Installing apps on device vs. storage card - Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General

I recently bough a Tilt with a 2G SD card and have been trying to get educated on WM as well as this phone. I did "remove the bloatware", installed KaiserTweak and a few others, and have begun to wonder what is the best practice in choosing the "device" vs. "storage card" as far as performance goes. Are there rules of thumb as far as certain apps or types of apps that will really run better when installed to the device? Thanks.
-Bob

rbade said:
I recently bough a Tilt with a 2G SD card and have been trying to get educated on WM as well as this phone. I did "remove the bloatware", installed KaiserTweak and a few others, and have begun to wonder what is the best practice in choosing the "device" vs. "storage card" as far as performance goes. Are there rules of thumb as far as certain apps or types of apps that will really run better when installed to the device? Thanks.
-Bob
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have an application that is constantly running (such as today plugins) etc. in the background, then install them on the device. For other apps such as games or other misc programs that you run on demand, install them on the storage card.

sherpa said:
If you have an application that is constantly running (such as today plugins) etc. in the background, then install them on the device. For other apps such as games or other misc programs that you run on demand, install them on the storage card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you. So to further clarify, once an app is loaded and executing it is irrelevant where it loaded from, but the actual initial load will be faster from the device than the storage card and that's where the payoff is?

rbade said:
Thank you. So to further clarify, once an app is loaded and executing it is irrelevant where it loaded from, but the actual initial load will be faster from the device than the storage card and that's where the payoff is?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as app loading time is concerned, you won't really notice the difference at all. But like I wrote before, if you have programs like today plugins or task manager, etc., install them on phone memory.

rbade said:
Thank you. So to further clarify, once an app is loaded and executing it is irrelevant where it loaded from, but the actual initial load will be faster from the device than the storage card and that's where the payoff is?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not quite so simple. All app's once loaded, reside in main memory and it's only the initial load that may be a bit slower.
BUT, some app's have other auxilliary components residing in their directory that they may need to call on from time to time and if on SD card, can slow it down for example GPS apps using maps on SD card. If your map set is small, just try loading your app into main memory storage and see how faster it is.
ALSO, because of poor coding or old app's not expecting to see an SD card, certain app's can fail to work, or crash as they expect to to load from main memory storage.
LASTLY, is the quality of the card. It's the old adage, 'Ya get's what ya' pay for'!
Some cheaper cards have very slow IO buffers that also reduce performance.

Let me ask another question on this (sorry for being lame) - does installing more and more apps (either on card or in the memory) slow down the device? In other words is it better to leave the phone as shipped in order not to increase the size of the reg file?

Related

Whats better: installing on sd card or device?

