Moving applications to the SD card on a Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)

[Miyuri99]

Hi,

My father recently changed from a Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini to a Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016). I transferred most of his data (though not all his apps) to the new phone. The S3 Mini only had 4Go of internal memory but he really has a limited number of applications and photos, so storage was never an issue. The J3 has 8Go, which should therefore work just fine, but shortly after transferring his data, I got the notification that the memory was almost full (there's about 500Mo left). I bought a 32Go SD card but found out that I can only transfer media there and not apps (which are what's taking most of the space) because he's already on the highest firmware (5.1.1) available for his device (SM-J320FN) and the SD card can be formatted as internal memory only with Android 6.0 and later…
I tried looking for solutions online and so far this is what I have found:
- I can install a custom ROM for 6.0 and get the included functionality to use the SD card as internal memory;
- I can root his current version of Android and use Link2SD to transfer the applications to the SD card.

As I'm not an Android user myself, I have never done these things before but I've found instructions I can follow, that's not the issue. I just wanted to know, out of these 2 options, which one would you recommend? Which one is the most stable? The easiest / less risky to perform? Or is there another way to achieve what I want to do (move the apps to the SD card)?

Thank you for your help!

 

[Miyuri99]

No opinion?

 

[dianehelen]

I'm confused. Were all his apps on the s3 mini on his internal storage ? If they were , how could they not fit on a device with more internal storage? Did you transfer photos , videos etc to the internal instead of the card?

Get an app called Disk Usage, it can help find where hidden stuff can be hogging your internal storage.






Good luck

 

[Miyuri99]

Yes, they were all on his internal storage: he didn't have a memory card, I bought one just for the new phone. I didn't even redownload all his apps from the store, since a bunch of them were unnecessary, but the ones I did download (5 or 6, if I remember correctly) had to be updated at once and this is when we started to get the message. So I suspect the phone might not be erasing the old data after installing the updates and everything is just stacking up. Otherwise it makes no sense why it would be so different from one phone to the other… But with Android taking almost half the space available on the device, there is barely anything left and the warning keeps coming… This seems to be a common issue with the J3 though, as I found a lot of other puzzled users while looking for a fix.

I also found that flashing a custom Android 6.0 to the J3 wouldn't solve the issue, since Samsung blocked the functionality to use memory cards as internal storage on its phones. So, except if somebody has a better solution, I think my only option here is to root 5.1.1 and use Link2SD, which will hopefully be enough…

 

[B. Diddy]

FYI, the S3 mini came in 8 GB and 16 GB variants -- I can't find anything about a 4 GB variant. The 4 GB you see is probably the space available to the user, after accounting for the OS and preinstalled bloatware. Since the J3 is also an 8 GB phone, it's possible that it comes with more bloatware. It's also possible that since the J3 is a more recent phone, it has more recent preinstalled apps that tend to be bigger than apps from 2012 (when the S3 mini was released). So the available space for users might actually be less out of the box for the J3 compared to the S3 mini.

 

[Miyuri99]

Hi!

Well, it might have been a limited number of devices or just a different model for a different country (we're from France) but in "total space" (not "available space") it clearly indicates 4.54Go for the S3 Mini and 8.00 Go for the J3…
There are less apps on the J3 since I didn't redownload everything but they take more space and yes, it might be because of bloatware, or just that the original apps themselves are bigger now that they're on a newer, more powerful Android…

But the "why" is not really my issue: what I would like to know is how can I use the 32 Go memory card that I bought to solve this storage limitation. Right now it is not working the way I want, since it is only letting me transfer media there. My parents are not avid smartphone users. They barely use the camera and have no music or videos on the phone. So I'm not interested in transferring media, I want to move the apps or at least some of them, to the memory card.
Link2SD seems to do just that, which is great, but I have to root the device. As I am not an Android user myself, I don't know everything about this OS and all its functionalities, especially since it changes so much from one version to the other and from one brand of phone to the other.
If rooting is the only way, then fine, I'm OK doing it, I've read multiple instructions on how to do it. But because I know that it shouldn't be done lightly, I just would like to check if there is a simpler or alternative way that I might have missed…

Thank you for your answers!

 

[B. Diddy]

The "Move to SD" feature (in the Settings>Apps menu) isn't supported by all devices, so if you don't see that button for any apps, then it's not supported (and you'd have to rely on rooting and using Link2SD). Samsung doesn't support Adoptable Storage, so formatting the card as Internal Storage is out of the question.

The 4.54 GB of "Total Space" in the Storage menu for the S3 mini is referring to the total space available to the user. A 4 GB phone wouldn't say there's 4.54 GB of Total Space -- it'd be 4 GB or even a little less. This is another way different manufacturers show things differently (which can be really annoying) -- some will say Total Space, while some will say Space Available To User or something like that.