My Samsung s7 phone started giving me a low memory usage and advises to free up memory. the phone has an internal memory of 16gb and a addon sd of 16 gb. when it shows me the breakdown of its internal 16 gb i am using less than 50 mb and the remaining 15gb+ is listed as other.? I think the operating system is using most of the 16 gb . The addon SD shows less than 1 gb of photos. Any help appreciated. Thanks Tom
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samsung memory trouble
- Thread starter Tommc
- Start date
16gb is not much these days....and yes the os will be taking up most of it. inwould start looking for a new phone soon. the s7 is pretty outdated and you will start to see a lot of apps not be compatible with your phone soon. or some of your apps now will not work as well or some features will not work any more.
phones have been by design to be obsolete in 4-5 years. the phone batteries alone are designed to last 3-4 years.
you can try and get a sd card and have it formatted as internal, but then everything on the card will be treated as your phone's internal and you will not be able to take it out and use it like a normal sd card. you will also run the risk of the card wearing out much faster increasing the risk of the card crapping out and losing all of your data.
puppykickr
Android Expert
Sd cards are really only for personal pictures and videos, and other media.
So any of this that is on device memory should go to the card.
As far as the device memory, Samsung seems to enjoy hogging vast amounts of that for the OS.
I am not familiar with the device, so bear with me if yours differs from the following things to try.
Settings
Storage
Internal shared storage
Other apps
overflow, the 3 dot menu, upper right
Show system
overflow again
Sort by size
The largest apps are on top.
Select and delete the caches, and see how much space you get.
Some apps are real pigs, as you will discover.
Especially social media apps.
These are best to uninstall or disable, and then access them with your browser instead.
Google is like a hog pen of apps.
There are multiple interlocked apps that all can get large.
If you can live without Google, then by all means do so.
If you want further assistance with these Google apps, I can help, but it can get pretty involved sometimes.
Without the device in hand to see results and testing it could be pretty difficult.
You have reached a point where either you have put too much stuff on the device, or else updates to built in apps and the OS have made them become too large.
The OS cannot be easily reverted back, but apps can.
Functionality of these apps may or may not be hampered.
It all depends on how much time and effort you are willing to put into an older device.
Keep in mind the age of the battery.
Is it easy to replace?
A new unlocked Moto e has double the internal memory and can be had for $120 USD.
But I have very often been broke and only able to use the most sparse of devices.
So if there is a want and a way to get that thing working correctly again, I will try to help.
When you see the percentage of internal memory used, what does it say?
A good rule of thumb is to use no more than 70%.
This allows for apps to expand as you use them- system apps do so as well.
They can expand and contract with use, but need room to do so in order to function correctly.
One thing that I have noticed is that when I used to overfill a device, certain apps would carry almost no cache at all.
Now that I leave much more open space, these same apps can get rather large caches.
So actually, I wound up having to cut back even more on how many apps I have on a device.
Until very recently I too had 16GB devices, and even a couple 8GB devices as well.
So I totally understand what you are going through with these lack of memory issues.
The quick and easy solution is to just get a device with more memory, but if you cannot afford that or if you wind up overfilling the new device as well- then you are back to square one.
I would save money for a larger capacity device while learning how to make a small amount of memory work for you.
That way, when you can afford that better device, you will have the knowlege to keep it functioning at peak capacity without worry of overfilling it.
So any of this that is on device memory should go to the card.
As far as the device memory, Samsung seems to enjoy hogging vast amounts of that for the OS.
I am not familiar with the device, so bear with me if yours differs from the following things to try.
Settings
Storage
Internal shared storage
Other apps
overflow, the 3 dot menu, upper right
Show system
overflow again
Sort by size
The largest apps are on top.
Select and delete the caches, and see how much space you get.
Some apps are real pigs, as you will discover.
Especially social media apps.
These are best to uninstall or disable, and then access them with your browser instead.
Google is like a hog pen of apps.
There are multiple interlocked apps that all can get large.
If you can live without Google, then by all means do so.
If you want further assistance with these Google apps, I can help, but it can get pretty involved sometimes.
Without the device in hand to see results and testing it could be pretty difficult.
You have reached a point where either you have put too much stuff on the device, or else updates to built in apps and the OS have made them become too large.
The OS cannot be easily reverted back, but apps can.
Functionality of these apps may or may not be hampered.
It all depends on how much time and effort you are willing to put into an older device.
Keep in mind the age of the battery.
Is it easy to replace?
A new unlocked Moto e has double the internal memory and can be had for $120 USD.
But I have very often been broke and only able to use the most sparse of devices.
So if there is a want and a way to get that thing working correctly again, I will try to help.
When you see the percentage of internal memory used, what does it say?
A good rule of thumb is to use no more than 70%.
This allows for apps to expand as you use them- system apps do so as well.
They can expand and contract with use, but need room to do so in order to function correctly.
