[Closed] Missing phone memory on HTC Desire?

Have you looked at the Data size that each application is using as well? It's listed under each application in the Application Manager.. maybe your web browser has a large cache (or similar)..?

System. Stuff like the Dalvik cache, email data, contacts data.

This is a [i]very [/i]well documented issue with a number of solutions with varying complexity and effectiveness. Froyo and App2SD is a simple start.

Happened to me too. It was the final push I needed to make me root it. Glad I did, transformed my phone. Couple of hours "work", tops.

Indeed.

I faffed about with it for months before finally pulling the trigger. Wish I'd done it at the start, "transformed" is exactly the term.

yes apps2sd should help - it makes clearing ALL cache memory easy.

I'm thinking of rooting my desire....I know there are instructins on the xda developers forum but as a non techie person for this stuff could someone answer a few simpple questions for me first?

I like the phone and want to leave it as unchanged as possible for now but it seems to slow down more and more recently and I've worked out this is a memory issue...phone memory is a little limited on hte desire. Presumably if I root it I could then remove some of the apps that Orange put on the phone (and sit in the phone memory and I can't seem to move to the sd card)...I'm thinking app sharing, pdf viewer (I use adobe), footprints, friend stream, google mail (I use k9), internet (I use dolphin), news, news and weather, stocks and SIM tookit I guess this would make a big big differnce by freeing up space, yes?

Before I go about rooting the phone, can I save the settings and apps etc somewhere and restore it all if I want to?

I also read, I think, on the developers forum that I can partition the sd card and allocate a chunk as 'phone memory'...i say I think as I din't quite understand what I read. If doing this allows me to then move on to the SD card some, or all of those apps that currently can't be moved then great....but I doubt it. So what is the advantage? does it help by adding more memory for apps to use as cache? I guess that would still be pretty useful.

oh and different apps seem to say different things about the memory status...either they are measuing differnt stuff or they lie. For example, right now quick settings says I've 45MB (31%) of phone memory free (and loads of sd card memory- 6Gig) ATK says I've 105M of available memory, Apps2SD says total 147.62MB and 45.9MB available (so available seems to agree with quick settings....but what is ATK on!?

This really is the wrong place to be asking but,

I like the phone and want to leave it as unchanged as possible

That's pretty much how I felt. You basically want a tweaked Gingerbread ROM with Sense. I tried a couple before finding a winner; I'll check what I used when I get home if I remember.

if I root it I could then remove some of the apps that Orange put on the phone

Not quite. Once rooted, you can replace the ROM with one that doesn't have all that crap installed.

can I save the settings and apps etc somewhere and restore it all if I want to?

Yes - your rooting guide should cover making a Gold Card and taking a Nandroid backup. It's worth noting that this is a rollback procedure; you're not going to use it unless you have to send it back under warranty. Trust me, you won't want to go back voluntarily. Point is, once you've replaced the ROM, for best results you should wipe the data and apps and start again (you can back up some of this - see Titanium Backup and others).

I can partition the sd card and allocate a chunk as 'phone memory'...i say I think as I din't quite understand what I read. If doing this allows me to then move on to the SD card some, or all of those apps that currently can't be moved then great....but I doubt it.

No, that's exactly it. You allocate a chunk of the SD to appear as "internal" storage, which fixes the Desire's storage limitation at a stroke. You don't need to 'move to SD' - the apps are already there.

different apps seem to say different things about the memory status...either they are measuing differnt stuff or they lie

Don't lose too much sleep over trying to work this out. They're all measuring different things in different ways. (Simplistically, ATK is referring to RAM rather than storage space).

Also, task killers are generally a bad idea.

RCMix, I used. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=988570

Further reading,

http://androidforums.com/desire-all-things-root/163477-desire-all-about-rooting-updated-11-nov-2011-a.html

Cougar - [s]I'm in the same boat as neiln and the OP, so would be grateful if you could let us know which ROM you settled for in the end, when you get a chance.[/s]
Thanks!!

disco-stu - did you get the last auto-update for Adobe Flash? It's huge, I un-installed the update, got about 15Mb back, and haven't noticed any issues.

indeedy! Flash has just gone ridiculously big so it had to go!

I have now turned off auto updating on nearly all my apps....i realsied they only ever grow and also rarely actually give better functions....which made me think and then conclude 95% of the updates are about compatibilty with new handsets/new operating system software. So, if an app is running fine for you, then there is no point in updating...updating just chews up more memory! Wish I'd realised that 12 months ago...I'd probably have all the same apps as now and several Meg for space.....or still have a couple of the apps I culled recently to free some space.

thanks Cougar, that has cleared stuff up a fair bit...I guess I need to bite the bullet and read the instructions and get on and do it one rainy weekend

Clearing the data from facebook cleared loads on space on mine.

