HTC Incredible Phone Storage Explained (sheds some light on the low storage messages)
nimiaj
Contributor - Level 3

On our phones there are four types of storages

 

App Storage : This is where your apps get installed. We have 748MB of this. 

Phone Memory: This is where physical files etc is stored (e.g. photos music etc etc). We have 6.6GB of this.

SD Card: This is the physical micro SD card that you can insert. Upto 32gb is possible. With this we can install apps here if the App Storage is running low (thats the 748MB one). Also photos, application configuration files etc etc is also stored here.

Application Data Storage: This is where all the apps can store non-user data like caching, internal configs, etc etc. We only     have 149MB of this. This one is the culprit when you get the low storage message.

 

Just wanted to explain what the low storage is all about.

Most of the apps that we install use the application data storage area of the storage for their internal purposes. The reason is that this storage is only available to the app itself and is secure. So if you installed Facebook and configured facebook with your username and password. That info is stored in the Application Data Storage. A lot of apps like the browser, video apps etc etc also use this area for better performance and personal preferences. For example if you had a lot of bookmarks, they are being stored here. You browser history is also being stored here. So over time, this area of the phone gets filled up as you keep using your apps.

 

So over time you are eventually going to run short on the 149MB worth of application data storage. The best way to avoid this is to regularly check on application data and cache under Manage Applications. If any one of them seems to be going way over, you need to review and take action. For example, if you have been keeping too many bookmarks or havent cleared your history in a while, your browser data/cache will look very bloated. Consider clearing history and reducing bookmarks if possible. Contacts Storage can bloat a lot over time if you use exchange and gmail sync. So if you don't store any contacts on the phone, OR store contacts locally on the phone and have backup assistant configured, you can simply clear contacts storage data. It will re-synchronize and rebuild it. And the new size will be much compact.