My phone has been bitching at me lately that it is low on memory and I need to delete some apps to insure optimum function.
I didn’t delete any apps but what I did do is migrate any app that my phone would allow to my SD card. This apparently didn’t satisfy my phone as it is still bitching at me to delete some apps.
I was under the understanding that when a phone whines about low memory, it’s referring to the phone’s internal memory. Is this true? Would it help at all if I bought a larger SD card?
Any fix to this? I need all the apps that I currently have.
This is particularly frustrating as my phone came preloaded with a ton of apps that I could care less about. Only except the phone wont let me delete those apps. :rolleyes:
There are a couple of games that are tremendous memory hogs and/or so poorly programmed that they have memory leaks. Wish I could remember a name or two.
Is this an Android phone? Go to Settings -> Storage and see how much space you have on each memory. It should also tell you which apps are taking up most memory.
Also, there are things besides apps that may be taking up memory. If you ever downloaded files through the browser, all those files are probably still sitting in internal memory under the Downloads folder. Do you use any apps that download their own data, like podcast downloaders, music players, e-book readers, etc.?
I had that same problem with an HTC phone with 2Gb of onboard memory. Despite the fact that I had a 16Gb SD card and installed every app I could to the card, I frequently ran low on memory. At 50Mb or less, I stopped receiving email updates, text messages and was unable to update any application until I deleted a few apps or cleared cache for everything installed. I even uninstalled all the updates for pre-installed apps that I never used. This went on until I gave up and replaced my phone with a Galaxy s4 with 16Gb onboard which supports up to 64Gb SD card (I think).
There is no permanent solution to this other than uninstall the apps you wish you could use if it weren’t the useless apps that were pre-installed on the phone. Or I guess you could root it. That may buy you some time but apps are just going to keep getting bigger.
I have the same problem on galaxy ace. I get some milage by listing appg by memory usage and then deleting data and/or cache for those I don’t care about. Rebooting phone often has a good result too. I should root the phone and uninstall some of the junkware it came with. However, as far as I can tell, these are not really the big culprets. Wouldn’t mind hearing from someone who has done this to find out whether it makes a difference.
There are multiple storage partitions on an Android Phone
/ is the internal phone storage. This holds the Android OS and apps (by default). This is fixed and ranges from 512Mb (early Android phones) to 2Gb /sdcard is the external card you insert. This is used for storing media, apps (if you use the Move to SD option) and some data /data or /data/data or /datadata is used to store application specific data - this allows the rapid restoration of application state after a resume/application switch. On some phones (HTC do this) this is mapped to a dedicated section of very fast flash RAM for speed, but the partition is rather small.
When your phone complains that it is low on storage, it is often the /data area that is running out of space - especially if the System and SDCard areas have ample free space (/data areas don’t show up on the Storage screen). There are tools to clear down this space or to move the data to the SDCard (out of the very restricted storage allocated to it) but you need to have a rooted phone to use them. Otherwise, backup your phone (I use Helium backup), run a factory reset, and only restore the apps/data that you use. That should clear the /data partition.
So / refers to, for example, the 16 GB advertised for the SIII? And /data is the 1 GB of RAM? That’s what I suspected, uninstalling apps or removing music won’t free up RAM.
When you jailbreak your phone, a real app deleter cAN delete pre-installed apps.
But first you have to ensure your phone is well and truly rooted. ( Thats like being jail broken , but really the jail still exists, its just you have become warden. )
Malware can also cause problems like this. Unfortunately, finding and removing malware on Android phones is nearly impossible. There are anti-malware apps but their performance is poor.
The problem with protected ecosystems like phone OSes, is that there aren’t all that well protected and any add-on app that wants to really check and fix anything that gets past the protection won’t have the necessary rights to do so.
If you suspect malware, the only cure is to do a fresh re-install of the whole system. Something that might require full root access. (Some Android devices allow a re-install from backup ROM using certain bootup keypresses.)
To expand on this - you can do a factory reset through your Settings menu, even on unrooted devices. This will put the phone back to how it was when you first got it ie you will need to re-register it with your Google account etc. Before you do this you will need to think about backup. SMS Backup+ will, well, backup your SMS to your Google account, and you need to make sure that your contacts are also backed up there (this should be automatic, but best to do a manual sync). Any music or pics on your SD card will be retained, but you’ll need to reinstall your downloaded apps. Google Play will do that for you.
Dammit, I think I do have malware. I was thumbing through my contacts list and one of my “contacts” is Hotpassion797. Hotpassion sounds like an interesting person but I know I sure as hell did put that in my contacts list.
I guess I’ll try a factory reset.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to root my phone. (I had to look that up BTW. heh)
My question is, where do I go for a root app? I guess Google play store isn’t going to help me out with that.
Also, once I root my phone then what? Just start deleting apps I thin k I don’t need? This makes me a little nervous as I’m afriad I might delete something that is crucial to the phone.
Go for a factory reset before you try anything a bit more fundamental. What make/model/network is your phone? The xda forums are very useful for rooting/flashing new ROM advice, but I don’t think you need to go that far yet.
My old HTC Desire ran out of memory all the time, but there’s a method to fool the OS into thinking that a part of the SD card is system memory, so there are options here