Easily Reclaim Wasted Space in an Android Phone

One problem of having a smartphone is running out of available space, specially with the built in memory. Although the newer Androids are coming with bigger memories nowadays (32GB for the new Note), it never seem to be enough in the long run. With more very tempting application and games to download, the seem like a gigantic capacity memory space is easily filled up with them. And not only with the downloaded applications, which are definite in size, but the additional data that you do not know that are collected and stashed away by these apps inside the built in memory. This decreases the available space, increases the read time of data, and in effect, takes the phone longer to launch an application or becomes less responsive to touch input. 

As much as possible, limit number of apps you download, uninstall the apps you barely use and clear your cache. 

What's the cache?

The cache is just a temporary storage, and the data inside the cache are temporary as well. With this in mind we can say that we can delete them without causing any changes in any program or application. 

Why delete them? 

For the purpose of clearing up some storage area, and for a program that is not responding well, clearing it's "cache" can solve it.

How to clear it?

It is easy to clear the cache, for the Android 4.2 and below users, just go to settings, applications manager, click the application, and you can clear the cache on the next window. For 4.3 and above users, click settings, more, then the applications manager. This step is okey, when you just have a few programs installed. However, if you have, say at least twenty programs installed, it is not practical to do it manually. And also, even the programs you do not use but is opened in the background can accumulate a stash of data. Opening the programs one by one in the application manager is a tedious work!

However, there is a way of clearing all the caches in one click and you can set it also to clear it in a given time. This is by using AVG Cleaner.

Installing and Using the  AVG Cleaner

Click here to download!

Get the cleaner by typing "AVG Cleaner" google play's search(or if you are accessing this post with an android phone, just click the link above), then follow the step by step procedure.  The moment you launch the application, it already asking you if you want to set the frequency of cleaning schedule. The default is every one week. 

Click continue(1) and the cleaner will start calculate how much temporary data are there stored from the history, calls, and program cache. You might notice that the bulk comes from the cache. The remaining free space is shown at the bottom. 

If you want to specify which one will be automatically deleted after a week, tap auto clean(2). You can tick or untick (3)other locations like calls and messages. Do not forget to save the settings to take effect.

Now you are ready regain wasted space occupied by temporary files. You can see that the programs cache(a) is where the bulk of the temporary files is when you compare it's size to the total MB of memory(b) that can be regained.

Touch cache(a) and it will show you the applications that are hoarding data within your memory. In this example, Instagram(c) hides the most. I also noticed that applications I do not use frequently (d) or do not remember using is somehow collecting unnecessary data as well. Now press Clean All Cache(4) to start removal.

The application also saves a record on how much space you reclaimed.

You can also clear the history of your calls and messages from here. But this is not necessary in this example as they just occupy a small amount of space. 

How to Uninstall Stubborn Android Apps

My android phone was struggling to follow my touches this morning, despite of having a 1GB ram and a quad core processor running at 1.4GHz. I have tried to turn it off and on, but still, it was so slow to respond. Seems like there is a big weight that is making it so hard for any program to run.

I have suspected there are too much installed applications and when I found out that there is only about 750MB of space left with the built in 16GB capacity, I decided to weed up those that I do not use often.  I have uninstalled one by one without any problem, until I came across something unexpected, one of the applications uninstall button is greyed, meaning it is not active, so I can not uninstall it! I do not have a clue why, I've tried deleting the data, the cache and re started the phone hoping the application in question just hanged, but to no avail.

Without a clue, I tried to look for a solution in going to the phone's settings and after sometime, my persistence paid off. The application in question was appointed as a device administrator. I have unticked it. To go to the device administrator(android 4.3), click settings, more, security, device administrators. For androids using previous versions, goto settings, security, device administrators.

When I went back to the uninstall menu (settings, more, application manager), the uninstall button is already clickable and have successfully get rid of it!

So the next time you can not uninstall a program from an android phone, goto the device administrators section and see if the stubborn application is set as one, untick it then uninstall it!

And yes, the phone is more responsive when the space was cleared!

How To Cash In This Christmas

Here's December, the most expensive month of the year. Season of sales, 50% offs, buy one get one and so on. Companies know when people are prepared to splash their cash out to buy gifts for friends and family or for themselves. So the hard earned money is gone, well , no hard feelings especially it's gone to someone we love or something we really want.  However, there is a way to get some of this cash back. No magic tricks, no hard to follow instructions and no fee, and I can show you how. Trust me, it works!

If you are planning to  buy top of the line smartphones and gadgets this Christmas, there are many sales out there from the highstreet retailers like Carphonewarehouse, dial-a-phone, phones-4-U and many more. This is great, as they all have offers of up to 50% on line rentals,  give you free gifts and cashbacks too. Now the better news is, when you join topcashback and shop online, you can get these offers from them plus another "cash gift" of up to £141 (at the time of this post). All you have to do is less than 5 minutes of your time to join then shop as usual.

See how much you can earn from selected companies below.

It is not only phone company products that you can have something back, in fact almost everything. If you are planning to switch your energy provider, you can have at least £50 in your bank account after the switch, at least £80 for broadband and almost £200 for the combination of TV and broadband products.

To join, all you need is an email address, mailing address, and method of cashback payment, like paypal, or back account.

Join here!

It's not all money out this season, but a cash in as well. An extra something for just joining that can grow into something big when used regularly. Be smart this Christmas on where to spend your money!