Hi Folks,
I've had the strangest thing happen to my nearly new Galaxy S4, and I'm hoping that some of you can tell me what happened and what to do about it.
Recently, I started getting a notification that AT&T wanted to do an update to my phone. I rejected the update for several days, although of course it kept coming back, but it was finally performed one night when I accidentally left my WiFi turned on overnight. I got up the next morning and found a notification that the update had been performed (note that I had never explicitly authorized it). I did notice that several new applications had been loaded on my phone... nothing major from what I can see, but the icons had shifted around a little bit in the application section of the interface... but the really big problem is that 8 GB of system RAM have now disappeared. I'm not talking about memory on the SD card, which I also have in the phone. The system now reports that 8 GB of system RAM have been expended since the AT&T update. I went from around 2.5 GB of expended memory to around 10.5 GB of expended memory in one night.
I had purchased the 32 MB version of the phone, and so I'm not hurting for memory at the moment. But I'm extremely concerned about the sudden (literally overnight) loss of 8 GB of system RAM. Could this happen again with the next update? Is there any way to get that memory back?
I went to the AT&T store where I had purchased the phone, and even their maximum tech guy had never heard of this happening. He had no solutions. So I called AT&T Tech Support and was told, at least by Tier 1 support, that I need to do a hard master reset on my phone. I find this an inadequate solution for several reasons, not the least of which is that it offers no explanation for what happened or if it could happen again. Am I going to have to master reset my phone every time AT&T decides, without my authorization, to update it? Are updates even retained between such resets?
Is there anyone here who can offer any comments on this situation? Is there anyone who has experienced anything like this with their Android phone? Is there any way to get that 8GB of RAM back? I sure would appreciate any intelligent comments on this matter...
Thanks, and best to all....
Chas
Oh let me get this straight because you confused a lot of things apparently ... you have a 32gb version of the phone and the update filled an additional 8gb of storage ... btw internal storage is not ram they are different things so you know ... i find it odd an update whatever bloatware may it had included took so much of your storage ... so it either must be some sort of bugged indicator of your internal storage or something actually got downloaded that consumed your storage ... so check your files and the applications installed to see if any of those uses that space and if not try a factory reset see if it helps ... also i don't think that any future update would cause this thing again if it is fixed ... and also when you have an update available for your phone it's best not to ignore it but actually do it
AvelonTs said:
Oh let me get this straight because you confused a lot of things apparently ... you have a 32gb version of the phone and the update filled an additional 8gb of storage ... btw internal storage is not ram they are different things so you know ... i find it odd an update whatever bloatware may it had included took so much of your storage ... so it either must be some sort of bugged indicator of your internal storage or something actually got downloaded that consumed your storage ... so check your files and the applications installed to see if any of those uses that space and if not try a factory reset see if it helps ... also i don't think that any future update would cause this thing again if it is fixed ... and also when you have an update available for your phone it's best not to ignore it but actually do it
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Well, I see that you are right about the terminology, and I apologize for the confusion. "RAM" refers to the random access workspace of the device, which on my phone is listed as 1.78 GB. What I meant to refer to is what is called "System Storage." I get to it by (a) long press on the central button, (b) choose the lower left icon, (c) choose the "Storage" tab in the resulting screen. "System Storage" under that tab is now listed as 10.43 GB/ 32.0 GB, whereas, before the update, it was 2.4 GB / 32.0 GB. This means that ~8 GB of usable system storage disappeared with the update. That's 8 GB that I can no longer use to store applications, files, etc.. Since the utility that gave me this information came with the phone (and was explicitly designed to give us information on things like active applications, RAM, and storage), it seems unlikely that it is faulty.
I find this whole situation odd as well, which is why I'm looking for a solution. I would love to find someone who has the technical expertise to help me diagnose this problem and find out what happened. I don't have that level of expertise, and apparently AT&T is not going to be much help. 8 GB is huge! It is much more storage than the entire operating system requires! I don't think that was lost by the addition of simple applications; something else happened, something significant.
I do agree that it is best to do the updates when they come in, but obviously, if this happens too many times, even a 32 GB phone would soon be depleted of system storage. It remains a problem awaiting a solution...
Thanks for your comments... Best,,,,
Are you sure that before it said 2.4GB/32GB because that's odd as well ... i have the 16gb version and i have 8.9gb available space which means i have 7.1GB/16GB out of the box and that's perfectly normal also i have an international version which mean no carrier bloatware ... so having the rom with the added bloatware from AT&T taking only 2.4GB of your internal storage is really odd ... 10.43GB/ 32.0GB seems a lot more reasonable assuming u stored some files too ...