hey everyone,
did a search on google and here but didn't find what i was looking for.
what keeps a ppc faster? installing programs on the device or the storage card?
thanks,
georgios
neavissa said:
hey everyone,
did a search on google and here but didn't find what i was looking for.
what keeps a ppc faster? installing programs on the device or the storage card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Personally, program would run faster if it was installed on the device, but to save space....storage card is for that.
It depends on the program and your personal habbits.
If you are one that has multiple memory cards and swaps them in/out or uses wm5torage, I would suggest programs you use often to be installed on the device.
if you're like me and just leave a card in the phone, then either way
i never swap cards. so i guess it doesnt matter huh?
Nah, I install all the important ones onnthe phone and all the ones that are not so important on the SD, right now there are none. I guess Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, and Dig Dug are important .
With some roms over 140+ mb space, it definitely won't hurt to install your programs to the main memory. Also, I've run into errors and duplicate folders, ect. from installing to the SD Card.
If you install to sd card, you won't loose anything, except registry entries/configuration, after a hard-reset/rom-reflash. I put all my stuff there that I hate restoring.
I install everything to the sd card, only install apps on the phone memory if the program requires it or an app doesn't like running from the sd card.
No its almost the same, if you have an external HDD, then they will show up in controll panel remove programs, and it will be on the desktop, but when you remove the HDD it will be there but wont run.
They way I do it is if the program runs all the time, lets say a complete system overlay like SPB Mobile Shell or PocketPlus, a real system type program I'll install it on the device. But if it's just an app I run once in a while say Google Maps I'll install it on the card because it only runs when I choose to run it..
Hope that helps!
-RT
I do find that programs like mobipocket run much better when I install to the phone. Seems to hang alot from the card. To me it appears that the phone memory has much quicker access time, but not every program is affected.
I think of it more as the difference between a portable app installed on a usb stick versus the same program running off the desktop.
One other thing to consider (at least it was the case with WM2003SE devices) is if the program/util was run at startup, automatically, it made a lot more sense to put it phone memory, as otherwise the delay in waiting for the SD card to be accessible could cause a slowdown/even hangs!
I install the majority of applications onto my 8GB storage card.
However, I've just discovered that whenever I remove my 8GB memory card, my device memory rises incredibly...
I guess it depends on the type of app you're installing. Something like MagiCall I put on the device so there's no problem blocking calls, but Mio Maps right on the memory card with just a shortcut in the /Windows/Startup Programs folder. If the apps important, then device, but if it's just Pac Man for example, card.
Interesting responses. I've installed apps that the instructions say "Must NOT install on SD card" in the instructions. Some say "You may install on SD card, but be aware that it may be unstable".
comments?
ewingr said:
Interesting responses. I've installed apps that the instructions say "Must NOT install on SD card" in the instructions. Some say "You may install on SD card, but be aware that it may be unstable".
comments?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats there for your safety, it means that if you have any data loss of any kind it wont be the applications fault. It may need to be next to the registry but it really doesnt matter. Games and such, SD card, system tools and registry editors may need to be in the main memory but don't have to.
I install applications on the storage card, and Today plugins on the device. The only "Application" I have on my device itself is Slide 2 Unlock.
-Jay

Why does the Link2SD application not link /data/data too?

