And a new "problem" - low memory.

[flying dog]

I've stuck an 8 Gig card in the Desire, but the phone's available memory is getting low - or so it is telling me.

 

I have removed a few of the profile apps, but alas while doing this I installed a couple of these "live" apps with moving backgrounds.

 

Yeah, I'm easily amused.

 

Anyway, now the phone tells me it is low on memory.

 

Short of deleting these new installs, how do I get stuff from the phone's memory to the SD card - as in I know how to move the files, but which ones can I?

 

Oh, and as such, the phone won't load TALK anymore when I click on the app.

 

Is that low memory related?

 

 

[Owi]

G'day mate,

 

So far as I can tell, your phone is low on memory because of those "live" apps you just installed. Don't confuse memory with storage. Those "live" apps may be stored on the external card (which has plenty space), but they will also be utilising the phone's limited memory capacity because it's active all the time. That would be my best guess as to why it's not behaving now.

 

Cheers,

 

 

[flying dog]

Update. I removed a couple of other non-live backgrounds. 3D animals and a cat one. It took a while but now the low phone memory warning has gone.

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

FD;

 

The HTC Desire is running Android 2.1 at present (2.2 due out before year's end after Telstra get done with Telstrfying it).

 

Android 2.1 does not store applications on the SD Card. There are ways, if you "root" the phone and load appropriate tools, but in addition, the app has to have been written for Android 2.2 and be backward compatible, plus allow storing the app on the SD Card(option introduced in 2.2). Even then the "Shared Libraries" and "Resources" and "Local Filesystem" used by the application to store private data are still loaded to phone memory and cannot be moved to the SD Card.

 

Once Android 2.2 is available and loaded, you will be able to move apps that support being able to be loaded on the SD Card, without the tools and "rooting" the phone. The other limitations still remain for security. Note that apps on the SD Card are unavailable when the SD Card is mounted on a PC (and obviously, if the SD Card is removed from the phone).

 

You can also manage the memory usage a bit by stopping "Service" type applications that run all the time in the background". Go to Settings-->Applications-->Manage Applications".

 

The phone only has 512MB of memory, so there are limits to how much you can store and run, independently of static public content that you put on the SD Card, like music, photos etc..

 

As the SD Card uses FAT formatting, it has no filesystem security. The only security is afforded by the Android operating system allowing or denying access to the SD Card by a specific application plus your physical custody of the phone.

 

Any data needing granular security is stored in phone memory in one of a number of forms (files in a filesystem or in a SQLite database). There are several "standard" SQLite databases (eg. People, Calendar) and some applications create their own SQLite database. All of these forms of storage are in the 512MB of memory, along with the applications.

 

Android tries to keep applications running after you use them, to make re-use quicker. There is an algorithm that it uses to shut them down, but apps that are "Live" run all the time and will thus be the last to be considered for shutdown. Thus it is easy to consume memory. Manually shutting down some apps as described above can help, particularly if you only use them rarely, or just started it to see what it was.

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

[flying dog]

David, thanks for that info. It isn't that I want to run squillions of apps. I shall wait for 2.2 . Otherwise I am slowly getting used to the phone. I do find it silly that in the phone when you want to call someone, you.can "spell"their name - fair enough, but where it gets me is: all numbers are stored with the std code. If I start to dial the number without the code, it doesn't find it, BUT when I am "spelling" the name it matches non-consecutive letters. That's just silly.