On Matthew Miller’s blog post about Android Cupcake in which Matt wrote that Google needs to improve storage management (Matt calls it memory managment, but this is really about storage), I replied about how Android Market is consuming more and more storage on my G1. It is currently at 23 MB on my device. I don’t know why, but I had not done a search to see whether anyone else is experiencing the Market storage issue, and I have since learned they have. Apparently this is a known issue to Google that they claim to have fixed in their source code, but obviously the patch has not been released.
In the mean time, the only apparent direct way to fix the problem is a hard reset. However, Android is supposed to automatically decrease this storage when the device gets into a low storage situation. I have seen this several times, each time of which I have manually gone in to the app manager and either cleared the browser cache or deleted applications. According to some, the trick may be that when you get the lower storage warning to turn off the G1 and then turn it back on. It seems as though if Android detected a low storage condition when powered off, it will do some clean up at boot such as with the Market.
So the good news is that Market should not continue to consume more and more storage because at some point Android should clean it up. Hopefully this issue will be fixed in the next release of Android, that by all reports should be coming in the next 2 to 3 weeks. In the mean time I’ll wait for the next time I get a low storage warning and try power cycling my G1 and see what happens.
All of this highlights two things. First, that Matt’s premise in his blog post is absolutely correctly. Android’s storage management must be improved. Ideally, it should incorporate storage cards as part of the total device storage so that users have a way to increase the storage on their device. Minimally Android needs to provide more ways for users to easily free up storage, and it must address the browser cache issue that causes users to lose favorites and cookies whenever they delete the browser data.
In my mind this issue also reinforces to me that Android on the G1 is a beta, and in my mind that means Google ought to focus on bug fixes over adding features. Bugs, including anything that causes a negative user experience, will cause more damage to a platform than not having a built-in video application. What is needed with Google is active release management in which every 6 to 10 weeks a new release is distributed that fixes bugs. I say this because I think one of the threats with Android is fixation on features versus getting the core product working perfectly. In my opinion this is the problem Microsoft has with Windows Mobile that allows bugs like the alarm notification bug to linger through new releases of the product while we get new features. When developing a new platform, the platform vendor (Google) needs to focus on making the operating system perfect and let the developer community focus on providing new features. I think this has been one of the fundamental differences betwee how Apple has developed the Mac operating systems compared with how Microsoft has developed Windows.
Notes From The Cave 