# What is eating up my phone memory on HTC Desire?



## Hocus Eye. (Sep 22, 2011)

I keep getting a notification symbol to the fact that my phone memory is low. According to Mini Info app, it is down to 11 MB while this morning it was at 14 MB. The notification only pops up when there is less than 16MB and it has been at that level for months.

I have done a Manage Apps and moved everything to SD card. I have deleted History from the phone and deleted all SIMS messages - although there were only a few. I have uninstalled Simple Notebook after uploading all of its text to Dropbox.

Do I need to delete some of my contacts? There are some old ones that I never use but this could take ages.

Why can't I look at the Phone Memory to see what is in there? All of the Explorer style apps only can access the SD card.


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## editor (Sep 22, 2011)

Here's a tip. Go into Settings -> Applications and see if thins you don't use (like HTC Mail) are chewing up memory. You can manually delete caches or use App2SD to do it for you.


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## The Octagon (Sep 22, 2011)

Yeah, I found deleting the caches of several of the apps helped (as did removing the G+ app, which is monstrously large).


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## butchersapron (Sep 22, 2011)

Use diskusage to find out.


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## Hocus Eye. (Sep 22, 2011)

editor said:


> Here's a tip. Go into Settings -> Applications and see if thins you don't use (like HTC Mail) are chewing up memory. You can manually delete caches or use App2SD to do it for you.


I have done all that using App2SD.

I will have a look at Diskusage - thanks Butchers.


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## Hocus Eye. (Sep 22, 2011)

I have now checked and cannot find any app that has got more than about 2 to 4 MB of cache but they add up to 122 MB. As there is only 148 MB available, it looks like I need to delete some apps.

Edited to add. Problem solved. by deleting 3 apps I now have 20 MB of memory and the notification has gone a way. I deleted Guardian Anywhere and New York Times both of which I can access via my World News app.

I would like to thank the apps 'Mini Info' and 'diskusage' and of course butchersapron for knowing about 'diskusage'.


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## marty21 (Sep 22, 2011)

The Octagon said:


> Yeah, I found deleting the caches of several of the apps helped (as did removing the G+ app, which is monstrously large).


I have that issue on my HTC Wildfire - problem is I quite like the G+ app - and for some reason, you can't move it to the SD card


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## editor (Sep 22, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> I have done all that using App2SD.


FYI, App2SD doesn't pick up on the HTC Mail cache.


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## Hocus Eye. (Sep 22, 2011)

editor said:


> FYI, App2SD doesn't pick up on the HTC Mail cache.


I didn't know that there was such a thing as the HTC Mail cache. I will have a look.

Didn't find it.

Now I did find a Mail cache, but as it is only about 2.5MB I have left it. I don't want to mess up my mail settings. There is also a thing called Mail Widget but I am leaving that alone as well as it has no data.


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## editor (Sep 22, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> I didn't know that there was such a thing as the HTC Mail cache. I will have a look.
> 
> Didn't find it.
> 
> Now I did find a Mail cache, but as it is only about 2.5MB I have left it. I don't want to mess up my mail settings. There is also a thing called Mail Widget but I am leaving that alone as well as it has no data.


If you're using GMail and the icon isn't GMail you can get rid of it.


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## Hocus Eye. (Sep 22, 2011)

Right, I am using Gmail with the Gmail icon, but I also have another hardly used email which it set to the anonymous mail icon. The inbox is empty which probably explains the absence of any data.


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## Hocus Eye. (Sep 22, 2011)

Having deleted a few apps and got my memory back to a satisfactory 20MB, I have been on Market and downloaded SMS backup (gmail). While I was doing this I was notified of a couple of updates to my existing apps so I allowed them to update.

Then I was back to only 12 MB of available memory. I uninstalled Winamp which is quite big and I have a couple of other players, so with getting rid of another newspaper link I am back to 20 MB. I now know what is eating my memory. Apart from me adding apps, obviously. It is the automatic updating of apps which get bigger as they update them with new features. From now on I will be hitting the big red exclamation mark that fires up Mini Info, on a more regular basis.


