I’ve had this issue 3 times now. The phone reports “Low on space: Phone storage space is getting low.” The first time I had to Hard Reset the phone – on the advice of both Verizon and the HTC call center (where I waited on hold for 30 minutes). Second time, I removed some apps, and the problem went away. But now, at time 3, I started letting my fingers search the net for the issue.
Here’s what Christopher Dawson at ZD had to say:
Is your Droid Incredible low on disk space? | ZDNet
Of course not. It has 8GB of internal storage and you’re geeky enough to have a Droid, so you certainly aren’t out of internal storage. If you’re like me, though, you’re still receiving an error message telling you that you are “Low on space: Phone storage space is getting low.†Here’s the problem, though: HTC has no idea that this issue exists, let alone that it’s essentially bricking Incredibles.
Android Central had a discussion on the low disk space issue that blames HTC mail, but I don’t use that, I use Gmail. Android Forums on HTC also note a problem but there aren’t that may posts on that site. The Incredible forum suggests getting a new unit.
The problem I’m having, and haven’t seen this yet for anyone else, is that my contacts database reports it’s 90MB. That would be a lot of friends. I’ve tried to ensure that my phone doesn’t connect Facebook and Twitter contacts with my address book, but apparently something is making the database huge. Maybe this is the cause of the memory issue, but who knows. The phone reports over 650MB of phone Memory free (Phone Memory, not Internal Phone Storage – that has 480MB free, just in case I’m confused about where stuff happens). I suspect that HTC Sense is trying to link everything and it is taking up a lot of “working memory.”
Verizon tech support level 1 didn’t know my issue – I think they basically got it, but knew enough to pass me to level 2. Person at level 2 support suggested that “If it were me, I’d get a new device.” So, that’s in the works now.
I’m calling on HTC to at least acknowledge the issue, and provide a fix.
UPDATE: Yesterday the problem got worse and worse, until the phone would crash when I tried to use the “phone” application. Yes, I could not use my phone as a phone. I rebooted by removing the battery, set it up as a diskdrive, copied all my photos off the phone, and hard reset it to factory settings, losing my apps and everything. Even thought the VZ people told me the android market would remember all my purchased and free apps, it really didn’t. It did let me reinstall my purchased game, but many of the other utilities I had downloaded I now have to find again, once the new unit arrives tomorrow.
My phone turned into a brick, I am convinced, because the contacts file was >100MB when the phone finally wouldn’t work as a phone, that some HTC Sense thing trying to merge all my contacts with Facebook and Twitter account info and bring in all pictures is what did this to it.
I am going to try to avoid all these ‘connect the accounts’ things when I reinstall the new phone.
Comments
20 responses to “My Droid Incredible Low on Disk Space – Not”
Just got an Android phone last week and already getting this error. It's a T-Mobile MyTouch Slide. So maybe it's more of a general Android problem? Anyway, I know I have a lot of contacts, but surely I haven't maxxed it out in a single week. Anyway, will be watching to see what you find out, and I'll share if I discover anything. (Great to see you, BTW!)
So, the phone got worse and worse and today it was unusable.
I had to reformat it to factory settings.
Really, really annoyed.
Pamela, how is your phone doing?
Just a simple way you should try to flash the phone memory.
It will completely remove your data and recopy new files.
Then your this problem will absolutely solved.
Tried couple of times before. 🙂
Regards,
Aria Kerry.
Professional Design Expert
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flyer design
For me and my incredible, i had to hard reset 3 times in 2 weeks. Each time i only loaded "certian things". The last hard reset i did NOT link my facebook, or Facebook for HTC sense or twitter. this has currently resovled my issue. My incredible now has worked fine the last 10 days. No issues. I downloaded apps, use 4 email addresses, all with NO problems. This might help some of you out… I did enjoy having pics on all my contacts and all the emails included with all my contact data. Although, id rather have no errors!
My phone was deemed defective by verizon. if you have a low on space error, get the phone replaced. My new Incredible works great, and works how HTC intended to. If you get the error, your phone is defective.
I have had the exact same problem, and my contacts is at 80 megs. I REALLY don't want to have to get my phone replaced, since I definitely waited a month to get it shipped to me in the first place. This sucks.
I had the same problem pop up last night on my Droid Incredible. I couldn't get mail or texts. This morning, I read up on this and cleared data from some applications. The problem went away when I cleared the data from the Facebook app. (Note, I deleted Pandora just before that, as that was the app I was running when the problem started last night, but I think it was the Facebook app that did the trick. I reinstalled and restarted Pandora with no problem. If it comes up again and clearing Facebook doesn't work, I'll try uninstalling Pandora again though.)
This happened to me after I received the OTA froyo update. The way I finally resolved was to do a factory reset from settings menu and unfortunately you lose everything you stored (not that big a deal but annoying of course).
On setup this time I explicitly chose NO when asked to integrate facebook or twitter contacts.
Darryl
@Heather – I just followed your advice and cleared Facebook and the message went away. Have you been fine ever since doing this? Clearly this is a MUCH better option than doing the hard reset!
Clearing my motonav did it for me. I had forgotten I'd tried it out when i first got the phone. It was using more than 30MB on its on just for cache.
I had the same problem on my Droid Incredible. I moved everything to the SD card that I was able to. That didn't work. I deleted the cache from every program I could think of and still nothing. I had Fennec, Dolphin, and Skyfire installed to give them a side by side comparison. Eventually I got the message to disappear after I removed Fennec. Fennec was horrible, slow and used to much space (although it didn't appear to be using much space compared to what I had available. I'm sticking with Dolphin.
A hard reset is not necessary, you just need to find the app causing the problem.
I had the same problem Howard described with the Contacts file. Mine was showing 85MB. When I cleared that, I began to receive GMail again. NO hard reset was necessary in my case.
PS: Resynched my contacts with my desktop (via Companion Link USB) at the Contacts storage has shrunk to 3.79MB. Odd.
And, yes, everything is still there. 😉
Just cleared my Facebook stuff and it immediately went away.
Thanks Howard, I'm having the SAME issue. Low space, then had to hard reboot and lost all my apps, data, etc., Now, I'm getting warning again! Will check out the latest ZD update.
Thanks!
So I think I may have solved the issue. So the phone says low disc space but as with everyone on this forum who have checked their storage…their appears to be plenty. The problem seems to be that one program steals all of the storage and makes the entire phone bug out. Instead of factory resetting do some investigation as to what program may be leaching all of the space. Even if your memory says it has plenty…. one program is leaching it, trust me. For me, it was my text messages. I deleted a few huge threads and I think that should solve the problem. – Travis
I realized it was Facebook for me. So I cleared it off and then reinstalled it. The phone was fine for a couple days, but now the message is back.
Change your message limit to only keep 200 messages. This is caused by all the crap txt messages you dumb dumbs never get rid of.
[…] of the problem, they don’t know (or won’t admit) how to resolve it. I suggest you read Howard Greenstein’s blog post and Christopher Dawson’s article on ZDNet and then set about removing as much of the Sense […]