The phone app (by Google) has 700 mb of data on the phone. What is that? Call history? Contacts? Then what is in the contacts app? Is it safe to delete?

Stock Pixel 6a

  • evo@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    So its basically “telemetry”

    There’s just no way. Telemetry are just text logs and should never take more than a couple MB. They are also going to be deleted routinely and frequently after being sent to the server.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      I don’t understand what data would be in the phone app. I use a separate voicemail app, there is a separate contacts app, and Messages should have all the text multimedia. The only data that should be in the app would be call history, which I don’t mind losing, but I don’t want to lose messeging media or contact info.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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        2 months ago

        You should be able to export both contacts and texts if the backup app is given contacts permission and to be set as the text app temporarily.

        Not sure about the text multimedia. If it’s in the system text database it can be exported, if the Messages app has it in its private data then tough luck.

        Well you can probably still back it up to Google.

      • 0x0@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        I don’t understand what data would be in the phone app.

        The only data that should be in the app would be call history,

        There you have it, nice data points to know.

        • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOP
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          2 months ago

          So I ended up clearing the data. It was not the call history, contacts, or messaging media.

          Some of my very old messaging media was gone, but I think that that probably was already missing from the last time my phone died.

    • 299792458ms@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      Its obviously not all just telemetry, it was an exageration, all they care about is your data and every feature they add is aligned for that goal whilst making the UI as “pretty” as possible. So I did not mention that because it felt unnecesary.

      • evo@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        It’s a drop in the bucket though. I’d be shocked if it was more than 1%. So it doesn’t explain anything.

        • 299792458ms@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          Hey man, I did not mean to say that all 700MB were basically telemetry. I was only trying to say that the services purpose is data collection, implying that the app itself (GUI) and the integration of those services are responsible of the size of the app.

          • evo@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            the app itself (GUI) and the integration of those services are responsible of the size of the app.

            That’s < 100MB for me.

            • 299792458ms@lemmy.zip
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              2 months ago

              Ok, and what is you point? The app I use is under 10MB and the data under 1MB. I do not know how can a log of calls and contact list be over 500MB. Another app I tested 18MB and 200KB of data. So you either have a contact list over 100 000 contacts or google contacts is abnormally huge. In the end is still 5-10x the size of alternative contact/dialer apps.