At the very moment, your little one has finally agreed to stay still and pose with you for a beautiful sunset click, your phone camera roll is full. The kiddo has gone and the moment too. Boo. A full phone memory not only means that you don’t have space for any more data, it also leads to a laggy, slow experience for the user.
Updates from the Play Store, offline map data, huge games, photos, music – all these are the major and most common space eaters. So, what is the real solution? Let’s find out some of the best ways to free up space on your mobile device.
1. Spring clean your internal storage:
Internal storage on a smartphone is mainly used up by three things:
- App data
- Cached data (system cache, app cache)
- User data (music, photos, videos, etc)
Fortunately, we can control all three of these. Take a little time to work your way through unused apps, bloated caches and unnecessary files, and delete what you don’t need. Else use an app to do it for you. SD Maid automates a lot of the process and ES File Explorer scours your Android file system and will prompt you to clear out the remaining files from the apps you uninstall.
2. Transfer files from smartphone to PC
If you won’t want to delete your user data, you can move it to another device to free up some storage space. For example DCIM, Music, and Videos folders can be saved onto your computer for safekeeping. To do this, connect your phone to your computer with a USB cable and unlock your phone.
Move the folders or files you don’t especially need on your phone to your computer. Don’t forget to check all folders – even your WhatsApp folder can be full of forgotten saved images.
3. Reinvent microSD card
Despite Google’s efforts to limit the use of microSD expansion, expandable memory is just as popular as it has always been. And even if your phone doesn’t have a microSD slot, you can still use microSD to get more storage space. Using a microSD card for additional storage space is not seamless, but it will help save space in your phone’s limited internal storage.
If your phone has a slot for microSD card, you can save photos or music on it, leaving the internal storage for apps or essential files. If your phone doesn’t have a slot for a microSD card, you can use one via USB OTG or with a microSD card adapter. You can then attach the adapter to your keys to carry it with you.
4. Upload Photos and Videos on Cloud
Another option to save space on your smartphone is Cloud Storage. Instead of storing files to your computer’s hard drive or another local storage device, you save it to a remote database. You need to be online to access uploaded files from your smartphone and tablet. There are a few Cloud storage apps to choose from, which allow you to keep your smartphone and tablet clutter free. Here are some you can download:
Box
Simply titled box, this nifty app offers personal accounts starting at 5GB of free storage. Users have the ability to share files and folders with other Box users and create links to share externally. There’s an option to view who downloaded or previewed each file. Box is hassle free and a delight to use.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a hugely popular cloud-storage service for personal as well as business users. Users can flip through photo albums, edit and share important documents, and attach emails straight from Dropbox. Even if you lose your Android device, your personal data will be safe in Dropbox, and can be retrieved anytime. Users get 2GB of free cloud storage with Dropbox when they register.
Google Drive
Google Drive is the best combination of a cloud storage service and productivity platform. With Drive, users can access photos, documents, videos and other important files, much like other cloud storage facilities.
What’s unique about Drive, however, is that you can make files available offline, so you can view them when you’re not connected to the internet. You can also add collaborators to help edit spreadsheets and documents and view PDF’s, scan documents, and keep everything stored in Drive.
Conclusion
With a few careful decisions about the cloud, off-device storage options, and general spring cleaning, you can ensure you never run out of storage space again. Also, in case you have a lot of data you need to backup, all these apps also have paid options, which let you save data up to 100 GB.
Do share them out and do share your experience with us.
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