal Memory Limit is really becoming an issue

[chronic25]

OK, so I like new apps. I like games. I like having some FUN with my phone. But I'm having a harder and harder time managing Apps that can't be moved to SD on my phone. I'm constantly hovering between 40-50MB remaining on the internal memory out of a total of 432MB. Some days, I can't even update my existing apps due to lack of available memory.

I have 3 Phone Only Apps that are 3MB. The rest are 2MB or less. I have 50 Phone only apps installed and half of them are less than 1MB.

I have 65 Apps on the SD Card. Only 6 are more than 10MB. 40 of them are between 2-10MB

I've moved everything over to SD that Android Assistant or SuperBox Pro will let me. I've even uninstalled other large Apps that ARE on the SD and noticed that doing so freed up internal memory.

I don't think I'm expecting too much in App capacity desires. But, I'm having to make too many compromises with the apps I choose to keep. Does anyone have any advice for freeing up more internal memory? I've cleared caches everywhere I can find them. I only store the last 50 emails from the accounts I'm tied to. My EVO Shift is less than 6 months old and I'm very happy with everything else about the phone.

Please help. Thanks.

 

[DaWeav]

I own a Shift too, but I don't believe that it matters what phone you have. Anyway, my compromise was to get a wifi tablet so that I could offload a bunch of the apps. And, the larger tablet screen is so much more useful when I'm at someone's house using their wifi. It's just what I considered since I had the cash and wanted to save the precious memory on your phone.

 

[jhill0224]

Memory limit is a HUGE issue... I use evernote and dropbox quite a bit and it takes up a ton of the little available internal memory... Unfortunately that cannot be moved to the memory card... Looking for a new phone now because of this issue.

 

[Thronnos]

Get yourself a 32gig sdcard and then make a SDext partition for max size.. Over a gig then move apps from your phone onto it while keeping app cache onto your phone. It will greatly improve things. Head on over to sdx developers if you need help we have a great bunch of guys over there.

Sent from my Shifty Speedy using Tapatalk

 

[chronic25]

Get yourself a 32gig sdcard and then make a SDext partition for max size.. Over a gig then move apps from your phone onto it while keeping app cache onto your phone. It will greatly improve things. Head on over to sdx developers if you need help we have a great bunch of guys over there.

Sent from my Shifty Speedy using Tapatalk

I'm not tracking the advice you provided. I have a 16GB Card with 9.5GB Available. What's an SDext partition? Will this force apps to move to the SD card that I'm unable to currently? I've checked out sdx Developers and cannot find anything of help on this.

 

[kristi]

I have the same problem, I was also running golauncher because it didn't have the sense reboot. Then I got sick and tired of no space, I uninstalled one app that takes 50mb alone got rid ok all golauncher stuff and any extra widgets. I also went into application managing and cleared the data for everything except recent texts and phone calls. I reinstalled the 50mb app (cuz I need it) in the end I now have 134m where I had 40megs and also could not update. Oh I also got rid of some games I wasn't playing anymore...because I too like to play games and do a lot on my phone. I now love my phone again because its like its brand new hope that may help

 

[TonyLibations]

I have to do a factory reset on mine about monthly to free up space. Deleting apps, data and cache doesn't clear enough. Then after a month or so u get to do it again. I don't know where this damn thing accumulates so much.

 

[chronic25]

I have to do a factory reset on mine about monthly to free up space. Deleting apps, data and cache doesn't clear enough. Then after a month or so u get to do it again. I don't know where this damn thing accumulates so much.

How long does it take to recover from a Factory Reset? What comes back manually and what apps and data do you need to reload and long into manually? I have 5 separate email accounts I sync with and I fear it would take hours to recover from such a reset.

Thanks

 

[cmags]

The previous suggestion regarding the EXT partition is really the only way to get a larger "internal" memory for your phone, but requires quite a bit of hacking/configuration.

Creating an ext partition on your SD card means backing up everything on your SD card, repartitioning it (breaking it into different sections), and configuring one of the partitions to be a 1 or 2gb ext3 partition. This is a linux file system that the phone can read. Then you use an app or a custom script to tell the phone that this partition is additional internal storage, and the phone then treats it as internal memory. So instead of the 400+mb the phone normally has internally, it has that plus another gig or two.

I believe at minimum you will need the phone to be rooted to use one of these apps/scripts. I've rooted, added a custom recovery, and applied Cyanogenmod 7 ROM to my phone, then used Simple2Ext (app) to do this, but it only works with CM7. I'm not sure what's involved entirely with other ROMs or if this can be done with the stock ROM. I do know that I personally needed to repartition my SD card with the recovery - it wouldn't work right when I partitioned with my linux machine.

Read read read if you want to do this. Your best source for info is over at XDA: HTC EVO Shift 4G - xda-developers

Otherwise, if you're not up for hacking the phone, your only real option is to use a different device with more than 400-ish mb internal memory, which is shared between your apps, your email, messages, and much of the OS itself.

Another "patch" option would be Titanium Backup - it has the ability to "force" apps to the SD card that will not move there otherwise, but be aware that this may cause apps to behave unexpectedly (it gives this warning when you try), so test each app you do this with.

Good luck!

 

[chronic25]

I finally got fed up and Hard Reset the phone. It took a couple of hours while working to re-connect with all my Mail, Contact and Calendar sources and then reload my apps from the Amazon and Android marketplaces, but at least they remembered what I had. "App List" was also very valuable in backing up a list of Apps loaded and saving the list to SD so I could recall them and load them from the list.

At any rate, I gained over 100MB of internal memory by the time I was finished. I shouldn't have to, but if a Hard Reset is needed every 6 months to solve the "Bit Rot", I guess I can live with it.

