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My god-daughter has inherited her mother's old HTC-Desire, it's currently running Froyo, but despite having a huge memory card it still suffers constant out of memory errors.

I can move things on to the memory card, but being 12 the god-daughter in question just gets confused and deletes stuff.

Is there any kid-friendly permanent solution to the problem or an upgrade route to gingerbread.

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To avoid confusion, maybe you explain the "out of memory" errors a bit closer: Do they happen when trying to install new apps (which would point to storage) -- or is it rather apps crashing due to low memory (which would point to RAM)? The HTC Desire does not have plenty of RAM, and in that case even a huge SD card would not be of much help. – Izzy Dec 2 '12 at 12:28

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Out of memory errors occur when the device runs out of RAM - is this what you're talking about?

If so, then the easiest way, if rooted, is to install Auto Memory Manager from Google Play, and lower the values, so it doesn't kill apps as much.

If you mean the storage keeps on running out, then the only way to solve this is to either:

  1. Uninstall the most memory consuming apps.
  2. Move some apps to the SD Card.

Please be aware that the Internal SD card and the /data partition (where apps are installed) are different, and only ~1-2GB will be mounted to the /data partition. You can solve this by upgrading to ICS however - which may be the better option, if your device supports it.

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It doesn't appear to be a RAM issue as the phone has an 8Gb memory card. So, from what I can tell from a distance the issue is hard storage. Are there any memory mangers that will fix that issue? – toomanyairmiles Dec 2 '12 at 10:49
RAM and storage are different - I think you are getting confused between the two. Storage, or internal memory is the storage, or internal SD card. It is a RAM issue if apps are closing on their own constantly. – Liam W Dec 2 '12 at 10:51
Trust me, I'm not confused about the difference. The phone is running out of internal storage, as it won't automatically ship new data and installs to the card. – toomanyairmiles Dec 2 '12 at 11:01
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You said 'It doesn't appear to be a RAM issues as the phone has an 8Gb memory card' that makes me think that you think the memory card has something to do with the RAM. Anyhow, 'automatically ship new data' is confusing, but 'installs to the SD card makes sense'. How much storage is left? Be aware that even though you have an 8GB internal storage, that WONT be going to /data, where the apps are installed. – Liam W Dec 2 '12 at 11:04
6Gb remaining on the card – toomanyairmiles Dec 2 '12 at 11:26
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From the commentary, it appears that you are having install problems, that is, out of internal storage, NOT RAM problems.

Assuming that's so, then NO, there isn't any real fix - you can't increase the internal storage of the device, you can only add a bigger SD card (external storage) and move apps to it.

The best you can do is to borrow the device regularly and push apps off to the SD card before things start to go wrong.

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