How To

Top 7 ways to Add Extra Storage to Your Android and iOS devices

Smartphone running out of space? Here’s how you can expand it.

Mar 25, 2023

One of the key factors in determining the price of a smartphone is its internal storage space. Smartphone makers usually offer 64GB and 128GB variants of a device at an affordable price, while assigning a higher cost to the 512GB and 1TB storage variants. If you’re looking to buy a phone under a strict budget, you can go for a low storage variant while using some tricks to expand the space on your smartphone. In this article, we bring you the top 7 ways to add extra storage to your Android and iOS devices.

Table of Contents

Use a memory card

Unlike iPhones, most budget and midrange Android smartphones come with a dedicated microSD slot as a part of the hybrid SIM tray. You can access this slot by using a SIM ejector tool to pop out the SIM tray. Depending on the smartphone, you can add up to 1TB of extra storage using a memory card. Here is our list of the 5 best microSD cards with high capacity to increase the storage space on your smartphone.

Use an OTG adapter to plug in external storage

If your smartphone does not have a dedicated slot for a microSD card using an external storage device is one of the best ways you can add extra local storage on an Android or iOS device. Using a USB OTG (On-The-Go) adapter, you can link any external storage device to your iPhone or Android smartphone. The official Apple OTG adapter goes for Rs 2,900, but there are plenty of other affordable options around.

The downside to using external storage via OTG is that you will have to rely on an extra piece of hardware and constantly transfer data back and forth between your smartphone and external storage. This is why we would suggest using cloud storage before turning to external storage.

Use Cloud Storage

Cloud storage services like iCloud and Google Drive provide an easy solution to the low storage issue on your smartphone. You can use these services to create backups of your personal data and free up some much-needed storage on your device. Filled up your assigned storage on Google Drive already? Try Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive. The only downside? You can’t access your files on a cloud storage service without an internet connection.

Disable bloatware apps

If you’ve ever taken a look at the storage space of a new phone, you’d have noticed that it is less than what was promised. This is because your phone’s OS occupies a good chunk of the internal storage space. Most smartphones also come with preinstalled bloatware apps that take up internal storage space. One of the first things you should do after buying a phone is to uninstall these apps from the device. This will free up some much-needed storage. To remove an app, go to Settings>Apps>Uninstall. Here is the full guide to deleting apps on your smartphone.

Clear cache

Your smartphone’s cached memory stores all kinds of temporary files for quick access. This increases the speed at which apps work and helps in quickly loading the pages on a web browser. Once you visit a page, your phone will save certain objects on it to the cache, just so it doesn’t have to download them when you revisit the page. Clearing the cache will significantly increase the internal storage of your device. There’s no centralised way to clear all cache on your device. You will need to delete it individually from every app. Here’s how.

Step 1: Go to Settings>Apps.

Step 2: Choose the App from which you want the cache cleared.

Step 3: Click on Storage.

Step 4: Click on ‘Clear cache’.

The app cache will be cleared in a few seconds, depending on the size of the data stored.

Delete duplicate files

Step 1: Go to Settings and select ‘Battery and device care’.

Step 2: Select Storage.

Step 3: Scroll down and tap on ‘Duplicate Files’. This is where you will find all the duplicate files on your phone, including images.

Step 4: Manually select the duplicate files and delete them.

This will boost the internal storage on your smartphone.

Use Lite Apps

Social media apps take up a lot of storage space on your device and keep expanding over time. If you don’t use social media apps outside of the very basic functions, you can use their ‘Lite’ alternatives. Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram have the most popular ‘Lite’ apps that are used by millions of users. A ‘Lite’ app doesn’t occupy too much space on your device, giving you extra breathing space to manage your storage.

Conclusion

These are the top 7 ways to add extra storage to your Android and iOS devices. It is a good idea to keep regular checks on your device’s storage and see which apps are using up the most space. You should also regularly clear the cache and remove duplicate files to keep the storage space under control.

For the latest gadget and tech news, and gadget reviews, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For newest tech & gadget videos subscribe to our YouTube Channel. You can also stay up to date using the Gadget Bridge Android App. You can find the latest car and bike news here.