Lost icons after clearing data

[DanielFFF]

I have heaps of added apps on my Galaxy Gio, as a result of which (despite rooting and moving all I can to SD card) I'm forever running out of memory (I presume this means RAM - I'm a bit new to all this!). Sometimes I can't even do an update of an existing app without it aborting due to low memory.

So today I went through the apps list and cleared the data for every app that I thought I didn't use. BUT all my carefully arranged home screens (full of my own app icons) disappeared, and reverted to the phone default icons! Aaaaargh!

I can eventually rebuild my several home screens, but I'd like to learn which particular app's data stores that information (home screen layouts), so I don't ever clear it again!

Any help appreciated! Thanks.

Daniel
Gerroa, Australia

 

[srkmagnus]

I believe the Launcher is the app you are referring to. It's either going to be Launcher.apk or something that has Touchwiz.apk It will have a home symbol next to it and controls the desktop/launcher functions. Do not clear the data in this app or you'll experience a wipe of the desktop settings you had.

There are third party launcher apps in the Play Store which allow you to backup the launcher settings.

Hope this helps

 

[Devinator]

I have heaps of added apps on my Galaxy Gio, as a result of which (despite rooting and moving all I can to SD card) I'm forever running out of memory (I presume this means RAM - I'm a bit new to all this!).

Moving apps to the SD card just moves them from the phone's internal storage to the SD card, neither of which are memory. But, you are most likely running out of internal storage if you are having trouble updating apps, so, that was probably a good idea. You should see how much free space you have on your internal storage/SD card. If internal storage is almost at it's capacity, you'll need to clean it up a bit.

 

[DanielFFF]

I believe the Launcher is the app you are referring to. It's either going to be Launcher.apk or something that has Touchwiz.apk It will have a home symbol next to it and controls the desktop/launcher functions. Do not clear the data in this app or you'll experience a wipe of the desktop settings you had.

There are third party launcher apps in the Play Store which allow you to backup the launcher settings.

Hope this helps

From the 'All' list in Settings/Applications/Manage applications, there are no apps named Launcher or Touchwiz.

Given that I'm already having problems with too many apps and not enough memory, adding another app for launching doesn't seem like a great idea!

 

[DanielFFF]

Moving apps to the SD card just moves them from the phone's internal storage to the SD card, neither of which are memory. --- You should see how much free space you have on your internal storage/SD card. If internal storage is almost at it's capacity, you'll need to clean it up a bit.

I beg to differ... Unless something new has been invented without my knowledge, 'internal storage' would have to be either ROM or RAM, both of which are memory (that's what the 'M' in the acronyms stands for).

My phone is showing a little under 19MB of 'internal storage' free, and it complains when it reaches about 16MB (roughly 10% of total RAM). So yes, I 'need to clean it up a bit', which is exactly what I was doing by clearing all unnecessary memory usage (data and caches) of various apps, which killed my desktop layouts!

So still no answer to my question - which app's data holds those desktop layouts?

 

[Devinator]

Nope. Internal storage is like a hard drive on a PC. A hard drive is not ROM. And it's not RAM either. I am very aware of what the acronym stands for, I have a B.S. in Computer Science and work in IT. If your internal storage was ROM you would not be able to write to it. If it were RAM you would lose it the moment you turned off your phone. So, it can't be either.

Read-only memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Random-access memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edit:

Just looked it up, your internal storage is EEPROM. So essentially it's considered erasable/writeable ROM. Dunno why they still use ROM if you can write to it though. Seems outdated. Either way, it's not ROM in the traditional sense, but, you are correct that it is memory. I guess I've just never heard of anyone refer to storage space as memory. When discussing how much memory one's computer has, anyone I talk to would tell you how much RAM they have, not how much space they have (HDD/SDD).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

Edit:

But, from what I read here, memory is anything that can interact with the CPU directly, which would include flash memory, but, a hard disk is not. So, internal storage for a PC might be on a hard disk and not be considered memory, while, one running off a solid state drive would be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_memory#Secondary_storage

Edit:

Storage (Internal storage, as phones call it) doesn't have to be either ROM or RAM (like an HDD, but, that's not really an option on phones), but, it definitely has to persist after power has been removed. The only reason I wouldn't use memory is because it can refer to a wide range of things, in this case, your phones RAM or it's flash memory. But, I think at this point it's moot to care what the terms are. I think the terms are all sorta blending and sometimes being used incorrectly (as in the case of being able to write to ROM). You can call it memory, I'll call it storage, and we can both be happy.

But, back to the real issue. If you are in fact running low on RAM, then you shouldn't worry about it. Android manages it's RAM well and closes apps that are taking up RAM but don't need to currently.

