OK - thanks again for the advice.
The concept both works and doesn't work:
- It works in the sense that if I successfully download a very small app, then after the install, it will be on the SD Card without me needing to manually move it from the phone:
+ I tried this with 3 small apps, sized: 236 KB, 1.22MB, 824 KB
- It doesn't work in the sense that when I tried to download a larger app, it still gives me an error message on The Market saying "Sorry, there's not enough space to install this item."
+ I tried this with 2 apps:
A. Angry Birds Seasons: 18.88 MB
B. Angry Birds Rio: 18.34 MB
So, I have thought of 3 possibilities for why this maybe doesn't work:
1. Android by default actually downloads first to internal storage and then moves to SD card no matter what you set the InstallLocation parameter to. [this seems strange to me, but who knows]
2. Rovio has their Angry Birds apps set that they must be installed onto internal storage, i.e. they do not enable the move to SD card function. [This seems unlikely to me as I have Angry Birds original already moved to SD card from a couple months ago when I downloaded it]
3. Android's Market App has some cache from when I tried to download these 2 apps in the past before I set the InstallLocation parameter to the SD card, and it is somehow reading that cache message that I don't have enough space in internal storage rather than looking at the SD card storage. [this seems odd... i have rebooted the phone a few times and seems strange that this would be the case]
4. Android's Market App always looks at internal phone storage to check if there is space to download, regardless of what the InstallLocation parameter is set to. [This is my guess]
So, for anyone out that who knows Android well, what's your idea? What do you think the reason is?
And more importantly, any further advice? My only other two ideas are:
1. If I root the phone, can I uninstall all the annoying apps I don't use which came with the phone when I bought it? (like facebook, plurk, twitter, soccer news updates, etc) That would free up some nice internal storage. Any danger in this?
2. I guess I could try to download phone apps on my PC, and then move apk files to the SD card and manually install if I select the check box in Applications-> Developer section to allow apps from unknown sources... Do most apps have this option to download on PC rather than on Market?
(Sorry - I am totally new to Android with this phone)
Any other ideas? Thanks in advance for any help!!