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## editor (Sep 22, 2011)

Have you looked in applications -> all apps -> sort by size?


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## Hocus Eye. (Sep 23, 2011)

editor said:


> Have you looked in applications -> all apps -> sort by size?


Yes, it is quite sobering to think that the biggest is Adobe Flash Player at 11.98 MB. This is followed by Maps at 10.88 MB.

I am quite happy now. I have released 20 MB of phone memory and the notification symbol is no longer there.


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## The Octagon (Oct 12, 2011)

Ah fuck.

Just went through my apps, clearing data to make some room and accidentally cleared the 'Media Storage' data, now all my photos and videos have disappeared 

They appear to still be on the SD Card but I can't access them using the 'Gallery' or 'Videos' icon.

Any ideas on how I can view them again?


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## editor (Oct 12, 2011)

They should reappear if they're on your card. Try rebooting your phone.


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## Kizmet (Oct 12, 2011)

Have you tried a reboot?


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## The Octagon (Oct 12, 2011)

Didn't occur to me to reboot 

Yep, that worked, cheers.

This is why I daren't root my phone


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## Kizmet (Oct 12, 2011)

When it comes to phone memory... you just have to be really selective of apps. Often, if you look around you can find smaller versions of the 'big' apps that use much less memory.

The idea of Android was to create a 'tinker free' OS that largely takes care of itself.

App killers and memory monitors are only of limited use and sometimes mess up the functions.

Better to just have less apps and more selectiveness in choosing them.


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## editor (Oct 12, 2011)

Facebook is one hell of a bloated fecker of an app.


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## Kizmet (Oct 12, 2011)

Is the app better than using a browser?


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## Barking_Mad (Oct 12, 2011)

Facebook app is a load of fucking shite. Sadly its installed on my phone and only rooting it will remove it - which a darent do!


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## Kizmet (Oct 13, 2011)

Don't let it update.


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## Hocus Eye. (Oct 13, 2011)

If you find that some gigantic app has updated and pushed you over your preferred phone memory limit, you can undo the update using app2sd. Currently I have 28 updates waiting to be unleashed but I am ignoring them as I am down to 17MB of phone memory.


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## Chz (Oct 14, 2011)

Yeah, I got sick of that crap and finally - 15 months later - rooted the Desire and put Cyanogen on it. It can format a partition of your SD card to behave as onboard memory and install stuff there. Works a treat!


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## dervish (Oct 14, 2011)

Yeah, I'd agree with putting latest cyanogen on there, I use simple2ext with it which can be set to move the applications, private apps, and caches to the sd card. It really makes a hell of a difference. Adobe flash only uses up 72kb on my phone! Breathes new life into an old phone!


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## ChrisC (Oct 18, 2011)

Root your phone and force the apps and cache, and Dalvik cache on to the SD card. Use Rom Manager to create an ext partition on your SD card. This fools the phone into thinking it has the memory. I have 100mb left on my internal memory and 84 apps installed with stadiums of room to spare.

Oh sorry just seen this has already been suggested.


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## quimcunx (Oct 23, 2011)

editor said:


> Here's a tip. Go into Settings -> Applications and see if thins you don't use (like HTC Mail) are chewing up memory. You can manually delete caches or use App2SD to do it for you.



How do I know if I'm using something or not?

I've just tried to update angry birds but it says there is no room. Exhaustive investigation reveals that my other angry birds things are about 3mb each but this update is 18mb so maybe they've done something wrong with this update to make it so big.

What is rooting?  Everyone's doing it and I want to feel one of the gang.


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## Kizmet (Oct 26, 2011)

It's rude.


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## Ranu (Oct 26, 2011)

Thanks for the suggestions on this thread guys, I partitioned my SD drive this week and have gone from getting 'Low space' warnings every five mins to now having about 100mb free space   Excellent stuff. Ta.


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