If you are running out of your phones internal flash memory (storage for me, memory for you, lol) to install apps, store music/videos, etc. then you should delete files, uninstall apps, move things to SD, etc. This would be like cleaning up a drive on your PC.

On my X2, I believe the App Home contains your launcher settings, if you have that, or, something like that, and, you cleared the Data on it, your desktop layout is gone and you are SOL. As srkmagnus stated, if you get a custom launcher, you can backup the way your desktop is setup, store it on your SD card, and, you can restore to it.

 

[DanielFFF]

Thanks for your further information. But I'm an electronics engineer, specialising in embedded systems design (hardware + firmware), so I'm familiar with the different types of memory available. The phone's 'internal storage' could be EEPROM, but I'd be surprised. Far more likely to be Flash ROM, perhaps a 'partition' in the microcontroller's internal Flash.

If you are running out of your phones internal flash memory (storage for me, memory for you, lol) to install apps, store music/videos, etc. then you should delete files, uninstall apps, move things to SD, etc. This would be like cleaning up a drive on your PC.

On my X2, I believe the App Home contains your launcher settings, if you have that, or, something like that, and, you cleared the Data on it, your desktop layout is gone and you are SOL. As srkmagnus stated, if you get a custom launcher, you can backup the way your desktop is setup, store it on your SD card, and, you can restore to it.

As already said, I've already moved all I can to the SD card, and I was deleting un-needed data to 'clean up' the 'internal storage' (memory) when I came unstuck with the screen icons.

Incidentally, music/videos wouldn't be stored in internal storage - they require far too much space. They'll always be on the SD card (apart from a few 'system sounds' and images).

And I have no app called 'Home' or anything similar. If there was any app in my phone's list that had a name in any way suggesting it was associated with home screen icons ('Launcher', 'Home', etc) I wouldn't have deleted its data! That's why I asked the question, since the app that holds this data is not clearly named, and I was hoping there'd be someone else with a Galaxy Gio that had worked out which app it was.

No such luck, it seems. :-(

However, using Titanium Backup Pro, I've been able to uninstall some of the 'system' bloatware that came with the phone, and I've now got 25MB of free storage. So now I can look at installing a 3rd-party launcher with backup facility!

Thanks again for your responses.

Daniel

 

[Rukbat]

Flash ROM is one form of EEPROM.

That said (it seems that we're all looking at the same thing from different viewpoints, with about the same amount of knowledge), most Android ROMs (meaning the OS itself - OS authors started misusing the acronym and it's stuck) use the area of internal flash originally designated as the equivalent of a hard drive, so they're stuck with that much space. Some third party ROMs (OS rewrites, not hardware) add a partition on the SD card to that space, or use it instead of internal memory, so you can have a few GB (or more) of "internal memory".

If you're "in the business" you're probably going to want to install more than most phones have room for, so I suggest that you look for a ROM (OS rewrite) that has the feature, like Cyanogen. There may be others for your particular phone. (I'm currently running with 2GB of "internal" and as long as I uninstall all the junk I was trying before I decided which app I wanted to use, I haven't gotten anywhere near running out of space. Even not deleting for a long time, I've rarely used much more than 1GB.)

 

[Devinator]

Incidentally, music/videos wouldn't be stored in internal storage - they require far too much space. They'll always be on the SD card (apart from a few 'system sounds' and images).

And I have no app called 'Home' or anything similar. If there was any app in my phone's list that had a name in any way suggesting it was associated with home screen icons ('Launcher', 'Home', etc) I wouldn't have deleted its data! That's why I asked the question, since the app that holds this data is not clearly named, and I was hoping there'd be someone else with a Galaxy Gio that had worked out which app it was.

No such luck, it seems. :-(

However, using Titanium Backup Pro, I've been able to uninstall some of the 'system' bloatware that came with the phone, and I've now got 25MB of free storage. So now I can look at installing a 3rd-party launcher with backup facility!

Thanks again for your responses.

Daniel

Well, if you have nothing like that, then I'm not quite sure how you ended up in the situation you are in. Maybe the name is ambiguous, as you stated. But, now I see why you are having so much trouble. You only have 150 MB available to you on internal storage. I have four GB of internal on my phone and use it to store whatever I need to. I have had media on it before, so, they wont always be on the SD. There are no limitations as to what you put on your internal storage, that's really up to you. But, with a phone such as yours, it wouldn't be prudent to store it there, as you stated, but, you could, lol.

But, I'm glad that you were able to free up some space and will be able to get a custom launcher on there. It'll be nice to be able to backup your settings. I make sure to back mine up on both my phone an tablet at regular intervals because I don't want to deal with having to set it up again once I have put some time into it. No problem, glad it's all worked out.

