Android Phone Keeps Reporting Low Available Internal Storage

[mbuckingham24]

I posted the following under the "Mobile Devices" topic yesterday, but got no response.  I thought I should try here, since it really is a "Troubleshooting" issue anyhow...

 

My Android powered (non-rooted) Motorola Triumph from Virgin Mobile keeps reporting low internal storage.

About every two months, I must factory reset the phone.  After reinstalling all of my apps, the phone reports around 300+MB of available internal storage space.  However, over the short time of a month or two, it suddenly reports low storage space, and refuses incoming texts.  As a quick fix, I then move what apps I can to the SD card, which usually brings me up to about 70MB free.  Then a few weeks after doing that, I'm low on internal storage again, and must factory reset.

The only thing I can think of is that one (or more) of my apps are using one hell of a large cache or something, but I can't imagine which one(s).  I use fairly common apps (listed below), and have even given up on installing any games.

 

Apps I'm installing/updating after factory reset:

 

Adobe Flash Player 11.1

Barcode Scanner

Facebook

Flashlight

Gmail

Google Play Store

Google Sky Map

Maps

Netflix

Outlook.com

Pandora

Power Control Plus

PowerAMP (full version)

Prey

ESPN ScoreCenter

Speed Test

SwiftKey

Thunderstorm (live wallpaper)

Tool Box

Twitter

WeatherBug Elite

YouTube

Zedge

 

As I said above, after installing/updating all of this, the phone reports around 300MB free internal storage.  In around 30-45 days time, it suddenly reports low storage space (below 20MB), and refuses text messages.

[joelthezombie15]

have you talked to your provider the phone might be deffective. and you might get a free replacment

[davidmorpurgo]

This happens to all low end phones which have low memory for apps. The reason why you lost suddenly almost 280MB of memory i due to cache and other app data (remember that you cant lower than 20MB of free space).

Solutions: 

Buy a better phone that will provide you a better overall user experience

Use Link2SD following some guide online 

[mbuckingham24]

have you talked to your provider the phone might be deffective. and you might get a free replacment

 

Well, I've had this phone since September, 2011.  This issue didn't begin until late 2012, I doubt there would be any warranty claim, or such.

I'm starting to wonder though, if there is a problem with the ROM that the phone factory resets to, and maybe if I rooted, and installed a custom ROM that may resolve this issue.  My concern with that, is that custom ROMs tend to have their own issues..

[mbuckingham24]

This happens to all low end phones which have low memory for apps. The reason why you lost suddenly almost 280MB of memory i due to cache and other app data (remember that you cant lower than 20MB of free space).

Solutions: 

Buy a better phone that will provide you a better overall user experience

Use Link2SD following some guide online 

I looked at Link2SD that you've suggested here.  Seems like it just moves apps to the SD card, including those that wouldn't natively support that.  However, the apps themselves aren't taking up too much space.  As you mentioned, it seems it may be their cache data, etc.  What I can't figure out is, why would a few 20MB apps, be using so much cache data, and can that data be stored on the SD card.  The description for Link2SD didn't seem to suggest that that data could be moved.

[mbuckingham24]

Also, under "Manage Applications" where it displays the sizes of installed programs, if you select any given app, it displays a breakdown of Total size, Application size, Data size, and Cache size.  Adding all of this data up, it doesn't appear that the phone is admitting where all of my space went.  It adds up to using only 224.39MB of 2GB total internal storage.  Admittedly that wouldn't include space that the actual Android OS is using..

[mbuckingham24]

Alright, I just found this on a Motorola Forum:

 

I did a bit of research a while back with my Truimph that semi solved my "always out of internal storage space" issue. I was able to discover what was causing all my free internal storage to get eaten over time (constantly growing alog files). I now manually delete these files ever few days to keep my free space clean however I wanted to post in the official motorola forums since I'm pretty sure it's not a general android smart phone issue but a specific issue with Motorola Truimph phones (several other truimph users posted saying they had the same problem and were able to clear 900+ Mb by clearing the alog files).

 

Now, if this is accurate, I have to figure out how to browse the system files, and delete these "alog" files.