If you’ve got an HTC Desire you’ll be familiar with the perennial annoyance of it failing to install apps or download SMS messages because it’s low on internal storage. Most probably it’s due to Contacts Storage ballooning to absurd levels; but fortunately, if that’s the cause, it can be fixed.

In my case, I had 100 contacts, which were requiring a staggering 30MB of storage. Most of these contacts only had a phone number or an email address, quite a few had both, but there didn’t seem much reason that much data to be there.

The cause of the problem was the fact that around a quarter of the contacts were linked either to Twitter or Flickr accounts, and occasionally both. (I don’t use Facebook, so that wasn’t a contributing factor.) The fix, therefore, is to kill the links.

The solution was as follows:

1. Go to Gmail and export contacts, just in case (you can do this on the phone, too, if you prefer; and if you have non-Google contacts, ie phone or SIM contacts, then these can only be backed up on the phone).
2. Go to Settings – Applications – Manage applications – All – Contacts Storage, and press ‘Clear data’.
3. Go out, and back to the People app; you’ll have to fill in your contact card again but everyone else should be there (if not, sync).
4. You should find that the contacts are unlinked. (If not, try deleting them all: Menu – Delete – Menu – Select all. If it somehow goes belly-up you have your exported files.)
5. Sorted!

My Contacts Storage data size went from 30GB to 800kB and there it’s stayed. I haven’t had a storage warning since.

And the disadvantage of unlinked contacts? As far as I can see, it just means they don’t pick up avatar images from the linked services. Big deal.

It’s like having a new phone…