Data Storage Space
For as amazing and functional as these little devices have become, they still obviously lack the plethora of external storage space found in most desktops. You may scoff at the idea of running out of storage space on a phone that has a SD card (which has the ability to be filled with a few gigs of data), but it can happen faster than you think these days. Some Android phones don’t have these cards either; such as the Nexus S which uses onboard USB storage.
So if you find yourself in need of more space on your Android, here are a few ways to make some room.
Ditch Unnecessary Apps
The phone comes with some apps already installed. For course you may download duds or just cease to use an app… or ten. So for all those forgotten and unused apps sitting on your phone, here’s how to delete them.
- Go to “Settings”
- Choose “Applications”
- Pick “Manage Applications”
- Find the “Downloaded” tab
- Tap the application name you want to remove
- Select the “Uninstall” button
This will probably be the easiest way to free up more storage space on your android phone.
Move Apps Into Storage
True, there are a number of Android apps that are stubborn (developers intentionally disabled the “move to SD/USB function), but others can get along over to your USB storage or SD card. So the irony here is, to offload an app to your SD safely, you are probably going to need to download another app. It’s called App 2 SD and it’s free on the Android Market. It will let you know which ones are good to go and then you can move them all to an external or internal storage unit at once. You can still perform the same function with any version of Android 2.2 or higher by using the Settings, but it doesn’t clear up app cashes, which may lead to issues.
Dropbox
It is a fantastic app in general, but the free account comes with 2GB of storage space. Ta-Da! If need be, you can even get up to 8GB by shelling out referrals or going social. The app lets you sync and store remotely. It works with all platforms, but may not download and sync all files like it does for your desktop.
Though Dropbox is the commanding favorite, there are other cloud storage services as well: Sugar SyncZ(5), ZumoDrive(2GB), Box.net(5GB), and Sorami (25GB).
Get Old Photos and Vids off Your Phone
Some people keep enough pictures into their photo gallery to impress the Louvre. It is often overlooked as to how much space these things actually take up. Try to save pics and vids to your SD card, save them on your PC, publish them to Facebook, and then delete them off the device. If not that way, then save them in “the cloud” by using Google’s Picasa service.
If you are just curious as to what is taking up room on your device and where, you may want to look into the app DiskUsage. Again, I know that downloading yet another app to deal with freeing up space seems asinine, but this one will provide a wicked visualization of both the phone’s internal and SD storage spaces.
=== About the Author ===
Jon Hosier is the Marketing Manager for Phonebooks.com, a site geared towards offering visitors free access to online phone and people searches, as well as easy searches of US phone numbers, people, addresses and more. Jon has been writing on the mobile and tech industries for the last few years.
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