Well I have had the Xperia Play for over a week now and there is one thing that is annoying me, as one might guess from the title.
First though, let me list all the Android phones (tablets omitted) I've had in the past year to give a bit of insight into my rant:
Xperia X10, Desire, Galaxy S, Desire HD, LYNX, LYNX 3D, Nexus S, Xperia Play.
Now, of these phones (I don't really count the X10 as I had it for 2 weeks before ditching it for the Desire), the HTC Desire has been the only one that really ticked me off. EVERY day there was a memory issue. I would test out a new app only to find that, lo and behold, the storage was filled from the other apps. It seemed like there was eternally 20MB or less free at any given time. I remember actively having to put downloads on "hold" in my mind so that when I got a new phone I could get them.
(BTW I realize that last April/May we had Android 2.1 and thus there was no option to save to Micro SD. Nonetheless, all of the other phones have been great, including the Desire HD.)
NOW we fast forward to my spending $800 on an unlocked Xperia Play. NOT happy. I have already, on three occasions, been notified of low memory on the phone. Why? Well I downloaded various games from the marketplace that are optimized for the Play, and I downloaded Adobe Air (absurdly large file size for something I don't ever recall using).
I find it quite ironic that a device designed to play GAMES has basically no on-board memory. Worse yet, IIRC many of the large games that are designed for the Play (including some that are pre-installed no less) will not migrate to SD and thus they are stuck on the phone occupying space.
Could I delete some of the applications? Sure. But the thing is, why do I have to? Why is it that my Nexus S and Desire HD, both of which I actively use, have not once experienced this problem and have MORE content on them no less. The HD still has 512MB free, and I'm even willing to overlook the NS entirely given that it ONLY has on-board memory.
Sorry, I'm just ticked off that I have this brand new phone (which I bought explicitly for games mind you, not even to use as a phone or take out of my house) and it requires micromanagement so as not to run out of space. I mean it's great that SE was nice enough to include a 16GB Micro SD, but WHY couldn't it have been built into the **** internal storage instead?!?! For crying out loud, even the PSP Go (which this is more or less a follow-up to) had 16GB on-board...
Is anyone else annoyed by this issue?
Mhh, I can see where you're coming from, but I found it to be a little bit of a non-issue, personally. I found it to be a huge issue with my Motorola Milestone, but mostly, because it's Android 2.1 and thus doesn't want to cooperate with the SD. Nowadays, you can just set the default install location on the SD with "adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2" and everything gets thrown on the SD, even programs that don't support it. And thankfully, the included Class 10 SD is very fast from what I've seen and could probably be even faster if we format it into ext4 - altho for that, we need root-access, otherwise Android still tries to mount it as a vfat.
It's unfortunate, yes, but it's not really that much of an issue to me, personally. I still have around 140MB free, and basically all apps I buy also allow me to throw them on the SD by default.
TokyoGuy said:
I find it quite ironic that a device designed to play GAMES has basically no on-board memory. Worse yet, IIRC many of the large games that are designed for the Play (including some that are pre-installed no less) will not migrate to SD and thus they are stuck on the phone occupying space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
umm i'm pretty sure all the pre-installed game files are pre-loaded on the 16gb card you get. plus any large game you install, almost in all cases you download the game data files to the SD by default. so yeah.....
Actually I was concerned that my phone had some kind of malware preinstalled because of the 3 minute start up issue and thus I formatted the memory and SD card. Exactly what was on there anyway? I'm quite worried I deleted something important, though when I went to play Crash Bandicoot it said the file had to be downloaded. Was it just the games and SE's sample music and pictures?
As for the large games, Asphalt 6 (29.30MB) won't move to SD, Pixeline (18.84MB) and some others. But it's also that I have things like Swype installed, and various other things that are also taking up space.
Nowadays, you can just set the default install location on the SD with "adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2"
Sorry, how does that work? It might sound ignorant, but is that something that you can do after rooting the phone or such? It would definitely solve my problem though.
Also, on a side note, has anyone experienced the phone randomly turning off? It happened to me twice today. I don't even have a SIM inserted so it is clearly something hardware related.
And on a final note/question, I have System Panel installed on the phone, however upon restarting, the icon is nowhere on the Application icon menu. It is still installed on the phone, but the icon is gone. Is this some kind of hardware/software compatibility issue?
TokyoGuy said:
Sorry, how does that work? It might sound ignorant, but is that something that you can do after rooting the phone or such? It would definitely solve my problem though.
Also, on a side note, has anyone experienced the phone randomly turning off? It happened to me twice today. I don't even have a SIM inserted so it is clearly something hardware related.
And on a final note/question, I have System Panel installed on the phone, however upon restarting, the icon is nowhere on the Application icon menu. It is still installed on the phone, but the icon is gone. Is this some kind of hardware/software compatibility issue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just enable USB debugging, attach the phone and run the command in the Android-SDK/tools directory via a command window. As far as I know, it doesn't need to be rooted to work.
I had no problems with the phone turning off yet, but it might be related to a "random reboot" bug the Nexus S had in 2.3.2 as well. It was fixed in the 2.3.3 update.
The default Launcher is very buggy and sometimes seems to "forget" applications. For now, I'd advice you to use an alternative launcher like Launcher Pro, ADW Launcher, Go Launcher oder SPB 3D Shell.
Meister_Li said:
Mhh, I can see where you're coming from, but I found it to be a little bit of a non-issue, personally. I found it to be a huge issue with my Motorola Milestone, but mostly, because it's Android 2.1 and thus doesn't want to cooperate with the SD. Nowadays, you can just set the default install location on the SD with "adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2" and everything gets thrown on the SD, even programs that don't support it. And thankfully, the included Class 10 SD is very fast from what I've seen and could probably be even faster if we format it into ext4 - altho for that, we need root-access, otherwise Android still tries to mount it as a vfat.
It's unfortunate, yes, but it's not really that much of an issue to me, personally. I still have around 140MB free, and basically all apps I buy also allow me to throw them on the SD by default.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure apps that don't support being moved to SD can be used like this?
TokyoGuy said:
As for the large games, Asphalt 6 (29.30MB) won't move to SD, Pixeline (18.84MB) and some others. But it's also that I have things like Swype installed, and various other things that are also taking up space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol dude you should be thankful Asphalt only takes 30 mb on your phone, check your SD card, see that 800mb+ folder? yh THAT'S Asphalt!
RacecarBMW said:
Are you sure apps that don't support being moved to SD can be used like this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It usually works fine, but I think it can cause issues if Widgets are installed that way.
Hey guys
I have had no problems like yours all u need to makesure thst u move the apps to sd card which is an android issue not enough int memory
My se play is brill screen res is better than iphone 4 also speed for loading webpages better than any htc especially the cam as it is sony
They have a winner here watch out apple.
I have had all the phones out there and sold them all this se play has a great gps aswell not agps which idveven better and agrest battery life
Rock on sony this shouldbe your flagship phone not the others u are producing like the arc or neo
Sent from my R800i using XDA App
well each to their own i guess. iphone has a better screen res FYI. but i also prefer the screen over iphone as 3.5" is too small. but i disagree, the only thing the Play does good is handle games that require controls. my galaxy s had a better screen, waaaay better web browsing experience, xperia play seems clunky and cumbersome imo.
but for gaming, cant beat it
Can anyone confirm if adb shell setInstallLocation2 is a viable option here ? Because I'm running out of space fast !
