“Your phone is running low on free storage space.”. Unfortunately, this message is all to common to many Android users. Low internal storage space can drastically effect the speed of your device and battery life (rendering the phone nearly unusable in severe-enough cases). Luckily there are a number of things that can be done to free up space and breathe new life in to devices suffering a similar fate.
Low Internal Storage Space In Android
The Android Market is filled with helpful apps created specifically for this purpose (so many that we couldn’t possibly test them all). The following is only a brief list containing the more popular methods. That being said, we encourage users to take a look at other applications and carve their own path (that’s what Android is good for, isn’t it?).
One of the biggest causes of storage-related issues should go without saying: Applications. Some big/bulky, some carrying a heavy cache whatever the situation, these can eat up an enormous chunk of the little internal space is available.
Move Data To SD Cards
As of Android 2.2 users have the ability to move applications from a phone’s internal storage to the SD card (if the developer allows it). This can be done manually (via Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications), but developers have created a handy tool to take care of the tedious sorting, App2SD. App2SD separates all installed applications in to three categories: On Phone (applications that can be moved to the SD card), On SD Card (applications already moved to the SD card) and Phone Only (applications that the developer won’t allow to be moved). Selecting an app (within the On Phone page) gives you the option to “Move to SD card”. Do this for each available application.
App2SD For Android
Unfortunately, some applications can’t be moved for one reason or another (ex: Facebook, Amazon Appstore, Advanced Task Killer). As un-ideal as this suggestion may be, gritting teeth and deleting rarely used applications is often necessary to free up the needed space. The majority of applications have alternatives available in the Market that are just as usable, if not more-so.
Another big storage hog is cache. An application’s cache is a collection of saved items that are used to speed up frequent tasks (such as web browsing, maps, etc.). aCCleaner Free is a great utility that’s used to clear these unnecessary stored files. This can be set up to be done regularly, but heavily-used devices may require this being done more often.
aCCleaner Apps For Android To Clear App Cache
The last option (which we won’t go in to too much detail on, as the post title suggests) is not recommended for most rooting. Advanced users can consider rooting their device and break free of their Android-restricting shackles. Rooted devices have the ability to move all applications to the SD card, delete pre-installed bloatware, relocate cache and much more! The internet is filled with helpful guides for those brave enough to modify their devices on both rooting and increasing storage.
Rooting Your Android Phone
These easy tips can make a world of difference on any Android device. In our lab testing, we were able to free up almost 50% of the internal storage space. Have a similar success story? Let us hear about it in the comments!
Related posts:
Article by Nicholas McMillen
Nicholas has written 95 articles .
If you like This post, you can follow Gizmo Digit on Twitter.
Subscribe to Gizmo Digit feed via RSS or EMAIL to receive instant updates.
