Why does my P9 lite have so little phone storage?

[Android Central Question]

I've had my P9 lite for 2 years and for a while now I've been having storage problems on the phone itself. I have 5 apps and 1 game, all my pictures and videos are stored on my sd card. And I always have a notification saying that there is not enough space. My phone storage says 99% full. I don't know what else to delete or transfer to my PC.

 

[belodion]

Post a screenshot of your storage stats in Settings, Storage, and we'll try to diagnose.
https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=409154

https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=413366

 

[Rukbat]

The phone has 16GB of storage to start with, before anything is loaded onto it. Then you have recovery and the whole system loaded. Plus a few other partitions.

To see how storage is actually set up, connect the phone to a PC (that already has the Huawei driver installed), install ADB and Fastboot Tool, open a cmd window and type:

adb devices

When you see your phone listed (it will be the phone's serial number), type:

adb shell df

(You could also issue the df command from a terminal app, if you have one installed, but you probably don't have enough space to install one if you don't already have one installed.)

Look for a line that says storage/emulated (on the right), or something like that. It's usually the last line. (It may also say sdcard.) Look in the 2nd column - that's the total amount of space allocated to internal storage. The rest is being used by the phone. (The 3rd column, Used, includes all the system apps. The 4th column, Available, is all you have left - which is probably almost nothing.)

In late 2019, a "small" phone is 64GB total storage (not the 16GB your phone has). 128GB gives you some breathing room. That's why phones with 512GB of storage are currently being sold.

 

[Golurk]

To think that I once thought 32GB was a lot...

 

[Rukbat]

Back in 2013, it was. A phone with 512GB internal storage? Impossible. Now? In a few years, those phones that still have external SD cards are going to need new technology, because 2TB is going to be too small.