Is there anything more annoying than that “No More Storage Space” notification? Especially when you’re seconds away from losing that image that’s just begging to be captured.
These things usually take up the most space: applications, pictures, videos and music. If you don’t want to run the risk of having limited memory on your device again, below are just some suggestions to help you keep your smartphones’ and tablets’ space optimized.
Applications
It’s understandable why most of us are trigger-happy when it comes to downloading apps. Applications are often free or cost less than a cup of coffee at most. Usually the Google Play Store or Apple AppStore already has your payment details so everything you download is literally just one click away. What a lot of people don’t realize is that having several kinds of fitness apps and having all versions of the same game adds up to a good chunk of a device’s memory. Make an inventory of the applications that are on the device. Those that you haven’t used for a while should be uninstalled.
Photos & Videos
The gallery can be greedy of a device’s storage space. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that people take several (hundred) variations of the same photo in order to find the best, most Instagram-worthy one. While there is some joy in keeping mementos like pictures close and accessible, it does eat storage space. Uploading your photos and videos to online storage programs like Dropbox or Google Drive can not only free up space, but also keep your precious gallery intact and accessible with an Internet connection.
Music & Movies
Quite a few people keep a select number of songs and movies on their mobile device just in case they find themselves in a long wait scenario. While this is undeniably one of the great uses of portable devices, it uses up so much memory. If you do the math, a movie comes to about 1GB a pop – 16 full shows will reduce many iPad’s memory to zero. Since Wi-Fi is so readily available nowadays, consider using streaming programs like Spotify, Pandora, Netflix or Hulu instead.
Also, if you’re really in need of more space, you can root/jailbreak your phone and delete all the junk apps that’s loaded on there by the manufacturer. However, keep in mind that it’ll void the warranty.
I did this the day my 1 year warranty expired. It made such a difference, in terms of extra space and improved speeds. It was well worth doing.
You could’ve unrooted it if need be though. The process isn’t complex at all, and if you were able to root it then you should be able to undo it as well.
Even if they did though, it might still have an affect because it’s not that safe and it depends how he/she did it.
I have an Android phone and I was getting REALLY frustrated because I had run out of room on my phone. I wanted to install a certain app, but it required the new version of Google Play Services and it simply would not fit on my phone. I tried deleting apps I didn’t use, music, photos, etc. all to no avail. For some reason I started to unload the updates of apps like Google + and the other bloated software that Google forces you to have. Once I got rid of 30 mb of updates from Google + (which I don’t even use), I started to make headway. I uninstalled a bunch of updates and managed to get enough room again to install not only Google Play Services, but several apps which I had wanted. It may not be the best solution because I think that viruses prey on apps that aren’t kept updated, but it was either I uninstall the updates or get a new phone with more room.
Wow, I’m sorry it’s been such a struggle for you to get some room on your phone! Most of the time, when I’m running out of space, I just get rid of a couple videos then I’m good.
Does your phone come with a MicroSD card slot? If it does, you can expand storage by putting a card in (maybe 4-8GB) and offload all your movies/pictures there so you can use the fast storage in your phone for all your apps.
The cloud was specifically invented to compensate for the limitation of space experienced by our new mobile devices. I use these online storage spaces all the time, especially for music and videos. Apps are a little tricky but if you are smart with your picks, you’ll be alright.
I have a lot troubles when it comes to space, since I only have 8 gb space. But I shouldn’t complain because this mobile was a gift, that doesn’t change the fact I often find myself struggling with the little space I have available 🙁 I have tried to keep only the apps that I really use, as well as some I’ll surely use (a recipe app) soon. I always save all my pictures and videos in my laptop 🙂 That saves a lot space as well.
To free up space on my devices, I delete old apps that I no longer use. Keep downloading to a minimum as well. Try using one of those cloud storages, if you feel confident about them. Just delete unwanted things and you should be fine.
Clearing your cache always helps too. I agree that cloud storage can be a real advantage – being able to access your entire photo collection through your mobile is really quite cool!
I’ve never actually come close to filling up my phone’s memory. My main device which I use for movies and music and I have with me the majority of the time is my laptop. I do have some videos and apps on my phone to pass the time if need be but since I have about 32gb of space on my phone it’s not really an issue. I think for the majority of people the problem is that they don’t uninstall their old apps, basically everyone I know doesn’t even use half of the apps they have installed.
I know others however that take an insane number of pictures and keep them all on their phones as well as downloading a ton of apps. They’ve mentioned storage problems before so I shall be sure to send them to this article!
Another tip that might go unnoticed is to make sure your camera app on your phone is set to save photos to external memory (if you have it). It can honestly save so much space on your internal memory, as I found out myself. It’s quite frustrating that on my Galaxy S4 (with 8GB internal memory) a lot of things are set to default to store on the internal memory and some you don’t have a choice! I recently invested in a 64GB SD card (about $40 on eBay for a quality SanDisk one) and it so great. All my camera photos, music and movies are stored on there, and space isn’t a worry anymore, I can just chuck whatever I want on the device without much thought.
Cloud storage is a god-send these days! It is really useful, especially for phones that have no expendable storage.
It’s also nice to pay for a Netflix/Hulu etc. subscription so you can stream movies/shows without filling up your storage.
It’s also good to delete the bloatware that some phones come with.
This is what I do on my phones all the times.
Additionally, I have started rooting and removing bloat software which I never used in the first place.
My phone is now faster and has no garbage apps on it. Be careful when doing that because there are apps that might make the system unstable if removed from your phone.
This blog post was a godsend. My Huawei Ascend P6 was complaining about memory running out. I applied some of these tips and now I can finally install the few apps my Android Wear device needed. Thanks.
Since I love taking photos with my Lumia, I always find myself not having enough space for all my photographs. What I do is fairly effective. Everytime my folder gets crowded, I connect my phone to my computer and just store all my old photos in a folder. Wish I could do the same with apps!
My issue with storage on a mobile device is the ram. Although it isn’t hard storage it can still be an issue for basic performance. I suggest Ram Cleaner or just remember to fully close apps or restart the device at least once every few days.
This is just so good. I’m glad there’s a way I can do that. I personally have A LOT of data to keep and save for myself, and it does take a lot of the space and it does eat it up quite a lot. Reading this does in fact help and I don’t know if there’s actually good applications out there to do that, but you can do that while backing some things up. I wouldn’t want to free up my phones data completely, so my solution is to put it on an SD card, then do it according to the article.
Tips on this article is really helpful. But if you really need a huge Disk space on your phone because you always wanted to save videos, pictures, music and etc on it then you need to upgrade to a device which can handle a large capacity of SD card. If the SD card is not enough then you can use some free storage online like dropbox and some other online storage out there.
My phone is always running out of space, I take a lot of pictures and download a lot of apps. I starting using a cloud service to put my pictures on so that I can free up space but I didn’t think of uninstalling the unused apps that come with the phone-good idea.
I’m the type of guy who loves downloading new apps, and I have several of them that I don’t really use, is good to know all the space that they are consuming, I need to take the time to download some of them and repeat the process all over again, I also have a lot (and I mean, a lot) of pictures on my iPod, and I feel that I am not aware of how much space they consume, but I keep them there because it would be a really hard and long process, so, I guess that it needs to be a progressive process.