Back in the early days of mobile phones all they needed to store was contacts, text messages, and if you were affluent, some fuzzy images. But then came along the smartphone. Complete with apps, movies, images and music. And all of these compete for a limited amount of space. If you’re one of the users that consistently runs out of space, then this guide will tell you exactly how to free some storage up on your phone.

Delete Unused Apps

There are literally hundreds of thousands of apps across the different handsets. And quite quickly you will fill your phone with apps, games and widgets that you never even use. Looking through your phone regularly and deleting apps you haven’t used for a while is a fantastic way to free up space. If you’ve purchased apps and don’t use them, they can also be deleted. All app purchases are stored on your account, so if you delete a paid app and want it back later you can easily re-download it through the store.

Back Up Photos

As smartphones have become more advanced, the cameras have too. It is not uncommon for a smartphone to have a camera resolution above 10 million megapixels this has meant storing these images takes up a lot of memory. Backing them up on your computer or even to a cloud service will allow you to delete them from your phone and free up more space. With the cloud services you can set up automatic synch, meaning every image you take will be copied to the cloud.

Delete Old Messages

Text messages on their own do not take up a lot of room but when you factor in picture messages, WhatsApp, Emails and many other messaging services, it equals a lot of data. If you find yourself sending a lot of gifs, memes and videos than deleting messages is key. It could even equal gigabytes of data. If there is anything you want to keep, back it up to the cloud or your PC before deleting.

Expandable Memory

With some phones instead of deleting data you could simply expand the amount of storage available. Most Android and Windows phones come with an expandable memory slot. The most common memory expansion is Micro SD these can take up to an additional 200gb of data, but the size of chip you get is dependent on what your phone will support. The handbook usually states the largest memory chip they will support. Micro SD cards can be used as an extension of your internal memory, but bear in mind that some apps will not work properly. It is wiser to use the internal storage for apps and the expanded storage for music, photos and videos.

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