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Help Posting as a last resort

S

Saintmike

Lurker
Hi,
First time poster here (with some problems...)
I'm sorry to say I'm reaching the point with my HTC Desire where I can't be bothered using it anymore as the hassle involved in making it useable outweighs any satisfaction I get from using it. And I'm fed up of being laughed at by my iPhone-toting brother...
The number one issue is the constant battle with memory space (which I find difficult to believe on a modern phone). I understand that for whatever reason everything has to go through the internal phone memory before it can be installed on the SD card, and if at all possible I do so - however a number of things don't appear to be movable (Flash, Maps etc.).
These unmovable items by themselves seem to take up the entire memory space (Yes I do constantly clear data and clear cache - again my point about hassle...)
Also the "Manage Applications" menu is so poorly designed it is very time consuming to find out what is on the phone (as opposed to the SD card) at any time making it very frustrating to use.
There are some other issues which I have with the phone in general, but at the moment the space issue is preventing me from using it and I've had to go back to my old Nokia for sending text messages and the like.
It's a shame as I've heard lots of good things about HTC and its phone range, but I'm just not getting it at the moment.
Sorry if this seems like a rant (well, I suppose it kind of is!). I may be missing something obvious with this space/ memory issue - any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike
 
The handset doesn't have enough internal memory. That's a design error by HTC.

There are ways of solving this, and I mean really solving it rather than putting the problem off for a couple of weeks, but you need to root it to use them. If you visit the "all things root" subforum and look at the "all about rooting" sticky thread you can find a collection of guides and FAQs, and people in the root forum are generally happy to help (but to avoid constantly answering the same question we prefer people to read the FAQs first, then ask for advice on what's unclear).

However, not everyone wants to fiddle with their device in that way. If that's not for you, there is a guide in the hints and tips subforum to moving more apps to SD, which may help. Still won't let you move everything, but should move more stuff.
 
Thanks. If there's nothing else that can be done I may have to try rooting (although I not overkeen on doing so) as I'm pretty much out of ideas and fed up of having to keep going through this every time
 
Saintmike said:
Thanks. If there's nothing else that can be done I may have to try rooting (although I not overkeen on doing so) as I'm pretty much out of ideas and fed up of having to keep going through this every time
Click to expand...

once rooted, it will be like having a new phone. It easily competes with an Iphone ;)
The possibilities become endless. Read up and root.
 
Howard Hopkinson said:
+1 for rooting.

It will solve your problems once and for all.
Click to expand...


Not by itself it wont. You will need to go further to solve memory problems. Partitioned sd card & custom room that supports apps2sd+
Alternatively s-off & flash a custom hboot.

It all sounds very complicated but if you follow the guides on this forum one step at a time it is really quite straight forward (even for someone as computer illiterate as me).

With the right ROM your desire will be like a new phone.
 
Root the phone, partition the SD card with 1GB EXT, install Cyanamod 7, run S2E and you will have a phone on a par with the speed and usability of at least an iPhone 3GS.
There are many other ways to do it, but for a well tested and stable method I'd advise on the above.
 
Thanks Rastaman. I may have to check out this link2sd. My wife needs more space on her desire but would prefer to keep her phone as is rather than go down the custom ROM route.

If I could root and A2SD without flashing I think it would meet her needs.
 
Read up on rooting, Saintmike, and keep reading until you think you know what you are doing. Then post on here what you propose to do and someone will tell you whether you are right to go or not. You will find plenty of help here from folk wanting to wipe the smile off your brother's face lol.
 
Bradden said:
Cool..I think I can handle that.. I have rooted with unrevoked so I can just follow the steps to s-off. It seems pretty straight forward.

What would I need to do next? Is there a thread with the info?

Thanks
Click to expand...

tbh im not going to tell you to s-off as i think i got the wrong end of the stick as to what suroot was on about.
i thought he was referring to bootmanager as you can have multiple roms on the same device but i dont think he is
 
OP: I've just upgraded my HTC Desire, which is now an old phone one of the first to run 2.1 Eclair. Internal memory problems were massive. Instsll the app called App2SD. It DOESN'T require root, it just gives a nice UI for managing which apps can be moved to th SD card, and automatically alerting you when new apps are installed that are movable. It's quite small itself, and moves to the SD card too, so worth a try even if you un install it after you've moved everything over.

