Help Storage question/issue

[MJSisco93]

There is something odd I've noticed about the storage on my phone. It says that I have 1.18 GB available space on system storage. Is there something I'm missing with this? I have no music/pictures/videos stored on my phone. I just have a decent amount of apps. Do apps really take up that much space on a 16 GB storage phone?

 

[lunatic59]

Newer phones and Tablets that include large amounts (by current mobile standards) Like the SGS2 (and my other phone, the Captivate) often partition them so that you don't have a huge amount of system memory that wouldn't be accessible for file storage. On the Captivate (and I am assuming it's similar with your device) Samsung has a 2 GB partition for the system and the remaining 14 GB partitioned and recognized as an sd card by making its mount point /sdcard.

The path to external storage within Android is /sdcard so apps that are installed to external storage will be there, which is the internal sd partition, not the removable sd card. You'll find the user accessible space by going to menu>settings>storage.

 

[MJSisco93]

Ok, something else odd that's going on with my phone. On my Skyrocket when I go to apps. I go to SD card, and it shows some of the apps that are there. Why would it say they're under SD card when there is no SD card in the phone? Second, it gives me an option to move the phone to the SD card when it's already listed there.

 

[lunatic59]

Android considers the storage mounted at /sdcard to be the SD Card. As stated above, most phones currently use the extra memory as an sd partition mounted at /sdcard. That's why, while there is no MicroSD card in the slot, the phone still thinks it has one.

If you put a card in the slot, it will mount at something like /sdcard/sd_external.

Some apps that have large data files, like games and maps, etc. will put much of the data on the SD Card so not to fill up system memory. What you see are most likely the folders for those apps.