Galaxy S2 cannot download updates or new apps

[TCCD]

Hello all,

I purchased my samsung galaxy s2 two and a half years ago. It came loaded with android 2.x.x or 3.x.x (can't really remember) and everything worked just fine.
A while ago i performed a firmware upgrade, via samsung kies, to android 4 (ice cream sandwich). Since the update i have been experiencing a problem - i cannot download new app updates or new apps that are larger than a few (~4) MB. When trying to download a new app i get an "application cannot be installed in the default install location" notification, and trying to update i get "insufficient storage available".

I recently updated to android 4.1.2 (jelly bean), but the problem was not solved. Furthermore, i now get a "storage space running low" notification, and my phone does not sync with apps (gmail, for instance).

When checking storage space, i see that i have 1.79/1.97GB used in the system storage category and 2.12/11.5GB used in the USB storage category. I do not have an SD card.

How can I use the USB storage for photos, videos and apps instead of the system storage, and will it solve the problem?


Thanks a lot

 

[Paul627g]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

You do have an insufficient memory issue there... Best thing to try is go into your Settings/Apps and start clicking on your apps installed from the Play Store. Some may have the option to INSTALL/MOVE to internal storage or sdcard...

Otherwise you may have to cut back on some apps, clean out old piled up text messages and look around for other possible memory hogging stuff to free some things up.

 

[TCCD]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

Thanks a lot for the quick response.
When I go into the application manager, there is a "move to SD card" option' but no "move to USB storage".
I don't have an SD card,and when I choose ths option I get "Unable to move app. Not enough storage space". Is this because I don't have an SD card or a system bug (since I clearly have enough space in the USB storage)?

Also, how can I move apps, photos and videos to the USB Storage? What use is it if I can't store anything on it?

Thanks again!

 

[jruelas11]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

I've encountered this problem before. the phone for some reason sees the built in 16gb as sd memory so when you go to settings then applications and select apps that are installed on the internal memory, you just have to select move to sd card and it will move the app to the other built in memory. I have found though that the phone might not move larger apps to the 16gb built in sd/usb storage so if you have apps around 300mb, they might not transfer and if you run out of memory you'll have to uninstall those.

 

[Lee Taylor1]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

Ive got the same problem. I cant update any of my apps. Ive transefered everything I can to my sd card. The only apps that installed on my phone is facebook, tagged, avg, flash player, and 8ball pool and there all stored to my phones memory. It wont let me transfere them to my sd card. The only thing I keep doing is uninstalling updates for apps that are built into my phone that I dont use and for a short while it gets rid of the storage warning and my notifications comes thought. But within 24hrs the warning is back again. According to my local phone shop there nothin we can do about it. Obviously they didn't think about this problem when they made the phone.

 

[Brian Cumberledge]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

I really don't understand this. Basically it is only allowing 2GB for apps. I just go the s4 yesterday because the s2 started acting like this after the software upgrade, like everyone else. I wanted to upgrade anyhow but no idea if same issue applies to s4. Why would it limit apps to 2GB?

 

[BBandroidBB]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

Hi what if you did exactly what you said but it didnt work then what do you do?

- - - Updated - - -

You do have an insufficient memory issue there... Best thing to try is go into your Settings/Apps and start clicking on your apps installed from the Play Store. Some may have the option to INSTALL/MOVE to internal storage or sdcard...

Otherwise you may have to cut back on some apps, clean out old piled up text messages and look around for other possible memory hogging stuff to free some things up.

What if it didnt work

 

[tiburonjoan]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

I also have tried moving apps to my SD card but it doesn't let me, saying there is not enough space. It says I have used 1.86GB of space, and I have 9.5GB of space available. Why is it giving me this message that I don't have enough space?!?

 

[Soriyon To]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

You cant help me updates or new apps.i can't open and updates apps with play store.