From the Link2SD FAQ:
Link2SD does not link application's private data files that are located in /data/data directory, they remain in the internal storage. Thus each app you install will still have some data on the internal storage so you can still potentially fill up your internal storage even if you are moving all of your apps over.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why is this the case? There are other Linking apps which do move /data/data files. Why would Link2SD not do this?
I wish to ask this before I go bothering the application author. I figure there is some well-known issue here which I am not aware of.
I may have to switch linking apps because my /data part is getting too full, mostly due to Google's crappy maps and browser apps, which are horrifically fat.
Data Linking ?
jmomo said:
From the Link2SD FAQ:
Why is this the case? There are other Linking apps which do move /data/data files. Why would Link2SD not do this?
I wish to ask this before I go bothering the application author. I figure there is some well-known issue here which I am not aware of.
I may have to switch linking apps because my /data part is getting too full, mostly due to Google's crappy maps and browser apps, which are horrifically fat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too have this issue, and am now running low on internal space (mainly due to the huge data\data folder) ...
Can you tell me the name(s) of the other apps that provide linking the data folder ?
I believe app data isn't moved, because it will make your phone laggy as hell. Guess the dev chose for finding more space, but not at the cost of speed.
tommert38 said:
I believe app data isn't moved, because it will make your phone laggy as hell. Guess the dev chose for finding more space, but not at the cost of speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This makes no sense at all. In many cases, newer SD cards are FASTER than the internal flash on older phones.
Please don't guess wildly about stuff you don't understand.
d_bizzzz said:
I too have this issue, and am now running low on internal space (mainly due to the huge data\data folder) ...
Can you tell me the name(s) of the other apps that provide linking the data folder ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
S2E does it, but from what I've seen, it's only for Cyanogen.
jmomo said:
This makes no sense at all. In many cases, newer SD cards are FASTER than the internal flash on older phones.
Please don't guess wildly about stuff you don't understand.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sustained write/read speeds don't tell the whole story, as you may know (probably not). You probably believe the more megapixels a camera sensor has, the better? Also, the phone must support those faster µSD cards. Seeing you've only been here for half a year and you've only contributed with a dozen posts, I can say for certain that you've never read any warnings for not moving app-data. It's not your fault.
Unfortunately, I noticed that all the new people coming here have no respect or decency and think they know everything already. Guess what: you don't know **** . So, like I already said before, drop the attitude.
Respectfully, you are simply wrong.
Modern SD cards are faster than the internal flash on older phones, which are the phones that need apps like Link2SD. I don't know about more modern phones.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=934087
Bonnie++ is the best way, that I know of, to benchmark a flash storage devices, but it's not for noobs
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1169910
I remember running bonnie++ against my Nexus One and a cheap 16GB card about a year ago when that above post was made and my SD card was faster than the internal flash in almost every way, and that was then.
Yes, my post count is low. XDA Devs is full of loud noobs who think writing a java app or rooting a phone makes them a leet technical resource. I've been writing software and managing unix systems for over a decade.
Well, sir, you go ahead and put your app-data on your µSD . Benchmarks are for [random word].
Did I also mention that somehow some new members are bragging about what they have achieved and are capable of, while they haven't made themselves useful in any way? If not, now I did.
Is there still no possibility to move also the data folder (e.g of games)? Most of my applications are rather small and most space is taken by the game data folders.
tommert38 is correct here.
Because there is no guarantee, that if your sdcard is fast, it'a also faster than your internal flash. There are more dependies than only the speed of the card. What are the specs of the nexus one sd-reader? This could be an popotentially barrier.
At least: Which size supports the nexus one for sd-cards?
I agree with the OP about this. If it is a worry about the speed, i'm sure mr. bulent akpinar can at least provide an option in the app to enable/disable saving /data/data to the link2sd partition. everybody happy!
here's a link to the original link2sd thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=919326 maybe the app author can take note of it as a suggestion for future updates
One other benefit of not placing /data/data on the SD card is for the case if your sd-ext partition fails to mount for some reason (e.g. failing a file system check). If /data/data was on the SD card, then most of your application settings will be gone, including for builtin apps like the launcher. It will look very similar to a factory reset.
With /data/data on internal storage, your settings will be still be visible in this scenario and it will only be the downloaded apps that disappear. This should be somewhat easier to recover from.
RealCrogge said:
Is there still no possibility to move also the data folder (e.g of games)? Most of my applications are rather small and most space is taken by the game data folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Consider all the risks and if you are willing to take them you might find this thread usefull. Just be sure you know what you are doing
LINK2SD v3.4.1 - No links data/data
apologies for posting to an aged thread, but just today LINK2SD has been updated to include linking of the /data/data
I'm already enjoying the new found space made available, it seems to work very well so far ...
d_bizzzz said:
apologies for posting to an aged thread, but just today LINK2SD has been updated to include linking of the /data/data
I'm already enjoying the new found space made available, it seems to work very well so far ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May I ask you if you noticed a lag or performance slow down? I also love link2sd but I fear to upgrade to the latest version cause I don't want to compromise the reliability of my system, which so far, has been excellent.
I have read that moving the /data files could slow down the phone or cause overheating of the sd card. Actually I have a class 10 ultra II Sandisk.
Thanks for any report and opinion.
ik8vwa said:
May I ask you if you noticed a lag or performance slow down? I also love link2sd but I fear to upgrade to the latest version cause I don't want to compromise the reliability of my system, which so far, has been excellent.
I have read that moving the /data files could slow down the phone or cause overheating of the sd card. Actually I have a class 10 ultra II Sandisk.
Thanks for any report and opinion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't done any benchtesting or anything but haven't noticed any slowdown or battery drain what-so-ever.
My phone runs just as good as before.
I only link my game apps to SD because I expect one day the SD card will fail (like most media storage devices) and most of my essential apps are un-linked and stored on the internal phone mem.
d_bizzzz said:
I haven't done any benchtesting or anything but haven't noticed any slowdown or battery drain what-so-ever.
My phone runs just as good as before.
I only link my game apps to SD because I expect one day the SD card will fail (like most media storage devices) and most of my essential apps are un-linked and stored on the internal phone mem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I have linked all my apps and it is now almost an year. I was very curious about the possibility to move the data too but was a bit on the standby, because if you check on the play store, there are some complaints. Now, I don't know what to do, maybe I'll give it a try.
Thanks for your kind reply.
ik8vwa said:
Thanks, I have linked all my apps and it is now almost an year. I was very curious about the possibility to move the data too but was a bit on the standby, because if you check on the play store, there are some complaints. Now, I don't know what to do, maybe I'll give it a try.
Thanks for your kind reply.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess some reviews may be on different phone models.
All I can advise is check the gppd & bad reviews and the phone model. Also to have a titanium backup of your older link2SD so you can roll back if needbe.
Worth just linking a few & see how it goes.
No complaints on my Galaxy S3, works fine & has done for the past 2 years
d_bizzzz said:
I guess some reviews may be on different phone models.
All I can advise is check the gppd & bad reviews and the phone model. Also to have a titanium backup of your older link2SD so you can roll back if needbe.
Worth just linking a few & see how it goes.
No complaints on my Galaxy S3, works fine & has done for the past 2 years
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I downloaded the new version (I have the plus option) but I don't understand how to move the data to sd since in the options it is specified that only future installs will be moved (if I flag the option).
Back to the original question. I use Mounts2SD for my Nexus One. I check to move Apps, Data, Dalvik, and Libraries. The rest I leave alone. I have no problems with space with this set-up. Speed is decent, I think the issues I have are probably related to the various custom ROMs I've been using but I can't be 100% sure.