Related
I flashed to the new HTC WM6 Europe Pre-release ROM today... all went very well until I tried to use the camera.
I got "Unable to start camera. Not enough storage is available to complete this operation."
I have plenty of space in storage. The camera just refuses to work.
Searching the forums, I cannot find anyone who has gotten this error message (the first part, but not the last).
Is this a bug in the new ROM?
Anyone have an idea as to what this could be?
This is in the manual that came with your phone. Perform a soft reset and you should be ready to go with the camera.
You'll also find an icon on the phone display. It will either look like a memory chip or a memory card. Once you get into the application, ensure that you are setting it to use the memory card as storage.
Thanks... but I have already done that.
As I stated previously, this is not likely a storage issue. I just flashed to this ROM. I have almost a gig on the microsd, 30 mb + in free storage, and almost 30 mb program memory available.
One interesting side note... Cool Camera works fine.
I am thinking that there is an issue in this new ROM.
same problem here, i think i'm going to try with some other rom versions, cause this one is like "factory default", but runs very quick.
I've received this message a few times. I have VJLumosIII installed on my hermes (this app uses some part of the camera functionality to make the screen brighter) and I used to use it all the time. If I forgot to turn it off when I went to use the camera, sometimes I would get this error message.
The weird thing is that it was only sometimes; perhaps 1 out of 3 times. The other times the camera would just work.
I quit using VJLumosIII, though, because it drained the battery too quickly, and haven't seen that error message once since.
Probably unrelated, but thought I'd throw it out there.
had the same problem do a hard reset fixed it for me
I am getting an insufficient resources available when I try to transfer information over to USB storage on my S. I checked and it's showing that I have 7 gigs left. Am I doing something wrong?
that seems very weird. i have yet to hear about something of this sort.. this isnt vent helpful but just to show that people care and read your problem! hopefully some one more knowledgeable comes to your rescue.
happy holidays
I know that sometimes my storage info does not update right away (had the same issue with Nexus 1.) I don't know if it is related to the file system management or just the way the OS tracks storage usage but you may actually have less storage than your device is saying you do. Try going to your memory card via astro or any other file manager and delete the trash file and then reboot. I did this last night and my memory usage corrected itself. Hope this works.
thanks for the quick repsonses guys. Astro is showing that I have 7.19 gigs free. So strange.
Just rebooted for the second time and that worked. Thanks guys
How about you try backing up all the important stuffs and reformat if thats even possible.
Are you running stock or a custom boot.img? I noticed on custom boot.img's I was getting insufficient storage errors... I haven't seen a single one since being on stock 2.3.1 rooted.
It seems as though a few weeks ago my phone started draining its battery faster then ever before. I've been beating my head against the wall trying to figure out why.
My stupid question of the day is whether a full SD card can increase power consumption. I don't think so but maybe there's more work being done on file system or something. Anybody have any technical explanation pro or con?
I am currently running midNIGHT ROM v5.5 BYOR and have been since its day of release.
I know there are threads on how to reduce battery consumption and I've read them. I know that my bright screen is a problem as is having 2 Exchange push accounts. But I've had these settings since I got my phone last fall and won't give this up.
Thanks in advance.
(My first thread. Hope I did it right)
Unless you are accessing the files on the SD card it shouldn't use any extra power, regardless of how much is on the card. It's non-volatile which means it doesn't require any power to retain data.
I'd look at any additional apps you've installed, and if signal strength in the area has changed in the last few weeks.
Or, your battery could be dying.
poit said:
Unless you are accessing the files on the SD card it shouldn't use any extra power, regardless of how much is on the card. It's non-volatile which means it doesn't require any power to retain data.
I'd look at any additional apps you've installed, and if signal strength in the area has changed in the last few weeks.
Or, your battery could be dying.
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Thanks, you're confirming what I know to be true. Back in the day we called it disk thrashing as the hard disk would work harder as it became full and swaps of virtual memory became more frequent due to low disk space. Wondering if there could be such a thing in Android.
have you downloaded spare parts or battstat to try to see whats using so much power? any new applications installed that may be running in the background?
swear0730 said:
Thanks, you're confirming what I know to be true. Back in the day we called it disk thrashing as the hard disk would work harder as it became full and swaps of virtual memory became more frequent due to low disk space. Wondering if there could be such a thing in Android.