DeadlyDazza said:
Can anyone confirm if adb shell setInstallLocation2 is a viable option here ? Because I'm running out of space fast !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Code:
adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2
adb: permission denied
Bootloader unlocked Play, latest SDK on Mac - doesn't work for me.
Thanks for that buddy
Worked for me using the windows android-sdk before I unlocked my bootloader, but didn't actually test it.
Hopefully it's just something I am doing wrong then.
Moved a lot of stuff over to SD card anyway so not critical on space (yet)
Laird_Attwood said:
Code:
adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2
adb: permission denied
Bootloader unlocked Play, latest SDK on Mac - doesn't work for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
worked fine for me no permission denied errors.
1st of all, let me apologize for being a complete n00b !
I've found a couple of how to's on the net regarding installing & using the android windows SDK to set installlocation.
However, when I plug in my Play I don't actually get any prompt to install drivers. So naturally, when I try to run the command line I get a device not found error.
If anyone could spare the time to help me out here I'd probably love you forever ! ;-)
I hope new android roms will give us more memoria, because I always have 80-90 mb free, and have to use advance task killer allways to restore to 200 mb
Yes and yes to your issues.
I dont have any where as near as many apps installed as I did on the X10 but, am constantly getting the low or out of memory notification. I downloaded a couple apps yesterday and the second one wouldn't even download because there was no space. I've moved everything I can possibly move onto the SD card. Itd be great if all game files could be put on the SD card. I have quite a few games, all the Play optimized ones (well and Angry Birds ) and thats just the launch titles. In a few months time, I'll have had to uninstall games, even if I'm not finished with them, to make room for new games. I've had to uninstall some apps, which I downloaded to try and as I say, I've moved everything I can to the SD card, next step will be to remove games. It's a shame that my favourite, Asphalt 6, is the one that takes up the most room, almost 30MB . Never too bothered about root on my X10 but, desperately want it on here to remove the unwanted crap which is taking up needed space.
Also, I've also had the phone switch off several times. A few times it's been off when I've gone to it, other times it's powered off when I'm using it and is nothing to do with a low battery.
This worked great for me! I have all the Gameloft games installed and a crap load of other games on my phone and i still have 170mb free. You need to install both Sony Ericsson PC Companion and Update Service before ADB detects the phone.
Related
Hi,
I currently only have 4.98mb left of the 180.85mb total storage available on my device and am now getting 'critically low memory' warnings. I have not installed many apps or anything else to the phone and can't really understand why this is so high.
I had a look at the folders which are: -
Application Data 39.8mb
Documents and Settings 1.07mb
My Documents 2.77mb
Program Files 10.4mb
Windows - doesn't say but must be approx 115mb for the total to be correct? Is this normal?
Also, I have 115.06mb free of the 336.93mb total program memory available.
Is anyone else having similar issues? If the windows section is suppossed to use this high amount why has the phone not been allocated enough memory to deal with it?
Thanks
James
You should search a bit, but, empty the cache folder of HTCAlbum, Opera, etc.. in Application Data.
Thanks for the help. I have deleted the contects of the HTCalbum cache and Google maps and this has increased the available memory to 39.57mb.
Why should we have to delete cache data to be able to use our device? This seems a bit crap to me
Your memory usage is not normal- the HD2 has about 135MB free Storage Memory after a hard reset, so something has grabbed your memory somewhere.
I'd suggest downloading a small program called SpaceFinder which can give you a tree view of where the memory has gone sorted by folder size. It was designed for much older versions of WinMo but still works well. Some of the fiels it sees are in the ROM, but at least it will give you some clues.
Culprits for memory usage apart from the caches are music and video files- look in those folders to see if there's anything obvious.
Hello JJJJacksonjjjjj
Your problem is not new and has been reported many times on here.
If you look in the hints and tips thread in this forum there are a number of suggestions for clawing back memory space, which I suggest you implement.
Other thing is I bet you have been installing all of your apps onto the phome memory when you could have done so onto the storage card. If I am right then I would suggest you backup all your data using, say Sprite Backup or my preferred app which is SPB Backup, hard reset your phone and rebuild it from scratch, installing your apps carefully and onto the memory card instead.
Might sound a bit heavy handed but you will reap the benefits in the long run (If too drastic for you then deinstall and reinstall apps onto external memory instead without hard resetting).
I built my phone exactly this way from day one. Every app that gets installed gets assessed by me as to whether it needs to be in phone memory or not. If not then its straight onto the memory card (running an 8GB at the moment, waiting for the 32GB to come onstream and at at a reasonable price).
This, plus all the tips in the thread I mentioned earlier, have left me a happy bunny memory wise.
Good luck with it.
WB
Thanks guys, I am sorted now.
I downloaded spacefinder (really good program) and found out straight away that I had 30mb+ in Windows>Opera9>Profile>Download. I didn't know it kept all the downloaded cabs and pdfs etc you download (without saving), I thought these would be cleared when you exit Opera.
Also there were loads of facebook pictures in the temporary internet files of Internet Explorer! Why does it save all these?!
Anyway, I am now at 93.5mb free out of 180.85mb so all is good
Don't get me wrong I love my HD2 (and TP before) but HTC will never win over the mass market unless they sort out these kind of issues. Most people I know wouldn't have the first idea about all the messing about we have to do with these devices, and as a result they would have a sluggish, buggy device within weeks of normal use.
Without the help form you guys on XDA I would have probobly ditched the TP after a month or so, and I think I knew deep down I was being too hopeful, but I thought the HD2 would be free from the minor niggles I had with my TP.
That turned into a bit of a rant lol.
Thanks again guys.
...many problems are for cache of programs like htc album, opera, google maps...
...in this post there are many advice, and explain how to move the htc album cache to storage card
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=600578
...i have a good result with SKTOOLS program, because i had the same problem with the internal memory
good luck!
jjjacksonjjj said:
Don't get me wrong I love my HD2 (and TP before) but HTC will never win over the mass market unless they sort out these kind of issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you're sorted- despite its age, I still always load Spacefinder as one of my 1st apps. Only 72KB and does exactly what it says!
Don't blame HTC for these issues- it is down to both MS and the application developers like Opera to define whether & where they store stuff.
At least the HD2 has a fair amount of free space- unlike earlier devices which ground to a halt because of these stupid problems.
Spacefinder download link please gents (google is not turning up what I am looking for)?
Cheers
WB
NeilM said:
Don't blame HTC for these issues- it is down to both MS and the application developers like Opera to define whether & where they store stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am probably being a bit unfair to HTC, but a lot of the common issues most people seem to have are (as far as I can see) ones that HTC should sort - sms, pink camera etc (I didn't just mean the memory). How can they release a top line device with these issues and expect that users will check for and install fixes?
My point is that they are selling us a product; which they know things like Opera, the facebook app, HTC photo etc are integral to how it will be used by the consumer, so they should ensure these functions work reliably out of the box without user research and fixing.
