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Help Few questions about my new android

Slav3k

Lurker
Oct 20, 2015
4
0
Hello everybody!
Iam pretty new to android, so please dont judge me too hard for newbie questions, thanks!

Question1:
Why is my lenovo memory distributed into 3 parts instead of two ( I was expecting that it will be just internal memory (8GB) and SD card, but i see there Internal, Sd card and "external sd card"). What is that?

Vstiek.jpg

Question2:
I would like to install new apps, i have a lot of space on the sd card, but still, i cant install and lenovo is telling to me, that i dont have enough space in my phone ... what???

Question3:
I am tired of tons of bloatware therefore i would like to root my phone, but iam concerned about my warranty. So if i will root my device, is it possible to unroot (restore?) so if i will go use my warranty the dont find out it was rooten?

Thats all for now,
Thanks a lot
Jan
 
Jan, Hello and welcome to Android forums. :)

Let me answer your questions in order. First, you see 2 SD cards because Android will partition a segment of the internal memory for user storage and call it an sd card, even though technically it's not. For those devices without expandable storage (no external SD slot) it provides the proper location for file storage and app data. Unfortunately there is no distinction between devices so even if you have expandable storage, you will still have an SD card partition internally. For devices with an SD slot, Android must give it a mount point and since /sdcard is already in use, it will go to external SD or something similar. Since Android 4.1, internal partitions are virtualized which allows dynamic allocation making installing apps to SD pointless. You should have access to all internal storage space for both apps and data. You can't really install apps to the external card without a lot of effort and it's not practical. If you want to see if it's possible, then maybe, but as a permanent setup, there are many reasons why this isn't a good idea.

As for installing apps, it would depend on the app. Many games require large amounts of memory/storage and frankly, an 8 GB device won't have enough room. What I see in your screen capture, though, is a little confusing. It looks like it's reporting your internal storage as your external card. Could you be a little more specific about memory use? Or, better yet, install Storage Truth and RAM truth and post the results. (This is a set of apps published by our own @scary alien and will give you the "truth" about what's going on on your device.)

Rooting. Well, yes, you do technically void the warranty and you assume the risk if you modify your device's firmware up to and including bricking your tablet. Unrooting cleanly will depend on your device, the version of Android and the method used to root. That said, I don't know of many instances of a manufacturer refusing warranty service on a rooted device if the hardware fails, whether they can detect it or not.

Since you are new at this, I recommend reading all you can about the rooting procedure and then come back here and ask before doing anything, just to be safe. We can walk you through ways to back up your device and safeguards against bricking so you don't get yourself into trouble trying things that may not be fixable.

Hope that helped.
 
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Okay, yes, it's possible. You need to root. An app like links2sd or apps2sd might be able to push some of the app binaries to your SD card and free up some space.

Here's why I don't recommend doing it.

Essentially what you are doing is making Android think the files are stored in one place when they are actually stored someplace else. If that "someplace else" ever goes away, it could render your whole phone unusable, depending on which apps you've moved. It will also have much poorer performance.

Even the highest quality SD card rated Class 10+ is nowhere near as fast as the device's internal memory and was never designed to handle the constant read/writes of running applications. It's akin to booting your computer from floppies (if you're old enough to remember when that was possible ;)). Also, SD cards, especially when over taxed are prone to failure and it tends to happen catastrophically. One day it works, the next it doesn't with no warning and that's usually all she wrote. Hasta la vista, SD.

Of course people do it. The presence of the apps that are still current indicate that there are plenty of people taking the risk. Of course that also explains a lot of the questions we get about recovering files from failed SD cards. :eek:
 
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