# Stock ROM (AT&T) - Rooted - App2SD Support?



## fsx100 (Jun 11, 2012)

Ok, so found how/where the External MicroSD card gets mounted.

But as far as I can tell, there isnt any App2SD support (in the Stock ATT ROM), atleast from the tools that I normally use to move my larger apps to SD.

Has ATT/Samsung done something with the App2SD function?

Or are all apps simply installed to "Internal Memory" (ie, the 16 Gb thats built in)?

Am i missing something here?


----------



## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

So Apps2SD isn't so important anymore because of how partitioning works.

A history lesson...
Before, you would take a fixed-size amount of storage (let's say 4GB), partition a certain amount for the OS (let's say 1GB), a certain amount to various other partitions that are important underneath but you as a user don't care about (let's say 1GB), and then leave the rest for "Internal Storage" (that would leave 2GB left). So if you had more than 2GB of apps and everything, well, you're just screwed unless you enabled Apps2SD. However, we all know that Android doesn't *really* need 1GB for the system - it's more like 100-300MB (well, maybe 600MB+ if you have Sense or something). So if 1GB is allocated but only 200MB is used, you have 0.8GB left being wasted. Some phones realized this and partitioned it specifically to something like 200MB but then when the next version of Android came out, it actually needed 225MB and, well, owners of that phone just lost out on the ability to get an officially-supported update to the newest version of Android because of this (sadly, this was the case with MANY phones over the years). So it was always a balancing act.

So why don't we care so much anymore? Two reasons:
1) We just have much more storage. Most phones come with 8-32GB of internal storage. Even if Android needs 2GB of it, that leaves plenty more leftover. There are *some* very large apps/games out there but it would be very difficult to fill up 6GB with apps and much more difficult to fill up another 14-30GB with apps alone. So it's not such a pressing issue anymore.
2) Ever since either Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich (somebody can correct me here), partition is done in a more dynamic way. Previously, partitions were of fixed sizes. Now, however, they are all dynamic in that they just use "what they need" and all share the "leftover" space. So you don't have to decide how much space Android needs - you're locked into nothing. So if you really only need 200MB for Android and 300MB for the "other partitions", that means you have 7.5GB leftover (where in the previous setup, you might only have 4-6GB left). So the new way of doing things is MUCH more efficient than before (and better in other ways). The #1 con to doing things this way is that you can no longer plug your phone into your computer and just "mount" your "virtual sdcard". THAT is why you have to use the new way of transferring files to ICS/JB devices' "virtual sdcards".

In addition to it not being as important, another reason why you've had difficulty with this is because the first ICS device was the Galaxy Nexus and it had no external SD Card. So a LOT of tools, tutorials, recoveries, and everything have been geared towards that. A LOT of those things need to be reworked to deal with both the new partitioning way of doing things as well as the old physical SD Card way of doing things.

But to answer your specific questions:

1) App2SD is probably not what you want/need anymore.
2) Yes, all apps just install into the "internal memory".

Unless you got some sophisticated setup to point to the external sd card, Apps2SD would simply install the apps to /mnt/sdcard which, as I explained above, simply shares space with your "internal memory" so you would get absolutely no performance, capacity, or space-efficiency benefit from doing so. So the very short answer is simply, "You don't want Apps2SD anymore".


----------



## fsx100 (Jun 11, 2012)

Thank you. That was a very good explaination....


----------



## MistaWolfe (Oct 10, 2011)

fsx100 said:


> Thank you. That was a very good explaination....


True, but I'm still awaiting an explanation to the extreme moronicness (word?) of why there isn't an option to switch storage by default.

I swear my old froyo/gb phones had this stock on some Moto phones. Why the step back?

Just dumb.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2


----------



## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

MistaWolfe said:


> True, but I'm still awaiting an explanation to the extreme moronicness (word?) of why there isn't an option to switch storage by default.
> 
> I swear my old froyo/gb phones had this stock on some Moto phones. Why the step back?
> 
> Just dumb.


I don't understand. What do you mean "why there isn't an option to switch storage by default"?


----------



## MistaWolfe (Oct 10, 2011)

I can't remember what Moto phone it was, but under settings>storage (something like that) you could pick your preferred storage location -internal memory or sdcard. It wasn't perfect, but it did put some stuff on the sdcard afterwards that would usually go to internal memory.

Can someone help out here so I don't sound crazy? Lol.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2


----------



## MistaWolfe (Oct 10, 2011)

OG Droid maybe?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2


----------



## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

MistaWolfe said:


> 1) We just have much more storage. Most phones come with 8-32GB of internal storage. Even if Android needs 2GB of it, that leaves plenty more leftover. There are *some* very large apps/games out there but it would be very difficult to fill up 6GB with apps and much more difficult to fill up another 14-30GB with apps alone. So it's not such a pressing issue anymore.
> 
> [...]
> 
> In addition to it not being as important, another reason why you've had difficulty with this is because the first ICS device was the Galaxy Nexus and it had no external SD Card. So a LOT of tools, tutorials, recoveries, and everything have been geared towards that. A LOT of those things need to be reworked to deal with both the new partitioning way of doing things as well as the old physical SD Card way of doing things.


----------