I don't want to knock HTC (I wouldn't have any other device now), but there are always niggles that they should sort out before release
Sorry for the loing post, bare with me
I have installed FRF50 when it came out, after a few day when doing an update of a few app in the market I had one stuck at installation, even after reboot when I tried to update it again it did the same, after a few cleanup of my download folder and retry all the app that where encrypted in the app2sd folder (not sure of the exact folder name) where not properly decrypted by the OS, at the time I taught nothing of it and reinstalled everything (froyo image + reconfig) to do a fresh start with froyo, I also reformatted my SD card to be on the safe side... and had no issue since then...
Then came FRF72, did the exact same problem yesterday and I was able to restart the SD (if I can say so) after a few reboot.
Today same issue is back, but no go so far, all app that belong to flash are there with a generic icon, they appear on the list of app in the SD section but without their icon, it really look like if the OS is not able to decrypt them (If I understand correctly that was the stupid way google decided to implement some kind of DRM on the flash memory)
I am seriously thinkiing about going back to CM and the old way of EXT4 app2sd, it was working ok...
I've had this occur after upgrading to FRF72, it's probably because the OS didn't manage to detect the apps correctly. To solve it, I just plugged in my USB cable, mounted the SD card and then unmounting it after it showed up correctly as a removable drive on my laptop. After waiting a while for the OS to scan the card (check logcat to verify that apps are indeed being scanned one by one), my apps were back.
Another test...
Rebooted the phone without the SD, then shutdown and reboot with the SD, no change but...
If I connect the USB cable, the computer see the new drive right away (it use to take a few second after enabling the USB sharing) but is is not usable and I see no notification of the USB, that's a really weird bug...
if anybody have some idea, I know from my first encounter with this issue that changing the SD card will not fix this either...
@ Zanglang
Thanks for the sugestion, but the PC doesn't see the card, my terminal was on the flash mem and I can not install new app from market
trying a nandroid from the Recovery now... BAD DROID...
I had a problem on Frf50 with app icons turning generic and disappearing from 3d app rolodex. They were still accessible from the generic icons.
Now on Frf72 and issue seems to have subsided. Everything is where it should be. This time around i only added apps to sd they were allowable to move, i didnt force anything. When i first talked about it a while back i heard it was a bug as well as learned that certain things shouldnt go on the SD altogether. Now that i got that straightened out im good and feel like i learned something. lol
crap, no recovery
SBERG117 said:
I had a problem on Frf50 with app icons turning generic and disappearing from 3d app rolodex. They were still accessible from the generic icons.
Now on Frf72 and issue seems to have subsided. Everything is where it should be. This time around i only added apps to sd they were allowable to move, i didnt force anything. When i first talked about it a while back i heard it was a bug as well as learned that certain things shouldnt go on the SD altogether. Now that i got that straightened out im good and feel like i learned something. lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, the funny part is that I did not move rom manager and I did not move anything like widget etc, I am frustrated by Google stupid way of handling memory extension tho... as for not forcing any app i am fine with the idea however too many app are not updated and it piss me off to go thru all app to move them by hand...
What's the point of encrypting the app moved to SD anyway... I can't believe how stupid this is, I hope Cyanogen will find a way to disable this altogether...
P00r said:
Yeah, the funny part is that I did not move rom manager and I did not move anything like widget etc, I am frustrated by Google stupid way of handling memory extension tho... as for not forcing any app i am fine with the idea however too many app are not updated and it piss me off to go thru all app to move them by hand...
What's the point of encrypting the app moved to SD anyway... I can't believe how stupid this is, I hope Cyanogen will find a way to disable this altogether...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well now some of the icons have disappeared again. LOL.
These were all allowable by FRF72. Only one that hasnt changed yet is titanium backup. I tried, thought it was gonna hold.
I managed to do a recovery, I swapped the SD with another one and moved everything from the protected dir of the old card to the new one and all the icon came back.
When checking in the app manager, I noticed a few file marked as flash, I deleted a few and it seem ok but the one in the SD section are still not all there, and some display calculating as in the properties field forever...
So far
Froyo = 7/10 (3 total crash so far all related to the new memory management) since I used the PM setInstallLocation 2 I am not putting 0...
Cyanogen = 9/10
I am really curious to see what he will do with flash memory management!
Now running FRF83 with the first SD untouched, I recovered my nandroid then directly flashed to FRF83 from Paul, all app are there... I am also reverting to setIntallLocation 0 to see if there's improvement...
Having similar issues right now on the latest update with setinstalllocation 2. I guess I have to f around with it to get this to work again. What a pain.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
adb setinstalllocation 2 doesn't seem to do much but make it seem like many apps are actually being installed on the sd card when they are in fact not.
I decided to investigate when I noticed my phone storage at 32mb of internal storage free. Installed flash player. I went to manage applications, installed on sd tab had all 7.7 megs on the sd card. I went to uninstall, the application freed up internal phone storage, all 7.7 megs on uninstall.
I don't believe this method actually does anything useful unless its an app that already allows store to sd.. which is few and far between. Furthermore you don't know what's really an app that supports that now and what isn't because most of the apps now show up in the "on sd" tab of managed applications.
I could be wrong, plan on testing some more soon.. busy for the rest of the day. Will report back
blisk said:
adb setinstalllocation 2 doesn't seem to do much but make it seem like many apps are actually being installed on the sd card when they are in fact not.
I decided to investigate when I noticed my phone storage at 32mb of internal storage free. Installed flash player. I went to manage applications, installed on sd tab had all 7.7 megs on the sd card. I went to uninstall, the application freed up internal phone storage, all 7.7 megs on uninstall.
I don't believe this method actually does anything useful unless its an app that already allows store to sd.. which is few and far between. Furthermore you don't know what's really an app that supports that now and what isn't because most of the apps now show up in the "on sd" tab of managed applications.
I could be wrong, plan on testing some more soon.. busy for the rest of the day. Will report back
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The files are encrypted and placed in .android_secure in the root of the SD card (when I crashed that dir had 350MB size...)
so they are there, but I agree that phone memory still didn't get freed as much as it should as well, I suspect it's the way the OS had to place thumbstone so that they appear in the app manager
Also I noticed that they seem to have some kind of naming convention {com.dooblou.WiFiFileExplorerPRO-2} vs {cn.mobgo.filego-1} where some have -2 and other are -1
either way I reformatted and started again from scratch (well partially, titanium backup is very usefull) this time without forcing usage of the SD card I already feel the pain of having to go thru each and every app to toggle the move to sd and this is when it simply doesn't support the feature yet...
I really think that this app 2 sd implementation sucks big time, oh did I mention that the way google implemented it's memory expansion sucks... Also the way they implemented encryption mean that you could end up with a backup from a broken phone not working on a new phone which is quite something, almost sound like an Apple Feature...
They could have to the very least added a tab in the app manager so that we can easily manage the said so option... and made an external app that could decrypt the app moved to flash for backup purpose
P00r said:
I really think that this app 2 sd implementation sucks big time, oh did I mention that the way google implemented it's memory expansion sucks... Also the way they implemented encryption mean that you could end up with a backup from a broken phone not working on a new phone which is quite something, almost sound like an Apple Feature...
