Author: Jim Bartlett

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Help! My Phone is Running Out of Memory

Before you give me any advice, let me explain the problem and what I am doing about it. I bought my Galaxy four years ago, and it has 16 GB of internal memory. All was well for a couple of years, and then I decided I needed to get some extra memory, so I bought a micro SD card, also with 16 GB of memory. I started by putting the photos from the phone’s camera on it, and later the ones from WhatsApp. Again all was well for a while, but in the past six months or so I have been having trouble again. The My Files app tells me I am using 15.32 GB of the internal 16 GB.

Every morning I check my phone’s apps for updates, and there is usually at least one. Some of the updates can be large, so some fail to install because of lack of memory. I suspect the apps must now be larger than they were a few years ago. I have tried moving some apps to the SD card, but only a few have allowed that. I have also looked into uninstalling the apps I don’t use, but again many don’t give me that option. I can sometimes uninstall updates, or disable the app, if that helps. I am now reduced to clearing caches. Incidentally I’ve noticed that Signal occasionally downloads a backup file, which is 116 MB. I assume I only need one backup file, so I’ve started deleting old ones.

Having (I hope) read all that, do you have any suggestions?

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Two Obscure Problems

The first happened a month or so ago, but I decided it wasn’t worth mentioning in a meeting. I thought I’d include it in this post about the second problem though, which happened a few days ago. The problems were:

WhatsApp, having to link my phone to the laptop every day.

Phone network, loss of internet access.

First, I originally linked the phone to the laptop, by scanning a QR code, and from then on I could read and write WhatsApp messages on my laptop. Then one morning I was asked to link again, and this happened for the next couple of days. I couldn’t work out why. Finally I got a message saying that I could link a maximum of four devices to my phone, and it turned out I had linked the laptop that number of times. The cure then was to unlink them all and start again. I’ve no idea how it all started though, as going through the linking process is not something you can do unintentionally.

Second, I’ve got a pay-as-you-go contract with 3, and as I said, I lost access to the internet that way a few days ago. That meant I couldn’t check my PAYG balance amongst other things. I thought maybe it needed topping up, and managed to do that via my laptop, but it didn’t help. I called in to the 3 shop, and the assistant took my phone and played with it for a while, finally curing the problem. I asked him how, and he said he had gone in and out of ‘flight mode’ for a few seconds. Not something I had thought of trying.

Maybe one of those might help someone in the group one day.

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Android 12 Issues

I recently had this message from the Royal Television Society, which David thought was worth passing on:-

We have become aware that there are issues with the latest Android 12 version that is affecting the RTS app along with many others.
The most common issues are that the App will not transfer to a new phone or will not download from the PlayStore.
It appears that Android 12 has elements of incompatibility with a number of app development platforms including the one RTS uses.
We are very sorry about the inconvenience and frustration this is causing.
We have been informed it is not possible to de-bug the App in the platform to avoid the incompatibilities, the solution being for Google to patch Android 12 to negate the issues.

A search has shown the range of issues arising.

With possible fixes suggested but not with 100% success.

Step 1: Clear the cache & data of the Play Store

This gives the app a fresh start and can help fix issues.

  1. Open your device’s Settings app Settings.
  2. Tap Apps & notifications and then See all apps.
  3. Scroll down and tap Google Play Store Google Play.
  4. Tap Storage and then Clear Cache.
  5. Next, tap Clear data.
  6. Re-open the Play Store & try your download again.

Step 2: Restart your device

If you still can’t download after you clear the cache & data of the Play Store, restart your device.

  1. Press and hold the Power button until the menu pops up.
  2. Tap Power off or Restart if that is an option.
  3. If needed, press and hold the Power button until your device turns on again.

Regrettably we will need to wait for an update to Android 12 but we will contact you again as soon as we have news of a patch to Android 12 and that the RTS App is working on that operating system.



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Who is that in the photo? Where was I when I took this?

When I first started taking digital photos, seventeen years ago, I kept a written record of the subject of each shot, the date and time it was taken, and the exposure details. When the photography group started, seven years ago, I began to take many more photos, and it became too much of a chore to keep records. I also realised that the technical info was stored with each image anyway, in the ‘Details’ section of the ‘Properties’, otherwise known as the EXIF data, (Exchangeable Image File). However that meant that I no longer had any information about the subjects. (I’m talking about Windows, but Apple computers must have something very similar. I can’t see an equivalent with Android though.)

As I have mentioned in the meetings, it occurred to me recently that I could actually add that info to the EXIF data. There are five headings I can add text to. From the top they are Tags, Title, Authors, Comments, and Subject. The upshot is that I have been able to throw away (so far) about 120 pages of my original records, covering about 4,000 images.