 

[Mark 42]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

I'm totally confused. I'm a novice, and "not young", so I get confused easily.
I just upgraded my Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket (i727) to Jelly Bean.
Now my phone's memory (not cache or RAM, but on device storage) is nearly full.

So I went to Setup>Application Manager
And moved as many apps as I could to my SD card.
Now the icons on my screens are ghosts with a little SD in the corner of the icon,
and it says the app is not installed.

I am tired of re-installing apps every time I try anything in Jelly Bean. My phone ran better with ICS.
Samsung needs to get up to speed on user support and fix the way Jell Bean runs on this model.

Anyone know what I can do in the meantime?

 

[DuncanPT]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

I've got a Samsung S2 that's about a year old at present, running Jelly Bean I think (4.1.2). It's on UK Orange/EE network if that matters.

What Paul627g (04-25-13) missed is that when this happens, according to the Application Manager on the phone, if you actually add up the memory used by the applications using a calculator it comes nowhere near what it says on the screen.So there appears to be a huge gap between the reported list of applications and what the phone thinks is being used.

In my case, if I do a factory reset and reinstall a set of apps, I'll have plenty of space for a day or so but then it starts to drop, either in little pieces or sometimes in great chunks, and before long Im left with only a handful of Mb "spare". This sort of makes me think it may be a caching problem - but none of the apps have any significant cache usage list, nor is their actual data usage high enough to explain where the memory went.

I've tried moving to SD card from Application Manager but that won't move much per application and the impact gets eaten up by the progressive nature of the disease quite quickly, and I'm back to square one.

I don't want to "root" the phone as this sounds like it may invalidate my supplier support - and surely if the software was up to scratch wouldn't be necessary anyway (although I can see that people wanting to dive deep might want to do it). I'm convinced this behaviour only came in when I upgraded the Android version from ICS to JB 4.1.2.

So I'd like to hear any further suggestions for fixing this. But don't bother with the following as I already know they don't work or don't work for long:

• factory reset (effect doesn't last)
• move things to SD (minimal impact)
• delete unused apps (effect doesn't last)
• root it (don't want to, don't why necessary)
• clear caches and/or data
• installing apps one at a time to identify which is the culprit (technically a good diagnostic approach but (a) I don't have the time and (b) won't help if it's actually something in the OS which is the cause)

Suggestions explaining deeper cache clearance (without rooting remember!) will be considered. As will upgrade paths to 4.2 etc or downgrade to 4..1.1. Reflashing firmware, ok if you tell me how.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can move this forward.
Duncan

 

[Mark 42]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

Clean Master has a "1 Tap Boost" function
https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ails?id=com.cleanmaster.mguard&token=LyDWtEG3
I don't know if it will help you problem, but it is quick to use, and worth a try.

 

[FaiqT]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

Hi, the cause of this is that some app shouldn't be moved to sdcard, because when you move them they get corrupted, i have the same problem

I'm totally confused. I'm a novice, and "not young", so I get confused easily.
I just upgraded my Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket (i727) to Jelly Bean.
Now my phone's memory (not cache or RAM, but on device storage) is nearly full.

So I went to Setup>Application Manager
And moved as many apps as I could to my SD card.
Now the icons on my screens are ghosts with a little SD in the corner of the icon,
and it says the app is not installed.

I am tired of re-installing apps every time I try anything in Jelly Bean. My phone ran better with ICS.
Samsung needs to get up to speed on user support and fix the way Jell Bean runs on this model.

Anyone know what I can do in the meantime?

 

[Jade Barrows]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

ARGHH!! I totally understand what all of you are saying. Its a nightmare, never getting this phone again EVER!! Its pointless and nobody seems to be able or want to come up with a solution. Iv tried everything... so the best bet is get a new phone and NEVER look back!!!! I have not downloaded ANY apps onto my device storage and yet it is full???!!!???!!!! However when I go to download facebook or whatsapp it downloads it onto device storage although my default settings are to download to sd card, and so I cant have them because there is not enough device storage!!! What the hell! Someone needs to come up with a solution, totally change the phone's storage functions or get rid of all Samsung Stupid Galaxy Phones altogether. It's not fair how much time and effort and money we have all put into this stupid phone model for it not to work!!! Rant over I'm OUTY!!!!

