moving apps to sd card on galaxy s7

[AC Question]

heard there was issues

 

[anon(632115)]

Would you care to elaborate? The S7 is no different to any Android device with and without adoptable storage

 

[Rukbat]

Meaning that "there are issues" with moving apps to the SD card. Most apps don't work right, or just don't work (like widgets) from the SD card, so many developers have learned to turn that function off in their apps.

Also remember, all you're "moving" is pieces of an app, not the whole app. So if you remove the SD card, the app still appears to be in the phone, but it will freeze or crash if you try to run it.

And ... there's a pointer in internal storage (where Android always looks for apps) pointing to where on the app that piece of that app is located. So if the piece moved is small enough (not much larger than a pointer - and that's determined by the library the developer is using in the app at that point), you can actually lose internal space by moving the app.

And ... the app doesn't appear on the card, it's just "there" (and that space is marked as being used - if anything goes wrong, you have to format the card to get the space back - there's no "file" to "delete").

All in all, a bad idea. Even formatting the card as "internal", so it becomes "adoptable storage", while apps will run from it, still leaves you with a card that nothing but your phone can read. Have a glitch with the card, and you have to format it (and lose everything on it - and the phone makes that decision - all you have is "storage" - you can't decide what part of storage an app or file goes to). Adoptable storage is actually intended for phones with less than 8GB of internal storage. Using a 128GB card on a phone with 32GB (or more) of internal storage is not what it was intended for - and if Google makes some change in a future version that breaks the phone's ability to read large cards if it has a lot of internal storage, they're not going to somehow recover your lost data. (Even just storing data internally means that any important file should be backed up. When playing "store it on the card" games, that's doubly true. When putting apps on the card, make it "triply".)