Get a new phone

iPhone

My phone is 6 months old.

What happens when you try to upgrade? It could be that your phone is lying about available storage. (Remember to back up your phone first).

The nuclear option is to back up your phone, do a factory reset, install the upgrade, and then restore your data.

The mega-nuclear option is to root your phone, unlock the bootloader, install a custom recovery, and install a custom ROM.

When I try to do the upgrade, it says:

"Device storage full.

"An additional 629MB of available space is required in your device storage to download and install the software update. Move some files and data to your cloud storage, or delete unused apps and make space on your device."

Unless I can move the OS and the fucking bloatware that came with my phone to the stupid cloud, then I cannot free 629mb of space.

Well, you can remove some bloatware if you root your phone. Don't remove any Google Apps though because that will brick your phone.

You could remove a bunch of apps and stuff and try to comply with their directions.

@Pangloss. All my downloaded apps are on the SD card, with only a residual memory impact on the internal memory. Facebook for example is my largest downloaded app. It has 62mb on the SD card, but only 5mb on the system memory. All the others are smaller than that. I calculate if I delete EVERY SINGLE downloaded app I will free up about 200mb of system memory.

I should not have to root my phone just to be able to download a system update. This is ridiculous. I'm going to go into the EE store and throw it at them.

Never buy any phone with 8gb of storage. Never, ever, ever.

Surely it should have enough space to be able to handle updates for its own OS though, no more than 6 months after it was sold, new?

What the fuck?

Sounds like you might have an argument for the phone not being fit for purpose under the Trades Description Act. Have you Googled to see if others have the same issue?

What kind of phone only has 8gb of memory? Sorry but that's your fault for buying. It's like buying a car with an engine that can only handle the weight of the car. Bad buy, I say.

I say do a hard reset of your phone and then install updates.

Next time go for 32 gb

You're wrong, Yoyo.

Goods in the UK must be (quoting from the Consumer Rights Act 2015) "Fit for purpose and last a reasonable amount of time). A smartphone unable to perform standard upgrades after 6 months fails this standard. It is ENTIRELY the fault of the seller.

Try charging it. I hear that sometimes causes fires which will burn the excess apps away.

I doubt the phone vendor has any control over how large the OS upgrades are. That's what he's referring to. The phone is still a smartphone and is functional. Not the phones fault.

If you buy a dell computer that comes with windows 7 and you try to upgrade to windows 10, and it crashes constantly as a result, is it Dell's fault? No of course not! The computer was built for windows 7.

You're the one that's wrong.

@Jamiet you could also look into your phones OS update settings and tell it to stop sending you notifications. But I'm not sure if it's guaranteed to have this feature. An 8 gb phones seems pretty hanky.

"I doubt the phone vendor has any control over how large the OS upgrades are. That's what he's referring to. The phone is still a smartphone and is functional. Not the phones fault."

That is utterly irrelevant. Under the Act it is entirely the responsibility of whoever sells the product. The phone is an Android phones that is incapable of handling standard Android updates. All smartphones routinely update themselves over their lives, so it is reasonable to assume that it will be able to do it. It can't, therefore it is not fit for purpose.

There is an argument that the Act is rather unfair to the retailer (although not one that I fi convincing) but that does not stop the Act from existing.

@ yoyo: This isn't like upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10. It's just like installing the little "Windows update" patches that Windows throws at you every couple of weeks. What I'm saying is that my phone, which was new 6 months ago, doesn't even have enough system memory to do that. I agree with Oct that this makes it not fit for purpose and I'll see how I get on at the store. I'll let you all know.

bullshit? Android has never put out 1.3 gb update. I thought you were trying to upgrade to honeycomb or something.

Hmm. You're partly right. I'm not sure where I got 1.3gb from - it must have been the value of something else in the memory manager.

The update is Android 6.0.1

The size of the update is 946.57 MB
That's still too large for the available system memory.

Update: Following Octavious's comments I went and found the contract document given to me by EE when I took out the contract that includes this phone.

Under the terms of the contract, I am *required* to accept and install any and all updates to the Android operating system.

(I presume this is because of security, or something)

The fact that the phone itself is incapable of doing something, that I am required to have it do under the contract, suggests to me it is clearly not fit for purpose.

Not sure if anyone mentioned this already, but have you tried clearing the cached data?

Often a ton of cached data can accumulate (over 1 gb) and you won't lose much clearing it. Atleast that is what I ended up doing when I had an 8 gb phone and needed to clear some extra space.

Yes I cleared the cache. There was only about 24mb in the cache to begin with because I clean it fairly often.

Ah, I see... Then what takes up the most memory on your device? If it is pictures and videos you can try saving them to a computer and deleting them to free up space.

Getting rid of bloatware is also an option, albiet much riskier.

@ arj11: Go and read my first couple of posts.

Ah I see, my bad. In that case, I have no clue. Cache is the only thing that comes to mind but you tried that. That makes no sense...

Hope you figure it out and update us if you do find a way around it.

Buying an android phone through a carrier is almost always a mistake. They add tons of bloatware and also hold up updates that are important for security. You can get many good phones for reasonable prices without going through carriers. I don't know exactly what is different in the UK, but I'd suspect things like the Moto G, Moto E, and Nexus 5X are reasonable buys. Of course, none of that helps you now.

The one thing I would try (which I think was suggested, but I don't think you've done yet) is to do a factory reset. This will present you with the most amount of space available to you as sold. Just be careful not to wipe out your SD.

If that doesn't work, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to demand a refund for the phone. If you give the phone model, maybe we can find a way to delete the bloatware without doing too much work.

Thanks Abgemacht.

For now I won't do a factory reset because I actually want the update to be *not* installed when I got into the store - because I want to prove to them that there is a problem.

OK, just make sure they don't fuck around with your SD card. Whatever they say, you cannot use the SD card for Android updates.

I wish I could. It seems weird that there's all this spare memory on there, that I can't use for the one thing I need a whole load of memory for...

Probably not an option you want, but i suspect there is a lightweight linux distribution for phones... Would require rooting and making sure it still supports android apps... But i feel like thi is optimal. (Though i say this from an unrooted iphone...)

No way is that worth the effort

Looking at the recommended system specs for this, it seems like it would run in your device: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch

@abge - i don't know, i think i would enjoy the challenge.

It also seems like the most sensible option - apart from upgrading the hardware to run the OS. If you want to stick with the current hardward then you need an OS which is lightweight enough to fit.

I'm at the store in about an hour. I'll let you know what shitty excuses they come up with.

Well it's kinda sorted. They gave me a link to a small program which I can use to download the system update into my laptop instead, unpack it there, and then sync it to the phone. It seems to have worked.

Ah well, at least you can get a new one in half a year.