Not enough memory to take picture (for no reason)

Help Fairphone 3
1

Hello

I found a few discussion about storage issues with the FP3 (+ android 10), but couldn’t find a solution for mine specifically.
For the past few weeks, my phone tells me that I don’t have enough storage to take a photo (when I open the camera) … and the problem is … it’s not true (I still have couple of free Go).

The exact notification is in French “Il n’y a plus d’espace libre sur votre carte SD. Changez la qualité de prise de vue ou supprimez des images ou fichier.”
So in English "There is no more free space on your SD card. Change the shooting quality or delete images or files ".

I don’t have an SD card, and in my settings I chose “Phone” for the storage choice.

I can keep downloading stuff, taking photos with WhatsApp, but no ability to use my camera (this is the only bug I have on storage).

Does anyone have an idea?

Thank you in advance

2

I guess using a SD card would be an option.
As I know it, Android is (wrongly) calling the phone memory sd-card as well; which would explain that part of saying that there is no space left on the sd-card.

It might in fact be, that there is no more space for pictures on the sd-card, as the phone memory most likely is assigned to different tasks/purposes.
Compare it to a large cupboard that you share with other people.
The space behind the left door is for person A (the system), the space behind the middle door is for emergency cases (cache …) and the space behind the right door is for you (app generated data; pictures etc.). While there still might be lots of free shelves behind the left and the middle door, the space behind the right door can be crammed already.
But to keep the system safe and running and prepared for emergencies, you can not use the space in the left or middle, when you only got the key to the right door.

Well, that’s at least, what I can think of.
There might be another reason/explanation and what I wrote is complete bonkers, but I remember that problem of assigned space, that can not be accessed from other occasions.

P.s.
I would expect the space behind the right door to be much larger; so make it another 3 doors maybe. :wink:

3

@MaximeBdb

Just looking at the settings. Storage
Do you have storage manager on, some apps keep temp files which don’t show unless you have hidden files visible ~ which I’m looking for how to do.

Anyway if you click non Internal Shared storage you will at least see what is recorded as being used for main apps. Maybe you can see something odd there.

You could also got to Apps and Notifications > all apps > select an app > storage and cache and clear storage an/or cache to see how that helps.

4

I have the same problem… Did you find any solution ?

5

How much storage space is still free? (Settings > Storage) We recently had an FP3 user who still had 5 GB left and yet it wasn’t enough free space.

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6

I have the same issue and even deleting a lot of files from the phone and creating more space doesn’t fix the problem. In apps like WhatsApp I can take pictures and it saves the pictures appropriately. It does this ever since the update…

7

See this topic . . . .

8

The problem is still there in safe mode. It’s also not the storage because I can do in-app photos in WhatsApp and there is plenty of storage. I would assume it’s a bug, but apprently it’s not widely known? It’s just annoying that I can only take photos if I send them to other people.

9

You don’t say if you have an SD card and how it’s formatted. Internal formatting An SD card formatted as ‘Internal’ can be the root of many issues.

I doubt it’s a bug, they get blamed for sorts of human problems. More likely a software issue down to your use. You can of course try a reset.

10

No, I don’t use an SD card and I didn’t change any internal formatting. It started happening after an update and was normal before that.

11

So which update and OS are you using and how much memory is free?

By internal formatting that was poor English, I meant hopefully you don’t have an SD card formatted as Internal, will go back and clarify that. Thanks

12

The Build-Number is: 8901.3.A.0129.20210805 and Android 10 is installed…

13

Yeap! that’s the latest.

Can you save any personal info and reset the phone?

14

Funny enough, I was just checking on how much storage I have and it was like 7 GB, but after emptying the cache of some apps, the photo app runs again. So it has to do with the cache?

15

Yes the cache does use up quite a bit of memory. It’s good idea to empty the cache of as many apps as possible occasionally.

Sounds like you have it in hand now.

It seems 7GB is on the edge of usability, it does make me wonder though ??

All the best.

16

Hello, in case anyone would like a double confirmation, I had the same issue, and emptying the cache on almost all my applications solved it :slight_smile: So happy I can take pictures again !

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