Why some app are not movable from internal to external memory of Samsung S7

[Android Central Question]

Dear gents,

I am using Samsung S7 with Android 8.0 Oreo I think. There is one constraint which makes me mad years. I have big bunch of apps. If I have installed apps by default they are stored in internal memory. Then it is possible to move them in settings app. But not all. Some of them are movable some not. Now question what is reason of such constraint of any app if it is movable or not? Such restriction persists in Android releases years. Does every app has some capabilities which prevents to move it to SD card, is it some design purpose or whatsoever? I assume rooting of Android can solve this constraint which I do not want whilst it voids warranty. Many thanks, regards

 

[Rukbat]

If the developer knows that his app won't run from external storage, he sets it so you can't move it. If you could, you'd be here asking why this app and that app always break when you move them to external storage.

Running an app from external storage is a bad idea for a couple of reasons.

1. It doesn't save much space. Each piece of the app gets moved separately and, since Android looks for apps in internal storage, a link to where that piece is in external storage is left in internal storage. So instead of 1 link to the app in internal storage, you may have 50 links in internal storage to 50 pieces of the app in external storage. Since each piece moved is small, you don't save much space.

2. If the card goes bad, you lose the app and all its data. You can't reinstall the app because, as far as Android is concerned, the app is installed already. You can't uninstall it, because pieces of it (the ones on the card) are missing, so the "space they took" can't be reclaimed. So when the SD card goes, you do a factory reset.

3. All Android apps have to keep their current state at all times. That means if you tap something, the app stores that. If the app changes something, it stores that. (That's because, if the app is running in the background [in other words, you're running another app, so you can't see that one], and you want to run another app, and there's no space left in RAM, Android can kill any app. [Windows asks apps if it can kill them - they can then save their data and say yes - or they can say no. You've seen that when shutting down or restarting Windoes - "This app is keeping you from ..."]) If the part of the app that's doing the "store the current state] is on the SD card, it's writing to the SD card. If it's an active app, it's writing to the SD card almost constantly. The lifetime of SD cards is measured in writes. By moving apps to the SD card, you could be killing the card.

Bottom line - buy a phone with enough internal storage for all the apps you're going to need room for, for as long as you plan to keep the phone. (Then double that for good measure.) Most phones come in 64GB/128GB versions now, many come with 512GB versions, and we're starting to see rumors of 1TB phones. As time goes on, we'll get faster CPUs, more RAM and more internal storage. Remember, before Bill Gates started developing DOS, 64KB was the largest amount of total memory, RAM, ROM, screen, everything, a computer could handle, and a lot of us got by with 32KB of RAM and 128KB floppy drives for storage. (Or even paper tape or, later, audio cassette tapes.) There days, a 1GB storage phone wouldn't even be a joke. 10 years from now? Some people will still be running those old 1TB phones, but they won't be of much use.

Time does, indeed, march on.

 

[Mooncatt]

The ability to move an app is left up to the developers. How much (if any) is also determined by them and how the app functions. Google does not like having SD cards in the first place, and for good reason. They are not able to stand up to the demands of Android apps and will lead to quicker failure of the card. They allow limited SD card abilities, but don't expect them to do you any favors. The SD card is best suited for stand alone files like documents and media.

 

[VidJunky]

I feel like a lot of good information was shared in the above comments. In my experience some devices will allow you to format SD cards as internal memory but there are requirements to that and a cost to match. If you want the extra space and can afford to get a high performance card, many phones will allow you to format them as internal memory. High performance cards come with a high price tag if you want to add any real (substantial) memory. While you can some times find deals you're going to pay almost $1 per GB. The real question, is the trade off worth it to you. Most devices won't allow you to record 4K directly to the card, some won't allow HD if the card isn't up to spec. So if you want to feel that boost in space when downloading apps just know it's going to cost you. The 128 card I got Ultra high speed, blah blah blah card retailed for $130. I could have gotten 2 slower 1T cards for that but they wouldn't have formatted as internal memory. Back in the day when they first introduced this moving apps to SD, what was that Gingerbread or something, most of the cards were just as fast or almost as fast as the phone. Even then there were very few apps that moved completely to the SD card. Most only allowed you to move some of the app, and not the whole app as was suggested by the "move apps to SD" mantra suggested. I would see people in the forums all the time angry that half the app was still on their internal memory. The fast bits, the high RAM bits, those stayed on the phone, and yes I know that storage is different than RAM but RAM accesses the data from storage, it doesn't just appear there out of nowhere. Then when Google pushed to basically ban SD's all together customers and some manufacturers too I'm sure pushed back. I'm not going to pretend to know why they were moving that direction, maybe they were looking at Apple and seeing that their fan base was embracing not having SD cards, maybe they wanted to jump start their cloud services and saw a way to boost income or maybe we'll never know. They may try again but actually I see manufacturers following Apple's trends before Google. Look at Samsung $1500 for 1T. Phones have never cost so much until Apple started driving its prices higher and higher and doing tier pricing based on memory. We all might want to enjoy our SD's while we have them... Thanks Apple nlm. Sorry I got off on a tangent of sorts. I think you can have what you want, it worked for me, if you're willing to spend the money to get a card you can format as internal memory and your device supports that.

 

[Mooncatt]

I don't think the S7 had the option to format as internal storage. It's mostly second/third tier phones that offer that. Flagship brands often have enough inbuilt storage not be worth the risks. Lower tier brands don't care and that feature is something of a selling point to make consumers think theirs low spec phones can perform like the big guys.