Chronic memory problems

[Daz D]

Anyone know why Huawei create phones with insufficient internal storage and how to resolve this? For lack of money I've always got low memory phones, but they always worked if limited number of apps/photos etc. until Huawei Y6 2018 that I have.


The phone got full and eventually I got tired of deleting photos etc and got an SD. I thought this would resolve the problem. I transferred most but not all media to the card. But within weeks it was full again. Now ALL my photos and videos are on the SD card and I only have 3-4 apps that are absolutely necessary for work, but it’s still full.


It seems that any space that I free by transferring photos or deleting data or apps is immediately occupied, so that I’m in bizarre situation of having less apps and photos on my phone than before only for it to be more full. The apps memory is totally bloated are far in excess of what it should be when I add up the size of all individual apps.


Other than this the phone is pretty good. Any solutions much appreciated. I have looked extensively but only found suggestion of deleting data which I’ve done or factory reset. Thanks

 

[Dannydet]

install Google photos on your android and let it backup your photos on your phone first.
Then simply open a browser on your pc and go to photos.google.com
Enter your Gmail credentials and fetch your photos directly from there. No cable needed. Then delete your photos off of your device to free up space.

 

[Daz D]

Hey Danny thanks for the response but the problem is that there are no photos or any other media on the phone. Zero. The only "optional" things I have on the phone are 3 or 4 absolutely necessary apps. It's all system data and accumulated crap that I can't access to delete...

 

[ocnbrze]

sorry not much you can do with only 16g of storage and 2 gigs of ram. next time get something with more storage and more ram. this is a budget phone....so do not expect tooooo much out of it. you might want to see if you can use the sd card as internal storage. a word of warning if you do, you will not be able to use the sd card as external storage. evrything on the card will bee seen by the phone as internal. also this will increase the wear and tear of the card.....so backup regularly and be prepared for your card to wear out eventually.

 

[mikedt]

Anyone know why Huawei create phones with insufficient internal storage and how to resolve this? For lack of money I've always got low memory phones, but they always worked if limited number of apps/photos etc. until Huawei Y6 2018 that I have.

Because they're usually very low cost. Here in China many users use them for just messaging, payments, online shopping, food ordering, mandatory Covid-19 tracking codes, etc. with Wechat and/or Alipay, and nothing else.

The phone got full and eventually I got tired of deleting photos etc and got an SD. I thought this would resolve the problem. I transferred most but not all media to the card. But within weeks it was full again. Now ALL my photos and videos are on the SD card and I only have 3-4 apps that are absolutely necessary for work, but it’s still full.


It seems that any space that I free by transferring photos or deleting data or apps is immediately occupied, so that I’m in bizarre situation of having less apps and photos on my phone than before only for it to be more full. The apps memory is totally bloated are far in excess of what it should be when I add up the size of all individual apps.


Other than this the phone is pretty good. Any solutions much appreciated. I have looked extensively but only found suggestion of deleting data which I’ve done or factory reset. Thanks

What actually are those apps? Because things like Facebook can be a notorious storage and resource hog.

 

[Deleted User]

Have you done a full factory reset?
Have you delved deep in to the Storage setting? Can you post screenshots of your Storage?

How much space is the System taking up?

You should have more than enough even with 16gb, but I don't know how much bloat ware Huawei put in that you can delete.

My Motorola moto e6 plus uses 5gb for the Android system. I had a 16gb Moto G4 that used similar.
* My Nokia with 64gb has 13gb taken.

New mid range Xiaomi phones take up 21 gb of System storage including bloatware, some of which can be uninstalled, but most have 128gb or 64gb as a base rom.

 

[Hadron]

Yes, the first essential is to understand what is using your storage - just being told "it's full" doesn't give us much to work with. If you could post a screenshot from the storage menu that would help. There are other apps that can give more detailed information - I quite like DiskUsage for giving a zoomable, detailed graphical overview of storage usage.

 

[svim]

If you're storing so much data on your phone that both the internal and an added microSD card are constantly getting filled to capacity, there's a reality you need to accept, either
a) rethink how much data you want to keep on your phone (and start using online storage services more to compensate), or
b) buckle down and just spend more for a more capable phone with more storage capacity.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-budget-android-phone/

 

[Daz D]

Thank you all for the responses. I appreciate it.

I have not tried a factory reset yet, but will do so if all else fails, which seems likely. Unfortunately I do not have the money for a new phone, nor will I in the foreseeable future. Hence I'm quite desperate to resolve this.

I have attached my storage screenshot.

To clarify, I am using as little data as humanly possible. I am certain the issue is with the phone and not my use of it. I am certain I am not really using all the space the phone says I am. I may be overly optimistic, but it doesn't stand to reason that all the space is being used. It just doesn't add up.

I have only 3-4 optional apps installed on my phone (whatsapp, skype and a banking app as well as messenger lite)

According to my gallery, ALL my photos are the SD card (which still has plenty of space).

You may have noticed there is 1.2GB of videos and 200MB of images. But there are no images or videos on my phone when I look in the gallery. Also apps are 7.66GB, which does not add up when I add up the individual space used by apps.

Which comes to the root of the problem. There is space occupied that, as far as I can tell, should not be occupied. On my old Samsungs I could click on the each heading to find what this storage is and delete it, but on this phone I cannot, so though there is a preposterous amount of storage used by apps and media, I cannot delete.

So my one hope is there is a way of finding, accessing and deleting this data, or some other method to access space that should logically be there...

 

[svim]

When you're viewing the Settings >> Storage menu, try tapping on 'Videos' and see if that shows any more details as to what video files are there. Do you have any kind of file manager app installed? A file manager app will be more useful in moving files and folders than just the Settings menu, and keep in mind the Gallery app is just a media file manager, with by-design limitations on what files it handles. An actual file manager is intended to be more comprehensive. Anyway, since you're down to just a few hundred MBs of internal storage, try installing this 'Explorer' file manager app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.speedsoftware.explorer
It has a good feature set, a nice user friendly interface, and most importantly only has a 4.5MB install size.
Or this 'Ghost Commander' app is an alternative:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghostsq.commander
It's install size is only 1.5MB and it has a more extensive feature set but its user interface is more utilitarian.
There are plenty of other very viable choices (see the screen caps for each to find one to you liking) but do keep in mind until you can free up some storage space your options are limited.

Also, double-check your Settings >> Apps menu. There does seem to be a lot of apps there. And if you do find apps you've installed that you don't use any longer, don't just use the 'Uninstall' button to remove them, use 'Clear data' first, then Uninstall. This removes all of the apps settings/config files/support files.