Android News
Froyo’s Apps to SD not enough for this user
October 11, 2010 | by Ed Clark
Android, Android Apps, Android OS, Paid apps
One of the reasons I rooted my old G1 so long ago was that I would run out of internal storage so quickly. It was frustrating to pay for apps and then have to uninstall them because I ran out of space. The apps to SD hacks in those early ROMs made my life easier, and I could install pretty much anything I wanted. At one point, I had over 140 apps on my HTC Dream.
I have never rooted my Nexus One, partly because updates happened so quickly that Google stayed ahead of my complaints. Besides wowing the world with Flash 10.1 support, Android 2.2 offered a lot of “Dream List” items for users like me. Faster, smoother, prettier? Check. Tethering? Check. Apps to SD? Built in to Froyo… but wait. Yes, many developers have made the switch to external storage, and I have certainly saved a lot of space with the new “Move to SD card” setting.
(Here’s how: Home Screen: Menu: Settings: Applications: Manage applications: Press “All” tab: Menu: Press “Sort by Size”, select app.)
However, many of my “space hogs” remain: Skype, 13.2MB. Flash, 12.4MB. Maps, 9.3MB. Documents to Go, 8MB. Facebook, 5.1MB. This is partly because these apps use features that will break whenever you mount your phone’s SD card in your computer. A full rundown of what apps should and shouldn’t be allowed to install to the SD card can be found here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/install-location.html
I understand the reasons listed, but having 48MB tied up in “internal-only” apps isn’t going to make anyone happy, particularly when a phone has limited internal storage to begin with. When you take away all the space for OS files and built-in apps on the N1 (and many other Android phones), you have a limited amount of room for other apps. Long story short: the current apps to SD implementation is not quite good enough, and I find that I am uninstalling apps again. Including paid apps. Grrr. At the time of this writing, my phone reports internal available space of 19.8MB after deleting my browser cache. That will last me for a few days, assuming I don’t install anything new.
So what else can be done? I have some suggestions which may or may not be technically feasible. For example, my Browser app data fills up very quickly–it just went up to 40MB the other day and basically shut down my phone. Sure, one option would be to use a different default browser, but I like how well the default browser works with the N1 News/Weather widget. (Note: If you are running out of space on your N1, try checking the size of your Browser app data via the same settings path described above.) Similarly, my Calendar Storage is stuck at 4.77MB, and my Dialer Storage is at 2.88MB.
Does this data really need to live in my phone’s internal storage? I would prefer my Browser user data to be on the SD card, and it would save me a lot of hassle of deleting the cache every few days. Of course, there also should be an option to limit how big the Browser’s cache can get. Calendar and Dialer Storage could live on the SD card as well–after all, if I’m mounting the storage in a computer, I already have access to my Calendar and my Contacts.
Another suggestion is to allow for an actual application exit whenever you mount your card. In other words, we should see a warning along the lines of: “Mounting your card as SD storage will shut down Skype, Flash, Maps, etc, etc, until you run these applications again.” This may not be possible, but it sure as heck would be useful.
Finally, we need developers to enable installing to SD whenever possible. I love Devilry Huntress, Aldiko, and Astro, but I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t be moved to my external storage. (Note that I am NOT picking on these excellent apps, but just using them as examples.) What do you think, Android developers–are these ideas possible? If so, let’s make it happen.
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The thing that kills me about this situation is that I very rarely mount my phone's SD card to transfer data (I usually use dropbox instead). I can live with just about everything being shut off (even the phone functionality) when I mount the SD card.
You could just purchase a newer phone that has more internal memory? Google has done a pretty good job with feature updates without having to chase the 1% power user demographic.
That's definitely an answer, but I think the issue deserves a closer look. Here are my problems: 1) Internal storage–the iPhone solution–is limiting in that once you run out, you're done. SD means you can always upgrade your capacity. You could even change cards if you needed to. 2) Having an option to store non-essential files–like browser data–on less valuable storage is a good idea. Maybe phone storage technologies will grow faster than application needs, but I doubt it. 3) The ability for a user to actually specify where files are to be stored–media, apps, cache data, etc–would be a superior approach to current methods.
That's kind of a bait and switch solution. The N1 is only 6 months old, and is still in many ways superior to every one of the latest android phones. Being completely vanilla, free, and open not being the least of it. At the time, Google declared that apps would be installable to SD, enlarging internal storage has only happened on a few models (mostly craptastic samsungs with a host of other issues) as a work around. Installing 200MB of apps is also NOT a 1% power user demographic, feel free to hit up appBrain to check the stats. Google needs to man up and finish the job as far as I'm concerned. Sure they have done well, but thats not an excuse to start throwing out cool new (half baked) features willy-nilly and abandoning those prior while still half baked because they got bored with them. Apple will eat them alive if the do that. It's really quite embarrassing to admin to an iphone owner that you cant show him the latest android coolness because you'd have to uninstall apps you need first, because your shiny fairly new N1 has less internal memory than an Atari-ST, because everyone banked on SD being the way forward, only Google dropped the ball.
