Hi Xperia/Android/Mobile sifus and pros,

First off, 16GB internal storage is a pain to use on an Android 6.0 phone.

My XA Ultra Dual (F3312) internal storage space is always filling on its own. Every time it reaches 90% I will remove apps. Despite that, it will gradually fill up to 90%+ again and I will remove apps again. The process repeats.

Here's what I've done so far :
1) Remove apps. Never reinstalled or installed new apps
2) Ocassionally cleared out apps data
2) Ocassionally clearing out the cache data
3) Ocassionally transferred media files to SD card
4) Delete FB Data, WeChat and Whatsapp chat data after backing up to cloud.
4) Clean storage of duplicate/obsolete/junk files with SD Maid Pro(Paid App) and CCleaner
5) Bought a 32GB high speed Class 10 UHS-3 (R:90/W:80) Micro SD to set up as adoptive storage to store apps.

None of the above seems to help. Some times I even removed most of the apps except FB, Whatsapp, WeChat and all but the storage just gets filled up in time until I have no more space to work with and are forced to factory reset the phone. Adoptive storage doesn't help either as most of the apps can only be installed into the internal storage.

Can anyone tell me what's taking up all the space in my phone's internal storage?.

Thanks for reading.

This post has been edited by LightningChan: Apr 7 2017, 12:41 PM

Not sure if there is anything peculiar about the android implementation by Sony. Though to be fair, 16gb is already small in the first place, by today's standards

For me, on all my phones, usually it's apps data
Google earth seems to take up/store a lot of offline data
Also Maps, of course
Other apps would be whatsapp and other messaging services that has to store the photos n videos, although nowadays i see that whatsapp can already store them in the external card.
How about your camera? Make sure it stores the video/pics in the sd card also

This post has been edited by abu.shofwan: Apr 7 2017, 01:11 PM

wechat is the culprit

I did some reading about XA and XA Ultra and seems that they're plagued by bloatware. Only 8.5GB free fresh out of the box and after apps updates and all only some 5GB is available to user.

That 5GB space that will go missing eventually even if I uninstalled all the apps I downloaded except for WeChat, Whatsapp and FB+Messenger. After deleting all the data from those apps the storage space is still 90% full.

In a nutshell : 5GB full with only WeChat, Whatsapp and FB+Messenger with all the apps data cleared. What could be hogging 5GB of storage space.. Hmm....

Also, I did put in a high speed 32GB Micro SD in 16GB Adoptive storage and 16GB for media configuration.

This post has been edited by LightningChan: Apr 7 2017, 03:20 PM

But but... I delete the app data after backing up to PC using WeChat Windows app.

have you try to look into the Settings > Apps and check which apps is taking up the space? Mine:

Facebook: 500mb
LINE: 1.2GB
Whatsapp: 150mb
Wechat: 350mb
Uber: 120mb
Messenger: 150mb
Google Map: 160mbGoogle Play services: 450mb

all these things add up, koyak my storage. And, not all apps can be move to SD card. Sometimes those after updated it goes back from SD to Main storage, have to manually click again.

try some cleaning app from playstore. wechat works differently in the background. even if you transfer the app to sdcard, most of the data, pictures, gifs are stored in internal storage.

This post has been edited by Haters_Gonna_H8: Apr 7 2017, 03:37 PM

Hmm.. Lets see
FB : 341mb
Google App : 185mb
Google Play Services : 126mb
Line : 66.78mb
Maps : 49.64mb
Meitu : 102mb
Messenger(FB) : 188mb
WeChat : 73.32mb
WhatsApp : 54.39mb
YouTube : 35.14mb

The rest either few MB or few hundred KB.

usually FB, browser (chrome) and whatsapp will fill up the space. try clear the data regularly. All these apps will store image cache which takes a lot of space. Whatsapp use a lot of space for backup. (5 copies of backup)

I bought SD Maid Pro and CCleaner. I din't transfer WeChat app to SDCard but I did backup the data on WeChat on my PC and clear out WeChat data on my phone.

All you need is Adoptable Storage on your XA (MM 6.0)

Tutorial:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/xperia-xa/...torage-t3435493
https://forum.xda-developers.com/z5-compact...age-mm-t3334153
https://forum.xda-developers.com/xperia-z2-...torage-t3361900


PS. Try dig around XDA for more proper tutorial, the above link I simply found on Google. But should work.

This post has been edited by NightFelix: Apr 7 2017, 04:57 PM

I already have a 32GB UHS-3 (R:90/W:80) set up as adoptable storage as mentioned in first post. Haha.
But most of the apps went into the internal storage instead and cannot be transfered to adoptable storage.

Now, internal storage 90% and adoptable storage 15% only lol.

WeChat will have a lot of data stay in internal storage as others instead of apps data only..

I shall dig into WeChat more. Haha.. Really unusable now.
Dont know why Sony allow user to remove some bloatware like AVG anti virus, Amazon Shopping etc on their flagship but XA and XA Ultra cannot remove.

screenshots your storage and post here and see.

Looks good to me after you get adoptive storage. Need apps to scan where all those Apps chunk up your storage. Like people mentioned earlier... Usually is WhatsApp or WeChat.

Now I'm really starting to suspect WeChat...
Sigh..if Sony don't release 7.0 update with the capability to remove bloatware I'm gonna root it and remove them all..

or get a new phone. nowadays, post marshmellow, the minimum specs for an android phone is at least 32gb internal storage + sd card support, or 64gb without sdcard. min ram should be 3gb. if the phone doesnt meet these minimum criteria, best to avoid.

This post has been edited by Haters_Gonna_H8: Apr 7 2017, 11:39 PM

But I just bought the XA Ultra not long ago.. dawwww