About The Kindle Fire's Memory

[Blossom]

This question has popped up a few times here and other places so I thought I would try to explain to those who are new to Android how it works.

The Kindle Fire has 8GB of Memory but only 6GB is available for content.

What you may not know is Android has two parts to its Memory.

There is an Internal Memory & External Memory. Depending on the device some External Memory refers to the SD Card Slot as some tablets, phones and Kindle Fire comes with a built in SD Card.

Think of them as Partitions like you would on a Hard Drive.
The Kindle Fire would have three.

1. System files 2GB
(Android O/S)

2. Apps 1GB
This is where your apps are mostly installed.

3. App Content & User Content 5GB
Books, Videos, Pictures and some app files.

Depending on the developer, alot of apps put files in both places, Internal & External memory. Then some apps are installed on the External memory only.

This does make a limitation on how many apps you can have installed because of 1GB or as on my phone 256MB. Though I doubt anyone would used up 1GB of storage for apps on the KF as that would be alot of apps!

So really only 5GB is available for sideloading content such as movies, books, videos...etc. That 5GB can be shared with some app content as well.

As far as I can tell unless rooted you don't have access to the Internal memory. Now on my phone I use a program Apps2SD which moves apps to External memory or in my phone's case it's SD Card if the developer allows it. This has been disabled on The Fire.

I have no idea where the downloaded Amazon content goes maybe someone with a rooted Fire can tell us. I do think books go in the Books folder but as for where the Cache\Temp files is located I'm not sure yet how that works. On my phone I use a cleaner as it can get quite large. More research is needed to see how Amazon has modified the Fire to handle this.

Just remember when you plug the KF into your PC it will only show the External Memory. Not your Internal memory.
So it will show 5GB not 6GB.

I hope this answers some people questions so they don't think the device is defective.

[salsaguy]

Well Then i must be the first since this just happened to me yesterday. I now have a message in my notifications that the memory for apps is low even though still have 4.5 gigs left!!

Not good esp if AZ is handing us out a free app a day.
i guess in need to remove some eh?

Originally Posted by Blossom

This does make a limitation on how many apps you can have installed because of 1GB or as on my phone 256MB. Though I doubt anyone would used up 1GB of storage for apps on the KF as that would be alot of apps!

[sadievan]

Originally Posted by Blossom

This question has popped up a few times here and other places so I thought I would try to explain to those who are new to Android how it works.

The Kindle Fire has 8GB of Memory but only 6GB is available for content.

What you may not know is Android has two parts to its Memory.

There is an Internal Memory & External Memory. Depending on the device some External Memory refers to the SD Card Slot as some tablets, phones and Kindle Fire comes with a built in SD Card.

Think of them as Partitions like you would on a Hard Drive.
The Kindle Fire would have three.

1. System files 2GB
(Android O/S)

2. Apps 1GB
This is where your apps are mostly installed.

3. App Content & User Content 5GB
Books, Videos, Pictures and some app files.

Depending on the developer, alot of apps put files in both places, Internal & External memory. Then some apps are installed on the External memory only.

This does make a limitation on how many apps you can have installed because of 1GB or as on my phone 256MB. Though I doubt anyone would used up 1GB of storage for apps on the KF as that would be alot of apps!

So really only 5GB is available for sideloading content such as movies, books, videos...etc. That 5GB can be shared with some app content as well.

As far as I can tell unless rooted you don't have access to the Internal memory. Now on my phone I use a program Apps2SD which moves apps to External memory or in my phone's case it's SD Card if the developer allows it. This has been disabled on The Fire.

I have no idea where the downloaded Amazon content goes maybe someone with a rooted Fire can tell us. I do think books go in the Books folder but as for where the Cache\Temp files is located I'm not sure yet how that works. On my phone I use a cleaner as it can get quite large. More research is needed to see how Amazon has modified the Fire to handle this.

Just remember when you plug the KF into your PC it will only show the External Memory. Not your Internal memory.
So it will show 5GB not 6GB.

I hope this answers some people questions so they don't think the device is defective.

I thought when I was playing around with one of the apps I could access the internal memory. Maybe it was ES File Explorer or WiFi File Explorer. Don't know if it would have allowed me to do anything though. I was just going through some of the folders.

Carol

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by salsaguy

Well Then i must be the first since this just happened to me yesterday. I now have a message in my notifications that the memory for apps is low even though still have 4.5 gigs left!!

Not good esp if AZ is handing us out a free app a day.
i guess in need to remove some eh?

This wouldn't be so much of a problem if Amazon let us use Apps2SD feature of Android 2.x but 1GB for apps is very generous. Most Tablets give less space when it comes to internal memory.

I recommend getting History Eraser or some other cache cleaner that will help clear up some space. You can also clear data on Preinstall apps you plan not to use to free up even more.

[mpeg2]

This whole discussion seems to be quite confused to me.

There are two types of memory in these devices (just like in computers): Volatile memory (RAM) and Persistent memory (Storage - Flash or Hard Disk). Everyone here seems to be discussing persistent memory (Flash on the Fire).

Remember, when you start an application, it is loaded from Flash to RAM for execution. The Fire manages RAM (or more accurately, Android does this). Androids memory management is quite good - often leaving apps loaded in RAM even when they're not running to aid in quicker startups. I think the Fire has a pretty generous allocation of RAM compared to many phones - 1GB compared to 256MB (on my Droid 1).

