why move an application from the phone to the sd card ?

Advantage: Save on your phone's internal memory by storing all your applications on your SD card. Frees up space basically.

Disadvantage: I don't really see one.

 

Advantage:
1. Some phones do not have that much internal storage, and once you run out you can not install any more apps without deleting some. This is a big advantage if you have an older Android phone, on my X with 8GB internal there is no advantage.

2. Some apps you want to keep there so if you forget to back up before changing ROMs you don't lose any data or you can change phones and keep the apps and data.

Disadvantage:
1. When you move an app to SD if it also has a widget the widget no longer works.

 

But if you have 380 apps installed (like I do) it is REQUIRED to toss a whole bunch onto the SD card.

I know, I know, I'm app addicted.

 

How do you move apps from the phone to the sd card? I looked in My Files on my phone and I don't see any apps.

 

The easiest way is with an app like:
App 2 SD (move apps to SD) - Android app on AppBrain
or
App 2 SD (move apps to SD) - Android app on AppBrain


Or you can go to settings -> Applications -> select the app you want to move -> there is a button that says "move to SD"

 

On my Samsung Moment, I don't have this option, even when rooted. I think it's only available on certain/newer phones.

 

It is part of Froyo, it should be available on any phone with Froyo. If you don't have Froyo there is no way to move apps to SD

Not all apps can be moved to SD, try a few different apps.

 

I am having an issue with my apps not showing up at all after sending them to the sd card. I can get them by using Root Explorer very easily, but after I move the .apk to my sd, I cant find the app. Anybody know that even though the widget may disappear, if there is a way to still use the app? If I click on the app in Root Explorer after moving it, it installs the app, and puts it right back on the phone memory.

 

Are you using root explorer to move them? You either need to use the built in applications manager in settings or an app like app2sd to move the apps

 

I used root explorer because I was informed that it works just the same as app2sd and the built in manager doesn't give all apps the choice to move. I know you can use Root Explorer, terminal backup, and app2sd. I just couldn't find app2sd in my 2 sec flurry to find an app to move them and TB seemed to be too much to make it work. But I will give it a try tonight and see what I can get. I will update after I am done.

Thanks

 

SDMove - Android app on AppBrain

MoveToSD - Android app on AppBrain

There are a couple of the apps that will do it for you. Root explorer does not move them in the same way. Each app has to be specifically enabled by the developer to move to the SD and only works with Froyo. If the app can not be moved by on of the apps I listed or the built in application manager then the developer has not enabled support for it and it will not work regardless of how you move it.

 

Thank you for the help. I will get those and try them.

 

Ok so I am having some issues. I have recently loaded a new ROM to fix my old one. I now do not have 3G (even though the symbol is active on the top of the phone), but I also do cannot get the market to open. When I click on the market widget, it opens, and acts like it is loading and immediately closes and my phone goes back to the main screen. I cannot download "appbrain" without the market. I have searched some forums to try to figure this little issue out as well, but the only thing I have found is to reload my gmail settings, but when I click on that, the app does the same thing. Is there a way to download just the market so that I can uninstall and reinstall just that app? Or do I need to find another 2.2 ROM that has it on it?

 

Every ROM is different, you should probably post this in the thread from whatever ROM you are using and see if others are having the same problem.

 

SD Move is basically a skin (front end client) for the inherent app mover in Froyo.

It color codes apps based on their ability to reside on the SD card, and lists them all for you. When you click on one of the apps, the same screen that's built into Froyo pops up and you can move it to SD that way.

One thing I discovered with SD Move. DO NOT change screen orientation while SD Move is loading. It has to start over from the beginning every time you go from portrait to landscape. I once did it back and forth to see what would happen, and it got really screwy. CPU usage was up to 100% for almost a minute even after I backed out of SD Move.

 

From Apps Manager we can see some apps has the options 'Move to Phone', it means it is on SD card. However, if you run App2Sd it still show a lot of those apps are actually on the Phone storage, which I think is true.

Even I have done an adb to install default to SD card, but can see the internal memory keeps decreasing for every installation (where Apps manager indicates it is on SD).

Any idea how we can 'actually' have it moved to SD ?

Thanks.
Bert

 

I think it is simply because even if an app is moved to SD there are some components of the app that have to placed in the system on the phone.

Same as in Windows. If you install apps on a drive other than OS drive it will still put some stuff like DLLs and such on the C drive.

 

Disk usage
DiskUsage - Android app on AppBrain
will show the amount of internal storage which each app takes up, including davlik cache and data.

 

1. SD cards are much slower than the internal memory. This may not be issue in all cases though.

2. SD card is not available when mounted to a PC.

3. SD card is not immediately available on startup (watch your notficiation bar next time you power up). This can be an issue for anything that you want running on startup.

I'm sure there are more that I can't think of off the top of my head. Every decision has its pros and cons.

 

This explains the weird behavior I had last night when my SD was mounted by the PC. Some of my icons (MSN Talk in particular) went to the generic Android logo icon. I couldn't figure it out. When I clicked on the app, it said it wasn't installed...I shrugged it off as a bug, but now I know what happened. THANKS!