Opera Mini Android Excessive Storage
October 7, 2011 12:57 AM   Subscribe

Opera Mini for Android using too much storage space that needs to be freed up.

Phone is giving notifications that storage space is too low and Opera Mini is the big offender using 96MB, of which 94.7MB is data (application itself is very small, only 1.3MB). Since the phone only has 256MB flash memory this is a problem. Does have 8GB micro SD card installed but do not see way to move OM or its data to SD.

I've cleared History, Cookies, and Saved Pages in Opera Mini. Only have seven pages on Speed Dial and another ten or so bookmarked. Likely less than twenty or so passwords memorized that I'd rather not clear.

There is no option under Phone Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications to clear cache (listed as 0.00B anyway).

This data used is persistent through restarts of phone and force closing the application (via Manage Applications or Advanced Task Killer).

Googling has not turned up much and results seem to get drowned out by complaints of Opera Mobile, a different browser, using too much storage space (Mobile's install is something like 20MB vs Mini's 1.3MB). Can't figure out why the phone is using so much data and what for. Maybe some kind of cache that is non-clearable? Would really like to free up this space and the next step would be to uninstall and reinstall application but would rather not to avoid reentering passwords, especially if the problem is likely to recur.

Specs: Opera Mini 6.1, HTC Hero (GSM) running Android 1.5.

(I know, I know, I should update to some Android 2+ but HTC pushed that update through carriers and did not make it available for download and I'm on a carrier that never sold the phone so it'd be down to Cyanogen or whatever the cool kids are using these days.)
posted by 6550 to Technology (6 answers total)
 
Best answer: Android 1.5? Ouch!

You could try the sledgehammer approach of uninstall/reinstall.
posted by devnull at 1:56 AM on October 7, 2011


The reason you can't move the app to the SD card is probably because you're still running Android 1.6. If you don't want to root the phone & install CyanogenMod then why not just grab the relevant ROM image from xda-developers.com and upgrade to the latest stock ROM image?
posted by pharm at 1:56 AM on October 7, 2011


Note that given your space constraints you almost certainly won't be able to upgrade without removing apps anyway: later Android versions generally require more space than earlier ones, unless you dump Sense and install an AOSP build.
posted by pharm at 1:58 AM on October 7, 2011


If/when you upgrade Android, not only will Android offer you the ability (in Settings ->Applications) to move the app back and forth between SD and phone, but also to clear the memory. I would think that even 1.6 had this function, but my memory is hazy on when certain features arrived.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:36 AM on October 7, 2011


You're browsing the web in Opera Mini with image-loading disabled, right? Images are not necessary for most mobile browsing, and disabling images made a HUGE space difference for my phone.
posted by nicebookrack at 8:45 AM on October 8, 2011


Response by poster: Uninstalling and reinstalling fixed it, though I wish I could figure out why it got bloated in the first place. Think I'm going to have to bite the bullet soon and install a later version of Android, though, if for no other features than the ability to move apps over to the SD card.
posted by 6550 at 6:51 AM on October 20, 2011


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