Of course not. It has 8GB of internal storage and you’re geeky enough to have a Droid, so you certainly aren’t out of internal storage. If you’re like me, though, you’re still receiving an error message telling you that you are “Low on space: Phone storage space is getting low.” Here’s the problem, though: HTC has no idea that this issue exists, let alone that it’s essentially bricking Incredibles.
I spent a fair amount of time Googling the issue tonight (surprise) and came to an extensive thread on the Android Central forums regarding the low on space message. Seems a lot of folks have this same problem: not only does the phone show plenty of space in its 8GB internal partition but also in the areas of the drive devoted to so-called “phone memory.” According to HTC tech support (more on them later), this warning message is supposed to appear when you have less than 10MB available of the roughly 750MB devoted to phone memory. I, like most of the other posters on Android Central and HTC’s own support forums, have plenty of space (549MB in my case) available and shouldn’t be getting any such warnings. Neither should the people with HTC Heros who have also posted their problem on the HTC forums (t even looks like this problem is popping up on HTC’s Windows Mobile phones).
Or so the extraordinarily polite gentlemen at HTC tech support told me when I finally just called. He thanked me for bringing the problem to their attention, informed me that the only solution he could propose was a hard reset, and suggested that I note the problem on their support feedback page, which had a much wider audience than his tech support database. If you happen to be having the same low-on-space issue and you’d like to talk to him or one of his tech support friends yourself, he’s just a phone call away.
Now I really don’t want to do a hard reset, since I’ve invested some time in getting my Incredible to be precisely the mobile computing companion I want it to be. And from everything I’ve read tonight, it certainly sounds like this is an issue with HTC’s mail and messaging clients. People who have gone through a reset and abandoned HTC Mail and the HTC SMS client in favor others like K9mail and Handcent SMS haven’t had this problem reappear. Others who have just done the reset have had mixed results.
So now, not only are the HTC apps and their Sense UI keeping me from getting Android 2.2 until later this summer, but some users are reporting that the low disk space issue causes their phones to lock up and become unusable until they perform the hard reset, wiping out their applications, data, and setup. Awesome. And here I was feeling all superior to my iPhone-carrying friends. Makes me want to root the phone if I have to wipe it anyway.
Anyone else out there having this issue? Get on the horn with HTC and make some noise. We’ll see if we can escalate this beyond grumpy posters on hidden forums.
Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.
Disclosure
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.).
He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change.
He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have).
Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others.
Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair.
Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards.
Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap.
Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff.
Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable.
Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.
Biography
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider.
He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.
I am not kidding but what is a "hard reset". I don't know I use OSX and Ubuntu. Why would you have to do that and why is it soooooo easy to screw things up. Is it because internet pop ups completely hose your computer? Seriously I don't know. 