To mitigate the problem of space I uninstalled updates to the Flash player. I found version 11 to be poor, and the originally installed 10.1 to be more than sufficient for my needs, as well as taking up a great deal less space. This freed up a whole load of space. I also uninstalled the updates to the Facebook app. It takes up a large amount of space too, and I found the cache size just grew and grew without regularly wiping the cache or logging out and in again. Eventually I got bored, and just used the mobile web version instead, which was pretty much on par with the app to be honest, although heavier users might not agree.

At the end of the day this is an old phone now, and there were certainly some design limitations which could have been avoided with a bit more foresight. But it was a great phone for two years, but now running Android 4.0 on a new Samsung Nexus - ultimately nothing will solve the problems other than an upgrade!
 
idic said:
OP: I've just upgraded my HTC Desire, which is now an old phone one of the first to run 2.1 Eclair. Internal memory problems were massive. Instsll the app called App2SD. It DOESN'T require root, it just gives a nice UI for managing which apps can be moved to th SD card, and automatically alerting you when new apps are installed that are movable. It's quite small itself, and moves to the SD card too, so worth a try even if you un install it after you've moved everything over.

To mitigate the problem of space I uninstalled updates to the Flash player. I found version 11 to be poor, and the originally installed 10.1 to be more than sufficient for my needs, as well as taking up a great deal less space. This freed up a whole load of space. I also uninstalled the updates to the Facebook app. It takes up a large amount of space too, and I found the cache size just grew and grew without regularly wiping the cache or logging out and in again. Eventually I got bored, and just used the mobile web version instead, which was pretty much on par with the app to be honest, although heavier users might not agree.

At the end of the day this is an old phone now, and there were certainly some design limitations which could have been avoided with a bit more foresight. But it was a great phone for two years, but now running Android 4.0 on a new Samsung Nexus - ultimately nothing will solve the problems other than an upgrade!
Click to expand...
you never went the root route so you wouldnt know
there are better devices than this but its certainly not dead yet. once rooted you can add a year onto the device easily
 
Rastaman-FB said:
tbh im not going to tell you to s-off as i think i got the wrong end of the stick as to what suroot was on about.
i thought he was referring to bootmanager as you can have multiple roms on the same device but i dont think he is
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply. But I'm none the wiser. The only solution I can think of is to root, gparted and then install Teppics Gingerbread ROM.. I assume this is pretty stable which is my only concern. I'm running mildwild currently and have found it to lock up now and then.
 
Bradden said:
Thank you for the reply. But I'm none the wiser. The only solution I can think of is to root, gparted and then install Teppics Gingerbread ROM.. I assume this is pretty stable which is my only concern. I'm running mildwild currently and have found it to lock up now and then.
Click to expand...
i was refering to your wifes phone being kept as-is

it locks up on mildwild? it shouldnt as its based on oxygen which is a very fast and smooth aosp rom. are other people on the mildwild forum post reporting this issue

when does it lock up?
 
What I meant is you can flash a custom rom which looks and feels exactly like it is now (Even possibly without a wipe/restore of data), but performs better. I mean, who wouldn't want that?!
 
Rastaman-FB said:
i was refering to your wifes phone being kept as-is

it locks up on mildwild? it shouldnt as its based on oxygen which is a very fast and smooth aosp rom. are other people on the mildwild forum post reporting this issue

when does it lock up?
Click to expand...

It seems to lock up randomly when it hasn't been used for a while. Normally a reboot using the power/volume/ trackball combination gets it working.

I'm not aware of anyone else having this issue.. I suspect it may be the class 4 sd card - it's verbatim so it's a decent brand though. I might nandroid and swap cards over the weekend and see if that helps.

I haven't put a swap file partition on the card? just ext3 and fat32. Could this be needed?
 
SUroot said:
What I meant is you can flash a custom rom which looks and feels exactly like it is now (Even possibly without a wipe/restore of data), but performs better. I mean, who wouldn't want that?!
Click to expand...


My wife would certainly want that!

I can reverese the apps2sd tweak.. run unrevoked to root.. gpartition.

Where do i go from there.. is there a rom you would recommend.

Could I really acheive this without losing all her data? Considering I spent a good chunk of the weekend rooting mine I'm happy to save a bit og grief reinstalling everything!
 
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