Memory at risk? Here’s how to make space on iPhone and Android

A short guide to maximize the storage capacity of your smartphone or tablet in a few moves and without spending money

A famous Buddhist proverb says: "in a man's life there is always room for knowledge, while in his smartphone space is bound to run out". However, there is a remedy for everything, and even if we don't have the ability to expand the memory, we can use tricks to make space on our smartphone Android iOS.

Applications, photos and music. There are several reasons for short-term storage. Not all smartphones have MicroSD slots. What to do then, change device or delete memories? None of the above. To make room, the first step is to delete all unnecessary apps. Remember that apps are like diamonds, forever. That is, if one day they come in handy, we can always reinstall them. Games are often one of the main reasons for low storage, given their weight.

How to monitor the heaviest apps?

For you, the Google Play Store has no secrets, and you download apps all the time without giving too much thought to size? Well, more or less, for you will soon come the need to monitor the apps that clog your memory. How to do that? Let's go to "settings", then look for "storage resources", click on "apps" and wait for the smartphone's report. So it will be easier to decide what to delete or not.

Manage photos and videos with a cloud storage service

Photos and especially videos can be among the main causes of an overflowing memory. If we don't want to deprive ourselves of them or waste time checking which ones we could delete, we can use cloud services like Dropbox or Flickr. Quest’ultima opzione ci offre 1 terabyte di spazio. L’alternativa è quella di caricare le immagini e i video presenti nello smartphone su PC. Anche se questa è una scelta consigliata solo in base alle caratteristiche del vostro computer. Altrimenti il problema non si risolve ma si sposta solamente.

Usare lo streaming

Scaricare non è il modo migliore per salvaguardare la vostra memoria, e non solo su uno smartphone o tablet Android. Per musica, documenti e video allora meglio usare lo streaming. Se non vogliamo spendere per app come Spotify e simili possiamo usare Plex. Un software che ci permetterà di riprodurre in streaming sul nostro smartphone la musica o i video presenti nel nostro PC.

Aggiungere uno storage esterno

micro-sd-smartphone.jpgFonte foto: Makeofus

Scheda microSD per smartphone

Se il nostro smartphone non ci offre la possibilità di espandere la memoria vista l’assenza di slot per microSd possiamo pensare a uno storage esterno. Con o senza fili. La prima opzione può garantirci abbastanza spazio in maniera relativamente economica ma può essere ingombrante. La seconda è più facile da usare e da trasportare anche se ha dei costi più alti e garantisce uno spazio d’archiviazione maggiore. Si può quindi ricorrere a una chiavetta USB con connettore microUSB o con connettore USB type-C, così da collegarla al dispositivo mobile senza grosse difficoltà. On the market there are all brands (SanDisk, Western Digital and RavPower, just to name a few) and all sizes (from 64 gigabytes up to 128 or even 256 gigabytes of additional storage space). Otherwise there's the wireless way to go: in addition to the cloud storage services we've already talked about, you can think about buying external hard drives like the Western Digital MyPassport Wireless Pro, which uses Wi-Fi connectivity to connect to your smartphone and provides up to 3 terabytes of additional storage space.

How to recover space on iOS

If you've run out of space on your APple smartphone and don't know how to recover gigabytes on your iPhone, you need to know a few simple tricks. The first step is to analyze all the applications installed on the device. Very often, due to the frenzy of always wanting to try new video games, we download very heavy applications that then we no longer use. So, the first thing to do is to delete all the video games and applications that you consider useless. In just a few seconds we'll recover dozens and dozens of gigabytes on the iPhone, without deleting photos and videos. Another application that takes up quite a bit of space in the iPhone memory is Safari. But in this case it will not be necessary to delete the browser, just delete the temporary files. Going into the iPhone's Settings, you'll have to press on Safari and then Advanced. At this point you'll have to tap on the Delete Websites and History item. In this way, you'll be able to recover at least 400-500 MB by deleting useless files.

If you really can't delete any file from your iPhone, you can opt for an alternative solution: buy a USB flash drive with Lightning output. There are several flash drives available on the market that connect to the Apple smartphone and allow users to move files to external storage.