So many apps everywhere and so little storage to go around. Storage capacity is a huge issue for many smartphone users, especially fans of Android. Most Android phones feature both internal memory and external memory.

All iOS devices and some the latest range of Android phones, on the other hand, come loaded exclusively with large quantities of internal memory (typically ranging from 8GB-32GB). Obviously, users of these phones are generally not affected by shortages in memory, unless the plan is to use the phone as a portable hard drive or something.

Therefore, today’s tech-tip is for the rest of us (mostly Android users), who have relatively little memory to spare (less than 1GB) and need to carefully monitor the storage use of various apps and other software in our smartphones.

1. Cleaning Apps: Cache

Apps generate data and cache memory, pretty soon it could overwhelm your internal memory. To avoid this situation, regularly ‘clean’ your apps by using the storage cleaner that is found in most Android phones.

[Settings > SD and Phone Storage (may differ depending on the phone) > make more space]

Some phones might lack this capability but users can download an app from Google Play to get the job done. (e.g. App2SD)

2. Cleaning Apps: Data

Some apps accumulate a lot of data,which users must manually clean. One excellent example is the ‘Internet’ app’.

[Settings > Phone Storage > Applications > *select app* > clean data]

However, keep in mind that deleting data means that all the settings will be deleted too, so you will have to manually re-do the settings. Also, do not clear the data of apps unless you are quite sure that you can reconfigure all of it later. If your “Contacts Storage’ is extremely high, refer to point 6.

3. Moving Apps to the SD card

By default all apps are installed using internal storage. However, users can then move some of these apps to the SD card, which saves a lot of internal memory. Apps such as the Facebook Messenger, Shazam, and can be moved to the SD card.

However, keep in mind that some apps cannot be moved to the SD card because they are designed to be fully integrated with your phone’s other features. Apps like ‘WhatsApp’, ‘Google Drive’, ‘Gmail’, ‘Google Play’ cannot be moved to the SD card.

4. Deleting your Messages

Delete your messages and keep your SMS inbox clean as often as possible. If your phone allows it, set it to automatically delete messages after a certain limit.

5. Setting the level of cache

Some apps use a lot of cache, especially apps like the ‘Internet’ or ‘Google Drive’. However, you can manually adjust the level of cache, so try to reduce it to a sensible level.

6. Contacts Storage

I have saved the most complicated for the last. If you are an Android user with a ‘Contacts Storage’ of more than 10MB, then you need to radically reorganize your contacts to save precious internal memory.

First of all, remember that all the contacts you save on your phone or saved on your Google Contacts list (Under *Starred in Android* in your gmail account). Therefore, you need to manually enter all the data of your important contacts and save it there.

Second, once all your contacts are safely stored online, clear the data of your ‘Storage Contacts’.

Settings > Applications > Contacts Storage > Clear Data

Third, open your ‘People” app from the apps menu and adjust the following settings.

Apps > People > View > *check box* only with phone number > *check box* Google (starred in Android).

You can optionally choose to ‘view contacts’ from your Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp or other Gmail contact groups. However, make sure that there are no contacts stored on your ‘Phone’.

Once you are done. All the contacts will be synced with your gmail account. That means that your contacts will be safe online while also consuming less memory on your phone.

Important: Any changes you make to your contacts via Gmail will also affect the contacts on your phone (because they are synchronized). Also, any changes you make  to your contacts from your mobile phone will affect the contacts stored on your gmail account. If you do accidentally make any changes, you can undo them via Gmail but be careful.

Also, to ‘Snyc’ your mobile contacts with your gmail account and vice versa, your phone must be connected online and allowed to sync (Settings > Accounts and Setting.