Weird - Moving apps to SD card

[rtewr]

So I was happy about Samsung's new update to allow you to move apps to the SD card, and installed it as soon as it was available. I ordered a 32 GB MicroSD (Samsung's model), tried moving apps of several GBs to the SD card. All seemed well. Until the phone kept telling me I was still running out of storage space. What?

So I look at the application manager, and those GBs I moved to the SD card supposedly only took up a couple of hundred MBs on the card, and moving them over did not free up any space on the internal storage. Can anyone tell me what's going on here?

 

[monsieurms]

So I look at the application manager, and those GBs I moved to the SD card supposedly only took up a couple of hundred MBs on the card, and moving them over did not free up any space on the internal storage. Can anyone tell me what's going on here?

I found in the past that it was common for some apps to still require a significant footprint on the device's internal memory, even if they could be installed to the card and have data stored on the card by default. So, I imagine some version of that is what is happening.

And yes, it could be quite frustrating. With some apps, virtually everything would wind up on the card. With others, I just saved a few megs in data mostly.

 

[rtewr]

I found in the past that it was common for some apps to still require a significant footprint on the device's internal memory, even if they could be installed to the card and have data stored on the card by default. So, I imagine some version of that is what is happening.

And yes, it could be quite frustrating. With some apps, virtually everything would wind up on the card. With others, I just saved a few megs in data mostly.

But I don't even have that many apps. Out of the ones I moved, when I go into app info, it says for example 2 GB SD card data for Modern Combat. And when I look at the "Downloaded" tab, MC only claims to take up a few MB, and under the SD card tab, 1.97 GB. So that looks good. But for some reason this isn't actually reflected in the actual storage space, which is completely lacking on the internal storage whereas my SD card is full of space. The same is true for all of my other apps. I moved 10 apps to the SD card that are supposed to take up 6 GB, but on the SD card only 300 MB is used. This doesn't seem normal to me, I think something is wrong.

 

[HPferoxCraft]

Yeah you probably won't be able to move the full app to ExtSd, probably just the core of the app, maybe enough to reinstall? The majority of the app is probably going to sit in the internal memory. Your games saves and maybe add on purchases might be able to be saved to ExtSd dependent on the dev, maybe but I'm purely speculating.
Maybe not what everyone dreamed of but IMHO better than nothing. Hopefully some app devs will be able to take advantage of it in the future.

 

[rtewr]

If what you guys are saying is true, then that's pretty horrible... I can understand all of the data not being able to move to the SD card. But if this is the way it is, then this SD card purchase did nothing for relieving my internal memory, enabling me to download more apps. It's only good for media.

 

[jtdunc]

New member here. Just got my S4 two weeks ago.

Thinking of buying a 32gb or 64gb microsd to store many files.

I can store or "move" app to the msd right? How do I do that?

 

[rtewr]

No other opinions on this? I still think something is off with my phone, or I don't understand why people were so excited about this update. So I was able to move 300 MB to the SD card and am still running out of memory, wow, thanks Samsung.

 

[ihbsbA]

No other opinions on this? I still think something is off with my phone, or I don't understand why people were so excited about this update. So I was able to move 300 MB to the SD card and am still running out of memory, wow, thanks Samsung.

You're going to have to wait until developers re-enable the "move to SD card" on these apps. Until then, yes, your card is for media and user data - even if you can move an app to the SD card, if it isn't optimized to do so, there's no point. As I've read, the people who are most affected by the storage space being a bit low is gamers. You said you play some combat game - that's probably the hog.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 2

 

[fantom305]

No other opinions on this? I still think something is off with my phone, or I don't understand why people were so excited about this update. So I was able to move 300 MB to the SD card and am still running out of memory, wow, thanks Samsung.

Are you in Germany or the UK by any chance that you already got the update ??? Cause no body else has gotten the update to be able to move apps to the SD Card yet specially if you are in the US....

 

[rtewr]

Are you in Germany or the UK by any chance that you already got the update ??? Cause no body else has gotten the update to be able to move apps to the SD Card yet specially if you are in the US....

I live in Sweden, so yes I have the update. I'm just surprised because I haven't heard anyone else complain about the update with SD cards, which made me think something must be wrong with my phone since it's barely moving over any data although the option to move apps to the SD card is there.

 

[moosc]

And this is one of the reasons why Google stored this practice. Unless the Dev made a update your not going to move the core app onto the SD card. All this update Samsung did was to make it seem like hey here u go. But in reality as u can see in your case is it will cause more issues and never fix the root of the problem. Just looked at modern combat 2gb game and doesn't support apps 2 SD. Maybe email them and ask. But I doubt they'll do it since it's not a Google standard for apps 2sd.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Xparent Cyan Tapatalk 2