That said (it seems that we're all looking at the same thing from different viewpoints, with about the same amount of knowledge)

Yes, agreed. I guess I was just in a mood when I posted, I shouldn't have even brought up, lol.

 

[DanielFFF]

Flash ROM is one form of EEPROM.

I almost agree; they are both based on the same priciples, but implemented differently. To quote from Wikipedia: "In the industry, there is a convention to reserve the term EEPROM to byte-wise erasable memories compared to block-wise erasable flash memories."

Anyway, having sorted out some of the terminology let's get back to my original problem...

I have, as stated in my initial post, rooted my phone and set up an ext2fs partition on the SD card. Although I'm an embedded systems engineer, I did the rooting with great trepidation, having read many horror stories of people 'bricking' their phones trying to root them. So I went with a rooting package that seemed to have been used successfully by many people, and came with very detailed and clear instructions: 'universal_gb_root_v20.zip'.

Whether this enables the ext2fs partition to appear like 'internal' memory, I don't really know. But it has certainly allowed me to install many more apps than I could before. And since my last post I've used Titanium Backup Pro to move all it could find to the SD card, though subsequently had to move 5 apps back to phone memory because they didn't work properly. But I still ended up with almost 40MB of free 'internal storage', which is good!

But given my propensity to keep finding and adding useful apps to my phone, I'll almost certainly want to do some more memory clearing at some later time, bringing me back to my original problem.

I did a search with ES File Explorer Pro and found that my launcher appears to be TWlauncher. But that name does not appear in the list of apps presented by Settings/Applications/Manage applications, which is where I went to clear memory used by apps! So it must be hidden in or called by some other app. There is nothing in that list that includes 'launcher' or 'home' in its name. The only likely app I can see is SamsungAppsUNA2. Does anyone know what that does?

 

[Rukbat]

I almost agree; they are both based on the same priciples, but implemented differently. To quote from Wikipedia: "In the industry, there is a convention to reserve the term EEPROM to byte-wise erasable memories compared to block-wise erasable flash memories."

Anyway, having sorted out some of the terminology

NP. I come from the days when "storage" meant mag tape or disk packs. Eraseable PROM meant a UV eraser. And I'm too lazy to change the words I learned when I still had mostly original parts.

Whether this enables the ext2fs partition to appear like 'internal' memory, I don't really know. But it has certainly allowed me to install many more apps than I could before. And since my last post I've used Titanium Backup Pro to move all it could find to the SD card, though subsequently had to move 5 apps back to phone memory because they didn't work properly. But I still ended up with almost 40MB of free 'internal storage', which is good!

Good, but that only gives you a little room. Some OS rewrites actually use the "external" SD card partition as the "internal memory", so you can have as large an internal memory as you like (up to about 62GB now), and you can have your widgets (which normally won't run from the SD card) on the SD card also.

I did a search with ES File Explorer Pro and found that my launcher appears to be TWlauncher. But that name does not appear in the list of apps presented by Settings/Applications/Manage applications, which is where I went to clear memory used by apps! So it must be hidden in or called by some other app. There is nothing in that list that includes 'launcher' or 'home' in its name. The only likely app I can see is SamsungAppsUNA2. Does anyone know what that does?

No help from me on either one. But, as I said, if you get a "ROM" (and it has to be for that model phone) that uses the SD card as internal memory, you don't worry about a GB of unwanted apps on the real internal memory. You don't even worry about a GB of junk you downloaded and haven't deleted yet. (Want to keep a few full-length movies on the phone? No problem. Especially with the price of class 10 SD cards dropping like lead balloons.)

I guess I was just in a mood when I posted

I think you misunderstood my comment. I just meant that we all seem to be pretty experienced, so we could talk on the same level. Not that you hadn't or something.

 

[Devinator]

Nah, I got it and definitely agree. All three of us seem to know what we are talking about. My comment about me being in a mood basically meant I shouldn't have been nitpicking, I was probably cranky or something, lol. I knew what was implied and regardless as to the outcome of the discussion, I should have just answered the question. I'm here to help, not needlessly attempt to correct people.

As for you Dan. I'm not sure what your launcher is called then. I guess follow some of rukbats advice if you wanna get more room for apps. And Just be careful clearing data for apps and you shouldn't have a problem. I rarely clear data for apps. Only when I'm 100% sure what app it is, and when I'm having a specific problem with the app. Like, if an app is malfunctioning, I might go in and clear it's data. My amazon appstore app was all laggy and getting worse. Went in and cleared its data and it's fine now.

