[DisturbedShifty]

So recently every time I try to update apps that are installed on my phone they fail because of not enough space. So I looked at my storage in the settings and most of the memory is being eaten up by miscellaneous files that take up roughly 6 GB of memory. So I open that up and deleted all those files and tried to download the updates again. It said there was still too little memory. So I deleted a couple of apps and restarted my phone just to be safe. After that I was able to update my apps. This has happened twice now and each time I have had to delete an app or two just to update other ones.

The thing I don't understand is why does it say I need more room to update apps? Shouldn't it just be writing over the old file and replacing it with the new file? I get that the file might be bigger but no way is it THAT much bigger that it needs that much more space.

Anyone else had this issue? If so, is there anything that can be done about it?

[itguyjax8430]

So recently every time I try to update apps that are installed on my phone they fail because of not enough space. So I looked at my storage in the settings and most of the memory is being eaten up by miscellaneous files that take up roughly 6 GB of memory. So I open that up and deleted all those files and tried to download the updates again. It said there was still too little memory. So I deleted a couple of apps and restarted my phone just to be safe. After that I was able to update my apps. This has happened twice now and each time I have had to delete an app or two just to update other ones.

The thing I don't understand is why does it say I need more room to update apps? Shouldn't it just be writing over the old file and replacing it with the new file? I get that the file might be bigger but no way is it THAT much bigger that it needs that much more space.

Anyone else had this issue? If so, is there anything that can be done about it?

Welcome to Android Central!

It is probably downloading the whole app in to cache and then replacing what needs to be update. Then after that it removes the old data and the other data that is not needed. Do you have a micro SD card installed on the phone?

[DisturbedShifty]

Welcome to Android Central!

It is probably downloading the whole app in to cache and then replacing what needs to be update. Then after that it removes the old data and the other data that is not needed. Do you have a micro SD card installed on the phone?

Yes I do. It has just over 22GB of space available.

[itguyjax8430]

Give this app a try and see how much storage is partitioned for your apps.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...artition&hl=en

[Crashdamage]

Install this simple little app called Storage Truth. It's very small and will install in very limited space. It will tell you how much space you actually have left for installing apps:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...a.storagetruth

Android since v1.0. Linux since 2001.

[DisturbedShifty]

Give this app a try and see how much storage is partitioned for your apps.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...artition&hl=en

Thanks for the help. Looks like clearing the cache helped a lot. I just understand why it's so bad with lollipop. I didn't have this problem with KitKat

[itguyjax8430]

Thanks for the help. Looks like clearing the cache helped a lot. I just understand why it's so bad with lollipop. I didn't have this problem with KitKat

Try doing a factory reset when you get some time. I know that a lot of phones had a ton of issues after updating to Lollipop and doing a factory reset fixed a lot of those issues. It is a pain to do but could save you some time and hassle in the future. Just make sure to back up all your stuff before you do it.

[trdrvcb]

I just started having the memory issue on my Samsung Galaxy S4 in the last couple days after Verizon updated my phone about 3 weeks ago. I have tried to delete items in the unused apps and empty the caches and still it says that I am having memory issues. There are a lot of apps that I have never used, some probably will never use since they were part of Kitkat and now not use by Lollipop. I cannot see that this update to a new operating system is a good thing. I AM FRUSTRATED WITH MY PHONE!!!!

I have not been happy with Lollipop as my phone changes the volume of my ringer without my doing it and I miss important calls.

[SUZANNE 1]

I am having the same issue and deleting apps was not enough so I decided to move all pics and videos to my computer. When I did this I found I had thousands of images saved as picture files. These don't show up in my gallery and I haven't been able to find them on my phone but there they are on my computer. There are over 1,000 random images I assume from apps and miscellaneous downloads and, most annoying, I have dozens of audio files from the Waze app I recently downloaded. They are the audio files for every possible warning you can get from the Waze navigation app. I have no way to delete these because I can't find them on my phone and, even if I did, what prevents this from happening in the future. SO now I know what happened to all the memory. I just don't know how to fix it.

[Gatchaman]

Same problem on my phone and my wife phone and a friends phone after the last update (lollipop). All 3 phones have ~6.3+ GB listed in Storage / Miscellaneous files that you cannot see. Every phone when you look at the misc files only shows at 50MB worth.

I've tried a dozen storage programs and none can see these files, nor is there a root out yet for lollipop on this phone. The only solution I have seen is to do a factory restore (but eventually the same problem will just come back).

This is a huge problem that Verizon/Samsung needs to fix.