They could have to the very least added a tab in the app manager so that we can easily manage the said so option... and made an external app that could decrypt the app moved to flash for backup purpose
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah it's a pretty terrible implementation. I think eventually it'll be some sort of transparent thing that the user will never see if the app developer enables it but for the time being it blows big time.
Maybe this is why Froyo hasn't yet released.... Wider audience and feedback on A2SD.
I suspect it'll either get fixed or yanked for 2.2.
I had to reinstall all the apps I moved to the SD card.
Had the same problem with FRF76..all of a sudden I couldn't install new apps from the market...soooo, what I did was:
- downgrade to CM5.0.8
- save all of my apps to apps2sd
- deleted app secure folder
- upgrade to rodrigurez r19 rom with older style apps2sd.
- now, I have all my apps n new ones my sd card n yeap..even widgets are working..
khaytsus said:
Maybe this is why Froyo hasn't yet released.... Wider audience and feedback on A2SD.
I suspect it'll either get fixed or yanked for 2.2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope so, A guy has made a great program to move the app to SD, however on my phone I can move like 10% of all I have installed, I just had to delete co-pilot to be able to install swype
What's weird is that their protected folder system even compress the app, but as far as I am concerned I do not need more space on my SD since almost nothing can be moved there anyway... and even if, I could update my SD as needed...
Hi everybody
I have been looking for an Android smartphone with a decent Camera (as I love taking pictures) and it seems I have found it in the Arc.
But one thing worries me, which is the 320 mb of internal memory which I have doubts of not being enough for my Arc to be Smart enough.
Can anybody help on this plz.
Thank you in advance
I have installed all the apps i need (abt 20 apps) and still have abt 200mb left. Also, I move games to SD card.
it's enough i have 150Mb free with all my apps. this was a little issue with Nexus. I even move some system apps to SD with titanium backup (you need root).
right now i have 58 apps installed (excl. system apps) and still have 147MB free. I have 9 games (not big games just casual) biggest games is taptap but after moving to sd save a lot.
If you able to fill up 320mb apps, your arc will be slowest phone in the world.
Given app2sd, most of new version apps support usage of 32gb SD card.
Sent from my X10i using Tapatalk
Thank you all
I am definitely going to have the Arc as soon as it is released here in the market (hopefully next week).
Thank you again
I have installed many apps (around 50 ~ 60) now still have 175MB.
Conditions: rooted the Arc, use Link2SD to move apps (cached, library, app) to your SD.
But you must get root to make 2nd ext2 partition and install Link2SD before can do this.
Can i move my apps on my sd card without rooting my phone?
Sent from my LT15i using XDA Premium App
Retrosid said:
Can i move my apps on my sd card without rooting my phone?
Sent from my LT15i using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
only some. There are a lot that still will not allow themselves to be moved to SD.
Rooting however can force them all over to SD with programs like Titanium backup which is mighty handy, particularly if you have a few gameloft games or big satnav apps
diggedy said:
only some. There are a lot that still will not allow themselves to be moved to SD.
Rooting however can force them all over to SD with programs like Titanium backup which is mighty handy, particularly if you have a few gameloft games or big satnav apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mkay, though i dont want to root my phone yet.
SD card partitioning
Can anyone please advise on what is the right way to partition the SD card?
I've gotten a Sandisk Class4 16Gb; googled around and thought I should partition FAT32/ext3/Linux-swap. But after doing so, the phone cannot see the card anymore.
limhkc said:
Can anyone please advise on what is the right way to partition the SD card?
I've gotten a Sandisk Class4 16Gb; googled around and thought I should partition FAT32/ext3/Linux-swap. But after doing so, the phone cannot see the card anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Theres no need to partition it unless your using apps2sd (which I dont think you can do yet with the arc?)
diggedy said:
Theres no need to partition it unless your using apps2sd (which I dont think you can do yet with the arc?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've rooted (using Gingerbreak) and installed apps2sd / link2sd. Basically my issue is the pathetic RAM available causing Arc to lag from time-to-time.
I've removed Telco's useless software and I'm still struggling with <100Mb available RAM all the time.
limhkc said:
I've rooted (using Gingerbreak) and installed apps2sd / link2sd. Basically my issue is the pathetic RAM available causing Arc to lag from time-to-time.
I've removed Telco's useless software and I'm still struggling with <100Mb available RAM all the time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You mean there's 100Mb wasted RAM sitting around doing nothing all the time? Oh no!
As for the partitioning, you have to do it in the right order or the phone wont find the card. First create an ext2 partition for apps, then format the remainder as FAT32. I dont recommend ext3 or ext4 for an SD card, theyre overkill for a simple single user system like a phone, and their fancy features will actually slow everything down on an SD card. You dont need a linux swap partition at all (IIRC this was only useful with early versions of some custom roms on other phones).
Note that i havent any experience with apps2sd on the arc, only on other phones, so everything i just said may be garbage w.r.t. the arc, but i think it probably applies whatever the phone.
Also note that using apps2sd wont help your ram 'issues' at all.
Moving apps to SD
You can move some apps to SD card in Settings > Applications > Manage Applications.
You can use apps like Apps2SD and ZDBox to automate much of the process.
If your device supports debugging in Settings > Applications > Development, enable debugging, install the Android SDK, go to the tools directory connect your device to the computer using USB, and execute this command:
Code:
adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2
This will allow you to move even more apps to SD, although there may be side-effects for some apps, like random crashes or failure to launch. If you see some app not working as anticipated, move it back to main memory.
To be honest i cant really see the need for the old style apps2sd these days, Androids built-in version seems to be sufficient to me.
While not all apps support it yet, the majority of the ones i've got installed seem to (particularly the larger ones, which is key), and the number is increasing all the time.
Maybe if you just *have* to install 200+ apps it will become a problem. I'm struggling to think of 200 useful apps though.
I have about 100+ apps. All the apps that CAN go on SD are on SD. I normally have about 70MB, but it fluctuates between 50~70
I've to install games and storybooks for my child, and these alone add up to about 50 apps. Some of them are not SD-friendly at all.
I certainly don't recall installing many apps, but Titanium Backup says I've some 306 elements.
Arc has only 335Mb available... why did SE take away the precious 177Mb away??
So suddenly I got the new market and with it like thousand of updates.
Problem is now I'm constantly running on low phone space.
All apps left that can not be moved to the SD-Card are a must have.
So deleting them is not an option
Except the ones that I can not uninstall (like Google Books) guess because they came preinstalled.
I can't even install some new apps as they require more space then I obviously have.
What are my options?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=670087
Move apps to SD (non-root and no apps required on phone)
I just did this yesterday with my Nexus One...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1001202
Read the FAQ, question 9.
I can not do this as I run a stock rom I think.
SocalVisor said:
I just did this yesterday with my Nexus One...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1001202
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DarsVaeda said:
I can not do this as I run a stock rom I think.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you read?
From what I can tell, you do not need root to do this, just a working ADB connection. No additional on-phone software is required.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Given your parameters, only solution is to partition your SD card, create an ext-flavored filesystem on one of the partitions, and run one of the available software solutions (referenced in the links above) to permit saving of ALL apps and app data (and dalvik cache) on the SD card.