One other thing. My camera records information about some of the settings I have used which doesn’t appear in the EXIF data, possibly because it is specific to Panasonic Lumix cameras. Things like the mode (P, A, S, or M), HDR, and highlight and shadow settings. I now use the Comments heading to record that info.

Incidentally I store the images in folders just numbered consecutively. I don’t need to have folders labelled by subject, for instance, as I can create virtual folders on the fly using ‘search’.

I’m not as good as David at explaining things face to face, but I hope you can now see why I am so keen on the idea, and wanted to share it.

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Screen Prints

In case you are wondering how I take a picture of our Zoom meetings, the answer depends on which operating system you are using. (I am using Windows 10.)

David has supplied these instructions for Apple users:

Taking a screen shot on a Mac …

support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201361

Alternatively from MacOS Mojave onwards there’s a tool called Screenshot – here’s a link to the Help file …

support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh26782/mac

To do a screenshot of an iOS or iPadOS device, press the power-off button and then the Home button.

With a Windows computer, the simple answer involves the ‘PrtSc’ key, near the right hand end of the top row of the keypad. You might have to press the Alt key or the Fn key, on the bottom row, at the same time. You will have to experiment. A message might pop up, saying the screen shot has been saved somewhere. If that doesn’t happen, the image might have been saved to the clipboard, in which case you will have to choose somewhere to paste it.

The less simple Windows answer involves the Snip and Sketch program, which you access by pressing the Windows key + Shift + S. This gives you the opportunity to crop the picture on the screen, so you only save the area you want.

For Android tablets and phones, press the power and volume-down buttons at the same time. I couldn’t get that to work with my phone though. I did have success by holding the power and ‘home’ buttons together. The screen flashed to show the shot had been taken. The picture went to Google Photos and to the Gallery.

Good luck!

Jim

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Windows 10 – Major Update

The first thing is, to see if there are any updates available, you go to Settings – Update & Security – Windows Update.

That is worth doing anyway, but I want to tell you about my experience with “Feature update to Windows 10, version 2004”. I started that running yesterday afternoon, and it finally stopped downloading this morning, seventeen hours later. I now have to decide when to install it. I’ll let you know how that goes.

My laptop is seven years old, and I use mobile broadband, so your experience might be different, but still …

Update: The installation took three hours.

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Google Photos – Album Archive

This started when I wanted to find out how many images I have in Google Photos, which they don’t tell you. After some digging I discovered my Google Dashboard, which again isn’t easy to find, so here’s the link (to yours of course):
myaccount.google.com/dashboard .
This told me basic information about all my Google apps, including the fact that I have over 200 images in Photos. I was surprised to be told in addition that I have over 600 albums though! Following that link, I discovered that these are stored in my Album Archive.

When my tablet and phone photos are uploaded, they are put into albums according to the day they are taken. That is OK, but it turns out that when I delete old images, the empty album remains. I will now start deleting these empty albums from the Archive, but it seems I have to do it one at a time. I can’t at the moment see a way of selecting a group of them.

I hope that is of interest to someone.

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My first encounter with computers

It seems I was relatively late entering the world of computing.  For Christmas 1993 I treated myself to a Psion 3A, from Argos.  This little marvel taught me about word processing, databases, spreadsheets, and even basic programming.  The screen was black and white of course, and there was no web browser, but still…  And the RAM? 256K! Not enough for even one small image these days.

I don’t remember when I first got to use a PC, but my first email, internal to the BBC and using my department’s log-in, was in April 1995.  I got my own log-in two years later.  In 1996 I got interested in writing web pages with HTML, which led to me having some formal training, getting involved with BBC Wales’ first web site, and then looking after my department’s pages on the Beeb’s intranet.

I didn’t get my first laptop until October 2007.

Jim Bartlett, June 2020

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Windows – Updates and Booting Up

Some notes, following the Zoom meeting last Thursday.

Updates: Going to ‘Settings’ you will find a link to ‘Update & Security’ at the end of the list of links. That has a section, ‘Windows Update’, which will tell you if there are any updates waiting to be installed, and also give you some ‘Advanced options’ on how to handle them. One of those is the facility to pause updates being automatically installed for up to 35 days, for instance.

Booting up: Another setting is ‘Apps’, which includes a link to ‘Startup’. This shows a list of your apps, and which of them are selected to start automatically when you log in. If you want your computer to boot up more quickly, it might help to turn off one or more of these apps. I will just mention Skype, which I found was selected to start, although I have never used it.

There are probably similar settings for Apple users.

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Updating Browsers etc

Once a week I check to see if my Chrome and Firefox browsers are up to date, and occasionally they will install an update.  Maybe that would happen automatically, I’m not sure, but it’s nice to know they are up to  date.  To do this I click on About Google Chrome or About Firefox, which are both in the Help menus.  The Firefox menu is via a tab at the top of the page, the Chrome one is via the three dots on the top right.
This also applies to updating other programs, by the way.