[Q] Apps on SD with Interop Unlock?

With Interop Unlock, there's any chance to install or move apps on SD cards?
Currently testing this out. Games won't work too well on an SD card unless you own a class 10
Could you post which registry key to change to install on SD?
Its not simply a registry key.
It's not even about wether it is class 10 or not. WP7 devices had huge problems with their internal SD cards due to the fact that the random access time was terrible. The SD card class tells you only about transfer rate though.
StevieBallz said:
It's not even about wether it is class 10 or not. WP7 devices had huge problems with their internal SD cards due to the fact that the random access time was terrible. The SD card class tells you only about transfer rate though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yep. random access is worse on most (big) class 10 cards afaik
It should be possible. You might have to install the app on your phone. Create the directory on the SD card and move the files to the SD card. And find a way to redirect all entries from the phone to the SD card. Access time shouldn't be a big factor, because windows phone apps load into the phones memory. This is all speculation though. I don't think you can install from the store to the phone. Unless there's a way to change the install path of apps in the registry. Again, all speculation.
Sent from my Nokia 521 using XDA Windows Phone 8 App
Access time was a huge issue with SD cards on WP7. And it was "supported" there. I don't assume it would have become less of an issue on an OS that does NOT support it.
aclegg2011 said:
It should be possible. You might have to install the app on your phone. Create the directory on the SD card and move the files to the SD card. And find a way to redirect all entries from the phone to the SD card. Access time shouldn't be a big factor, because windows phone apps load into the phones memory. This is all speculation though. I don't think you can install from the store to the phone. Unless there's a way to change the install path of apps in the registry. Again, all speculation.
Sent from my Nokia 521 using XDA Windows Phone 8 App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've got the same thought recently. If it would be possible to create a junction link in Phone\Data\programs, then it should work, cause windows doesn't really "know" that junctions are only links, it handles this as a directory...
on a "normal" Windows it must be a shell command like
mklink /j C:\Data\programs\{GUID from App} D:\{copy of the entire GUID-App-Directory from C:\Data\programs}
sorry for my "poor" description, but maybe someone got an idea...?
You all are missing a really critical problem: apps (unless they have ID_CAP_PUBLIC_FOLDER_FULL or similar) cannot actually access the SD card (ID_CAP_REMOVABLESTORAGE goes through an out-of-process RPC service; the app itself still can't access the card). Trust me, moving an app's binaries and data files to a location that the app cannot access does *not* end well (in related news, I can't launch Calculator on my phone anymore).
Oh, by the way, symlinks require some registry tweaks (in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem) to work. Otherwise, you get these nasty and useless error messages about the link being "disabled" if you try to do anything with it (creating it works, but not much else). This probably won't affect hardlinks or junctions, though.

