JohnD Posted June 15, 2020 Share Posted June 15, 2020 Once again I need to appeal the Common Room of Sideways U.! My mobile is "short of memory". It has 4Gb of user memory, not a lot, I know, and 3.55 Gb are used. But in addition it has an SD card of 40gb with less than 500 Mb used! So should have plenty of RoM! So why does it keep saying " too little memory "? Is it turned off? How to turn it on? John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkshire_spam Posted June 15, 2020 Share Posted June 15, 2020 If its an android you may need to move apps to the sd card or tell the apps to put files on the sd card. If it's an apple device, sorry no idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted June 15, 2020 Share Posted June 15, 2020 By no means my specialist subject but....... from listening to my kids trying to sort out their Android-owning mother and grandmother, I think that some things, such as the operating system and maybe apps have to be on the built-in memory whereas your data - pics, videos, music etc can be on the SD card or the the inbuilt memory. Problem that usually arises is setting it up so it puts the things that can be on the SD card, on the SD card...... I have an iphone, with huge memory and no removable card - so that's all I know..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escadrille Ecosse Posted June 15, 2020 Share Posted June 15, 2020 John, if this is an Android phone then I had this issue a while back and a very similar thing happened to my wife's phone a couple of weeks ago following an update. This was even with everything apparently configured correctly to the appropriate storage locations. May not be your problem but for both of us it was an issue with how the OS was interacting with the existing (older) SD card. A new SD card (yes I know!) to the latest format cured the problem in both cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richy_rich Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 Android phones can be a pain for this, some don't even really support moving the apps to the card even if there's a slot for the card and you can store other files on it (my wife's was like this, it drove her mad..) It might help to go through all your apps and try to move them onto the card : e.g. https://www.tomsguide.com/us/move-android-apps-to-sd-card,news-21279.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetecspit Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 What peeves me about tech is that if you buy a 16bg phone, about 12gb is already used. Likewise my little notebook, double the memory and yet you get little extra free space. And yes, it seems apps often have to be kept in the phone memory not the SD card now. Right PITA. (Not to mention my 18 month old lappy that so far has had a new keyboard, followed by motherboard. And now it won't start again and the case is worryingly developing a bulge in the battery area. Luckily I purchased a "support plan" so it looks like they will give me a full refund. Fingers crossed. So I am using the old notebook, though that is appalling with Zoom and anything that needs more than a gnats fart of power) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulAA Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 John Could you identify the make/model of phone? Should be possible to guide you through it then. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richy_rich Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 1 hour ago, zetecspit said: What peeves me about tech is that if you buy a 16bg phone, about 12gb is already used. Likewise my little notebook, double the memory and yet you get little extra free space. Me too, what's weirder is that I don't particularly do any more than I used to. I remember writing my university final papers on an old mac (maybe LC?) which ran word, photoshop and a web browser at the time just fine The internet connection was definitely slower and certain operations took longer but I remember the UI being pretty responsive, probably more so than many apps are now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkshire_spam Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 If it's a 'droid, going into settings then Apps and then selecting an app will tell you if it's storing it's app/data on the SD card or the internal. For anything "memory heavy" it's worth making sure it's on the card. https://www.tomsguide.com/uk/us/move-android-apps-to-sd-card,news-21279.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted June 16, 2020 Author Share Posted June 16, 2020 (edited) Thanks to all! The S.U.C.R. comes up trumps as always! (in the nice way!) Richy, and Sam, Tried that, but when I get to "Storage" my phone doesn't offer a "Change" option, only "Clear data" and "Clear cache". The first might save a Megabyte, on one example app but I presume I'd lose everything I had on that? Paul, It's a Vodafone VFD600, running Android 6.0.1. Build number VDF-VFD600B01-UK_MR02k, which it gives as the Software update. John Edited June 16, 2020 by JohnD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkshire_spam Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 9 minutes ago, JohnD said: Richy, and Sam, Tried that, but when I get to "Storage" my phone doesn't offer a "Change" option, only "Clear data" and "Clear cache". The first might save a Megabyte, on one example app but I presume I'd lose everything I had on that? Some apps can't be moved, some can... you won't lose any app data, but if it's "big" then it might take some time to move it and render the app un-usable until it does. (minutes, not hours!