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Help Low on Space (Phone Memory, NOT application data storage)

OUJukebox

OUJukebox

Member
I am doubtful anybody will have a solution, but here is the problem I am having. I used to occasionally get the "low space" error and I would move an app to the SD, or clear a cache, or uninstall an app I never used, and it would resolve itself.

After getting the Gingerbread update on Monday and another software update on Tuesday, I started getting the error again, and was able to make it go away with the same actions listed above.

Today, I am getting the error: "Phone storage is is getting low." I don't think this is talking about the "application data storage," because in the settings menu I see that I still have 46MB free out of the total 149MB available. The first couple of times I got the error, I would tap on the notification and it took me to a list of apps and it would show something like "250MB used, 498 free." That didn't seem low to me. Today, in the settings under phone memory it says total space 748MB, available space 0.00MB. When I tap on the low space notification, it is a little different, saying 741MB used, 7.4MB free. Those numbers have fluctuated a little today, but the free space actually seems to be getting lower when I clear a cache or uninstall an app!

I am still getting text messages, but the phone won't even let me take a picture with the camera because it says "Phone storage space is getting low." Nevermind the fact that I offloaded all my pictures and videos and my internal storage says 6.29GB of 6.6GB free. Apparently the lack of Phone Memory means I can't use the camera.

If I was confident that a factory reset would fix the problem, I guess I wouldn't mind doing that, even though it is a hassle to set up all my widgets and shortcuts again.

Any suggestions?
 
OUJukebox said:
I am doubtful anybody will have a solution, but here is the problem I am having. I used to occasionally get the "low space" error and I would move an app to the SD, or clear a cache, or uninstall an app I never used, and it would resolve itself.

After getting the Gingerbread update on Monday and another software update on Tuesday, I started getting the error again, and was able to make it go away with the same actions listed above.

Today, I am getting the error: "Phone storage is is getting low." I don't think this is talking about the "application data storage," because in the settings menu I see that I still have 46MB free out of the total 149MB available. The first couple of times I got the error, I would tap on the notification and it took me to a list of apps and it would show something like "250MB used, 498 free." That didn't seem low to me. Today, in the settings under phone memory it says total space 748MB, available space 0.00MB. When I tap on the low space notification, it is a little different, saying 741MB used, 7.4MB free. Those numbers have fluctuated a little today, but the free space actually seems to be getting lower when I clear a cache or uninstall an app!

I am still getting text messages, but the phone won't even let me take a picture with the camera because it says "Phone storage space is getting low." Nevermind the fact that I offloaded all my pictures and videos and my internal storage says 6.29GB of 6.6GB free. Apparently the lack of Phone Memory (which I guess would be RAM) means I can't use the camera.

If I was confident that a factory reset would fix the problem, I guess I wouldn't mind doing that, even though it is a hassle to set up all my widgets and shortcuts again.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...


The ~750Mb you are seeing is the actual space used for apps (unrelated to the "application data space" error). It sounds as though you have a lot of apps installed. Some data is also stored there, which is why the amount of free space increases when you clear data.

A factory reset would definitely solve the problem. But i wonder what you'd come up with if you were to manually add up the size of your apps. Also, how much space do you have left on your sd card?
 
I only have about 55 apps installed and many of them are very small and/or on the SD card. I am pretty sure I don't have 750MB of apps installed, and earlier this week the phone said I had at least 300-400 MB free space (I don't remember exactly). I definitely haven't installed 300-400MB worth of apps in the last two days. The only new app I have installed is Vlingo, which is a 7MB app.

I have over 4Gb free on my SD card as well.
 
I just added up all the apps and it is less than 300MB including the ones on the SD card, so I am really baffled why the phone thinks I have used all 748MB.
 
OUJukebox said:
I just added up all the apps and it is less than 300MB including the ones on the SD card, so I am really baffled why the phone thinks I have used all 748MB.
Click to expand...


Very weird, it's a glitch i haven't seen before. I'm assuming you tried pulling the battery for a few minutes? Or maybe just try uninstalling a few apps and see what happens.
 
I deleted some apps and it didn't help at all. I did a battery pull the other day when I was having the more common problem with application data storage, but for some reason I didn't think of trying that today for this problem. I will give it a shot right now.
 
If you go into Applications, then select an application, you can select "Clear Data". I did that for applications such as Internet, Facebook, etc. and it took care of the issue.
 
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