Pardon me if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't see much about it on this forum.

The problem with Android phones is that not many apps can be installed on the phone because most can only be installed on the phone memory and not on the SD card.

The ability to install apps on the SD card only came in with Froyo 2.2 version of Android, but as it turns out all the apps need to be recoded to allow them to be moved to the SD card.

My phone came with a 4GB card - I'm only using a fraction of it as most apps can only go on the phone, and I have to prioritise which ones I can have due to the space limitation.

I hope all app coders are busy fixing their apps to allow CD card installations!

I see this as a very major flaw in Android.

No, it *was* a major flaw with Android. That's been fixed.

Now it's a major flaw with some apps.

Seems to be the majority of apps as far as I can make out!

Would be helpful if AppBrain told me whether it could go on the SD card or not.

I agree that app makers really need to update for this issue - the Froyo fix is great, but most of my apps can't be moved anyway.

I don't mind so much on apps that are only a few KB, but some are several MB and they soon take up the space.

Yes - you can't really blame the app makers though - this is a hangover from earlier versions of Android, and 2.2 hasn't been out very long.

How many apps do you have on your phone? Sounds like too many to use all them practically on a regular basis.

Most people apart from AppHounds won't have this problem as they spend too much of their life doing things that don't involve their phone.

I probably have a load I don't need - I don't know really... only had the phone a couple of weeks and still getting to grips with it.

I've been busy doing too many other things that don't involve my phone to work it out!

But that's not the point - it's still a flaw that means most apps cannot be installed on the SD card, and apps have to be quite limited - you don't need a lot before the phone fills up.
Last edited by HaraHeeHum : 21-09-2010 at 20:09

I don't know, if you're serious about wanting people to use your app, then it should be a priority.

Hopefully they will get around to it soon.

There is a way to force nearly all apps to install directly to your SD card.

It's easy, doesn't require you to root your phone and works with all apps except around 10 of them.

You need a USB cable, a windows machine (not tried it on Mac, may work, who knows) and your Desire plus the Android SDK.

It's a simple case of running a single command at the DOS prompt once you've installed the SDK to your machine and suddenly nearly every app installs to SD. The space you save is incredible.

Like others have said - a drawback but 2.2 fixes it. Of course it will take time for everyone to code in the use of the 2.2 feature but it's being resolved, so I'm afraid calling it a 'major flaw' is a bit odd.

It's a major flaw because the reality is that currently Android users are quite limited in how many apps that can be installed.

Sounds interesting - what is the command?

Have you tried this? What happens if all/part of the app writer's code wants to run on the phone and not the SD card?

I've got 20 or so apps installed with no doubt room for 20 more.

If I reach about 40+ then I would need to disable one or two low usage ones.
But considering the install files are all there ready in downloads is that really all a bad thing?

It's not a major flaw, it's just an inconvenience at best.

Having said that, I have plenty of space left on my handset. I have removed what I used maybe one or twice and kept only what I need. The stuff I hardly or never used was just cluttering my handset up.

I have a graphics app, a GPS app that I use a lot and a few others that I use from time to time. So for me the capacity on this handset is fine. This means what you are describing as a major flaw is more to do with perception and an individuals needs. I don't think calling it a major flaw is fair really...

I don't take credit for this, it was found by someone else and is currently all over Google, a quick search just now and I have these two examples for you,

http://androinica.com/2010/08/03/how...oid-2-2-froyo/

http://androidboss.com/force-apps-to...card-on-froyo/

both do the same thing but are done slightly differently as in one runs a command through the software, the other loads in to the software first. That's just down to preference.

I can confirm it works, I did this weeks ago on my Desire.

** YOU DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK **

Yep I've tried it. It was good to find something like this that didn't require the phone to be rooted first.

If the software completely refuses to move, such as Google Maps does, then it won't move - however there are literally a handful of apps that act in this way the rest will move.


Just be mindful, yesterday after weeks of running with all my apps on SD my phone managed to loose all my apps installed on SD. I was playing around with a 3rd party backup tool that did something to my phone and that stopped me accessing the apps on my SD. I had to reformat the SD card and reinstall them from scratch. It's worth pointing out however that I appear so far the only person to experience this problem and others are using this method without problem. I was just unlucky due to my messing about and experimenting

Thanks - I will give this a go.

From my perspective it is a major flaw, from yours it's not - let's agree to disagree.

It is a hangover and it's a real problem. On the face of it, it's like WTF why can't you do this most basic of things. But the reality is more complicated.

I have an app in the app store and I haven't enabled it for my app on purpose. The app is a widget and if you unmount the memory card while app is working all hell lets loose. I'd rather avoid people complaining about FCs than allow it to moved to the memory card. Having said that it's only 200k if it was a 25MB game or mapping app I might think differently.

I borrowed my uncle's Porche a while back. I couldn't fit my child and wife in the car because there were only enough seats for two.

The Porche is flawed!!! All that money wasted on a flawed car

Great chick magnet though

I grew out of the need for status symbols and penis extensions. That's why I bought the helicopter.

Yes, but I can only take one 'chick' home with me though due to the flaw with the Porche! Damn this flaw, if only it could handle more capacity to meet my individual needs. It's clearly flawed!

The real question is, why did it take Google this long to implement a feature like this?

Also, I believe Android's currently rudimentary copy protection system prevents apps from being copied. This is deprecated and will be replaced soon in favour of a licencing system - perhaps when this happens there will be a lot more SD card friendly applications in the market.

Har de har - your 'analogy' doesn't stack up and subsequent comments make for pretty lame humour as well.

Most apps cannot be installed on the SD card because up until very recently Android didn't allow it, so although you might have up to 32Gb of storage you are limited to a couple of hundred meg or whatever is available on the device, and there are thousands of apps. Whether anyone has the time to use them is not the point. Some apps are quite large, and sometimes you want to try a few different kinds to test them out.

Presumably there isn't such a limit on the iPhone - if you were comparing the two phones then this would be an obvious disadvantage.

Before anyone jumps in and says 'buy an iPhone then', I would still get an Android phone as I still expect that most apps will eventually install on the card.