• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Desire memory

A

adders21

Newbie
Hi All,

Please don't groan when I ask this question (well not too much!)

I Have a HTC Desire. According to the spec it has 512mb of free memory.

I have totalled up the size of the apps on my phone so have excluded the ones I have moved to my SD card. The size is just over 64mb.

I am showing 22mb free space.

So my questions are
1, where has the other 426mb gone?
2, how do I get it back?

I have searched through more forums than I would like to mention without getting an answer that I can understand.
I don't want to root my phone as I may cock it up.
Thank you for reading.
 
I can't believe you've searched very hard, there's about a gazillion threads in this forum alone.

Anyway,very briefly...

The 512MB spec is a bit of a lie, as this RAM also has to hold the OS. On stock Android, you have about 238MB left for apps IIRC .

Various other things can take up huge chunks of space, Facebook contacts are a favourite I believe. Emails in 'Trash', browser cache, Maps & Flash updates - these four things alone can easily swallow 40MB or more. The rest is just apps.

Check settings > applications to have a look at cache sizes and delete if you want. There are a few apps in the market that will do all this for you, and also that will move all apps that can be moved to the SD.
Check the 'Force apps to install to SD' thread, but beware that this trick won't work with widgets, and even apps that have been moved leave a chunk in phone storage.
 
Hi SiHa,

Yes, there are a gazillion threads on this issue. I spent a few hours sifting through as most just point down the route of rooting which I didn't want to do. All I found was the factory reset option but I wanted to check I hadn't missed anything else.

I decided to do a hard reset after backing up all my data.

Free memory before I restored my data was 137mb. My phone is unbranded so 375mb is taken up with stuff put on by HTC.

After restoring all of my data, apps etc I now have 53.10mb of free space.

So, conclusion, reseting to factory default clears load of stuff out but rooting is the only way to clear through the 375mb, of course some of it has to be used for the OS etc.
 
The /data partition which is where your apps and data goes (including where the settings you change are stored) is 147 - 148MB. Cache for apps is here too.

Obviously when you start up the phone and go through the set up wizard, you are making changes that are saved here and start eating away at that space.

There is a thread in the tips and tricks forum that will help you subvert the install location and force all apps to SD card. Ofcourse widgets and apps that run on start up should NOT be moved but you can save a bit of space that way. It doesn't require root.

The thread looks a bit daunting at first and this is because there are many superfluos steps in there. Go to the last page and you will see a brief post by me that cuts the crap and gives you 5 easy steps.

You can also install acCleaner (cache cleaner) and schedule it to wipe cache every 3 days. This could keep a sizable amount of space free for you too.
 
The internal memory issue would be partially helped if Desire would get Gingerbread. That's because more could be moved from internal memory to SD card.

Since the latest news is that Desire is not getting GB, the more permanent solution to memory shortage looks to be the rooting way...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom