Android mobile low internal storage

[morrell]

I have been posting LC questions in the Complete Beginners forum and have had tremendous help since starting to learn LC in early December and hopefully I can obtain the same help here.

I had my very first mobile with a screen a couple of weeks before installing LC and so I'm no whiz OAP on it, plus the little book that came with it covers nothing about internal storage. Now I'm designing the look of my app it's file size is starting to grow which is now 16.9MG (is that large as apps go) and I'm getting a message saying my internal storage is running low with 158MB used and 7.0MB free.
I have no images in my gallery and no saved texts and in fact I'm not using the phone other than for testing my app as I only have 9 pence on the sim card.

Could someone explain how and what can be removed from the 158MB used as the only thing I can see which can be removed is my own app?
Motorola Defy Mini - Android 2.3

Kind regards,

Ruth

[Simon]

Hi Ruth,
On the Android device go
Settings > Applications > Manage application
The first screen shows all downloaded apps these can be deleted or have their caches cleared.
Click on the Menu button down at the bottom and sort by size. There was a big update to Google Play (Market?) that can be deleted (when you go to the Play store it gets updates it again).
Whatsapp jumped to 20 mb so I had to delete that.
Goggle Maps also had a large update that can be removed.

Click on All up at the top.
The largest app that I cannot remove is Internet at 4.08 mb
There was some sort of Mail cache that was at the top of my list, I removed it.

And there is a point where you have to remove your app before trying it install a new version (pain!).

Simon

[morrell]

Thank you Simon.

Regards,

Ruth

[jacque]

Most Android phones have two types of storage -- internal and external. Internal storage is built into the device and is generally fairly small. Apps that need to interact directly with the OS have to be installed there. External storage is usually supplied by an SD card and can be up to many gigabytes in size. Apps and data that do not need to interact with the system should be stored there, where there is more room.

Your Motorola accepts an SD card and may have come with one. You can see by going to Settings -> SD and phone storage. In there you will see data for both internal and SD storage. If you have SD storage then you should install your app there. If you do not have any SD card then you can either purchase and install one (small ones are pretty inexpensive) or resign yourself to shoehorning your app into the tiny amount of remaining space in internal storage.

If you do have external storage, you can move your app there by going to Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications. Tap on your app. There will be a button "Move to SD card" which you should select. That moves it to external storage. If the button is not active then your app was probably not compiled with that option and you should recompile it. In LC standalone settings, Android pane, set the Install Location to "Prefer external storage" and save it as a standalone again. After you install the updated app, go back to Settings and see if your external storage amount has changed; if so, the installation went directly there. If not, move it to the SD card manually in its Application settings screen.

[morrell]

Thank you Jaqueline and I'm sorry I did not reply earlier but have been away for a few days attending a family member's funeral.

I have been given an SD card so memory should no longer be an issue. Not only have I been given the card but a friend has loaned me his old mobile which has a large landscape screen and I'm hoping to also see how the app looks on that (finished the coding and now designing) but have a problem with MT65xx_USB_Driver recognition and so will post again in the Off Topic later this evening.