Too Little Storage

[Carder1Y]

Let me apologise in advance. Although I’ve had various mobile phones over the past 20 years, apart from making calls and sending texts, I know very little about them. The phone I’ve had for the past 2 years is a Huawei Y6 2018 and the contract is actually up today. The problem is that for the past year or so, every time I open my phone I get the message “Free up storage space to improve performance” and I have. I now have only a fraction of the photographs that I’ve had in my previous phones, I’ve deleted all of my sms text and WhatsApp messages and uninstalled some of the few apps that I’ve downloaded. And still the problem persists! Tried to download an app this morning but there was no space. The storage is 16GB with 603 MB available and I’ve got a 15GB sd card with 14GB of free space. Am now going for a new phone and since I’ve never had the problem before, I want to avoid having it again. Problem is I don’t know what to look for. Can someone help please?

 

[Steven]

Your handset likely requires the onboard storage for the operating system and apps and is NOT able to move either to the micro SD card. This makes sense as people could take out the micro SD card or whatever and then the phone would not run

My guess is you may well have been storing photos on the micro SD card previously. Deleting the photos has not helped free up onboard storage, containing the operating system and apps installation

This is a budget handset for the India market. I get people do not want to pay the prices for flagship Samsung and Apple, but there are plenty of wallet friendly models in the UK market with 64gb or 128gb onboard storage plus micro SD expansion. Look to upgrade to such a model

As for your current handset you probably need to remove all apps apart from the core apps to free up space. But then why compromise how you want to use technology. Even this might only be a plaster fix because operating system updates, security updates and app updates all take up space

 

[Carder1Y]

“This is a budget handset for the India market”. They didn’t tell me that in Tesco’s! However, thank you for the rapid and informative reply, I now know the way ahead.

 

[wine man]

16GB simply isn't enough for most of us. My old phone was 8GB and that filled up in 6 months. Some modern phones have 128GB and more so have a look around if you are out of contract.

 

[Carder1Y]

I thought that the sd card provided extra space, shows how much I know. Anyway, have taken on a Motorola mono E6S with 32 gb. Will see how it goes. Thanks for your input.

 

[depot]

I thought that the sd card provided extra space, shows how much I know. Anyway, have taken on a Motorola mono E6S with 32 gb. Will see how it goes. Thanks for your input.

It’s best to set photos and videos to be stored on the sd card, it’s a big help to keep the internal storage for apps, even 32gb is a squeeze nowadays.

 

[Steven]

As an addendum, apps will commonly permit data to be set to the micro SD card

My podcast app (podcast republic, others are available) is set for podcasts downloads to be saved to the micro SD card for example

SanDisk and Samsung branded micro SD can be had for around £30 for 128gb and around £40 for 256gb (just avoid new no ratings resellers on Amazon and eBay in order to avoid fake cards)

 

[Carder1Y]

The sd card from my Huawei is 15+gb with 14+ unused. I take it that I can use this card on the new phone Steven.

 

[Steven]

I do not see why not

You may want to consider also moving the micro SD card data to a higher capacity micro SD card, at the same time as buying the new smartphone

It depends how you use a smartphone. For example I like offline podcasts downloads and music files on the micro SD card rather than to stream, to preserve battery life from having WiFi / data turned on all the time.

If you are happy 32gb onboard plus 15gb micro SD is sufficient for your needs then fine. But do think about a backup for your photos and anything else (whether by syncing to an online cloud service or with a physical hard drive at home).

 

[AndroidUser]

@Carder1Y I think you should try this feature:

This should solve any problems with storage capacity.