Where did all my storage go

I have used a reported 6gig out of 11 on my /sdcard0, and yet when I run sd analyst in es explorer it doesn't add up as you can see in the attachment.
Sd analyst seems to be correct because I don't have any huge games installed. So where did all my storage go?
Its all the apps Samsung puts on there that you cant delete.
If somebody starts a class action lawsuit on this device like they did with the iPad I am all over it. Its not even remotely fair that a 16gig device has 8.9gig free because of 3+ gigs of bloatware you cant delete.
I have an SD card, but the lack of app space is concerning me.
Except I'm not running touch wiz. I'm running a CM12 ROM. Any way if I'm reading it right, this is just counting /storage/emulated/legacy the user data partition. Very weird.
barth2 said:
Except I'm not running touch wiz. I'm running a CM12 ROM. Any way if I'm reading it right, this is just counting /storage/emulated/legacy the user data partition. Very weird.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That does not make sense? I hope one of the Devs can come up with the answer to this mystery!
Correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it that if you root your device and get a rom let's say CM, as far as I know CM doesn't eat up a lot of space meaning depending on the contents of that rom, that 3gb bloat ware should be gone right?? Also this is what frustrates me with Samsung, we just can't have the option to write over to SD cards which I know can be a liability but look at the what we need to deal with. There's no 32gb version in my country so I'm always cramped up for space and I hate it, having to remove apps and games just to get by.
Sent from my SM-T805
Well I wiped my internal memory (drastic measure) and started over and now it looks correct. Not sure what was behind it.
More information would be great here. I know there's an incredible amount of Google bloat on these devices, but perhaps there is some information missing from the ES File Explorer results. I'd recommend downloading a dedicated app cache cleaner and a dedicated storage analyst app to get an accurate idea of all the things that are taking up storage. Some of the biggest offenders are browsers, but the one I've seen eat up a whole gigabyte on unknowing users' phones is usually the sneaky Google+.
Storage analyzer
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.levelokment.storageanalyser
1Tap Cleaner
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a0soft.gphone.acc.free
steelbrachen said:
with Samsung, we just can't have the option to write over to SD cards which I know can be a liability but look at the what we need to deal with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, with Google Android Kitkat, it was decided that apps should only be allowed to write to their own sandboxed folders on the SD card anyway. Samsung has always been pretty good about at least allowing file management via a first party app, and even managing which apps can use the SD card are listed in the application manager, so I fail to see how Samsung is at fault here. (Meanwhile, in addition to demanding restrictions across the board to SD cards in Kitkat and then Lollipop, Google's more focused on forcing a social network on their users than writing a file manager for all the devices that DO have SD cards... or providing any decent AOSP apps in general.)
Sent from my Galaxy S5
Without going into too much detail the amount of available space is affected by the partition layout of the device. Esp with cm or custom rom that only takes up a couple hundred mb; the system partition ends up with a lot of unused space. If you were willing the modify your default partition table you could reclaim some usable space. Though I would place this in the advanced user grouping and would not recommend attempting it.

external sd card support for moving apps

I have the Project Fi version of the X4 and I have not found any way to move apps from internal memory to the memory card that I put in the phone. Am I missing something? I even enabled the Developer options and switched on the "Force allow apps on external", but it didn't make any difference...
Force encrypt makes all apps stay on internal memory. Once we can remove encryption, it should be possible.
You need more than 32GB for apps? I know the system takes up almost half of it, but you still need 16GB of apps? What are you running?
crazyates said:
You need more than 32GB for apps? I know the system takes up almost half of it, but you still need 16GB of apps? What are you running?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wondered the same thing. Unless the apps load faster from a high speed sdcard. That many apps is going to have so much stuff running in background it would be crazy.
souleman said:
I wondered the same thing. Unless the apps load faster from a high speed sdcard. That many apps is going to have so much stuff running in background it would be crazy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same question. I want to put some of my 600+ audible audio books and I also want to put movies on sd card via the playon cloud app. Seems crazy to me to clutter up internal memory with stuff like that.

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