The Smartphone is Out of Memory. What to Do

Any smartphone is limited in the amount of memory that is available to store data in it. Sooner or later, with the active use of a smartphone, a moment comes when this very space is already full and the smartphone stops working correctly. What to do when this situation happened?

In this column, I’ll show you how to fix your smartphone’s fullness problem.

1. Clear your app cache

What is cache? The cache on your phone is a quick-access data storage and application data is stored in it. We need a cache for fast functioning of applications. Application data that is frequently used is loaded into RAM, and the data that is used most frequently is loaded into the cache. The number of applications on a smartphone is constantly increasing and sometimes so large that it slows down the system.

If you have an Android smartphone, then it will be enough for you to install a program to optimize work, for example, CC Cleaner, to clear the cache. Or you can clean the cache “with your own hands”: for this it will be enough to go to the settings, go to the “options” tab and go to the “memory” section.

If you are the owner of a smartphone from Apple, then you can clear the cache in each individual application, or by reinstalling the program.

2. Remove duplicate photos

In today’s world, most people take a very large number of photographs. Even if you are not very fond of photographing, you probably have a lot of duplicate photos in your gallery. And if with photos that are no longer needed you need to “sort out” manually, then for duplicate photos there are applications that allow you to optimize the memory in the gallery of your device.

3. Use streaming services instead of downloading to your phone

I’m sure you still have a lot of music that you download to your smartphone. And this music takes up a lot of space on your mobile device. Today, downloading music is completely optional, just subscribing to any of the streaming audio playback services. If Spotify is not available, then you can easily subscribe to Google Play Music if you own an Android smartphone, and Apple Music if you own an iOS device. A new service is also available – YouTube Music, which allows you to listen to music without being tied to any operating system and smartphone brand.

4. Reduce the quality of the video you are shooting

Most modern smartphones are equipped with cameras that shoot videos in FullHD or even 4K. For example, 1 hour of 1080p video can take up 10 GB of space on your smartphone. If you are not a professional operator, then a video with a resolution of 1080p (and even more so 4K) is hardly necessary for you. In the smartphone settings, you can easily reduce the resolution of the recorded video to 720p – this will practically not affect the video quality for personal use, but will significantly unload the memory of your smartphone if you like to record all-important (and not so) events on video.

5. Cloud storage

If all of the above mechanisms did not help to clear the memory on your smartphone, buy a subscription to cloud storage services. On mobile devices, there are recommended applications for installation. On Android OS, this is Google Drive, for iOS – iCloud, which is automatically preinstalled on the iPhone. These applications, apart from their advantages, of course, have a number of disadvantages. The most critical disadvantages are the low speed of data loading to storage servers, high cost.

There are a number of similar applications for synchronizing files with storage – which one to choose is a matter of preference and in order to choose a reliable service for storing your data, you need to carefully study all possible offers on the market. I would single out two applications that are not inferior in functionality to those listed above – Dropbox and FEX.NET ID.

Dropbox delivers fast download speeds and a good level of data protection, and the app is well-equipped. The disadvantages are the same high cost of a storage subscription.