If you do that, cheers to you, but do some critical thinking and research before buying into the Class 10 hype. Most benchmarks have shown that the bottleneck in the N1 SD read/write speed is not the speed of the card, but rather the combination of software and hardware that handles SD card input and output. In fact, on some benchmarks, Class 4 cards perform as well as Class 6 and Class 10, and in some, Class 10 cards underperform Class 4 (which may have to do with the different standards applicable to Class 10 versus 2,4, and 6...the older cards had to meet a certain minimum read/write speed on a fragmented card for a single large file transfer; for Class 10 the specification is sequential writes on a defragmented SD card -- if you ask me both specifications are insufficient...how about a spec that tests sequential operations on a fragmented card?).
Or, alternately, consider removing some apps. Unless you are a developer, I can't see that you "need" to have more apps than the admittedly meager flash allocation can handle. You may want them, and want them very badly, but I've always found that a self-critical distinction between needs and wants makes me happiest in the long run, because it's easy to ignore wants. If this doesn't work for you, look above. Whatever floats your submarine, man.
I never had any problems with the sd-card performance.
Doesn't matter anyway as my problem is that there are 9gigs of free space on the card but I fear I will soon run into the problem of being unable to install any more apps (even to the card) as the phone space is too low.
This actually happens already now when updating apps.
Unfortunatly I did not manage to get the adb thing working yet so I can not test SocialVisors solution.
I'm unrooted as well, and have this problem as well. I'm hoping the nexus prime hits soon enough (and on tmo).
Otherwise, I'll look into rooting (which I'd rather do, if I'm going to modify, I'll go all in), I think one of the benefits is being able to uninstall unwanted stock apps and keep them off. So like the amazon mp3 store, for instance.
Okay so I now managed to get ADB working.
I could move some heavy apps like swype. I could not move "Astrid Tasks" as then the widget does not work anymore. Hopefully that is the only app.
I am now back at 30MB free space.
But still there are some hughe apps, like Google Maps(11MB), that can not be moved at all.
And yes, Google Maps is a must have!
Did you read the FAQ?
Did you read rallyemax's answer, and put attention to the first paragraph?
Are you looking for a solution, or do you just want to complain?
tkirton said:
How to install:
NOTE: ROMS THAT ARE ORM (ORIGINAL ROM FROM MANUFACTURER...ALSO KNOWN AS STOCK ROMS) WILL NOT RUN ANY VERSION OF APPS2SD EXCEPT FROYO.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I alread said I run a stock rom (not froyo).
The only one who is complaining is you.
You can just ignore this thread if you don't like it.
But thanks to everyone so far.
In that case, it's simple: you can't do a thing.
Your 2 options are:
1) Run a custom kernel over your stock ROM, or a custom ROM, and install A2SD support. Need to root / unlock the bootloader / hack the bootloader, of course.
2) Do nothing and don't look for solutions that don't exist, just accept the fact that you're stuck with less internal storage that you wanted.
No third option.
I've spent the past 3 weeks pretty solid working out how I want to transform the 3 Fire's I got for $35 for my boys, 10, 8, and 4. I figure I'd post where I've finally landed along with some other things I've tried both with success and failure, and hopefully save some people some effort. I'd suggest reading through this before you use it as a stepbystep guide to make sure this works for you. I apologize if it's a bit jumbled, but everything should be here for you to convert your Fire. Again, I'd suggest reading through the whole thing to come up with a plan of action for you.
Goal: Turn this Fire into a glorified gameboy, used ONLY by kids, not shared with parent(s) and child
On 5.1.1
Assuming you've purchased an SD card, you will want to repartition in preparation for moving files and content.
Pointers for this:
Make two partitions, 1 which is about 70% of the card formatted as Fat32, must be a PRIMARY partition.
Second partition will be the remaining space, make it ext2, must be a PRIMARY partition. (From what I can tell the reason people suggest using ext2, and not 3 or 4, is because with 3 and 4 there is some built in backup and recovery operations which is great for when you're running a full Linux operating system, but for our purposes all it does is cause more writes which in THEORY will shorten the life of your SD card)
I formatted the Fat32 partition as the first partition, and the EXT partition as the 2nd. Not sure if the order matters or not, but I've had no problems doing it this way thus far.
Reference: http://rootmyandroid.org/increase-internal-memory-phone.html/
Reference: http://rootmyandroid.org/how-to-use-link2sd-tutorial-guide.html/
Note:
During initial setup, don't bother with multiple user profiles (reasons explained later).
Using root junky's super tool (Thanks root junky, you made this all possible!!! http://rootjunkysdl.com/?device=Amazon Fire 5th gen&folder=SuperTool) do the following:
Root
Prevent OTA
Install Google Play
Install NovaLauncher (this is important if you're not going to use the built in Kids Mode in FireOS)
In Google Play Store download the following:
Link2SD (This is assuming you've purchased an SD card)
Kids Place - The VERY SIMPLE reason I went with using this app (which essentially becomes an alternative launcher) instead of using the built in FireOS's profiles and kids mode, is because the built in kids mode will ONLY allow you to use apps which you've downloaded FROM the AMAZON app store. I understand why they do it this way, I mean, the whole point of the fire is to keep you inside the Amazon ecosystem after all. But, I have MANY games I've paid full price for on Google Play that are appropriate for my kids. Since I can't put them into the kids profile built into the FireOS (If anyone can link me to a guide which is different, I'd love to hear about it) I couldn't use the built in stuff. In addition, the built in kids mode really is a pretty awesome feature on the fire, but the icons are freaking huge and kind of a waste of space.... going with this alternative method of Kids Place gives you smaller icons therefore you can "shove" more icons on a single view. Icons which take up half the screen are great, but if you're a dad like me who's going a little overboard and putting 100+ games on these things, it'll be a bit of a pain to scroll through them for your kids using the built in profile in the OS.
Note:
You can get Link2SD from the Amazon app store, but the version there is older than what's in Google Play and ultimately didn't work. Once I got the Google Play version, worked like a champ. NOTEx2: For whatever reason (this was frustrating for me to figure out), even though I partitioned 70% of the 64GB Samsung microSD to Fat32, and the other 30% I partitioned to ext2 (BTW I did the Fat32 first and ext2 second... not really sure if it matters the order or not but that's what worked first time for me so I went with it), when I launched Link2SD and it asked me which partition to use, I had to choose ext4 for it to finally work. Choosing both ext2 and Fat32 would both result in basically it saying: "yeah, you chose the wrong one punk" (or whatever it says).
Kids Place - similar to the one above, there is weirdness in the version on Amazon vs Google Play. On Amazon it actually claims the version there is slightly newer than Google Play, but when I'd launch apps on the one I got from Amazon it would kill the WiFi for that app. I realize that this is a built in option into Kids Place, being able to choose WiFi on or off per app (which is really cool), but the one from Amazon seemed to do it when and how it wanted instead of what I was telling it to do. Google Play's version had no such problems.
