Help Phone is garbage. Keeps giving insufficient space message.

AndrewG45 · Jun 3, 2014

Sorry if any of this sounds a bit too "aggressive" for this forum or is in the wrong section, I have been enraged by this glorified paper weight, so I made an account here as a last attempt to find a solution before I go back to the store to demand a refund.

So I wanted to upgrade from my LG Esteem I've had for the longest time and got an L70, everything is much faster, but I can't install large apps because I get an error saying "Error downloading "APP NAME". There is insufficient space on external storage", I just bought a brand new 16GB SD card, it is empty, so there is plenty of space on my external storage, it looks like the play store is trying to download to the incredibly small internal storage.

Is there any way at all to fix this without having to root the phone? (Make apps install directly to the SD Card from the play store, NOT move after installing to internal)
I've tried some way that involves Android SDK and using the command "adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2" but I get an error saying it's an "unknown command"

If that's not possible, does anybody have any suggestions for a good phone that I can exchange this piece of garbage for within the same price range?(Paid around $85, anything more is just insanely overpriced for a phone in my opinion) or do I have to go back to my Esteem with it's 5 minute boot up time.

Hope somebody will be able to help, been looking everywhere for a solution.

EarlyMon · Jun 3, 2014

Welcome to the forums!

Sorry for your frustration.

Google dropped direct SD card installation support quite some time ago.

You can still do it to some extent with some models but it often requires root, such as "Link2SD"

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buak.Link2SD

I don't know where you got the adb idea, link would be appreciated, but that's not a shell command that I've ever seen.

Your device came with 4 GB of storage, and that's allocated to the system and your apps and data. To see what you really have available, you'll need Terminal Emulator and then issue this command -

df

Or, you can do it with adb and no additional app -

adb shell df

Post the results, I'll be glad to help you make sense of them.

As for a better model in the same price range, I couldn't say, you might want to post back your carrier, perhaps others will have some ideas.

EarlyMon · Jun 3, 2014

Ok, I found the odd package manager (pm) command link you must have seen.

You might try this command syntax instead -

http://android.stackexchange.com/qu...th-adb-shell-pm-set-install-location-2-result

But I think it would be surprising if it worked - as I said earlier, Android dropped direct SD card installation support some time back.

AndrewG45 · Jun 3, 2014

EarlyMon said:
Ok, I found the odd package manager (pm) command link you must have seen.

You might try this command syntax instead -

installation - Changing install location to 2 with `adb shell pm set-install-location 2' results in 'insufficient memory' errors when installing apps - Android Enthusiasts Stack Exchange

But I think it would be surprising if it worked - as I said earlier, Android dropped direct SD card installation support some time back.

Well, I guess that one "worked" in a way, no error, restarted the phone, used "adb shell pm get-install-location" to confirm that the install location was changed to external, however there appears to have been no real change, phone still acts the same.

Here is the results of using adb shell df

(I did a copy/paste, looks out of line, hopefully it will post properly)

Filesystem Size Used Free Blksize
/dev 460.13M 128.00K 460.01M 4096
/sys/fs/cgroup 460.13M 12.00K 460.12M 4096
/mnt/asec 460.13M 0.00K 460.13M 4096
/mnt/obb 460.13M 0.00K 460.13M 4096
/system 1.49G 1.32G 173.61M 4096
/data 1.48G 1.05G 436.36M 4096
/persist 31.46M 4.02M 27.43M 4096
/cache 295.09M 72.14M 222.96M 4096
/persist-lg 7.83M 4.15M 3.68M 4096
/mpt 31.46M 5.30M 26.16M 4096
/sns 7.83M 4.03M 3.80M 4096
/firmware 63.95M 31.83M 32.12M 16384
/mnt/shell/emulated 1.48G 1.05G 436.36M 4096
/mnt/media_rw/external_SD: Permission denied
/mnt/secure/asec: Permission denied
/storage/external_SD 14.83G 598.00M 14.25G 32768
/mnt/asec/com.mobilityware.solitaire-1 11.98M 10.50M 1.48M
4096
/mnt/asec/org.mozilla.firefox-1 27.96M 26.43M 1.54M 4096
/mnt/asec/com.StudioOnMars.CSPortable-1 39.95M 38.73M 1.22M
4096
/mnt/asec/com.ea.games.r3_na-1 53.95M 52.27M 1.68M 4096

And my carrier is MetroPCS

gelige · Jun 3, 2014

Memory limitation is a problem with this phone / and in the name of "security" its tougher to move applications to the SD card in Kitkat, the current Android OS.

Is it a game your trying to install?

Anyway, try moving some other applications to the SD card, and seeing if after they are moved, if there is enough space available.

Shabbypenguin · Jun 3, 2014

This is nothing new with lg and metro/tmobile. the last several phones they have released all have had under 2gbs for app storage. you buy budget you have to compromise on something, moto g doesnt have sdcard or lte, lg devices dont have storage and have locked bootloaders, budget samsung devices tend to be lacking in power and screen size.

AndrewG45 · Jun 3, 2014

Bit of an update, turns out metropcs has a crappy "no refunds on upgrades" policy, the thieves. So now I'm enraged calling every MetroPcs store in the area trying to find a way to get my money back. Looks like they would rather lose a customer paying $60 a month over giving back $85 once.

And yes it is a game I'm trying to install, that's the only reason I upgraded.
Tried moving every app possible over to sd, still didn't work, moved Real Racing 3 (the largest app on my phone) to SD through the file manager on the phone, upon starting the game it started downloading all the stuff it does at first run, even though all that data was moved with the app to the SD card.

EarlyMon · Jun 3, 2014

Yeah, I think we understand.

The key line in your df output is the /data - that's where your apps and their data go. You can see the total possible and the total free, those are the numbers you care about.

A lot of games respect nothing about the SD card - many will populate /data no matter what.

AndrewG45 · Jun 3, 2014

EarlyMon said:
A lot of games respect nothing about the SD card - many will populate /data no matter what.

Well, thanks for the help, I think I might be able to manually move all large apps to the SD card to free up the internal storage and move one app back into internal when I want to play it and then move it back when I'm done, not a very quick way, but it just might work.

DaisFlaque · Jun 3, 2014

Heres a trick i liked to use on my older devices.. i would copy the game/apps .apk file to my sdcard and than its data. (Must have root for that) and then uninstall. This would clear up space and i could just push the /data folder back to its respective place and the app as well after i was done with my other games.

caseyjp11 · Jun 30, 2014

Working great here. Rooted with towelroot. sdcardfix to unlock the sdcard, link2sd+ to move apps. Phone has 1.1 gig free internal now, and snappy as hell. The only thing annoying is that the bootloader is still locked, but with root, titanium works fine.

EarlyMon · Jun 30, 2014

Congratulations, glad that worked out for you!

nps531 · Jul 4, 2014

i had the same problem you have. i made all downloads go to ext sd which made this error appear. i changed it back to internal and the problem went away

Help Phone is garbage. Keeps giving insufficient space message.

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