It’s an HTC Wildfire S on Tesco Mobile.
I keep getting the message that the phone’s short of memory.
I’ve moved all possible apps to the SD card, but there is no option to do that with Facebook.
I can’t see the point of having a direct Facebook app, I just access it via the internet, so I might as well uninstall it, but there is no option to do that either.

How do I get rid of it and free up some space ?

Some pre-loaded apps cannot be removed. It is worth clearing out the cache for it if you don’t use it though

HTC seem keen to force you to keep apps you never use on your phone.

Mrs Grips’ Chacha has this problem. It’s disgraceful imo, will never buy another HTC.

There may be some apps that you can get, Apps2SD or something. Otherwise, root the phone and install a custom ROM.

Settings > Apps, click on the app and uninstall.

druidh, I found the “Clear Data” button while looking at the greyed out “Move to SD card” button. I’ve also clicked the “Uninstall Updates” button which cuts it down from about 19Mb to about 3Mb, but it seems to automatically reinstall them later.
If I could stop it doing that it would help.

You should be able to switch off Auto Update but that will affect all apps. TBH, I prefer or that way anyway. Nowt worse than a big update happening when you are on a dodgy connection.

carbonfibreismadebyaliens, there is no Uninstall option, just Uninstall Updates.

Molgrips, rooting the phone and installing a custom ROM sounds a bit risky to me.
I’ll look in to Apps2SD, that sounds like what I’m looking for.

I’ve set updates to wifi connection only, to save on data usage. I don’t think I can set it for individual apps.

Can you download Privacy Protector and deny your FB app net access?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.houzuo.android.privacyprotector&feature=search_result#?t=W10.

Molgrips, rooting the phone and installing a custom ROM sounds a bit risky to me.

It is..

I have an android HTC. I wouldn’t mind them forcing you to have certain apps IF they were something useful or interesting, rather than the hateful pointless turd that is facebook.

Well that’s a stupid thing to say, Facebook is both useful and interesting to many people.

There’s a few of those “App2SD” type apps. They all say something like “moves all the apps that can be moved in one go” though, not “moves apps that can’t otherwise be moved”, so I don’t think they are what I want.

Privacy Protector, looks like it would stop Facebook locating me when I use it, but it says nothing about preventing updates.

You’d have to globally disable updates then?

I was in a similar position and did the same thing, now you will get endless notifications telling you to update Facebook – you can’t win!

I ended up flashing my phone to an Ice Cream Sandwich build (rooting not required) and I now have much more control. ICS also handles limited internal storage space much better by making better use of the SD card so since then I haven’t been juggling apps, I just install what I want. My phone only has 500mb internal and a 4?8? Gb SD card, on gingerbread and the Sony bloatware I could only have about 10 apps! Now I have everything I want install and still have 100mb internal free (I keep most on the SD).

Have you gone through all the apps & cleared their caches? Also go into you internet app, then menu setting & delete cache & history.

Do you have any really long text message threads? I find on the Desire that the memory doesn’t like it if you have messages threads over 100 long.

…flashing my phone to an Ice Cream Sandwich build (rooting not required)…

I don’t feel confident enough with technology to attempt stuff like this.

I was hoping there might be some simple solution.
It looks like my best option is to wait until I get the low memory warning, then go and uninstall Facebook updates again.

Well that’s a stupid thing to say, Facebook is both useful and interesting to many people.

Oh for goodness’ sake. Do I really need to start putting ‘IMHO’ after everything?

Although I appreciate the importance of maintaining the standard STW stance of “your opinion is different therefore it’s/you’re stupid” … I like consistency

😀

Oh for goodness’ sake. Do I really need to start putting ‘IMHO’ after everything?

Yes, obviously. Are you stupid or what?

Yes, obviously. Are you stupid or what?

Stupid is as stupid does.

Or, the rest of STW is stupid and needs obvious things spelling out.

That’s also an option.

Lol 🙂

Settings->Applications->Manage applications

Select the Fb app and then tap uninstall.

If you don’t have an uninstall option then you’re stuck.

FWIW, I uninstalled the fb app from my tablet that’s struggling a bit as it was always taking up a large chunk of memory. Hangs much less now.

You can disable updates for individual apps via Goggle Play. Go to “your apps”, and uncheck automatic updates as required.

What size is your contacts storage as I believe this is a factor in low storage notification

I have the same issues with google books, movies and +. Will uninstall the updates but not remove the whole thing…then every day I get notifications that updates are available…just wont allow me to uninstall and fully remove them…right pain!

Graham,

I have the same issue a Sony Ericsson Arc. Its to do with the older versions of Android and general bloatware. I periodically delete old photos, once they’ve been back up on-line and clear the cache.

As you wrote – You can delete all the updates on FB/Flash/Gmaps ect, but they still update in the background.

I haven’t found a permanent solution either, other than hacking into the phone and doing a forced updated to Ice Cream Sandwich. I didn’t fancy doing that.

Dave

I also have an Experia Arc S and recently keep getting update errors with FB – it’s nothing to do with the storage – it’s something androidy/facebooky. I find uninstalling FB and then reinstalling it straight away has sorted it – it’s somehting to do wiht Google Play cache data I think.

If you go into settings you’ll porbably still have loads of storage space. I thought like you it was storage originally and moved lots of apps to my SD card, but trust me – it’s just some Android bug that FB doesnt like.

Not sure it is that…it isn’t just Facebook that gives that problem…a lot of the Google apps, once installed on your phone you can’t completely remove…it will remove the updates, but the ‘basic’ item will remain on the device – you can’t actually remove it. Then when your phone checks for updates you get constant (well daily) notifications about updates for the apps you are trying to remove completely from the phone…

I’ve got an SE Arc. It’s rooted and has the latest OFFICIAL SE ICS firmware. It’s absolutely fine. As long as you follow all the steps in any guides, it’s actually reasonably easy. It’s almost impossible to brick an android phone.
If you don’t want to change the firmware, rooting is still worthwhile. It will allow you to uninstall all of the junk apps that your phone comes pre-loaded with.

If you had an app that allowed you to view the hidden files on the system, could you identify the ‘offending’ apps and delete them so they weren’t on the system? I’m guessing an .apk file is sitting on the device somewhere?

…and I am guessing!!!

You can disable updates for individual apps via Goggle Play. Go to “your apps”, and uncheck automatic updates as required.

Thanks freddyg, that’s the nearest to a proper solution yet. I wouldn’t have thought of looking there for that option.
I can’t delete the whole thing, but after clearing the cache, uninstalling the updates and disabling further updates, I have at least minimized it’s memory use.

You should also go to accounts in settings and untick sync of your fb account. Then it wont talk to fb any more whether the app is installed or not.

Or even remove your fb account from the phone. I have a htcdesire hd with fb installed but its dormant as it does not know my account.

If you had an app that allowed you to view the hidden files on the system, could you identify the ‘offending’ apps and delete them so they weren’t on the system? I’m guessing an .apk file is sitting on the device somewhere?

…and I am guessing!!!

Simplifying a little,

It’s rolled into the ROM. To uninstall a ‘system’ app like that, you’re looking at the root / custom ROM route. You’d edit the ROM image before installation to remove what you didn’t want. Removing apps from the phone after the event is, let’s say “non-trivial”.

As discussed above though, removing the Store-originated updates will recover a deal of space. As I Understand It, updating system apps essentially gives you two copies of the app, the System version and the User version, so it takes up twice as much space. Sort of. I think.

Or even remove your fb account from the phone. I have a htcdesire hd with fb installed but its dormant as it does not know my account.

I did this. And removed the extra FB app (Messenger?) that is optional, and doesn’t form part of the stock package. That Messenger app has interesting bugs (or had, at least), like making sure all your friends know you have the app without you realising it’s done this, and making it look like you’re logged in to chat, when you’ve turned chat off entirely.

Not tried the ICS upgrade from HTC yet. It’s not OTA for mine, so need to download and install manually. CyanogenMod is tempting though.

If its preloaded, you will have to root the phone to gain superuser admin rights to physically remove the bloatware, or flash a different android rom, which is something all the nerdy kids do to their phones, so its simple to find the instructions on the web.*

I did it to remove all the shite that orange cram into their phones and my world is now a happier place. 🙂

*This will, unsurprisingly, void the guarantee.

just set your phone not to update unless you want it to.

i then deleted all the updates installed and just let it update the phone OS only.

All the stuff still works nicely without filling the onboard memory full of pointless code.

I suspect that the remaining 3MB will be in the System partition rather than the Data partition so even if you could delete it the OS wouldn’t let you install anything else in it’s place…

Deleting its cache and updates will most likely be as much as you can do without rooting/etc…

An alternative is to install this.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lim.android.automemman&hl=en

It stops applications that take up too much memory and that are idle or ones your are not actively using on the screen. Be warned though if you haven’t got enough memory then this cause other apps that you are using to stop for example if you are flicking in between a web browser and email.

You can specify apps the app will avoid from being stopped.

*This will, unsurprisingly, void the guarantee.

I think that’s carrier dependent, they’re slowly coming round to the idea that people actually want to do this. When I sent a rooted Galaxy back to O2 (with a letter asking them to replace it with something that wasn’t shit), they didn’t care that it was rooted.

I suspect that the remaining 3MB will be in the System partition rather than the Data partition so even if you could delete it the OS wouldn’t let you install anything else in it’s place…

Deleting its cache and updates will most likely be as much as you can do without rooting/etc…

+1.

An alternative is to install this.

We’ve done this in depth on STW before, but I’d be very sceptical of this sort of app. You can end up causing more problems than you solve.

In any case, you’re attempting to address a different problem. It’s akin to trying to free up RAM on a PC because your hard disk is full.