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

Phone storage is not all acessible.

S

swansojb

Lurker
I have a 8GB smart phone. On the phone it shows 8GB with 6.4GB available. Phone is always short of memory, and I have to delete caches and/or apps to install a new app. I've moved all apps it will let me to the SD card.

When I connect phone to PC, It shows 2.47 GB used and 0.5GB available.

How do I access/utilise the missing 6 GB?
 
Last edited:
You can't access it all. That "8 GB" includes the part used for the system software and firmware, and the amount available to the user is always smaller, usually by several GB. And to make it worse there are still some Chinese budget manufacturers who partition what is left in a way that stops you using all of it for apps. 8 GB is below minimal these days, and for a sensible setup I'd be surprised if you had more than 4GB available, but if you've one of those archaic partitionings as well it could be worse.

Since you are getting different stories from the phone and the PC, and we don't even know what phone this is, if you want a more definite answer you'll need to give us more information. Screenshot of your storage menu would help, or if you can install and run a tiny app called "Storage Truth" and post what it says that should give an unambiguous answer.
 
/system
Size 787.4Mb
Used 701.9 MB
Free 85.5 MB

/data
Size 2.5GB
Used 1.9 GB
Free 592.7 MB

Device info
Android 4.4.2
Device 06
Model 06
Maker alps
App version v1.5

Thee is no number displayed in the title bar of the app which app text states should be there.

it was sold as Android 6. If the Android version is actually 4.4.2 then its been mis-sold.
 
Last edited:
So the /data partition is for apps and app data, and that is sized at 2.5GB. Since Android 4 the "/sdcard" virtual volume is normally mapped onto that (apart from strange Chinese devices, as mentioned earlier), so that is probably what your PC sees as well.

The real question is what is "the phone" talking about when it shows "6.4GB" storage? I can easily believe that there are several hundred MB being used by other partitions for stuff like baseband firmware, recovery, etc. Maybe a GB or two. But that still leaves several GB unaccounted for. I'm assuming that this really is an 8GB device and the missing storage is in some other partition (the numbers in your last post suggest there is as much as 4GB unaccounted for).
 
Settings
Storage
then under phone storage it has a bar that shows about 1/3 is used and equates to the figures following .
Total Space 8.00GB and Available 6.40 GB.
I've never heard of the model which is X-BO.
It was a Xmas present, so I can't complain, but looks like it is maybe a "Chines device"

The apps that were on it eg Facebook, mini chrome, etc. cannot be moved to sd card (option blanked out). Just wondering if I could delete them from the phone and re-install on SD card to give a bit more space on the phone storage as a work around and live with the current usable memory limit???
 
Pre-installed apps cannot be moved to SD card. The app itself lives in a different partition (/system), which is why you can't move them and also why the app itself isn't using any of your space. Its data do (but those don't move when you move the app), and updates do it to. Disabling a system app will remove its data and updates, so that does save you space.

In fact whether user-installed apps can be moved to SD is up to the developer: not all developers allow this, and "moving" those that can be moved actually only moves part of the app. So I don't know whether the system would let you disable Facebook and then install another copy and move that, or whether, if you could, it would save you any space. It might be that disabling Facebook and installing Facebook Lite (or other FB viewer) would save some space - I've never tried, so can't be certain.

Doing a bit of research, based on what you've posted, I've found an X-BO V6 (Android 4.4.2) and an X-BO O6 (Android 6.0 according to most sites, 5.1 on some). The V6 sounds more likely, based on the OS version, but both are described as 4GB phones rather than 8GB. You don't happen to have a very small (4GB) SD card installed do you? Or is this a different model?

I don't know where "Android 7" came from though. Neither is advertised as such. Did it say that explicitly on the box, or did it say something like "A7" (which would be the cpu core architecture)?
 
My apologies, it is Android 6, hence the model name X-BO 06. The 7 was a typo.
I have installed a 32GB SD card as that was the max that was stated. I have it set as the default area to install downloads, but still have to clear internal data to get it to install a new app on the SD card sometimes.
 
While you're understandably getting frustrated with your phone, you might be better off just accepting that it has a serious limitation, only 8GB of storage. Any Android phone with that low amount of storage is going to require a lot of extraneous work simply to usable if you want to use it as a typical, day-to-day smartphone. As @Hadron has pointed out, you have to just accept the fact that the operating system has to be there and it's going to take up a significant amount of that 8GB. You can keep moving or deleting a few MBs here but that's always going to be a temporary fix that you have to keep repeating. At some point you need to stop aggravating yourself and upgrade to a newer, more usable phone that suits your needs. A phone that you can just use and not fight with all the time. You don't have to invest in a flagship model, at this point there are a lot of mid-range phones with very decent hardware specs, and if you're willing to buy into a contract-situation there are really good carrier-branded (as in bloat added) phones available for free or just a few bucks a month.
 
swansojb said:
My apologies, it is Android 6, hence the model name X-BO 06. The 7 was a typo.
I have installed a 32GB SD card as that was the max that was stated. I have it set as the default area to install downloads, but still have to clear internal data to get it to install a new app on the SD card sometimes.
Click to expand...
Yet Storage Truth reports the OS as 4.4.2, which seems odd for the O6.

A 32GB card doesn't explain the storage. But maybe there is more than one "X-BO O6" out there. Although almost all sites quote it as having 4GB storage (which is consistent with what Storage Truth saw) I came across one, selling an "X-BO O6" that was branded as a Sony handset, that claimed 8GB (with about 6.6GB available to the user - which is consistent with what your system settings say).

This is what really puzzles me. Not some possible mix-up between model numbers or quoted specs - when we are dealing with a manufacturer who make fake phones (and I've found versions of the O6 branded as HTC and Sony already, so X-BO are certainly that) then unreliable listings or confused model numbers are likely. It's the mismatch between what the system menus say and Storage Truth, an app I've always found reliable and whose developer is one of the moderators here. Which do I believe? Well to be honest Storage Truth and the PC are in agreement, and we know the manufacturer makes fake devices so their honesty is suspect, so I fear that you really have a 4GB device (2.5GB user-accessible) that is pretending to be something more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom