When I was trying to update my old Samsung Galaxy S4 to Android 5.0 Lollipop o, I encountered a problem: I did not have enough free space on my smartphone. I really wanted to update my operating system, however, so something had to be removed. Very usefully, I could see how much storage space the update required and how much space was left on my phone. To do this, go to Settings and select storage. Here you can see the total storage on your device and the available space, as well as the types of data that are using the most space: apps, images and videos, audio data, cache data, and files. various..
Here are five ways to clean your Android smartphone or tablet:
1. Delete unused apps
First, I took an inventory of my application drawer, flipping through screen by screen. Like a physical drawer, it's been filled to the brim with stuff: some useful; most of it is forgotten and digital dust is gathered. Of course, there were several apps that I used every day, but there were also an amazing number of apps that I hadn't touched in weeks or months, be it a discontinued game, an app that I had reviewed and never used, something that I downloaded and immediately forgot. Eliminating these apps one by one was tedious and it took a while, but it saved me a lot of space.
2. Move photos and videos
Then, since I didn't have enough space, I transferred most of my photos and videos to my computer. I had previously backed up to the cloud, but I like having backups for my backup. Also, the S4 has a card slot, so I dumped the card as well..
Otherwise, you can just change the full card with an empty card, but be sure to keep the unused memory card in a safe place. My smartphone had a lot of old photos (I had had the phone for a few years) as well as a bunch of screenshots from past app reviews.
3. Clear cache
When I checked my storage settings, I found that a space was taken up by cache data..
You can delete it with just one click if you have a new Android smartphone; this will delete data like app preferences or old searches, but you won't lose important data like game progress. Think of it as clearing cache on your web browser. Depending on how much time has passed since you cleared your device's cache, it might free up a lot of space. (Right now my Samsung Galaxy S6, which is not yet a year old, only has 866MB of cache data, but this will increase over time.)
4. Ban bloatware
Bloatware has to be one of the most frustrating aspects of owning an Android device that isn't a Nexus device. These preinstalled apps cannot be removed unless your device is rooted. What you can do is restore the app to its original version, removing any updates you downloaded. This will save a small amount of storage. Also, be sure to turn off automatic app updates.
5. Root your phone
Finally, I considered rooting my smartphone. In this case, rooting has two immediate benefits: killing bloatware and getting immediate access to Android operating system updates. Root is no easy task, but it has its pros and cons. In this case, I decided not to root, as I knew I was going to upgrade to S6 soon.
How to avoid storage space problems in the future
When I was looking for new Android smartphones I decided to stick with the Galaxy series, but opted for the 64GB version of S6 since it doesn't have a slot for a memory card. I recommend buying a smartphone or tablet with at least 32GB of storage. Alternatively, you can buy a device that has a card slot like Moto X Pure Edition, which is compatible with cards up to 128GB or Droid Turbo 2 which is compatible with cards up to 1TB.
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