One thing that I have noticed is that when I used to overfill a device, certain apps would carry almost no cache at all.
Now that I leave much more open space, these same apps can get rather large caches.
So actually, I wound up having to cut back even more on how many apps I have on a device.
Until very recently I too had 16GB devices, and even a couple 8GB devices as well.
So I totally understand what you are going through with these lack of memory issues.
The quick and easy solution is to just get a device with more memory, but if you cannot afford that or if you wind up overfilling the new device as well- then you are back to square one.
I would save money for a larger capacity device while learning how to make a small amount of memory work for you.
That way, when you can afford that better device, you will have the knowlege to keep it functioning at peak capacity without worry of overfilling it.
The actual Android system takes about 2-3 GB on an S7. Suggest you try the DiskUsage app, and that should tell you what is actually in "Other", and maybe you can clear some things out that you don't need. Are you using apps like Facebook? Which a notorious data hog.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage&hl=en_US&gl=US
@Tommc you were giving us the amount of internal and external storage: but I'm pretty sure that notification is about the RAM being full.
If you've ever used and old PC with very little RAM, it takes forever to do anything. The system has to store temporary files on the hard drive, which takes a long time, then retrieve them, which takes a long time...
The point is that your Galaxy S7, as awesome as it was back in the day, only has 4GB of RAM. New Galaxy S models have 12 or 16GB. New OS and app features will eat up a couple of GB just starting up!
Your S7 is still good for some things: I suggest you get a much newer phone and donate your S7 to a local shelter for domestic abuse victims. Even with no plan or carrier SIM, phones can still call 911. Just a thought.
If you've ever used and old PC with very little RAM, it takes forever to do anything. The system has to store temporary files on the hard drive, which takes a long time, then retrieve them, which takes a long time...
The point is that your Galaxy S7, as awesome as it was back in the day, only has 4GB of RAM. New Galaxy S models have 12 or 16GB. New OS and app features will eat up a couple of GB just starting up!
Your S7 is still good for some things: I suggest you get a much newer phone and donate your S7 to a local shelter for domestic abuse victims. Even with no plan or carrier SIM, phones can still call 911. Just a thought.
The term "memory" is ambiguous here: I will only use it for RAM, and refer to the rest as "storage", but sadly neither users nor manufacturers are always so clear in the distinction. But if there is > 15GB of the internal storage used then "low storage" is likely to be a problem.
"Other" in that menu is meaningless: all it means is "it doesn't fit into the few pre-defined categories we list". So it could be anything from offline maps to caches to media that aren't in a format the storage menu is looking for to... basically all sorts of stuff. So I'd follow the suggestions above: use a decent third party app to find out what is actually using the storage, check your app caches (browsers and social media apps can easily cache GB of data) and clear any large ones. Also go into recovery and try clearing the system cache (note: that means selecting the option to clear cache, not clear cache and data - that latter is a factory reset, and you don't want to do that without backing up everything important first!). If you still have excessive storage use that you can't identify (e.g. stuff that DiskUsage labels "system data" and can't tell you more about without root) then backing up the data you wish to keep and doing a factory reset is an option.
But yes, realistically 16GB (which probably means 10GB usable after a factory reset) is always going to be tight these days. Phones suffer the same disease PCs did in the 90s and 2000s: as storage increases, app developers forget about efficiency and let their apps become ever more bloated, which means that people using old hardware will increasingly be limited in what they can do. So it probably would be good to upgrade when you are able to.
"Other" in that menu is meaningless: all it means is "it doesn't fit into the few pre-defined categories we list". So it could be anything from offline maps to caches to media that aren't in a format the storage menu is looking for to... basically all sorts of stuff. So I'd follow the suggestions above: use a decent third party app to find out what is actually using the storage, check your app caches (browsers and social media apps can easily cache GB of data) and clear any large ones. Also go into recovery and try clearing the system cache (note: that means selecting the option to clear cache, not clear cache and data - that latter is a factory reset, and you don't want to do that without backing up everything important first!). If you still have excessive storage use that you can't identify (e.g. stuff that DiskUsage labels "system data" and can't tell you more about without root) then backing up the data you wish to keep and doing a factory reset is an option.
But yes, realistically 16GB (which probably means 10GB usable after a factory reset) is always going to be tight these days. Phones suffer the same disease PCs did in the 90s and 2000s: as storage increases, app developers forget about efficiency and let their apps become ever more bloated, which means that people using old hardware will increasingly be limited in what they can do. So it probably would be good to upgrade when you are able to.
Thanks to everyone for your advise . I will try the things mentioned. The phone service is Tracfone and the phones get little use. I don't have cell service at my home so the phones are used only when traveling. years back when I had my children home I installed a roof antennae with a in house amplifier but today we only use landline from our home. I will start looking to eventually upgrade the phones but for now will streamline the apps installed. Thanks again