Android and it's annoying way of dealing with low space!
Bill Clinton
Posts: 9,389 Forum Member
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I'm quite an Android fan but this has always annoyed me, you go to download an app, it downloads fine but only reports a low space warning when it attempts to install. And then when you hit the app manager etc, there is such scant information as to where all your space has gone! I have the problem on both my Samsung and Sony devices that when I go to clear space it is such an effort. On the Samsung there are three forms of memory shown, one is the external SD card and then in the internal space, there are two listings for "USB memory" one of which seems dedicated to the core apps and system etc! But I got about 100-150 MB free on it, and still apps wouldn't install, even after a reboot of the device, despite being far lower than 100MB in download size.
On the Sony Ericsson Xperia device in particular it seems you can download hardly anything at all before the internal space is filled and you need to start moving things to the SD card, but even then the internal "baggage" still conspires to prevent any more apps being installed!
No information is given to help you work out how much space is needed, how much space it didn't have and exactly how to clear it so that you can install. We often complain about Windows, but you have to admit that it's very easy to see what space you have in comparison to the Android system.
How much DO you need to keep free?
On the Sony Ericsson Xperia device in particular it seems you can download hardly anything at all before the internal space is filled and you need to start moving things to the SD card, but even then the internal "baggage" still conspires to prevent any more apps being installed!
No information is given to help you work out how much space is needed, how much space it didn't have and exactly how to clear it so that you can install. We often complain about Windows, but you have to admit that it's very easy to see what space you have in comparison to the Android system.
How much DO you need to keep free?
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Comments
I have Link2SD installed on my HTC Wildfire S, and use it to move apps and check on memory usage. It seems to report a different "free internal" figure after every reboot, even with no changes made.
I think you need at least twice the package size free internal (RAM) to install an app, even if it's subsequently to be shifted to flash storage.
The phone only has one SD Card slot. It turns out that SD Card 2 is infact the physical SD Card in the phone and "SD Card" is some sort of virtual SD card from the internal memory!
They know its happening but they are still selling the low memory phones now
When you think about it the processors are dual and quad core speed and then they are still putting 250/500mb memory some less.
No, storage management on Android is absolutely fine. The Google standard since at least the Galaxy Nexus is one partition and no SD cards (I know the Nexus S didn't have an SD card slot but I don't know about its partitions as I never owned that phone). The problem is manufacturers breaking this standard. Samsung used to have the internal, SD & SD2 situation as well.
Absolutely. On my s3 it alerts me to say " memory running low" and when I try to delete a video or images it wont let me into the gallery so I have to go through the files app
I have this as well on my Ace 2. In fact I've been locked out of my photo gallery for a while now. Fortunately all my photos are on Dropbox. I still have a lot of storage left!