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Click to collapse
Even if the sd card took power, disk thrashing wouldn't be a factor. Disk thrashing happens because as the disk gets full the OS has to scatter one file over more and more little remaining places. So the fragmentation sky rockets, which is a really big deal on disks with actually moving parts.
Nothing moves to go from place to place with your card, so fragmentation doesn't matter. Accessing the next, first, and last portions are just as fast.
This sucks. I got a 16 GB model some time ago expecting marshmallow and a good microSD card to be the ticket. I have a Sandisk Ultra 128 Gb class 10 card which is well regarded for speed and reliability. I FINALLY got Marshmallow recently and went through the process of getting my card reformatted for adaptive storage. I was surprised during the process that the phone gave me a warning that the card was slow and I may experience problems, but I pressed on.
Everything seemed to work fine after the 'conversion' and the phone seemed snappy enough. Though I hadn't yet installed any new programs in the new configuration. I merely backed up photos and audio media that was being stored on the card, and then restored them to their proper location after the reformat to integrate the card with internal storage.
I then installed some apps I had removed to make space on internal storage previously. Now the phone is totally unusable. I get about 1-3 minutes of usage after boot before it hangs up on a screen, or with the notification shade pulled down. The phone just totaly freezes; I can't even power it down (need to look up how to force it to shut down).
What have I gotten myself into? Why would that card be considered 'slow and/or inadequate' when I purchased it less than 6 months ago and it is rated a good and fast card?
Any suggestions on how to proceed? I need and counted on the combined storage capability (or I never would have gone or the 16 Gb model).
Thanks for any help.
oh, and random reboots and also the screen going blank but the phone not actually being off (battery died really fast) overnight. I'm trying to get into the bootloader and do traditional things like clearing dalvik cache (is that current? I haven't done much rooting and messing around with the guts of Andriod since Kit Kat), etc.
I had to revert too. Limited TWRP support, very slow apps, couldn't connect via USB to the SD storage. I bought the 16GB thinking the same thing. Was a mistake as of now.
Besides not being able to do anything with the card in TWRP, I'm having no problems using adaptive storage, and I too use a 128GB SanDisk Ultra.
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
I'm not worried about TWRP. I'm actually content with the phone non-rooted if adaptive storage works, since it's not carrier locked and I can do things that previously Verizon wouldn't let me. I'm not interested in mucking around with new ROM's and stuff anymore; too busy with other tinkering projects and i have plenty of other viable devices to do that with (amazon phone and tablet, older android phones, etc.). I want this one to be a stock daily driver; but I want it to f'ing work as indicated.
I just got done doing a factory reset, formatting the SD card as internal and restoring (system tool; is that a Moto thing or Lollipop+?). We'll see how it goes. I may just have mucked it up trying to convert to adaptive storage after having used it with Lollipop AND even moving some apps to the SD card.
The S5 that I have is one I got as a warranty replacement last summer. It's running stock Lollipop rooted.
It's been running fine except for the fact that it's developed some lag. I mean that when I'm typing on the keyboard, it will sometimes hang for about 10 seconds and then turbo type all that I've typed to catch up. Also the lock screen will sometimes hang unresponsive for about 10 seconds, until it realizes that I want in and then let me type my pattern. I've also noticed that storage is getting full as sometimes I can't install App updates due to insufficient memory. I did install an app that managed to clean up about a half GB of internal storage, but that's not much. I know that If I was to do a factory reset with a reinstall of the apps, I'd have about 4 GB free. I could do that but it's a time consuming process and I'd have to spend time backing up apps and data with titanium... and Yes, I know about fixing the folder permissions after restoring with Titanium. Does someone know what is removed that does not get replaced with a factory wipe and reinstall? Is there something like a cache that I can delete to get to the end result of this work? What I'd like to know is if there is a shortcut to free memory that is not an app that I have to run every week or so.
Secondarily, the 64GB card I have in the phone is getting full. Yes... I know there are a lot of videos/photos/music on it, but there is a lot of old crap on it as well. When I upgraded to the S5 from my previous Android 2 phone, I upgraded the card from 32GB to 64GB. Not knowing what I needed and didn't, I simply copied everything over to the new card and plugged it in. I'm sure there probably exists a lot of junk from my old phone that I can delete. I have been thinking of getting a 128GB card, but before I do, I'd like to know what directories/files i could delete rather than just moving the entire card contents to the new card and moving along. Is there a good tutorial that I can read to understand what is stored on the card and what might not be necessary?