Russians told about the loss of photos due to lack of memory on smartphones

Yandex 360 analysts conducted a study to find out how often users lose important photos and videos, and in what situations this happens. The survey data was reviewed by Izvestia on April 1.

More than half of Russians (52%) have experienced a lack of memory on their smartphone at least once at an inopportune moment: 37% had it happen repeatedly, 15% — once. However, the problem does not depend on the device: in 59% of cases we are talking about Android, in 41% — about the iPhone.

Most often, memory ended at significant moments — at concerts and festivals (25%), on trips (17%) and on family holidays (12%). Less often — at children's matinees, weddings or at discharge from the hospital (4% each).

To free up space, 37% of users regularly delete photos and videos, but such actions often lead to losses.: 37% accidentally deleted the necessary files, and another 19% later regretted deleting them.

In addition to running out of memory, users face more serious data loss scenarios. More than a third of Russians (36%) have lost photos at least once due to a device failure without the possibility of recovery, another 16% have experienced a breakdown, but were able to return the data.

Most often, devices fail unexpectedly: in 32% of cases, the phone simply stopped turning on. Almost a quarter of users (25%) lost their device due to water ingress, and 19% due to falls and serious damage. Memory failures (14%), screen failures (7%), or charging port failures (4%) were less common.

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Interestingly, technology does not always last long: a third of devices (34%) broke down in the first year of use, another 18% in the period from one to three years. However, the risk is associated not only with breakdowns, but also with the loss of the devices themselves. Every second Russian (49%) has lost his phone at least once: 9% were unable to recover photos, and 40% were able to return the data.

Smartphones were most often lost during trips (60%). Another 18% of users dropped their phone on the way: in transport, in a store, or on the street. 13% lost their device due to drowning, and 6% simply forgot it in public places. In 3% of cases, the phone was stolen.

A quarter of users (26%) admit that they are ready to "give everything" to return the lost images. Another 42% say they strongly regret the loss, even if there were no important pictures among the photos. About 22% worry moderately, and only 10% have no regrets at all.

After a negative experience, users begin to rethink their storage habits. Today, about a quarter of Russians use cloud services (26%), and almost the same number use social networks (24%). However, 22% still store photos only in their smartphone's memory. Other options are used less frequently: 20% save pictures on a computer, 12% on external hard drives, 6% on flasks, and 7% store photos in hard copy.

On March 24, Anton Vishnevsky, MegaFon's mobile equipment manager, told Izvestia how to free up memory on a smartphone. According to him, a significant part of the gadget's memory is occupied by automatically saved photos and videos from messengers, as well as cache and downloaded files. All this is stored in the device's memory, although from the outside it seems that you just looked and scrolled on. Additionally, downloaded files and documents from messengers, e-mail, and the Downloads folder take up space, which is usually remembered only when the storage is full.

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