Device memory varies wildly, but consistently is near maximum

wojci028

Distinguished
Oct 1, 2011
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18,510
Hello all,
I am running a galaxy note 1, unrooted, model SHV-E160S, android version 4.1.2.
I have freed up as much free space as I can. I have 13 gigs free on my SD card, another 13.5 gigs free of USB storage, and apparently I'm running out of memory.

The first thing I tried was uninstalling just about every app that I don't use on a regular basis that is larger than 3 or 4 MB. I have 2 gigs of total space to use and only about 250 MB of apps remaining. Everything else is either preinstalled garbage that I can't delete or some sort of system process. When I look up memory usage, it seems to just refill itself and then memory dump at random intervals. My contacts storage in particular seems to be varying wildly, rapidly increasing in size after a phone reboot until it runs out of space. Normally my contacts should be about 300 MB, but right now it's up to 1.14 gigs, aaaaaand it just jumped back down to 520 MB for no apparent reason. What the heck is going on? Do I have a virus?