Thanks, everyone for your suggestions.

 

[Lannig]

Well, since I'm still using a good old Nexus One which only has 196M partition for all non built-in (system) applications that don't go to the SD, this particular issue is even more serious to me. I also noticed that "bit rot" mentioned by previous poster, i.e. storage space that just seemed to "leak" even after uninstalling apps. All of this was quite mysterious to me until I eventually took the step and rooted my phone. Things started to make sense then.

Among the the sub-diectories found at the top of the /data partition, there are 3 important ones:

./app, which holds the .apk files of downloaded apps when they aren't moved to SD
./data, which hold the data (surprise!) for these applications, each in a separate directory going by the name of the application (e.g. ./com.eurosport), *even* if the app itself resides on SD
./dalvik-cache, which contains one .dex file for every app, *even* the ones residing on SD (e.g. mnt@asec@com.eurosport-1@pkg.apk@classes.dex). My understanding is that .dex files are kind of precompiled Java code translated from what is found in the .apk files. This directory can be completely emptied, .dex files will be rebuilt when applications are run. This will slow down things a bit at first, that's all. Immediate reboot is required after zapping davik-cache.

So every application, even the ones on SD, will consume significant storage space from the internal flash memory.
Uninstalled applications can leave data behind in /data/data (I haven't seen this happening much) and a .dex file in /data/dalvik-cache (much more common).

When I rooted my phone, I had just about 30Mb of free internal storage left. After I removed some left-overs from uninstalled apps in /data/data and zapped the /data/dalvik-cache, free space jumped to almost 80Mb ! Of course after some use the dalvik-cache was rebuilt and free space stabilized around 50Mb. That's almost double of what I had!

If using shell commands isn't your thing, there are apps claiming to be able to zap the dalvik-cache. I think they require a rooted phone. Not sure about cleaning up leftover subdirs in /data/data.

Disclaimer: this is my understanding of things. I'm no Android guru although I have 25 years of Unix system admin behind me. Corrections are welcome.

 

[tirith]

Well, since I'm still using a good old Nexus One which only has 196M partition for all non built-in (system) applications that don't go to the SD, this particular issue is even more serious to me. I also noticed that "bit rot" mentioned by previous poster, i.e. storage space that just seemed to "leak" even after uninstalling apps. All of this was quite mysterious to me until I eventually took the step and rooted my phone. Things started to make sense then.

Among the the sub-diectories found at the top of the /data partition, there are 3 important ones:

./app, which holds the .apk files of downloaded apps when they aren't moved to SD
./data, which hold the data (surprise!) for these applications, each in a separate directory going by the name of the application (e.g. ./com.eurosport), *even* if the app itself resides on SD
./dalvik-cache, which contains one .dex file for every app, *even* the ones residing on SD (e.g. mnt@asec@com.eurosport-1@pkg.apk@classes.dex). My understanding is that .dex files are kind of precompiled Java code translated from what is found in the .apk files. This directory can be completely emptied, .dex files will be rebuilt when applications are run. This will slow down things a bit at first, that's all. Immediate reboot is required after zapping davik-cache.

So every application, even the ones on SD, will consume significant storage space from the internal flash memory.
Uninstalled applications can leave data behind in /data/data (I haven't seen this happening much) and a .dex file in /data/dalvik-cache (much more common).

When I rooted my phone, I had just about 30Mb of free internal storage left. After I removed some left-overs from uninstalled apps in /data/data and zapped the /data/dalvik-cache, free space jumped to almost 80Mb ! Of course after some use the dalvik-cache was rebuilt and free space stabilized around 50Mb. That's almost double of what I had!

If using shell commands isn't your thing, there are apps claiming to be able to zap the dalvik-cache. I think they require a rooted phone. Not sure about cleaning up leftover subdirs in /data/data.

Disclaimer: this is my understanding of things. I'm no Android guru although I have 25 years of Unix system admin behind me. Corrections are welcome.

Most custom recoveries also have a feature for clearing dalvik-cache...

Moved to a phone with 16g internal and a 32gb sd card, so room is no longer an issue for me

Swyped from my Photon using t-talk.

 

[crump84]

This is why I use a2sd... No memory issues for me

That's with about 80+ user apps installed

 

[ginglish]

crump84
Who is the developer of the APP you recommend?

 

[turkbot]

crump84
Who is the developer of the APP you recommend?

Its not an app it a script inside of the rom to allow apps to be on the sd ext

Sent from my PG06100 using Tapatalk

 

[B-San]

^ So you'd have to root it & use a non-stock rom so that you can use a2sd?

My apologies, I'm a noob to the whole rooting thing...

 

[turkbot]

Yeah pretty much or you could use an app but its not the same thing

Sent from my PG06100 using Tapatalk

 

[reed4richards]

Before you Hard Reset your phone, you could try to go to Manage Apps and delete the cache and user data for all the apps with a lot of data. For me, I noticed that Facebook was talking 50+ MB of user data that I got back once I cleared it out. This does mean that you need to re-log into your accounts, but this is less work than resetting the entire phone (which I've also done).

 

[TonyLibations]

Something else that has helped me is to uninstall all the updates to the bloatware from Sprint that can't be removed w/o rooting. I use Telenav, so i've left it alone. But, the other 4 tend to take up quite a bit of space when fully updated.

 

[fatshark76]

Had the same problem...found out that the data being stored by uploads to apps such as twitter and facebook were being stored internally. Go in to manage applications under settings. Clear the data under twitter/htc peep and facebook. It will log you out but clear out alot of memory! Hope this helps.