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richy_rich Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 9 minutes ago, JohnD said: Tried that, but when I get to "Storage" my phone doesn't offer a "Change" option, only "Clear data" and "Clear cache". Pretty much what happened with my wife's phone.. which is how it ended up here : https://richyrichracing.com/2019/04/adding-a-cheap-laptimer/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted June 16, 2020 Author Share Posted June 16, 2020 Cunn-nning, Richy! I like it! But looks to be fixed with a cable tie - has no scrute demanded that it be wired in yet? One did to my in-car camera. But this is my only phone! It's four years old - I know - like, so last century, dahlings! I have few apps on it that weren't there when I bought it, WhatsApp, myGP, online banking, and I don't want to lose those. The rest, calculator, Clock, Camera, Chrome, Contacts etc.etc, I suppose will be fixed in position anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulAA Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 John If you can't move apps (particularly 'Album') onto the SD card, the second section in the link that Yorkshire posted should work for you (your system is 'Marshmallow'). Scroll down to the section titled "Use SD Card as Internal Storage If your device does not support moving apps to a microSD card there’s another option, first introduced in Android Marshamallow, that may be the answer for you...." This talks you through the process of using your SD card as a memory overflow and your system install should support it. The other thing to do (not sure if you've already tried this) is to clear your cache. If you go to Settings > Storage and click on 'Internal Memory', it will give you a list showing what is using the phone memory. Near the bottom of the list is an item called 'Cached Data' - click on this and you should have the option to clear all your temporary data. A slightly more laborious route, requiring you to go through all the apps you regularly use, is explained here:https://www.androidauthority.com/android-6-0-marshmallow-how-to-clear-app-data-and-cache-647355/ Another small space-saver is to identify apps you don't use or don't require and try uninstalling them. Some are tied into the operating system and you won't be able to get rid of, but you are given the option of disabling them, which means that they dump the updates they have received and don't take up active memory. Every little helps... Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richy_rich Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 3 hours ago, JohnD said: Cunn-nning, Richy! I like it! But looks to be fixed with a cable tie - has no scrute demanded that it be wired in yet? One did to my in-car camera. It's actually in a clamp, the photo's too small to really see. Cable tie is belt and braces, but no one's mentioned it so far Even at Zandvoort, where they were pretty thorough. Regarding your apps, phone upgrades these days are actually pretty good most of your stuff should get moved across automatically when you set it up. When the lockdown started I bought a 'new' phone from ebay and spent a week or so waiting for it to come and imagining all the fun I'd have (and time I'd pass) setting it up along with all the new things I'd be able to do. Turns out that the damn thing set itself up in about 30 minutes and was a carbon copy of my existing phone even down to the wallpaper.. It was all quite underwhelming, but as I have a lot of work stuff on it I've opted to not fiddle too much for the time being.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted June 16, 2020 Author Share Posted June 16, 2020 (edited) Richy, I wish mine would 'self-organise'! Paul, Couldn't follow that, apart from anything else, no "Use SD as Internal storage" button! But your tip on Marshmallow led me to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhz6Ox9cX3A Which revealed that when you insert an SD, you have to tell the device what you want to do with it! The barsteward who sold me the card, and installed it for me clearly didn't bother! I now have an SD card with 201Mb used of 29+Gb, and internal storage containing 3.41Gb used of 3.99Gb. In other words i STILL have no room on the broom. THEN, (Doh!) I realised that when you wrote "Use SD as Internal storage" you made it a hyperlink!! That leads me to another site that does the same in more detail. But the extra detail makes me think I CAN use that SD card to load another app. Let's try! And yes! I can download Kardia, 80-odd Mb! But while the Internal memory now says 3.56Gb used, the SD still has 'only' 201Mb. So I've just made room on the broom in Internal, not used the SD as memeory, only storage?? Oh, my old BBC micro! 64Kbytes of pure gold, even if 32 of those were the OS! JOhn Edited June 16, 2020 by JohnD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattius Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 Not done this in a while, but if you go to settings > applications and then tap on each individual application most of them should have a button that says move to SD or something along those lines. Some applications can't be moved but some of the big memory hogs can i.e. the dreaded f-book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now