Android question?

Space Monkey · 14 Nov 2011 at 09:29

Hi guys,

I'm in the market for a new phone and I'm currently looking at all options, but I have a query about Android phones.

I was just watching a youtube video on the HTC Sensation XE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1ePCDugdvQ&feature=related (from about 1min onwards) the box spec shows 'Total Storage 4GB' but 'Available Storage upto 1GB'??

So what does this mean as a user, as I see the phone comes with a 16GB SD card, so do I only have 1GB for apps etc, and pics/music go on the SD card??

1GB total for apps doesn't sound a lot? Can anyone Android buffs enlighten me, as I've never used an Android phone before. Also are all Android phones the same or do they differ with the amount of usable memory?

Cheers

Myshra · 14 Nov 2011 at 09:44

Without being overly technical it means the OS + onboard apps share a private 1gig partition, 3gig is for user crap and the 16gig is a second drive for user crap. By and large apps arn't a problem as apps are stored on the SD card if they are big (This is App or OS controlled and can be overridden but tbh - leave it alone, it knows best and it's very good at it

)

It's basically mounted as:
/OS+apps - usr has no read/write privledge
/sd_card - onboard memory (badly named), full read write
/sd_card/external_sd - SD card, full read write.

Space Monkey · 14 Nov 2011 at 10:01

Myshra said:
Without being overly technical it means the OS + onboard apps share a private 1gig partition, 3gig is for user crap and the 16gig is a second drive for user crap. By and large apps arn't a problem as apps are stored on the SD card if they are big (This is App or OS controlled and can be overridden but tbh - leave it alone, it knows best and it's very good at it )

It's basically mounted as:
/OS+apps - usr has no read/write privledge
/sd_card - onboard memory (badly named), full read write
/sd_card/external_sd - SD card, full read write.

Ah right, so I read it the wrong way round, the 3 gig is for user stuff, but larger apps use the SD card if needed (would a large app be 100% on the SD card or would it use a bit of both?)

Thanks Myshra, appreciate your help

Myshra · 14 Nov 2011 at 10:36

Oh, I just read that again and now I'm confused. Every other phone I test here is the other way around, smallest partition is for os, bigger for user. It might be the other way around (would be the largest partition I've ever seen for apps/OS though) but it wouldn't make much difference.

A good example of a test app I use is Angry birds (i can hear your groans) - On android it defaults to install on SD card as it's 21meg but what it really does is put a flag in the OS that says "Angry birds is installed but it's on the SD card - don't let it launch unless the external SD card is there". If you go into the apps setup menu you can move it back to the OS partition if you really care but as people leave their cards in 99% of the time this isn't an issue.

Some do a double system - Gameloft apps like Dungeon Hunter 2 have an app on the OS partition and they "store" everything else on the external SD card (like 800meg or something) but again, it's seamless and unless you're looking for it you'd probably not notice how it's executing.

Ring Peace · 14 Nov 2011 at 12:22

Smallest part is for system, somewhere around 200Mb for the OS.

All apps that get transferred to the SD card have a small amount in system memory, some apps (such as google+) the widget won't work if it is stored to SD. You shouldn't have any space issues with the sensation.

V4NT0M · 14 Nov 2011 at 15:48

1GB for apps is a lot and even if it's running out you can move them to the SD card, I have literally 100 games on my Desire HD which has 1GB of app storage.

A the moment it looks a little something like this:
150 apps on the phone 103 of which cannot be moved to SD.
78 on SD card