Users can do a lot more on their smartphone these days. They can watch 4K movies, run high-resolution audio, save images in RAW file formats for photographs and play games with console-level graphics. To save all these files, the smartphone needs a lot of free space. Adding a microSD card can help. However, a lot of smartphones such as lower priced variants of the Apple iPhone 7 (Rs 47,499 onwards), Google Pixel (Rs 44,000 onwards) and the OnePlus 5 (Rs32,999) don’t support microSD cards to add more space.
The latest version of Android and Apple’s iOS offer some nifty features which can come in handy if your smartphone’s storage is filling up faster than you want.
Android
Mobile apps are designed to create and save temporary files, also called cache data, on the smartphone so they will load faster the next time you open them.
Android Oreo comes with a feature called Smart storage. It automatically deletes images and video files which have been backed up on Google Drive after 30 days. To take advantage of this, go to Settings->Storage-> and switch on Smart storage.
Android OS offers lots of other options when it comes to making room. The simplest one is to go the phone’s Settings->Storage->Cached data and select clear data. A lot of smartphones come with a file manager app which can help users see how much space a file is occupying. It can also help users by identifying and deleting cache files manually.
You can also free up space with third party apps such as CCleaner or Clean master. They can identify all the cached files for you and delete all of them with one tap.
iOS
The latest (iOS 11) version of Apple’s mobile OS is finally being rolled out to users. It requires at least 4GB of space. If you are using a 16GB or 32GB variant of the iPhone, the new storage-related features of iOS 11 can help.
So if you go to Settings->General-> Storage, you will see two new options, Offload unused apps and Review large attachments.
The former allows users to delete storage files of an app that they don’t use very often without removing the saved files. So the next time they install the app or game, the saved file will be available.
The latter helps users identify and delete heavy messages with photos, videos or some other attachment.
If your message box fills faster than others, the message app has an option which allows users to automatically delete older messages after 30 days. You can access it in Settings->Messages-> Message history.
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