(( A word of caution using Link2SD's "feature" of being able to "Link Internal Data". DON'T DO IT. I've not been burned HARD CORE by it. The symptom is that if you POWER DOWN, and POWER ON the tablet, Apps go missing. Through reading and troubleshooting, it appears via this forum (http://androidforums.com/threads/link2sd-missing-apps-after-reboot.858565/) that the culprit is when you choose the Link2SD option to "Link Internal Data" to the SD Card. There's even a nifty batch way to enable it on ALL apps. Well, after powering off and powering back on the tablet (after I was COMPLETELY done putting on 150 games), when it came back up I only had like 15 apps on it. Everything else was POOF, gone. I've noticed sometimes after a power cycle like that the apps might take a few moments to 'come alive', but even after 15 minutes of waiting I had nada. Went in search and found I'm not the only one. I've now since completely redone (including reformatting the SD Card) all 3 Fire's and so far after multiple reboots, I've not lost a single app. So for now at least, this does seem to be the problem ))
You will need to spend the $2.35 on Link2SD Plus (striking out due to my caution above, that being said I'm glad I threw this guy $2.35 because my tablet would basically be worthless without the app), and after you install Kids Place, you'll need to upgrade to premium for $4.99. Here's why:
Link2SD - Plus - This is what allows you to automatically move files and content to the SD card when an app is installed. This is mega important to me because that piddly 5.x GB of usable space gets eaten up ridiculously fast otherwise. Dive into the settings once you have plus, and just go turn everything on. Auto move everything. Be sure to go into all menus and sub menus.
Kids Place - The premium features is key for me. For example: A) You can make this app launch upon reboot, thus it basically "forces" this into a kid only/friendly device. If your kids are sneaky, or bored, they'll try to break out of Kids Place. Then they'll delete apps, make folders, sabotage they're brothers devices, etc. B) You can change the name that's displayed on top from "Kids Place", to something else like their name, give them a fun nickname, whatever. For my 10 year old he won't feel like it's just a little kid thing. C) You can do this part without premium, but it's critical for me to mention it: You can change what the home "button" does so that it directs you back to Kids Place instead of the regular home launcher. The reason you need to install NovaLauncher above is because if you still have the stock firelauncher, you can NOT replace the home button with another launcher otherwise. [Word of caution, if you enable the 'background' premium feature, Kids Place is still running, just more in the background. Took me a few minutes to figure out that's what I had done. I kept thing something was wrong and wondering when whenever I launched Kids Place it kept asking me if I want to shut it down or go into settings.... it's because it was running the whole time already)
Once you've done all that, simply download apps (Amazon Underground still seems too good to be true, but I'm hopeful), sideload apps, get apps from Google Play, then go into the Kids Place settings and choose which apps you want (Manage Apps).
Other things worth noting:
SlimRom. So, this is cool. It's fast, and pretty awesome. For me however, at the end of the day, it didn't make sense to introduce something in addition that could go wrong. If you're like me and you have no intention of using this device yourself and you ONLY want this to be a device for your kids, I don't think SlimRom is worth putting in. If it's a shared device, it might be worth it. The only thing I really forgot to test when I had put SlimRom on one of the devices was how the Amazon App store would work, and whether or not the device would be recognized properly with the Amazon Underground portion.
That's it, I hope you find this helpful. I welcome any feedback or suggestions on how to make this a more gooder guide for anyone like myself who's first jump into amazon tablets has been these fires. They truly are AMAZING devices for the price.
hobojester said:
The only thing I really forgot to test when I had put SlimRom on one of the devices was how the Amazon App store would work, and whether or not the device would be recognized properly with the Amazon Underground portion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems pretty comprehensive guide for those using it the same way, very nice work
And when I had Slim on it worked fine with my amazon app store and underground apps. And the music and video ones for that matter. I couldn't get the kindle app to show my books but someone solved that by using older apk after I went back to stock.
@hobojester, THANKS so much for posting.
I purchased the $35 Fire Tablet for my 3 girls (9, 7, 5).
I've rooted at 5.0.1 and disabled OTA, disabled ads, Installed GooglePlay store, and loaded Nova launcher. Although I haven't taken it another few steps with Kids Place, I feel that I'll start with just locking down and hiding the apps via Nova Launcher will be enough for now. My kids are pretty savvy at navigating interfaces and even when they touch/exit an app, they know how to get back to it. I know there are holes with settings and NovaLauncher settings so when they figure them out, they can reenable certain functionality.
I'll look into Kids Place though, that might be my next step.
Also, about the whole SD card partitioning, I've installed a 32GB card and the tablet stated that it would start using the card as the default storage device. I'm guessing your method moves EVERYTHING to the card, and the default behavior for the Fire Tablet is to install some things on internal memory and 'other' storage is routed to the card? I've installed quite a bit of applications since I plugged in my SD card and it doesn't seem to be full... although I didn't check the storage stats before I wrapped the tablets.
Also, I've heard some good press on the Circle (with Disney) router, so I did order one for the home as yet another piece of the parenting puzzle:
[edit] sorry, didn't have sufficient permissions to post outside links. Google up: "Circle router with Disney"
Pond-life said:
Seems pretty comprehensive guide for those using it the same way, very nice work
And when I had Slim on it worked fine with my amazon app store and underground apps. And the music and video ones for that matter. I couldn't get the kindle app to show my books but someone solved that by using older apk after I went back to stock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to know about Slim and the Amazon store. Again, if I were going to use the tablet in a 'shared' environment where I'm using it AND my kids are using it, I'd totally use Slim. It was awesome. In this particular instance where this $35 device is a glorified gameboy, Slim is just something that is an extra layer of complexity that's really not needed and *could* get in the way. I have no intention of my kids even getting on the internet with this device. Not until there's a real need, and even then, I'd probably go get the K9 browser and use that.
TheTruthKC said:
@hobojester, THANKS so much for posting.
I purchased the $35 Fire Tablet for my 3 girls (9, 7, 5).
I've rooted at 5.0.1 and disabled OTA, disabled ads, Installed GooglePlay store, and loaded Nova launcher. Although I haven't taken it another few steps with Kids Place, I feel that I'll start with just locking down and hiding the apps via Nova Launcher will be enough for now. My kids are pretty savvy at navigating interfaces and even when they touch/exit an app, they know how to get back to it. I know there are holes with settings and NovaLauncher settings so when they figure them out, they can reenable certain functionality.
I'll look into Kids Place though, that might be my next step.
Also, about the whole SD card partitioning, I've installed a 32GB card and the tablet stated that it would start using the card as the default storage device. I'm guessing your method moves EVERYTHING to the card, and the default behavior for the Fire Tablet is to install some things on internal memory and 'other' storage is routed to the card? I've installed quite a bit of applications since I plugged in my SD card and it doesn't seem to be full... although I didn't check the storage stats before I wrapped the tablets.
Also, I've heard some good press on the Circle (with Disney) router, so I did order one for the home as yet another piece of the parenting puzzle:
[edit] sorry, didn't have sufficient permissions to post outside links. Google up: "Circle router with Disney"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you can find this useful.
