Android phone problem 10 points to the best answer?

[Migyj]

My phone's problem is with the memory.I tried to download an app for 23MBs (Adobe flash player), but it said I needed to clear up space. So I went to my memory manager it said I have 83MBs worth of memory left. So my question is this some kind of glitch or is there something taking up all the space in my phone. Please answer ASAP and with much detail as possible. (:

[Mike D]

Older versions of Android stored apps and data in their own space in storage, and some manufactures didn't give enough room. It was a balancing act between leaving the user more space for apps/data vs. more space for daily use.

In Android 4.0 they changed that. It's all stored on the same partition now. But that obviously doesn't help you.

The bottom line is, you can't trust that 83MB number your phone is telling you. The real number that you need to be concerned with (the size of the /data/data partition on your phone) is not something that your phone will tell you (at least not without other apps).

So, to fix your problem you can do either of the following...

A) Depending on what is low, apps or app data, you may just be able to move apps to the SD card to free up space. You can do this through the settings > apps menu, but it's easier to download an app called app2sd https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...one.app2sd to streamline the process). If you really just have a lot of apps, this may make the problem go away (at least temporarily).

B) If that didn't help, or if it did but then the problem came back, you only solution is to start clearing data. Go to settings > apps and sort by size. Click on some of the ones at the top of the list and look at how much it says it's using under "data." It's possible some of the heavy-hitters are apps that you don't use and may be able to uninstall. If that's the case, then by all means do so. It's more likely that the things at the top of the list are things like email, Facebook, "Dialer Storage," and other things that you either cant or don't want to uninstall because you actually use them. For these things, you'll need to clear the data. Depending on what's on your list, you may need to make some decisions on what apps might be storing important data vs. which are are just caching data for speed.

Example: Facebook. If Facebook claims to be using a lot of data, you can probably clear it. All of your information is stored on Facebook's servers so the next time you need to access soemthing, Facebook can just pull it again. Note: If you clear things like Facebook, you'll usually need to log in again the next time you open the app.

Things like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are generally OK to clear the data for. Be careful with things that seem like they are part of the operating system. You may unintentionally lose your text messages or call logs (although you should be backing those up automatically with SMS Backup + https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...es.smssync ).

The moral of the story is... just be careful about what data you clear.

In the end, these things will probably fill back up again and you may have to clear the data every so often.