Android Phone ‘Low-on-Space’ warning fixes

The most frustrating nag on an Android Phone is the ‘Low System Memory’ or ‘Low on Space’ warning.  It does not matter whether it is a Samsung 2.3.6 Gingerbread device like mine or a Samsung Galaxy S4 Jelly Bean 4.2 device like a dear one’s - within a couple of months that nag is sure to pop up.

The general advice to all Android users to avoid this ‘Low on Space’ warning are:

• set limit on number of text/SMS messages to retain,
• move *all* media files (music, videos, images, etc.) to SD card,
• clear all the app cache regularly,
• turn off widgets and live wallpapers,
• move as many apps as possible to SD card,
• uninstall apps that are not used anymore.

Which also proves an unrelated point - even Linux boxes need System Cleaners.
;-)

The most useful and most frustrating of these advice is about moving apps to SD card.  The danged Android does not allow or permit many (almost all !?!) apps to be moved or installed to SD card.  You might have a 32 GB SD card in the slot with 30 GB of free space, but the silly phone will not allow that space to be used for an app.

Instead it will keep moaning about ‘Low Space’.  And that is exactly what I have been suffering for the last few days.  Updates from Google Play for Maps, Hangouts and YouTube ran into this problem and failed to update.

Even worse, the dingbat apps stop responding and for all practical purposes crash the phone - turning the Samsung smartphone into a dumb phone - good only for making phone calls and SMS - nothing else.  Not even the Gmail was getting synched because of the stupid warning.

Powering down and switching on the phone gave a temporary fix - for a few minutes - till the phone attempted another update from Google Play store.



Thus it was with frustration I set out to find a better solution today.

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