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I recently purchased an LG Optimus Logic for StraightTalk, which runs Android 2.3.6. The phone was advertised as having 1GB internal Memory and also came with a 4GB Micro SD.

I've used the phone for about a week now and noticed something which I believe is drastically wrong with the Memory Scheme. As I've downloaded apps, they seem to not be using the internal memory properly. On the Applications Manage screen, the apps take up "System Memory", which is about 190MB maximum. As you can imagine, this space is used up rather fast after only a few apps installed. So I tried to see if I could move apps to the SD Card, but there's the hitch. The option didn't refer to an SD card at all, but was a greyed-out "Move to Internal Memory". A few of the apps had this option, and when I selected it they began to take up the 1GB Internal Memory, which was not used at all before. The option for memory management then read "Move to Phone". Also, I noticed that as I installed more apps RAM was being used even before the Apps started running.

My theory is that the phone was poorly configured. A section of RAM is being treated as the Internal Storage or Flash Memory or whatever you call it, which was labelled "System Memory". The actual, 1GB Internal memory is being treated as external storage much as an SD card would, which leaves the real SD card out in the cold. My best evidence for this is that I removed the SD card and the apps I moved to the other memory still functioned.

I have two questions:

  1. Am I correct in assuming this, or do I not grasp Android memory properly and your knowledgeable minds can enlighten me?

  2. If I am correct, is there any way I can fix this manually, as LG and StraightTalk seem to be of no help on the issue.

Thank you for your time.

Matthew Moehring
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  • Probably related: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/25200/why-cant-i-install-apps-when-i-have-enough-storage http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/4132/cannot-download-not-enough-space-when-phone-storage-clearly-lists-enough-sp – ale Dec 04 '12 at 20:33
  • I doubt they are using system memory, as /system is mounted read-only. It will rather be "phone storage". And yes, stupid thing is internal memory being mapped to /mnt/sdcard on several devices, the real sdcard moved to /mnt/sd_external or something like that... – Izzy Jan 08 '13 at 11:50

1 Answers1

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This is the issue with Android.

The 1GB internal storage is classed as an 'Internal SD Card'. A section of this (normally about a 10th) will be used to store /data.

/data is where the apps are installed too, and is mounted as a completely different area.

The rest of the 1GB internal storage is most likely mounted at /sdcard, and the external sdcard mounted at /sdcard_ext or something similar.

This is down to the history of Android devices, and can be quite annoying.

An example that shows this is correct is my SGS2. The app install area has 1GB of memory, and the rest of the 10GB internal is used as an internal SD card.

This is why when you select to move an app to the SD card, it moved it to the 1GB space.

If it grayed out, it is already on the SD card, or the developer does not want it installed on the SD card.

Liam W
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