+1 for the recent flash update. Bleedin' enormous!!

When I had my Desire, the biggest two apps were the Flash and Facebook updates, both of which I never used anyway. They were the first to go.

indeedy! Flash has just gone ridiculously big so it had to go!
'S****'

And there's still people who maintain that Flash is essential for the 'full web experience'.

 

And there's still people who maintain that Flash is essential for the 'full web experience'.

Removing the Flash updates doesn't remove Flash - it's pre-installed. Phone runs Flash fine without the updates.

Rooting my Desire was the vest decision I ever made. I used the androidforums guide that cougar linked to and it was fairly simple. I run the current rom from Oxygen which is super quick and good on the battery. The roms that MIUI are producing are lovely and have loads of features but their standard launcher looks very iPhone like. MIUI are very close to releasing ice cream sandwich for the desire too.

Get cracking and breath new life into your phone.

How do I partition some of my SD card? If I could partition a 1Gb piece then I'd have no memory issues with the Desire for quite some time...anyone got a link to somewhere I can read about it please? Unless it is dead easy and can be typed here?

Thanks.

DickBarton check out the second link cougar posted, i'm sure the guide is there.

ta...thought that was just rooting...which is still scaring me!

Read up on App2SD+.

The easiest way is using Gparted on a Linux boot disk to create an ext3 partition. You'll still need a ROM that supports it, though - it doesn't just work with the stock ROM.

From memory, what I did is,

Create a gold card and obtain the RRU for the O2 ROM on my phone, for recovery purposes.

Root the device with UnrEVOked.

Take a Nandroid backup.

Repartition the SD with a 1Gb ext3 partition leaving 6.something of the 8Gb card as FAT32 for regular data. In hindsight, I could've got away with less.

Flash the RCMix ROM.

Try not to have kittens whilst it takes far longer than you thinkto come back up.

--

Caveat emptor (so to speak): This is 'as I remember' and almost certainly misses some steps; it was a while ago and methods may have been superseded; different revisions of bootloader may require different steps and / or the secure flag disabling (S-OFF). READ THE GUIDES.

If it's any help though, it's really difficult to do something completely irrecoverable; you'd have to try particularly hard in order to brick it.

Cheers...have been reading up on it for a while and still not fully understanding it...I'm sure it is easy but just need to start doing instead of reading...for some reason I have a fear I'm going to loose all my phone details!

Well... you will. So that's not an unfounded fear.

Your contacts, emails etc will be synced to Google, assuming you, er, sync to Google, so you can just sync back afterwards. Ditto Market purchases. But other apps and data (SMSes, call logs) will go, you need to back it up. Ostensibly, you get a new phone.

For me, I had nothing of worth on there that wasn't synced to Google. In hindsight, the one thing I lost that I wanted was my Slice-It saved game.

hmm, job for the weekend.... it sounds straight forward enough...i think...but not something to try when rushed or knackered!

Oh yes....do any custom ROMs support the use of the usb port with the phone in host mode? ie, so I could plug a flash drive into the phone and have the phone read it? would be handy to have memory map files on a flash drive that way, and some climbing guide books I have in pdf.

oh and sorry about the highjack OP! but hopefully you fund this useful too 🙂

ah yes, how do I sync my contacts then? I've been very lax with that....and haven't (knowingly)

Thanks for the replies, it looks like rooting my phone is the best option, as I've only got 6 months left on my contract I think I'll give it a go.
I think a new memory card will have to be ordered as well.

Has anyone overclocked their rooted Desire?

how do I sync my contacts then?

If the phone is associated with a Google account, it should just do it. Log in to your gmail account on a PC, all the data should be there.

ah yes I managed to sort that last night....I had switched off all background sync'ing but forced a sync.

I'm now trying to decide what I want from a custom rom.....think I might go for speed over whizzy shit like wallpapers....so might go for an ASOP....I have more reading to do I feel

COugar knows his shit, I know

however 😳

IME (2xorange brand phones - ZTE blade(sanfrancisco) & skate(montecarlo)) you [b]can [/b]just take out the orange branded stuff once the phone is rooted and without a new ROM. I used an app called AntTek app manager which can freeze the apps (so they disappear but aren't removed) or remove them (once you're sure that you won't miss 'em or that the loss doesn't bork the phone)

yeah but reading a bit more I need a custom rom to do the sd card partition and app2sd+ thingie...this is THE main thing to do as it instantly overcomes the biggest issue with the desire (virtually only issue in my view) the small internal memory. So I'll be going down the custom rom route..root...err 😉

I was considering rooting my desire, but as I have no clue what 90% of the posts in this thread mean, I guess I'd better leave it

THREAD RESURRECTION:

Same problem as OP, if I do this rooting thing, what fundamental, noticeable differences (apart from getting my phone working again) will there be?

(already got app2sd)