Actual size of application

[Reactant]

Greetings! This one issue is always in the back of my mind.

Lets say i want to remove an app (ie Medscape medical app)

I go to Settings-->Applications-->Manage applications

And it shows which app i want to install and the size of each app. But wait! The size they are displaying is wrong and grossly small.

Ie. After installing Medscape, the app then asked if i want to install the offline version of it which is 300-400MB. But under the manage applications section it labels Medscape size as "4.42Mb."

So my question is, if i uninstall this would all the files be erased (ie 400mb) or only 4.42 mb would be cleared? If only 4.42mb would be cleared what should i do to completely remove the application?

PS. Medscape is just an example, there are many apps that are displaying a completely underestimated size of app.

 

[Hadron]

I expect this is because the 300-400MB is stored on SD. The phone menu only shows the internal space (/data) used by the app. Similarly if you move an app to sd then the apparant size decreases.

In the latter case uninstalling it also removes the part that was moved to sd. If an app has instead downloaded a large data file and stored it in its own directory on the sd it might be that the phone OS doesn't know about it, in which case you'd have to remove it yourself (many apps leave folders behind on the sd card after removal). Never used the particular app you give as an example, so can't say in that case.

 

[Reactant]

I expect this is because the 300-400MB is stored on SD. The phone menu only shows the internal space (/data) used by the app. Similarly if you move an app to sd then the apparant size decreases.

In the latter case uninstalling it also removes the part that was moved to sd. If an app has instead downloaded a large data file and stored it in its own directory on the sd it might be that the phone OS doesn't know about it, in which case you'd have to remove it yourself (many apps leave folders behind on the sd card after removal). Never used the particular app you give as an example, so can't say in that case.

That was my first guess. That it must have been installed in the SD, but i've checked my SD folder. There are no files/folders related to medscape.

I can give more examples
Example:#1>> NOVA 2. Under 'Manage Applications' mentions it is 14.30 Mb, when thats impossible compression for such a huge game. The actual folder saved on the Phones's memory is labeled "GloftN2HP" and in reality is 1.04 Gb.

So if i were to uninstall the 14.30 mb file, would the rest of the 1.04 Gb also leave?

PS. Both Medscape and NOVA 2 work fine even when SD card is removed. As of yet i havent really moved any program to the SD card.


Example #2: "Hero of Sparta HD" game.
Labeled: 3.38 Mb
Actual folder name in the phone "hos" and is roughly 75 Mb.

 

[Daniel Jones]

Hey Reactant
This is a property of android OS, the size it shows under manage applications is the amount of space app is using from your phone's internal memory. When you will uninstall the app it will remove all the data of the app but few apps leaves the app folder with some temp files that you can erase manually.

 

[adaaaam]

Gameloft games I've downloaded always download additional data to my external SD when launched, and uninstalling the app leaves the data behind. I'm not sure why the game still runs with your SD ejected. You seem to be aware of the actual gloftn2hp folder being present, so are you locating it on your internal sd? What phone do you have? When you remove nova the folder and content remains behind, doesn't it? From my experience the app size total reflects how much space is being taken up on internal phone memory, and there's even a data total that can accumulate, such as cache from a Web browser.