Whatever cell phone we use, we will find ourselves (sooner or later) before the problem of the exhausted space, especially on models that have less than 64 GB of internal memory (which may seem a lot, but very little is enough to fill this amount, figured lower values!) . Between the two most popular operating systems, Android is a lighter operating system but it is also installed in cheap smartphones, with limited memory.
On the other hand, the iPhone is not expandable with a microSD so we will have to make the internal memory sufficient; on Android the micro SD (where available) is only good for keeping photos and music (some apps can also be moved but not all).
If you have to delete something, the best way to save space on your smartphone is to take advantage of cloud services that save data online .
Here we see the main and free systems to save photos, videos, music and how to save memory with small tricks.
1) How to free up space from internal memory
First of all, to find out what is taking up memory space on an iPhone go to Settings> General> iPhone Free Space .
In this screen there are several options to free up space on the iPhone that you need to understand and use in the right way so as to recover a lot of space (the screen also shows when space occupies the various types of multimedia files and some tricks to recover space) .
On Android we can check the space occupied in Settings -> Memory or a similar item (depending on the manufacturer, we could also find Internal Memory, Archive or Remaining Space ).
With Android it is possible to export some data, including contacts and some applications, to an external SD card to free the internal memory.
To find out how, read the guide on how to survive on Android with full internal memory or out of space on your mobile phone .
1) Save the videos
The video files are large, the HD Videos occupy about 78MB per minute of shooting, thus taking up a lot of phone memory.
It is worthwhile, when shooting a video, to upload it to Facebook or Instagram, delete it from the smartphone's memory and then download it from the computer if you want to keep it.
Of course, full films that can also take up 1GB of space cannot be stored on your smartphone or tablet.
If you want to watch movies from your tablet or smartphone, you should upload them to a cloud which then allows you to watch streaming videos.
Google Photos is able to make a free backup of videos shot with the camera (see next session).
Alternatively, we can save them to the cloud offered by Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or iCloud (on Apple devices).
Many of these services also have an integrated player so as not to download anything actual during playback, as if our videos were streaming.
2) Save the photos
To keep online the thousands of photos taken it is better to use Google Photos with unlimited and free backup .
You can also use the same services that we have listed above ( Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or iCloud (on Apple devices)), since they all support the backup of the only folder that contains the photos taken.
In another article, we proposed a comparison between the various cloud services to keep photos on the internet .
Obviously then the photos present locally but already synchronized in the cloud will be deleted, since 1GB can contain about 256 photos:
16GB = 4096 photos
32GB = 8192 photos
64GB = 16384 Photos
128GB = 32768 Photos
In practice, if you take 10 photos a day, a 16GB memory will be filled in just over a year.
3) Save the music
Each MP3 or other music file stored in the mobile phone's memory occupies more than 3MB of space.
Personally I find it useless, nowadays, to waste space to keep music on a smartphone since streaming music applications can be exploited .
In this regard, we have seen:
- App to listen to music on iPhone and iPad also radio and streaming
- Music streaming app on Android phones and tablets
In fact, you can make a music collection with your favorite songs on sites such as Spotify or upload music to Google Play Music so that when you open the relevant applications, you can listen to the chosen songs without looking for them again.
If we use a Premium account for Spotify and the like, remember to periodically delete the songs that we save offline on the device, since they also take up memory (these are encrypted files that are indistinguishable but still take up space as long as they are kept for offline listening).
4) Save the applications
Most of the applications themselves do not take up much space (excluding some games, as we will see later); the problem is often the app cache which can grow a lot.
In another guide we can read how to free up space on Android.
On an iPhone, simply tap any application listed in the Usage of memory settings menu and see if there is temporary or cache data that can be deleted.
If apps don't take up too much space, this isn't true for games that can also take up 1 GB or more of memory (e.g. games like Asphalt or FIFA).
Therefore, uninstalling the finished games or games that are no longer played would certainly be convenient to recover memory.
On an iPhone, applications are removed by holding your finger over its icon and then pressing the X.
On an Android phone, you need to go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications to uninstall them.
5) Small tricks
Other tricks to save space are the deletion of the browser history, the elimination of unnecessary contacts in the address book (but much is saved online with an automatic backup on Android and iPhone), delete the history of Gmail or other mail apps, remove old documents or move any unnecessary data to the cloud.
The best Cloud applications for Android and iPhone smartphones and mobiles are listed in the comparison article of online storage services where the Dropbox, Google Drive, Onedrive apps are mentioned which are the 3 best to have absolutely.
See also how to increase the space of Cloud services to the maximum for free up to 100 GB.
6) Conclusions
After seeing all these tips, the advice we can give you is: don't spend too much money on models with 128 GB of internal memory or higher!
Nowadays 64 GB are more than enough and, applying the suggestions of the guide, they will practically never end (by performing a regular cleaning anyway).
Cloud and streaming services are the future, local files are really only needed for chats and social apps.
If we have a smartphone with 32 GB of internal memory (very common cut), we immediately begin to move most of the multimedia components to the cloud and get rid of the apps that we no longer use, so that we can always keep at least 10 GB of free space.
The models with 16GB of internal memory are now almost completely extinct, better to avoid buying them if we still find them on sale.
