Full phone storage? Tips on freeing up space

You are just about to take that perfect picture…and disaster! Your phone storage is full. Just because you’ve run out of storage space on your phone doesn’t necessarily mean that you need a higher-spec mobile, particularly as the same type of phone with more memory can cost up to £350 more.

There are plenty of space-saving steps you can take to free up some storage on your device without any associated costs. Here are 6 ways to increase your mobile’s storage.

Shift your media off internal storage

The first (and possibly the most important) step to take when clearing your phone’s storage is to move your photos and videos into the cloud. They take up a huge amount of space on your phone, even more so if they’re shot in high definition.

Storing them online or using a free storage app can free up many GBs of space, yet means you can still view them on your phone whenever you like.

Delete any unwanted apps

If it’s not the photos or videos clogging up your phone’s storage, then it’s likely your apps are the culprit. According to a recent study by Kaspersky, Android users download, on average, 2 new apps every month, and as many of them can exceed 1GB, it’s no wonder your phone is struggling to cope.

If you’re reluctant to delete your apps or unsure of which ones to drop, follow a rule that many of us use for clearing out our wardrobes – if it hasn’t been used in 6 months, get rid of it.

Clear your app’s caches

A silent killer of your phone’s storage is your apps’ caches. It’s where your phone stores information from apps it’s likely to need in the future so it can be accessed quickly. Over time, it can slowly drain your phone’s storage.

The Facebook app, for example, can go from 50MB to 500MB in the space of 1 year. The Sky Sports app has also been known to take up nearly 1GB of phone storage.

Clean up your browser

It’s easy to forget that your phone’s browsing software, like Safari and Chrome, has a cache which contains your browsing history and cookies data. Whilst clearing your browser is unlikely to make a huge impact, every little helps. Plus, clearing you browser’s cache can improve the browsing speed.

Delete any old messages

Conversations over iMessage or WhatsApp may seem harmless in terms of storage consumption, but they’re often not, particularly if you’re sent lots of photos and videos. Old conversations get stored on your phone so they’re easily accessed, but clearing them can free up a surprising amount of space.

If you’re an iOS user, you can easily purge messages after a certain period of time, say 30 days for example. Simply head to Settings > Messages > Message History > Keep Messages and select a time frame of your choice.

Change your camera resolution settings

Most of the new smartphones on today’s market shoot photos and video in a high resolution, which due to their finer detail take up a lot more storage.

A quick-fix for freeing up some storage space is changing your camera settings to capture moments in a lower resolution. It’s a longer-term trick which will help save GBs of storage in the future.

Concerned that your company mobile isn’t coping with the amount of storage you require? Elite Telecom Solution offer a variety of low cost business mobile phone solutions within different storage bands. Get in touch with us on 01962 864332 or info@elite-telecom.co.uk for a quote.