[update July 2011] So I finally bit the bullet and clicked the "clear data" button for the Dialer application. It was at an incredible 70MB, but I feared I would lose all kinds of contact information. Turns out it has more to do with stored SMS and MMS, as all my messages were wiped after doing this (luckily I thought to run a data back up before doing this. I guess HTC thinks it needs to store SMS/MMS data in the Dialer Application AS WELL as the SMS and MMS programs? WTF? Anyway, I haven't had any storage issues at all since doing this. In fact, I reinstalled a bunch of apps I had deleted for space, including Netflix, and have experienced no issues whatsoever. Just thought you might like to know.
[update June 2011] This is getting effing ridiculous. I have removed Facebook. I have removed all SMS and MMS. I have moved every application possible to the SD card. I went into Apps and cleared all caches (and even some data from programs). Still, I am not able to even listen to my voice mail (of which I only have ONE), because I get the message: "Unable to manage your messages because your storage is full. Please delete content from other applications to make more space."
I have more than 6GB of free space on the phone. If HTC/Google doesn't fix this sh*t soon, they are losing a customer (I assume many).
Topics covered:
- managing SMS and MMS
- application data space and application space
Ah, the dreaded HTC/Android “Application Data Space Is Low” error.
Hopefully the genius architect who coded HTC phones to only allow a miniscule amount of a phone’s memory to be used for app data has been fired, ‘cause this is a horrible over site. You should at least be allowed to change this setting yourself (allocate an amount of memory to system vs. data).
I’ve got more than 5GB of free space on my phone’s memory, yet my Droid Incredible keeps screaming at me: “Application Data Space is Low!”
There are quite a few apps at which people often point fingers. The two biggest culprits I’ve found in my searches were Facebook and News Rob (or other RSS/Feed readers that cache data locally).
Another thing I learned is don’t
EVER sync the Facebook App to your phone for your contacts. You don’t need (or want) every friend you have on Facebook synced to your device. The HTC Facebook app that came with your phone does a great job of syncing faces to the numbers you have on your phone. If you allow the app you downloaded from the market or Facebook to sync, it will store a lot of useless data on your device.
HTC Mail often gobbles up application memory as well. Clear your stored mail!
Here’s a list of some of the top space gobblers on my device (this is just the space the actual
app takes up –not necessarily its data):
- Dialer Storage: 62.57 MB (wtf?!)
- Contact Storage: 21.23MB
- Firefox: 17.71MB (this is way to much, I think I’m deleting the app)
- Google Earth: 15.06MB (I’ve never used this; I think I’m deleting it)
- Google Maps: 10.63MB
The next app (doubleTwist) is at 6.35MB and they get smaller from there –all under 7MB.
To find apps that are gobbling up too much data resource, go into Settings > Applications > Manage Applciations > Running (or All) and look for the culprit.
Some people have also had success just clearing the cache for various apps.
Don’t hit “Clear data” as that will clear user names and important data for the app.
Another thing that can help is where you store your apps. I’ve got a 16GB SD Card in my phone, so I try to store as many “non-speed sensitive” apps as possible on the SD card instead of internal memory. Unfortunately your apps will start competing with the space for your media (songs and videos) when you do this.
THE FINAL SOLUTION (for me): The thing that I never really thought about (duh!) is that I’ve had my phone for going on a year, and I’ve never backed up my SMS or MMS. That data can build up, so I assume it’s taking up a lot of space –especially with all those MMS photos. Some of my conversation threads have over 1,000 messages (I’m looking at you Mikey B, Miguel, and E)!
Deleting text messages seems to be a long and laborious process unless you do a “select all” and just wipe everything. You can also just delete certain threads (conversations with certain people) by long pressing the conversation and selecting “delete.” Note that you can “lock” specific messages (under the message’s long-press menu) so that when you delete the entire conversation those messages won’t be deleted; just be sure you don’t tick “delete locked messages” when you’re deleting the thread.
To save future pain, you can set the number of messages your phone will keep. Just be sure to back up your SMS/MMS often unless you’re not worried about archiving your messages.
Go into your message app. Click the second icon at the bottom of the screen (it’s a text bubble with lines overlapping a text bubble with an icon). Press menu. Press settings. Click “Delete old messages,” and set “Text message limit” and “Multimedia message limit” as you wish. These settings are
per conversation (not total).
ALSO: Scroll down to MMS settings and select Attachment Storage. Change it to SD Card.
You can also change your voicemail attachment storage location from here (scroll down a little farther on the main message settings screen).
This whole shabang has brought me to the search for a good
back up app. There are some fun apps that backup SMS to Gmail, but none of these handle MMS, and I’d like a more robust back up app anyway (for apps, call logs, etc.), so I think I’ll be going with MyBackUp. More on that in another post soon!
…