Wouldnt it be possible to compress our 7650's 'user space' at a ratio of 2:1 thereby giving ourselves 7.2mb of disc space? That would mean I could have Doom & Pool installed at the same time! Bliss!
It would be quicker and easier than upgrading the memory. Cheaper than buying a 6650, and it would be done by software not hardware mods. The only downside is the decrease in reliability but as long as you were to back up your data once a week or so it'd be fine! Wouldn't it?! :-?
I'm prepared for all the people telling me that the above is absolute nonsense so lets have it! 😃
In theory, compression is possible. One thing you missed out was the fact the decompression will take time, so you'd also get lag before accessing any contact. Not only that, you'd have to have memory available in order to decompress the data you require.
In practise, the phone's operating system probably expects the contacts file in an uncompressed format and would complain if you compress it, unless another application could act as a go between. Even then, it's not a simple thing to do.
I wouldn't be surprised if the contacts file was already compressed internally, but I don't know for sure, since I've not looked at the file. Compressing a compressed file can lead to an increase in file size.
So what about only compressing, for example, half of the availble disc space? Leaving contacts/calenda well alone? No need for a 'go between' piece of software, and i'm sure we could all live with a bit of lag when opening applications if it meant we could store more data.
There are programs out there that allow you to compress your data files, such as the photos you take. You'd still have to uncompress them before you want to use the files as the applications themselves aren't designed to cope with the compressed file format
The one I've come across, but haven't tried is ZipMan and it's only $10.
http://www.allabouter6.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1496
I know ZipMan won't do this, but from a technical point of view, would it be possible to compress either:
A) Unused disc space (Not files. This can be done on a PC/MAC)
B) Applications
?
Compression of unused diskspace was all to do with the amount of data you needed to store in a fixed block of data.
For example, imagine you have egg boxes that can hold a dozen eggs.
If you have 13 eggs, then you'd need two of those egg boxes and the 2nd one would have 11 spaces free. Now, if each time you add a batch of eggs, you needed a new egg box, that 11 spaces would be unused. The compression on the empty space would allow you, for example, to use egg boxes that held only a half dozen eggs, so the amount wasted would be less.
This was an old concept with early versions of operating systems and I don't think there's much need for it now. As for the 7650, you don't have a harddisk to store the data, but have memory instead, which works differently...so no, you can't compress the "unused memory"
As for the applications, yes, you could compress them, but while compressed, you wouldn't be able to use them and then have the same problem of having to decompress before usage.