As far as the storage card piece, you are correct in that "my" method moves EVERYTHING. Some apps are "self contained" as I like to think of it, when you download it. Popular games like Geometry Dash have everything contained in the downloaded app (or the .APK file). That is just the app itself. You can tell the OS to auto put the "app" on the storage card, and that works out great, but it's a little misleading. The problem comes in when you have games like Knights of the Old Republic. That app itself is something like 40 MB or what not, but after you launch the app, it'll download this extra content, which in this particular case is 2 GB. The kicker: it'll ONLY store that "content" (as I call it) into what the device considers "External Storage", which is ACTUALLY on the INTERNAL storage. That whole emulated SDcard business Android does. It's all funky. For fear of sounding like a commercial, Link2SD fixes all of that. Linux (what Android is built off of (oh, and hi iPhone users, so is iOS for the record)) has this thing called "Symbolic Links". You can google it up more about it, but think of it as an uber shortcut. You create a symbolic link on internal storage to the actual physical SD card, and the program THINKS it's writing to internal storage when in fact it's writing to the SD card. The kicker: you can only create symbolic links if you're rooted. The nice thing about Link2SD, is that it'll symbolic link EVERYTHING. The "app", the "content", and all of the saved game data and what not (which take a game like MineCraft, can get pretty big if your kids (like mine) go crazy building worlds). And you can have it to it all automagically. But you will need to pop that SDCard out, put it in your computer, and get it re-partitioned (visit the links I posted in the original guide for more in depth details).
I have heard really cool things about the Disney router. For now, my kids don't really have any need (or business) getting on the internet unsupervised. When they do, I'll probably give them the K9 browser.
Sorry for the questions but I can't figure it out, searching doesn't find it, and I'm trying to get these wrapped.
Do I need to still select Fire OS" install supported apps to sd". Or do I do it all with LInk2DS? I haven't Rom'd these yet and I probably won't until we get back from vacation. They are only rooted with stock rom. I also don't need to do the whole kids place thing as my kids are a little older...Thanks for taking the time to write this all up!
Also I have partitions shown in my Disk usage app that are named "External", "SDcard1", system and "SD Card". I know "SD Card" is the exfat 2 part I made base on the size, but as for the "external" and SDcard1, they are both roughly 5 gb ( my sd was only 8 gigs so I made the FAT 32 5 gigs and the rest the exfat 2. But now I am not sure of the naming and I can't tell based only on size. So, is "External" really the built in amazon storage, and "sdcard1" is my microsd?
Like your thinking.
How are you getting past the "Apps with usage access" request for Kids Place?
howzitnow said:
Sorry for the questions but I can't figure it out, searching doesn't find it, and I'm trying to get these wrapped.
Do I need to still select Fire OS" install supported apps to sd". Or do I do it all with LInk2DS? I haven't Rom'd these yet and I probably won't until we get back from vacation. They are only rooted with stock rom. I also don't need to do the whole kids place thing as my kids are a little older...Thanks for taking the time to write this all up!
Also I have partitions shown in my Disk usage app that are named "External", "SDcard1", system and "SD Card". I know "SD Card" is the exfat 2 part I made base on the size, but as for the "external" and SDcard1, they are both roughly 5 gb ( my sd was only 8 gigs so I made the FAT 32 5 gigs and the rest the exfat 2. But now I am not sure of the naming and I can't tell based only on size. So, is "External" really the built in amazon storage, and "sdcard1" is my microsd?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This will be a good chance for me to point out (I'll edit the guide in a second): DO NOT LINK "INTERNAL" Data via Link2SD. It has caused apps to disappear and never come back. I actually had to start completely over on all there of my devices. That "option" to Link the Internal Data is only available when you purchase the Plus version of Link2SD, DON'T CHOOSE THAT OPTION!!!
Now, with that out of the way, Link2SD is clever in how it works, and I am barely out of the n00b stage on this so I'll give a disclaimer that I may be totally feeding you false information here, but here's how I understand it: First of all, what I did was leave the SD card settings inside the OS all 'defaults', which installs the "App" to the SD Card. Now with that, I believe what happens is Link2SD intercepts that 'transfer' and puts the actual apps on the EXT partition. There is the incredibly critical option in Link2SD to put all other data (except "internal" data of course) on the SD Card. That's what moves the really big parts of those big games and apps. So when the App is relocated, it's put onto that EXT part and the Content on your FAT32 part. To address your question regarding External, SDCard#, and 'where in the heck is the EXT' part.... the EXT partition is mounted and 'located' under the 'local' storage under something like the /data/sdex2 folder. Welcome to the world of Linux... on a computer Linux (if my really old dusty Linux knowledge still works) when you need to access the CD drive you have to MOUNT it, and than LINK that mount to basically a local folder (something like /MNT/CDROM). Your EXT partition is mounted the same way as a folder, and for whatever reason in an app like ES File Explorer you won't see it as another drive, you'll only see the FAT32 drive. Maybe that has something to do with it being FAT32, I'm not sure. ...... the long point here is that Link2SD intercepts or coordinates with the OS's moving of apps to locate the App data to your EXT partition (mounted to that /data/xxxxx folder) and all the other really big stuff to the FAT32 partition. Again, I may be way off here, but hey, makes sense in my brain right now .
Inside of Link2SD there's an option in the menu to see the storage consumption, and THERE it'll actually show you the EXT partition as well as the FAT32 partition.
If my kids were a little older and I truly didn't care about them mucking around in settings, potentially deleting things etc., I'd probably give SlimRom a go for that. I've been messing around with it some more and it is just simply more 'pure' Android OS so it'd give the more 'true' Android experience.... if you really care .
cogito808 said:
Like your thinking.
How are you getting past the "Apps with usage access" request for Kids Place?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not, simply because FireOS doesn't have that option. I just have to hit 'Cancel' and move on. If you were to put on SlimRom you'd have that option. From what I can tell the biggest thing we're missing out on by staying on FireOS and not having this option would be limiting time in Kids Place for certain apps and what not. For me personally, I'll just set a timer, but if it's something you want to use, I'd absolutely suggest putting SlimRom on there and then basically following the rest of the guide. Everything still applies.
If anyone cares, I set up SlimLP for my mom who is a bit less technologically advanced than I am and I put smart launcher on the device and just hid the apps I thought would be bad if she were to accidentally open them and not know what she was doing. (I thought his could be useful for some of the people here as well)
How do I avoid using the "Link Internal Data" feature? I do not see this option anywhere in the App.
Edit: OK. found it. I was looking in settings (before moving anything) but once I move an app the options come up.
chemie99 said:
How do I avoid using the "Link Internal Data" feature? I do not see this option anywhere in the App.
Edit: OK. found it. I was looking in settings (before moving anything) but once I move an app the options come up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I found out the hard way how bad this can be.... like... 6pm on the 24th, type of thing, RIGHT when I had finished it all up. I had some kind of heavenly help nudge me into thinking "you should turn these off completely, and simulate Christmas morning, see how long it'll take to fully boot back up".... and you can imagine my stomach drop when I went from having 150 games down to something like 3... it was painful. So, yeah, avoid that setting AT ALL COSTS!
