Last Updated on December 14, 2020

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Low-end and budget Android smartphones are the most victims of the annoying low memory notifications. Android mobile manufacturers like Samsung, Tecno, Infinix have their own marketing strategy to influence customer’s choice over their products. In Samsung, their Galaxy S series always have reliable internal storage capacity unlike their DUOs.

In MTKs like Tecno, Infinix, iTel sometimes create unnoticeable margins in their products. If you have thought on how you can increase Android internal memory, then read along.

Your Android internal memory becomes full whenever there is no sufficient space to install new apps. May be your phone comes with a 16GB of internal memory but you keep seeing 8GB in your file manager. Is it not wonderful? Some thought about “It is a fake phone” while others say “It is virus or not complete”.

Without wasting much of our time, your Android might have taken a separate partition to handle system files, apps.. and that is why about 8GB is missing.

How to increase Android Internal Memory

There are many good ways to increase Android internal memory without rooting your device. Though, they might not seem too reliable because of some privileges that requires root – moving apps to SD card and deleting bloatware. Take your time to read my recommendations below:

Uninstall unwanted Apps

What use has a dormant app that you hardly open less than once in a 7 days be to you? Nothing! Every apps you install either from Play Store or otherwise take some space from your internal storage space. If you want to know how much apps your device can allow, just navigate to Settings > Apps > Swipe to Downloaded. Take a look below to see the amount in Megabytes.

If you cannot use any app at least three times a week, it is not important! Uninstall it to free important space. Some folks would love to install apps from friend’s phones just because they love them. They wouldn’t consider their device capacity. To uninstall any app, then Settings > Apps > Swipe to Downloaded. Tap on the app and choose uninstall. This will not only uninstall the app, it releases other free spaces. For Samsung users, Settings > MORE > Application Manager > Swipe to Downloaded.

Clear app caches, Residual files and Junk files

App’s Caches are used by installed apps to store it data so that whenever you request for that same activity, the data can be served faster. Technically, clearing off cache is not recommendable but in this case, it is.

ALSO READ: Why swiping away recent apps is not proper

Why should you clean your cache? Sometimes your app tends to have stored too many files in it thereby taking in extra space for others. Some of your apps can begin to lag or hang. And your device low memory alert begins to hit loud. Just clear them off. You can clear individual cache by navigating to Settings > Apps > Swipe to Downloaded > CLEAR DATA

Residual files and junk files on the other hand are unusable files, folders left by either uninstalled apps or logs. Residual apps can be older version of your installed app. There are cool apps to handle clearing of caches, residual or junk files, some of them are CCleaner and Clean Master. They are freeware. Download a copy of any from a secure source and install.

The image above is a screen short i took on Ccleaner. I could save 1.13 GB free space but be careful.

Delete old files

Delete already used old files like movies or game data. These take at least 700MB of space. You can back up your huge files to an external drive or upload them to cloud either using Dropbox, Google drive etc.

Use USB On-The-Go Storage (OTG)

OTG is a  peripheral that allows you extend your device memory usage by simply plugging it onto your OTG supported phone. It looks exactly like flash but has both mouth and tail. The mouth connects to your device and tail to your PC. You can move some of your files onto OTG.

If users’ device supports OTG, they can insert a micro SD card or add an external hard drive to it via using an OTG adaptor. To check if your device is OTG supported, download this APK file.

For more on usefulness of OTG cable, watch this video

I hope you would find this post useful. You can check back on how to reliably increase Android internal memory with a rooted device.