Can this all be bloatware?

[swee'pea99]

I know Samsungs are notorious for it, but my daughter's phone is just grinding to a halt and she can't download any new apps.

So, 16Gb in total, of which about 4 are accounted for. Where the hell are the other 12Gb? Can that really all be Samsung crap? Is there any way of finding out, better yet sorting out?

Any help/advice much appreciated.

 

[I like Skol]

Wife and son have similar issues, watching with interest.
My Motorola works like a dream.

 

[Seevio]

I'll crack open a Samsung J6 tomorrow and let you know what out of the box usage is.

 

[ColinJ]

You could probably move some of the 3.9 GB of apps to the SD card - LIKE THIS.

I had about 12/16 GB used so I have just been moving some more of my internal apps to my SD card. Each move goes to 90% really quickly and then takes a long time to complete which I assume is due to the relative slowness of the card compared to internal memory.

PS A lot of the 'bloatware' on my HTC phone can't be moved, and some of my apps can't either (Chrome for example) but I have managed to shift about another GB worth onto the card so far.

 

[aferris2]

Ive got a Samsung tablet with similar sorts of numbers that don't add either:


I use Clean Master Lite to scan for and get rid of the rubbish that builds up. Just did a clean with the Samsung app, then a scan and clean with CM Lite and it got rid of another 2GB of cr*p. Another useful app is DiskUsage by Ivan Velosyuk which does not get rid of anything, but does show how much storage is being used in a graphical image. Easy to spot the apps that are using more storage than they should.

Some apps do store a lot of data that doesn't seem to fall into any of the categories listed in the Samsung app. For example, Garmin Connect stores every ride and these build up over a period of time. The only way to get rid of them is to delete each ride individually (or delete the app and reinstall again) (...unless anyone knows a better way...). My fitbit lookalike also has a habit of filling up the storage with log files.

 

[Dirk]

I can never understand why, after you've moved an app to the SD card, they revert to internal storage when they update.

 

[gaijintendo]

https://files.google.com/ is quite useful for maintaining your phone.

The sd card balance is not brilliantly thought out.

 

[Cycleops]

The OS on android takes up 5.39GB so that's a possible 10GB of bloat ware, I suppose that's possible but does seem high.
Is it still receiving updates for the system? Might be time to get a new phone, there are plenty of good budget models out there. Get something with Android 1 which ensures you get updates for a set period.

 

[Crackle]

You can't move apps on the latest versions and it was always a bit flaky anyhow.

Go into each app, browser and play store in particular and clear the cache. Disable any apps you don't use and can't remove. Switch on storage management and go into downloads and clean that out too.

 

[wonderloaf]

Mrs W has an A3 which she has stripped back to barebones apps only and it still crawls along complaining of not enough memory. Have installed an SD card and moved some apps over but still no real difference. Funny thing is it wasn't like this when she first got it, I've reset to factory settings but still no joy. Will be watching this with interest!

 

[Deleted member 1258]

I had a similar problem with my Lenovo tablet, it would open an app and shut it straight down again, turned out it was full, I went through the tablet uninstalling stuff I wasn't using and clearing the caches, that stopped the misbehaviour.

 

[Seevio]

I've just opened a Samsung Galaxy J6. Without adding any extra apps or accounts, there is 9.3GB taken up by the OS and whatever bloatware Samsung decides to put on it. On a 16GB phone, this is clearly a significant amount.

 

[Slow But Determined]

Had the same with a Sony and you could not get rid of a lot of it. Like a previous poster has intimated switched to a Motorola, no such problems.

 

[si_c]

It's not all bloatware, the OS and all the default apps are installed into a read only area of the OS, so facebook takes up say 400MB, when you update the app, that original app just gets hidden and the new version is used, so taking up 800MB. This is the case for a lot of the preinstalled apps including the google services ones.

Edit: This is more of a problem on "Premium" phones which bundle more software.

Possibly the best way to fix this is to reformat the SD card as internal storage - this means that Android uses the SD card and it's own storage as one block, so apps and data are stored across the two meaning you don't need to worry about storage any more. The downside is that you cannot remove the SD card and put it in your computer to copy the files off, you have to connect the phone to the computer to get at them.

 

[Cycleops]

Had the same with a Sony and you could not get rid of a lot of it. Like a previous poster has intimated switched to a Motorola, no such problems.

.... or Nokia, Google Pixel, Asus Zenphone, Redmi, Xiaomi Mi all which run pure Android with no 'skin' or bloat ware.