I have an Alcatel 918N Glory X with internal memory of around 320MB (160 of which goes to RAM) I have been installing quite a few apps and moved them to SD card and I notice that the internal memory free space has decreased even if I move it to SD card, is it normal? For the real problem, I have downloaded an app around ~40MB in size from Google Play (with ~50MB free internal memory). However, the app was not installed due to "insufficient memory". I decided to ignore it, but when I checked my internal memory's space, it was reduced to just ~8MB only, without even the installed app. I have set my default install location to SD card using ADB before I downloaded the said app. Can you tell me what happened here? Is it that the downloaded app resides in internal memory and I have to delete it? if so, please teach me how.

  • internal memory != storage space... just saying :) – t0mm13b Jul 21 '12 at 16:25
  • This happens to me when I install big apps ,a tip you can find the file in the /cache/download/ directory – Mohamed Essam Jul 21 '12 at 17:48
  • @MohamedEssam That location depends on many things. – R R Jul 22 '12 at 19:19
  • @RichardBorcsik i mean for me – Mohamed Essam Jul 22 '12 at 20:21

When you move an application not everything is moved. Namely the application's data stays on the internal memory.

As for your issue, go into

settings -> applications -> all 

and select clear cache for the listings: "Play Store" and "Download Provider".
Than reboot.


That's because normal move to SD card doesn't move every thing there.

If you want to move apps completely to your SD card you'll have to root your phone (I'm not responsible for doing something wrong to your phone, although it's rare to brick a phone during rooting).

Rooting (Android OS)-Wikipedia

How To Root Your Android Phone With SuperOneClick

After rooting your phone you'll have to partition your SD card (as you need) to make it two partitions.

SD card partitioning - XDA-Developers

then you'll have to obtain one of the following apps to move apps completely to SD card.

Although i use Link2SD many people prefer simple2ext.


if you are going to use Link2SD some problems may occur,sometimes it tells you on first to choose your ext partition to create mount scripts so it could mount your ext partition on startup then it tells you to restart your phone and then it tells you the same message.the reason is that mount scripts are not compatible.

SOLUTION:you must mount it manually using Terminal Emulator by typing these commands:

mount -t ext* /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /data/sdext*

note : replace (*) with the number of your SD ext partition

then you should quick restart from Link2SD by pressing the hardware menu key then more then at the end of the list choose quick restart and then confirm.you're DONE.


When you download an app, it is downloaded into a cache on the internal SD card. So the 40MB app you downloaded is already taking up 40MB of space on your internal storage :(

There are a couple things you can do:

  1. Sideload the app. Download just the APK to your external SD card, and install it from there (there is a Chrome extension you can use to download APKs to your computer, which you can then transfer to your phone - I've done this, works like a charm). You don't need to be rooted or anything for this to work - you just need to go into Settings and allow app installation from other than the Play Store.

  2. Delete the caches for your system (and possibly some apps) to clear up more space on your internal storage. If you're not comfortable finding and deleting the caches manually, such as /cache/download, there are many cache cleaning apps you can download from the Play store to do this for you. You will probably need to be rooted for this to be effective, depending on your phone.

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