Sent from my DROID X2 using Android Central Forums

 

[DanielFFF]

NP. I come from the days when "storage" meant mag tape or disk packs. Eraseable PROM meant a UV eraser. And I'm too lazy to change the words I learned when I still had mostly original parts.

You don't go back far enough (my first encounter with digital computers was mid 60s; analogue computers a year or so earlier) - what about mercury delay line memory, and 'core' memory (magnetic toroids strung on 3D grids of 3 othogonal wires)?

But, as I said, if you get a "ROM" (and it has to be for that model phone) that uses the SD card as internal memory, you don't worry about a GB of unwanted apps on the real internal memory.

This is where I run into a problem...

This is my first and only smartphone (it came with a phone plan package just a few months ago - I wouldn't have one otherwise), so I'm a raw beginner, and not at all confident with 'mucking about' with the phone! I searched long and hard for a rooting kit that I could trust. Some came with instructions that, although saying they were specifically for the Gio, talked about booting into recovery mode using buttons that don't exist on the Gio! Didn't inspire me with confidence! It's quite possible that they were OK for the Gio, and the instructions were just copied from some other model but not completely updated for the Gio.

The other problem for me is that many of the rooting kits don't say whether they will allow SD card to substitute for 'internal storage'. Which is probably how I ended up with one that doesn't seem to do that. I'll just have to search some more, and perhaps find a forum where there are more Gio users with rooting experience. Trouble is the Gio is sort of a 'beginners' phone (no doubt why the cheapskate service provider included it!), so not a lot of 'hackers' would be playing with it.

Daniel

 

[Rukbat]

You don't go back far enough (my first encounter with digital computers was mid 60s

Well ... computers were my third profession.

what about mercury delay line memory

I've seen them, never ran a box that used one.

, and 'core' memory (magnetic toroids strung on 3D grids of 3 othogonal wires)?

Used to own a few. Stores in NYC sold them as surplus.

This is my first and only smartphone (it came with a phone plan package just a few months ago - I wouldn't have one otherwise), so I'm a raw beginner, and not at all confident with 'mucking about' with the phone!

Same here. First time I flashed a ROM, and it took a few minutes to boot, I got worried. Now I wait a few days and if no one reports problems and the ROM has something I want, I download it and flash it.

Rooting is pretty trivial - basically it installs 2 files. (Although it's actually replacing the OS with one including those files, if I understand the process correctly.)

Some came with instructions that, although saying they were specifically for the Gio, talked about booting into recovery mode using buttons that don't exist on the Gio! Didn't inspire me with confidence! It's quite possible that they were OK for the Gio, and the instructions were just copied from some other model but not completely updated for the Gio.

That would give me pause too, unless I could communicate with the author. My Precedent still claims to be on Boost, because the ROM is a modified Proclaim ROM. But other than that text and Boost's numbers in my contacts, that ROM works fine. (And I ripped those numbers out, of course.)

The other problem for me is that many of the rooting kits don't say whether they will allow SD card to substitute for 'internal storage'.

No, they won't. Rooting just gives you administrator or root access to the phone. You need a ROM (OS replacement) to do that.

Trouble is the Gio is sort of a 'beginners' phone (no doubt why the cheapskate service provider included it!)

It's still a little better than my Precedent - ARM 11 CPU and AT&T

so not a lot of 'hackers' would be playing with it.

There are a few people writing (or modifying) ROMs for the Precedent. And all you need is one that has the features you want.

Galaxy Gio GT-S5660 Android Development - xda-developers is Android development (ROMs) for the Gio.

Galaxy Gio GT-S5660 General - xda-developers is general Gio discussion.

There may be other forums with Gio subforums or even Gio forums.

 

[DanielFFF]

There are a few people writing (or modifying) ROMs for the Precedent. And all you need is one that has the features you want.

Galaxy Gio GT-S5660 Android Development - xda-developers is Android development (ROMs) for the Gio.

Galaxy Gio GT-S5660 General - xda-developers is general Gio discussion.

Thanks for these links. The sheer number of available ROM replacements is overwhelming! It would take me a week to read through the details of each to decide which one is best for me. I don't have that time right now, so will leave that till I have some spare time.

I'm somewhat put off by my impression that many of them are primarily intended to change the appearance of the phone's home pages. I don't want to change the look, just the storage capacity.

The next problem after that is getting good instructions to do the ROM reflash. Those I've seen so far are abysmal. They assume you've done it before and largely know what to do, so omit small (but critical) pieces of information. I need a "Reflashing the Gio ROM for Dummies" book!

I've downloaded Odin (whatever that is), so I've taken the first step!

Thanks again for all your help.

Daniel