UKC

My other half's phone has stopped working completely, despite her having moved all the apps she can onto her SD card. It was telling her she'd run out of memory.

I'm beginning to get memory warnings on my phone despite doing the same and deleting old texts etc.

Is there some trick I'm missing that will free up some memory or is there some great app on Google Play that I can download that will help me keep my phone memory nice and tidy?

In reply to Removed User: Try moving all your photos, media etc to the SD as well - unless you have already done this?

In reply to Removed User:

unistall facebook for starters, reinstall, delete messages and its usually ok for a week or so! Ongoing problem with my Galaxy Ace that only gets worse as the Apps get bigger.

In reply to SGD:

Already done that.

I'm kind of thinking that Android must fill up memory with junk files or something. Seems strange that you don't get some sort of straightforward clean up facility in the phone.

In reply to Removed User:
A factory reset may help, this should wipe all data, so you'll have to reinstall your apps.

The phone may be filled with unneccessary programs from your mobile phone company.
Some of these may be easily removed, but some can't be unless you hack into your phone - 'rooting' your phone and installing more efficient software such as CyanogenMod. This is a great solution but only for the techy people.

A better solution for most is just to get a more modern phone. You can get a second hand galaxy S2 for not much, or go for a Google Nexus 4 or 5 which are the best 'bang for buck' new phones out there. Don't go for entry level phones if you want to use a lot of apps.

In reply to Removed User:


I tried to solve those very same problems with my Samsung Ace but had to admit defeat. The Android operating system gets too big for the tiny amount of RAM.

Bite the bullet and get another phone or accept the phone's limitations.

I still have ages on my contact but ditched the phone for a more capable one and this was the best thing that I ever did because I realised that my new phone could do so much more.

In reply to The Lemming:

I got some useful tips on this thread: http://forums.androidcentral.com/droid-razr-maxx/200396-low-memory-warning-...

Even so, it didn't seem to make a huge amount of difference.

In reply to Removed User:


Moving apps to the SD card doesn't free up working memory, it only frees up storage memory.

And even moving an app to an SD card will still leave some storage memory being used on the phone's builtin storage.

I've used an app called ZDBox which clears caches and stuff like that, but also has an app management part that shows how much storage each app is using, whether it can be move to SDCard or not, and I think it also shows how much if each it is using. This may vary based on which version of Android you have installed.

If you gain root on a phone, then you can install apps that allow you to remove some of the phone providers "base" apps that you cannot otherwise uninstall.

Or you can install another ROM that doesn't have all that shite "branding" stuff installed in the first place, but that may invalidate your warranty, make it difficult to resell the phone later, and may brick it if you are not particularly capable of understanding how to flash an OS onto an embedded computer.

Also, some of the links on xda-developers (etc) take you to places where if you are not careful you will be downloading an "installer" that will f*ck with your web-browser's search engines, home page and stuff like that, which frankly completely pisses me off big time, particularly as you almost always have to use Windows to get some of this stuff - certainly to run it - and having to set up a sacrificial account on my computer which I'm going to have to wipe is just too much of a pain...

I could rant further, but it would probably be fruitless. I ought just to have run windows in a sandbox as a virtual machine for tinkering with trying to find ways to unroot a Samsung Ace and put it back to their default state,,,

In reply to Removed User: Same problem with a Galaxy S2. Factory reset ans reinstall all aps solved it. Allow 1hr to getting settings etc correct.

In reply to Removed User:

Had this problem with my old HTC. Best thing I did (and it pretty much solved the issue til I upgraded) was to remove the twitter and facebook apps, and replace them with bookmarks to the mobile web pages instead. The facebook app is renowned for eating up ridiculous amounts of memory - more than the phone's OS - and unless you clear it a couple of times a day, it can build up and crash the phone, as you've discovered!

As well as that, install ES Task Manager and get into the habit of killing apps and clearing cache regularly. Those two aren't the only culprits and with most apps launching themselves and running in the background, it's useful to be able to kill them and clear the cache without any hassle.

Co:

In reply to CarolineMc:


You shouldn't need to go around killing apps on Android. The built-in memory management in the OS will kill idle apps if another app needs memory. However, some apps mark themselves as "do not kill" so the OS won't kill them to recover the memory they're using. These are usually apps which do actually do stuff in the background fairly regularly, so being killed and having to be restarted is (a) inefficient and (b) can actually stop them working properly*.

I suspect the Facebook app is one such. If you only ever look at Facebook when you choose, rather than getting notifications from the app when someone has posted new stuff, then there's no real point in having the app anyway - as you say, you might as well just access Facebook via the browser.

* This is also why killing apps yourself, or worse still using an automated task killer app, is often a bad idea.

In reply to Martin W:

Good point on the app killer - however with ES, you can select which ones to kill, rather than it indiscriminately killing all of them... I only ask it to kill the 3rd party apps, thus catching those pesky "do not kill" ones!

Co:

In reply to Removed User:

try SD Maid

In reply to Martin W:


which is where you get into having to root your phone so you can remove the app, as it's often a default app that cannot be un-installed using the default tools...

Or install a ROM that only has the functional bits that make your phone work, rather than having branded social media apps that are additional to the actual functionality of the phone.

Facebook is not essential to making your phone work, so should be un-installable, but most phone manufacturers or networks have customised ROMs that make twitter and facebook load up on boot and cannot be removed.

I suppose, if you root the phone, and you are technically capable then you should be able to stop apps like Facebook loading unless you specifically load them. Or install an app that allows you to remove them, because someone else has already played with the OS sufficiently to allow them to force remove apps that normally you are not allowed to.