I think that the problems being reported & error messages relate to running out of RAM. Playing around with the Flash memory won't do much for this.

Of course, I could be wrong also...

Rich

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by mpeg2

This whole discussion seems to be quite confused to me.

There are two types of memory in these devices (just like in computers): Volatile memory (RAM) and Persistent memory (Storage - Flash or Hard Disk). Everyone here seems to be discussing persistent memory (Flash on the Fire).

Remember, when you start an application, it is loaded from Flash to RAM for execution. The Fire manages RAM (or more accurately, Android does this). Androids memory management is quite good - often leaving apps loaded in RAM even when they're not running to aid in quicker startups. I think the Fire has a pretty generous allocation of RAM compared to many phones - 1GB compared to 256MB (on my Droid 1).

I think that the problems being reported & error messages relate to running out of RAM. Playing around with the Flash memory won't do much for this.

Of course, I could be wrong also...

Rich

No it's caused by installing too many apps they are running out of space. On most android devices we just use App2SD to move the app over to the SD Card but you can't do this with the Fire so people who are installing large games and apps are running out of storage fast.

You can install App2SD on the Fire from the App store. It is compatible but you can't move anything but it will show you where all your space is and what apps are taking what but it's a good uninstaller app if nothing else.

[shinew]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I have no idea where the downloaded Amazon content goes maybe someone with a rooted Fire can tell us. I do think books go in the Books folder but as for where the Cache\Temp files is located I'm not sure yet how that works. On my phone I use a cleaner as it can get quite large. More research is needed to see how Amazon has modified the Fire to handle this.

if you meant user/app storage space, should be all under "/sdcard" for android.

Originally Posted by salsaguy

Well Then i must be the first since this just happened to me yesterday. I now have a message in my notifications that the memory for apps is low even though still have 4.5 gigs left!!

Uninstall some apps that you won't use, with current generation of android apps, no one really needs or uses 1GB of apps, well unless your goal is to just simply load as many apps as you can...
I have 1GB app storage on my phone, I use like 400MB of those and I already have some apps with duplicate functionalities...

Originally Posted by mpeg2

This whole discussion seems to be quite confused to me.
There are two types of memory in these devices (just like in computers): Volatile memory (RAM) and Persistent memory (Storage - Flash or Hard Disk). Everyone here seems to be discussing persistent memory (Flash on the Fire).

It's about persistent memory, not volatile. Android won't give you warning if it runs low on RAM, it'll just slow down and auto clear up more memory for you. If you get a warning, it's your App storage reaching its limit.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by shinew

if you meant user/app storage space, should be all under "/sdcard" for android.

I meant temp files mostly. Like when you stream from the cloud but since posting that I now know a cache cleaner will clean most of it up.

The app store space isn't accessible by any File Explorer. Amazon has only given us access to SD card so to speak. Most all apps are installed in the App 1GB space with no way to move them to the SD Card area.

It's about persistent memory, not volatile. Android won't give you warning if it runs low on RAM, it'll just slow down and auto clear up more memory for you. If you get a warning, it's your App storage reaching its limit.

Yep that's what I was trying to say. We got all these users downloading huge games and apps and running out of storage and if only Amazon would enable the move app to SD feature. It would solve this problem. I have 600MB left on mine.

[shinew]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I meant temp files mostly. Like when you stream from the cloud but since posting that I now know a cache cleaner will clean most of it up.

depending on the apps(built-in or installed). mostly likely it's in /data/data/your_app/cache

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by shinew

depending on the apps(built-in or installed). mostly likely it's in /data/data/your_app/cache

Probably I'm not rooted so there is no way for me to know.

[shinew]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Probably I'm not rooted so there is no way for me to know.

why do you need to find it out? Each app runs as a separate user using their own virtual environment. It could store temp data on internal or external(/sdcard) drive, but there is no way for you to change that even if you could see it. And android will auto clean it for you once it's below certain threshold for the internal storage.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by shinew

why do you need to find it out? Each app runs as a separate user using their own virtual environment. It could store temp data on internal or external(/sdcard) drive, but there is no way for you to change that even if you could see it. And android will auto clean it for you once it's below certain threshold for the internal storage.

On my phone I clean it out manually. Alot of apps uninstall leave junk behind. I just like things to be neat and tidy is all. I'm okay on space on the Fire right now but later it could be a problem.

[deannah]

I know not what you all are talking about, but did get an app from Amazon called Gemini App Manager, that shows what is running, size, etc. The batch option gives you the ability of killing the task, moving it to SD, uninstalling, clearing the cache, etc. I haven't done much with it yet, but is this similar to what needs to be done?

It is free and had a four star rating.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by deannah

I know not what you all are talking about, but did get an app from Amazon called Gemini App Manager, that shows what is running, size, etc. The batch option gives you the ability of killing the task, moving it to SD, uninstalling, clearing the cache, etc. I haven't done much with it yet, but is this similar to what needs to be done?

It is free and had a four star rating.

Yeah it has similar feature of the other two apps but you can't use the move option but it does show what each app size is and where it's installed.

[shinew]

In general it's not a good idea to use taskiller to kill apps(unless the app is frozen or something), it usually does more harm than good, as android manges it fine itself since Froyo.

Here is an article if you're interested:
Why You Shouldn’t Be Using a Task Killer with Android