How do you partition the SD card on the tablet? Also is this worth doing when you can install xposed SD card modules and be able to move obb files
Sent from my KFFOWI using Tapatalk
just wondering on the reason for 70/30 FAT32/EXT2. What gets installed in each partition?
tonyt3rry said:
How do you partition the SD card on the tablet? Also is this worth doing when you can install xposed SD card modules and be able to move obb files
Sent from my KFFOWI using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I"m not familiar with the xposed SD card modules so I can't help there. As far as HOW you do it, I linked to some articles in the first post that might help (Reference: http://rootmyandroid.org/increase-in...ry-phone.html/
Reference: http://rootmyandroid.org/how-to-use-...al-guide.html/)
chemie99 said:
just wondering on the reason for 70/30 FAT32/EXT2. What gets installed in each partition?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Basically the "app" gets installed to the 30% EXT2, and allt he "content" goes tot he 70% FAST32. Content will typically be data that gets downloaded after the app is installed. Take Knights Of The Old Republic for example, the "app" is like 50MB, but the "content" which gets downloaded upon the first time launching the actual program, is 2GB.
An Alternative Solution
I also gave my kids 3 Fire tablets for Christmas. My kids are mostly older (12,11,4) and the older two have had other Android devices. I went a different direction from the OP, which I'll discuss here for posterity's sake. This is a bit harder than the OP's method but ends up with a more conventional Android environment.
As background, I used FireOS on the Fire Phone for a few weeks, and ran into many problems. I installed CM11 on the Fire Phone and bought another in the final sale. You can read about that on the Fire Phone forum if you're interested.
Also, I've used Screen Time Parental Control for a couple years now, and while somewhat expensive it's great for monitoring without being too invasive. I can let the kids have a lot of freedom with their devices, without having to be worried about them either being on them all the time, or doing weird things. Screen Time nominally works with FireOS but in the end I did not use the tablets as-is long enough to try installing it.
For these tablets, I decided the easiest path was to install CM12. This avoided waiting for Amazon for security updates, and any FireOS incompatibilities, as I'd experienced with the Fire Phone. Also, the kids are familiar with CM, and frankly any replacement Android device will be easier in the future. After my experience with the zombie Fire Phone from Amazon I'm less concerned about CM/ggow/XDA bugs than I am Amazon's.
I decided to create separate user accounts for each child, as opposed to having both my Google account and the child's Google account** under a single user. I've done this before, but it's awkward to have to switch between accounts when using Gmail/Hangouts/Drive/etc., and sometimes things get mixed up.
Thus, for each of the three tablets I went through this process:
[I don't have the tablets in front of me, so if one of these steps doesn't seem obvious ask and I'll look up the exact names/buttons.]
1) Install CM12 using the well-documented methods
2) Boot into CM
3) Configure for my primary Google account
- Download interesting applications that have been purchased on my account
- Open SuperSU, enable multi-user access
- Open Contacts, select "ME", change name to "Dad" (or whatever)*
- Open File Manager
- Settings / Enable multi user access
- Open main Settings app:
- Set screen lock / PIN
- Users / Add user / OK / Set up now
4) "Switching to new user"
- Google Launcher always
- Log in with the "child's" account** in the wizard
- Open Contacts, change "ME" to the child's name
- Open File Manager
- Settings / Switch to Root access mode
- Browse to /data/app/
- Change into interesting packages and pick the .apk file
- Select "Install"***
- Repeat as necessary
Here I installed Screen Time Parental Control from the Play Store and went through the steps for Child device. Also any customization for the account should go here, then you can switch back to your regular user.
To switch user, drag down the system tray, pick the head image in the top right corner, and then the appropriate name.
Notes:
* This is in a wacky place, but this contact is how CM identifies the user name to display in the switch screen. If you don't see "ME" don't add it, just browse around; it's there somewhere.
** Apparently Google only allows accounts for people >=13. Thus, if you are reading from Google, know that these are my own accounts and my children happen to use them.
*** This will actually not re-download the application, but it makes a temporary copy while installing. Application user data is always separate between users, but for the most part download data is shared. For most applications things work on either user; however, Electronic Arts applications don't work with separate users, and Terraria will print an error (but still worked once the core data was downloaded with my purchasing account). I'm sure there are other apps that roll their own security and will be in this situation, but out of a very large family library these are the only apps with which I've had trouble.
Finally, a last note that Screen Time does not presently block creating new users from the system tray. In theory a youngling could create a user that would not have Screen Time limits, but then they wouldn't be able to delete it without getting in to Settings, which you should block anyway. Depends how devious your children are; for me I'm just waiting until they figure it out to do anything about it... just keep an eye on it if you go this route.
Hopefully this helps someone, eventually!
Best,
Tim
I got two fire tablets for the kids for Xmas, one is the kids edition (with the 1yr of apps,etc) the other is a standard fire. Used root junkies tool on both to block lock screen ads and OTA and hide Apps. They were both running OK, occasionally have the odd situation where you try to open an app and it looks like it is reloading it or redownloading it, not sure if this is because internal space has ran out and its redownloading on the fly but its quite frustrating.
Decided to flash slim LP rom on the standard tablet as there were apps that weren't available(better choice on play store and it wasn't tied into the 1year subscription).
So glad I did, was pretty straight forward to get it up and running and the latest build is so solid, fast and stable, was expecting it to be a bit quicker than fire OS as it had a lot less bloat but it seriously impressed me. So I have kids place set up on it to control apps and play time. I also installed hilocker from the play store to help simplify/lock down the lock screen. For example you can disable the status bar in kids place,but the child is still able to turn the screen off and on, they can then access the pull down toggles and mess with things, but with hilocker you can disable it which is great. Battery life is just as great if not better and your also up to date with all Google's security patches to boot.
It is a very good value tablet, as its just been reduced to just £40 in the UK. One thing that would be a major improvement is I just wished they had put 16GB of storage instead of 8GB. I know it has the sd card option which is great but in reality you only get around 5GB of actual internal storage for apps, a lot of which can't be moved to the sd card or still take up internal space when they are. Again I can't recommend slim rom enough as it really makes a big difference to the tablet (besides providing full play store access) and makes it perfect for consuming media, browsing, or just handier for when you want to use a bigger screen than your phone.
Sent from my InFocus M810t using Tapatalk
gsmyth said:
One thing that would be a major improvement is I just wished they had put 16GB of storage instead of 8GB. I know it has the sd card option which is great but in reality you only get around 5GB of actual internal storage for apps, a lot of which can't be moved to the sd card or still take up internal space when they are.
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@gsmyth, look into Link2SD if you haven't already. Between that and a 32GB MicroSD I don't feel especially constrained by the 8GB onboard.
tdcrone said:
@gsmyth, look into Link2SD if you haven't already. Between that and a 32GB MicroSD I don't feel especially constrained by the 8GB onboard.
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How are you formatting your 2nd partition for links2sd?. I keep getting 'unable to mount' error, trying to setup as ext4, which I thought was the standard on newer hardware. I believe I tried ext 2 as well. Without 2nd partition obb and data stay on internal. Thanks
I wish to thank the OP for this, as I am trying to use, and bought the recommended apps... haven;t had the time to set this all up, and it gets a little confusing having all these other devices, but eventually I'll get it.