Why do I get "memory full" errors when I have enough memory?

[AC Question]

I have a Samsung Galaxy Core. Looking in the settings, I have more than 500 Mb free in the main memory. But when I try to upgrade any app, the phone says that I don't have enough memory. This happens even if the app, according to Google Play, requires as little as 12 Mb.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Welcome to the forums. Are you seeing the 500 MB in your RAM or your storage? What app are you trying to install?

 

[Martin59]

Original Poster here. Answer to Golfdriver97:
The 500 Mb are in RAM. It affects just about any app, I have 14 waiting to update right now. The smallest one is Google Calendar. Oddly enough, four apps managed to update themselves automatically today, which I don't think has happened for weeks. Google Drive was one of them.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Original Poster here. Answer to Golfdriver97:
The 500 Mb are in RAM. It affects just about any app, I have 14 waiting to update right now. The smallest one is Google Calendar. Oddly enough, four apps managed to update themselves automatically today, which I don't think has happened for weeks. Google Drive was one of them.

Welcome to the forums!

This might be a case of incorrect terms being used, but how much storage do you have?

 

[Martin59]

Reading your question again, I'm not sure what you mean with RAM vs storage. This is what the storage summary calls "unit memory".

 

[Martin59]

I have 8 Gb of unit storage (plus the same on SD, but that is useless when downloading)

 

[Golfdriver97]

Storage being what you can hold in the phone. So the 8GB is your storage. Think storage as your PC Hard Drive. Can you post a screenshot of the storage stats, please? Go into Settings>storage.

 

[Martin59]

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

 

[Golfdriver97]

Sorry for the delay. I think what the error is referring to is that you don't have enough room in storage. The app you want to download is larger than the available space you have.

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

 

[chanchan05]

Android blocks downloads if storage is going below 500mb. That space is needrd for extractions and cache building when apps are being run (most will be deleted in closing app). If you eat into that it will cause performance issues, hence system is coded to protect that space. This is true for all systems (Windows, Macs), that they need an amount of the system drive free.

 

[Martin59]

Thanks for both replies. Byt unfortunately neither makes sense.

The app requires 12 MB. Last time I checked, 12 was less than 500.

The second explanation, that 500 Mb should always be required, sounds better. But I do have more than 500! Also, it used to work with around 200. It was when I got tired of always having to free up those 200, and uninstalled a couple of big apps, that the problems started.

The apps I uninstalled were Word and Excel. Instead, I installed WPS Office.

 

[chanchan05]

Re: Why do I get "memory full" errors when I have enough memory?

I can't say for your experience previously. All devices I've had in the last 3 years requires me to have more than 500mb free when downloading (the last device that allowed me to go below was the OG Galaxy S) The only times I've managed to go below 500 was through app updates and then I get device memory low warnings. Plus don't let the download size fool you. The download size is smaller than the installation size due to installer compression. Also the phone would learn how much actual size is needed and thus block the download.

 

[Martin59]

Re: Why do I get "memory full" errors when I have enough memory?

The download size is less than 5 Mb, the figure 12 came from the requirements listed in Google Play. Either way, 500 + 5 + 12 is still comfortably below the 590 that I have.

What I'm after is that something must have gone wrong. There is some part of the storage that the stats display sees as free, but the installer sees as occupied. And this probably happened when I uninstalled the MS Office apps, or when I installed WPS.

 

[chanchan05]

Well you could try doing a cache wipe. There may be an error.

 

[Martin59]

Thanks, sounds like it's worth trying. I have cleared the cache from the stats display, but I guess there's a more thorough way to do it?

Adding to the confusion, the phone just now upgraded two 85 Mb apps automatically! But when I try one of the smaller apps that are queued up, I get the same error as before.

 

[chanchan05]

Depends on your phone model, but you want to try clearing the system cache. On a Samsung with a home button, you turn off the phone, then power it on while pressing volume up, and home at the same time until you see the blue screen and then it brings you to a recovery menu and you want to clear thr system cache from there.

 

[Martin59]

Ok, many thanks! I will try this when I have time.

 

[Martin59]

To round off this thread: As I wrote in the next last post, automatic updates suddenly started to work for me. Manual updates and new installations were still blocked though. I left it like that for a few days, and gradually more and more apps got updated in the background. When the list of waiting updates was down to two (from originally 18), I tried to manually update those, and it worked! Now, I can also install new apps. And the indicated free space has somehow also increased in this process, to some 680 Mb.

So in conclusion, thanks for the tips but the problem seems to have solved itself, just as mysteriously as it first appeared.

 

[3nigmatic]

You just needed to clear data of certain apps using up space
When I had this same problem on my Android, I fixed it with Link2SD (after rooting). You may find the steps I followed in https://forum.hovatek.com/thread-19111.html