Lenovo Smart Tab M10 16GB - SD Card and App Installation

[Android Central Question]

I'm thinking about purchasing a Lenovo Smart Tab M10 16GB. My main concern is that only 9 Gigabytes of storage is available on the device after the operating system and that once a couple of beefy apps have been installed there will be little to no space available. Can anybody tell me if apps can be moved across to the external SD card or does Lenovo lock the system down and prevent end-users from doing this? I understand that there are some app makers out there that prevent their apps from being transferred across to the SD card but I want to know if Lenovo stops you from doing it altogether or not. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[mustang7757]

Hi, welcome to Android Forums

I'd like to recommend creating a account so me or other members can assist you, as guest have limitations in replying here and if we need further Information to communicate with you.

I'll provide a link to register, please come back to your post so we can further assist you . Thank you

https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=409154

 

[bungleshark]

Hi mustang7757, thank you for your message. I have signed up as you suggested. Many thanks.

 

[mustang7757]

Hi mustang7757, thank you for your message. I have signed up as you suggested. Many thanks.

Hi, welcome!
Does it give the option for adoptable storage?

 

[bungleshark]

There is additional storage but I've had other android tablets in the past with expandable storage yet the manufacture lock the system down so that the end-user cannot transfer any apps to the SD card.

 

[mustang7757]

There is additional storage but I've had other android tablets in the past with expandable storage yet the manufacture lock the system down so that the end-user cannot transfer any apps to the SD card.

Oh ok gotcha, yeah they try to move away from it .

 

[mustang7757]

You can try contact lenovo support see if they know if it still supported.

 

[bungleshark]

I may have to go to "the source". I've tried asking on the Lenovo forums but there are about 90 users online there and I doubt they will be able to give me an answer which is why I came here, hoping the larger android community base here will be able to give me an answer.

 

[mustang7757]

I may have to go to "the source". I've tried asking on the Lenovo forums but there are about 90 users online there and I doubt they will be able to give me an answer which is why I came here, hoping the larger android community base here will be able to give me an answer.

Ok let me see if mod can move your question to tablet forum see if anyone can help there.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! This is only an indirect answer, but I can tell you that Lenovo does support Adoptable Storage for the Tab 4 series (I have the Tab 4 8). The Smart Tab M10 is pretty similar to the Tab 4 line, and manufacturers will typically support Adoptable Storage throughout their entire device line, so my guess is that the M10 can format SD cards as internal storage.

 

[bungleshark]

Thank you for your response B. Diddy, very useful

 

[B. Diddy]

FYI, this thread confirms that you can do it: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo...ard-assistance-with-system-files/td-p/4432624

 

[bungleshark]

I saw that but as it was talking about system files, I wasn't sure if it would apply to apps.

 

[B. Diddy]

Oh, I meant that it confirms that the device supports Adoptable Storage in the first place. Adoptable Storage technically means that the expanded storage should be usable for installing any app (but there are some devices where the implementation doesn't seem to work well -- that's been seen on certain Moto phones).

 

[Rukbat]

Actually, you don't "install [or move] apps" to the SD card, you just have more than 16GB of storage. If you put in a 64GB card, you have 80GB of storage, and the tab puts anything it stores wherever it wants.

But ...

Apps have to constantly keep their current state stored (Android can kill any background app it need to gain RAM space, then, when you make that app the foreground app again, Android tells it "run and start where you left off" [part of the cache for that app is its "current state" storage]). eMMC can take more writes than SD, UFS is even better, but in a game with constantly changing scenery, the app is going to be writing constantly, so an SD card won't last very long. And if the game happens to land on the SD card, you'll probably be replacing a few a year. (And doing factory resets, because when the card goes bad, the game isn't there any more, so you can't delete it, but Android has it listed as an installed app, so you can't install it. So you have to do a factory reset, then install all your apps. (Or root, install TWRP, and keep everything backed up regularly, so you can get back to where you were when you made the last backup.)

All in all, though, using an SD card for anything but portable storage, to store what are basically write once, read many files (pictures, music, etc.) is a bad idea. (Which is the one intelligent thing Samsung did - they don't do adoptable storage.)

 

[Wireless Gadget]

What Rutbat said is interesting & helpful. Recently bought the Lenovo M10 w/ 32GB, I had the option to merge my 128 SD card with internal storage, opted not to. I still have my Nexus 7 w/ 32GB, after reading this thread, I'll hold off.

I find the tablet crashed a lot during setup... maybe bad heat dissipation or just the processor used, once I got all my apps and updates, it's been good. With 3GB of ram, it has been very smooth running. The speaker dock sounds very good too. Cheers.