We also need to consider apps with data that can be seperated from the app itself. For example the Music player references the SD card for music files, the email apps like the default Google Mail and Email apps. Both consume main memory for holding mails.
This is a beautiful topic as I'm running into this daily, this is a big reason why I'm looking to upgrade my n1, I need mojavascript: postComment(0);re space for apps.
I just switched to the desire rom.. and man.. I have no space at all. Cyanogen was heaps better, but still I was always in a constant fight for more internal storage.
The thing is, I love my N1, and I think it's a bit of overkill to buy a new phone just for some internal storage… because I love everything else and don't really play many 3d games at all.
Why not mount an image on the sdcard like they do for samsung galaxy S ??
run this command in adb:
adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2
moves any app to sd card.
if you want to disable change the 2 to a 0
It's otherwise a good idea, but brings you problems whenever you want to update apps (cannot update apps that are installed to sd but don't support installing to sd or something like that), haven't tried but that's what i've read and that's why i have not tried.
Really, there's so many apps that could very well be installed to sd. Even the ones with services and widgets. I mean what does Skype have that prevents installing it to SD? It doesn't even seem to have widgets (didn't study much, had to uninstall it to preserve space). And if it did, why not create a separate apk for the widgets? not everyone needs them.
Maps? Who needs maps when SD card is unmounted or connected to your computer? Facebook? Flash? Really, if your computer is using your SD, when you're transferring music or whatever, I doubt many people would need these apps just at that moment. You can use flash stuff on your computer, you can surf Facebook with your computer.
Also, the way this is implemented, most apps only move about 60% of their footprint to SD.
I have had the same issue with my Desire. In the end I installed Cyanogen’s ROM and dark tremors Apps2SD. It all works fanastically well and I can now use all the apps that were just too big (earth!)
I don’t understand why the OS can’t implement the same solution without having to get techie on it. People don’t expect to see memory full errors when they buy large SD cards. I don’t agree that this is only power users that have the issue. The shame is that they are the only people that can get around the problem.
if an app doesn't enable "move to sd", give it low rating till they do
Can we move our apps to external SD card instead of Internal SD?
Wow, I was afraid to be the only one having this kind of problem…yes, I feel the android project has a big hole here. My wife has an iPhone and she is giving Apple important money for their apps.
What Google was thinking when designing Android??? We don't want your money, get a bunch of applications and be happy with those. No, no, no…in 2010 and with a 32Gb microSD (probably more memory than the mainframe sending the first man to the moon was having!!) I cannot run out of memory…no, no, no!!!
From Apps Manager we can see some apps has the options 'Move to Phone', it means it is on SD card. However, if you run App2Sd it still show a lot of those apps are actually on the Phone storage, which I think is true.
Even I have done an adb to install default to SD card, but can see the internal memory keeps decreasing for every installation (where Apps manager indicates it is on SD).
Any idea how we can 'actually' have it moved to SD ?
Thanks.
Bert
How about having Android Market marking apps whether they are installable/movable on SD cards or not?
One easy way is root with unlockroot software from pc. Install link2sd & grand acces with superuser. Know move instaled aps to sd, hoever you vill still lose memory, like if you install GO louncher for theames, you will see even if moved to sd or uninstaled that some internal memory will be losed.
Other way is root explorer will let you browse in system, hoever you will have to know what to remove, one file & you can damage the booting of the phone , resulting in a need of reinstaling firmware.
Forgot to tell, use link to sd select system aps , sort by chace , select app clear chace ; then select by data & clear data.
Hay mucha gente que simplemente no tiene ningún valor añadido para agregar a la obra OP, por favor tratar de llevar una discusión más constructiva a este mensaje. Sé que no estoy haciendo nada constructivo con este anuncio, pero yo quería contarles a ustedes al respecto.
Gracias por la crítica sabia usted. Yo y mi vecino se disponían a hacer una investigación al respecto. Recibimos un excelente libro sobre el asunto de nuestra biblioteca local y la mayoría de los libros de exactamente donde no como influensive como su información. Estoy muy contento de ver esta información que estaba buscando desde hace mucho tiempo.
Bonjour à vous tous, je suis aussi nouvelle pour les forums. Bien que j’ai rejoint il ya quelques instants, je me cache les forums pour le moment, d’apprendre à connaître ce qui se passe.