We’ve all had them, that glorious moment to capture the perfect picture and before you can say “Cheese” and click, your smartphone kills your joy with “Not Enough Storage” error message. (WHOMP, WHOMP.)
While there are many reasons, to clean out your smartphone, Spring is the perfect time to extend your Spring cleaning efforts by giving your device the digital wash down it deserves and get it performing like new again.
Having a hard time downloading new software updates because not enough storage? Can’t download a movie because you’re out of space? Here are some solutions to declutter your phone and combat those hoarder tendencies head first. Follow these tips and your smartphone could be running faster (and like new) in no time!
Trick Your iPhone Into Finding More Space
There’s a new hack circulating the web that will automatically clean up your iPhone for you. It requires faux-renting a movie in iTunes. (It’s faux-renting because you don’t actually get charged for the movie.) First, pick a long movie (like The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers), because the trick requires that the movie’s file size exceeds the amount of storage left on your phone. After you hit the Rent button on a movie, a dialog box will come up, which will prompt you to hit OK or Settings. Hit Settings.
Your phone will take you to the Settings menu. If you take a look at General > Storage & iCloud Usage, you’ll see that your phone’s available storage space has probably gone up.
If you hit your home button, you can see your iPhone working through different apps, graying them out and replacing their names with “Cleaning…” This likely means that your phone is removing a bunch of unused data and things like cookies, caches and histories. If you repeat the faux-renting process 2-3 more times, you could score 3GB or more of free space on your iPhone.
Get a memory boost
In today’s age of accessibility, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that limitations still exist. Once a smartphone has gotten its fill of music, photos, videos, apps and other data, it’s going to cry out for some attention. That attention could come in the form of additional memory.
A memory card on your phone essentially acts like the hard drive on your PC, boosting the storage capacity for files and data. So if you must have your favorite tunes, pictures of the pooch and the latest games at your fingertips, then it’s worth checking into phones that are compatible with memory cards, like the Samsung Galaxy devices, which supports microSD cards with up to 64 GB of extra storage.
Make a move
Moving video, music, photos and personal data between your mobile phone and your computer or other USB host device can be fast and convenient with a high-capacity microSD memory card reader. SanDisk’s versatile, flash microSD memory cards allow you to directly plug in a memory card for fast movement of your favorite mobile media. Direct plug-in means no card adapter is needed, and little time is spent transferring data. Plus, you get a smartphone with freed-up space without sacrificing the media that matters.
Use it or lose it
If apps abound on your phone, it may be time to clean your mobile house. Much like the clothes you haven’t worn in a year, unused or underused apps can be a real drain on space and battery. If app overload is an ongoing issue, you might try observing a “one in, one out” rule. Every time you add a new app to your device, remove one that isn’t as necessary. Your phone will return the love by providing space for what’s really important.
Following these few tips will help you free up plenty of space, just in time for summer fun! How do you spring clean your smartphone? Share your tips/tricks in the comments below!
