Android Phones Memory

When I jumped into the Android world, I was not aware of how the memory is managed. Initially I was so happy for having a SD card slot but then I was disappointed because not all applications can be stored on the SD card, so the phone memory became an issue. It was difficult to find information about it or to interpret it.

So an Android phone has two types of memory: INTERNAL and EXTERNAL.

The OS reserves for itself part of the internal memory and the remaining is for you to install apps or to save your data, being music, pictures, contacts, etc. The internal memory is fixed ( a chip on your phone ) and can not be expanded.

On the External memory you can store your data, music, pictures, etc. as well as those applications that allow to be placed on external memory which is set by the developer and cannot be changed (as far as I know).

So I was happy with my new phone that has SD card but after installing a few applications I started to get the memory low warning and then discovered that I cannot move all apps to external memory. Then I had to return my phone and get a different one that had 1 GB of Internal memory.

The original phone had 512 MB of Internal memory. The OS took 316 living 196 for me.

Now, physically speaking, the External Memory can be an SD card or more fix chips inside the phone. The Nexus S from Samsung has a total of 16GB that is used as follows: 1) The OS takes whatever it needs, 2) It gives you a full 1 GB for Internal Memory (your apps) and the remaining behaves as External Memory.

Compared to my initial phone with 196MB, this one gives you 1GB, (1007 MB to be precise) which is great. I can still move those apps that allow it to the external memory, that is to the remaining 14GB or so on my phone. It is true that I can not insert an SD card of 32 but for my use, 16GB total memory is OK as long as is divided as the Nexus S does.

Specs on the phone, will read INTERNAL or ROM, and EXTERNAL or FLASH or SDcard or Total Memory as in the Nexus S, in this case, you have to know how much is reserved for your apps, typically will say reserved for ROM.

A tool to know how much memory you have available for your apps, is DiskUsage and you can find it on the market.

Don't buy a phone without enough memory for your apps, it would be like buying a car with a gas tank of just 5 litters!.

By the way, there is a third type of memory, RAM, that is just like the RAM on your computer, it is used to store data for the running programs but that is maintained by the OS and as far as I know, you won't have trouble with it. The contents of the RAM get erased when your apps stop running or when new apps need the space.