Want to double your Android's speed? I found a way…

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It’s App Wednesday! But this week I don’t have an App, I have a great story of taking back what’s mine! I set my phone back to “factory default” last week. I have an HTC Evo Shift 4G – it’s a Sprint exclusive device which only has one major down side: storage capacity. It includes only 512 MB of onboard space.

The problem with the Shift seems to be a strange setting on it. When I get below 45 MB of free storage space on the phone, it locks into a panic mode and a lot of features like background sync don’t run properly. It’s trying to prevent you from running out of storage space – but 45 MB on a device like this is still more than 10 average sized apps! I don’t get why it chokes me at such a high level of free space. So most people say, still, it’s no big deal. Just install some apps, move things to the SD card and you’ll be all set! Wrong.

It turns out, at least in my case, after performing some Over the air Updates, some of the files were left over and hogging up space in some hidden way that I couldn’t find them. Even using apps like Disk Usage, I couldn’t remove stuff from the System partition. So when it was all said and done, I decided to make sure I had contacts synchronized to my Google account, made sure pictures, etc… were all moved off to the SD card and my computer in some cases. Then? Settings screen, SD & Phone Storage menu, then Factory Data Reset.

It kept the firmware and software updates that had been pushed to the phone, and got rid of the installer files that had clearly been left behind from OTA updates. I now have nearly all of my apps reinstalled, and nearly 3 times the free space I had! Also, this thing is running like lightning. Slow down must have happened gradually, but I forgot this phone was ever this fast when I got it. But, much like Windows, the occasional reformat may prove to be a good idea! Glad I did it, and just wanted to share!