 

[Mark 42]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

I'm going to bite the bullet and do a factory reset. If that doesn't fix it,
I'll revert back to ICS and do another factory reset to start from scratch.
None of this would be necessary if the developers had done their job.

 

[Christian Cole Bourne]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

Duncan... I just ran into this problem on my (d710-vmub) Galaxy S2. I rooted the phone last week and so I have access to some deeper system
insight/functionality (syslogs, root file explorer, kernel tuning, etc...).
I will look into this and see if I can find a decent solution. It appears to be some fownky-aass bu11**** though.

-C

 

[Golfdriver97]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

I've got a Samsung S2 that's about a year old at present, running Jelly Bean I think (4.1.2). It's on UK Orange/EE network if that matters.

What Paul627g (04-25-13) missed is that when this happens, according to the Application Manager on the phone, if you actually add up the memory used by the applications using a calculator it comes nowhere near what it says on the screen.So there appears to be a huge gap between the reported list of applications and what the phone thinks is being used.

In my case, if I do a factory reset and reinstall a set of apps, I'll have plenty of space for a day or so but then it starts to drop, either in little pieces or sometimes in great chunks, and before long Im left with only a handful of Mb "spare". This sort of makes me think it may be a caching problem - but none of the apps have any significant cache usage list, nor is their actual data usage high enough to explain where the memory went.

I've tried moving to SD card from Application Manager but that won't move much per application and the impact gets eaten up by the progressive nature of the disease quite quickly, and I'm back to square one.

I don't want to "root" the phone as this sounds like it may invalidate my supplier support - and surely if the software was up to scratch wouldn't be necessary anyway (although I can see that people wanting to dive deep might want to do it). I'm convinced this behaviour only came in when I upgraded the Android version from ICS to JB 4.1.2.

So I'd like to hear any further suggestions for fixing this. But don't bother with the following as I already know they don't work or don't work for long:

• factory reset (effect doesn't last)
• move things to SD (minimal impact)
• delete unused apps (effect doesn't last)
• root it (don't want to, don't why necessary)
• clear caches and/or data
• installing apps one at a time to identify which is the culprit (technically a good diagnostic approach but (a) I don't have the time and (b) won't help if it's actually something in the OS which is the cause)

Suggestions explaining deeper cache clearance (without rooting remember!) will be considered. As will upgrade paths to 4.2 etc or downgrade to 4..1.1. Reflashing firmware, ok if you tell me how.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can move this forward.
Duncan

Something to keep in mind is for whatever unknown reason Samsung partitioned the memory. Roughly 2GB for apps, the rest was considered mass storage.

Sent from a Slim 4.3 S3

 

[Stu40]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

A simple way to free up storage space is by deleting all the log files in the device memory. Just dial *#9900# on your phone and select option 2 ?Delete dumpstate/logcat? in the prompted menu. It's not necessary to root your phone either. That?s it!

 

[Mark 42]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

A simple way to free up storage space is by deleting all the log files in the device memory. Just dial *#9900# on your phone and select option 2 “Delete dumpstate/logcat” in the prompted menu. It's not necessary to root your phone either. That’s it!

Is there a way to do the same thing through the settings menus?

 

[Doug Wagstaff]

Re: Galaxy s2 cannot download updates or new apps

A simple way to free up storage space is by deleting all the log files in the device memory. Just dial *#9900# on your phone and select option 2 “Delete dumpstate/logcat” in the prompted menu. It's not necessary to root your phone either. That’s it!

You, sir, are a legend.
Thanks for this, it worked perfectly.
Cheers