moving to external SD card

[bonniecjy]

I had bought a 16gb SD card to store more apps in my phone. But somehow in this new phone (S4) I cant find the option "move to SD" for every app. My dad faced the same problem on his Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 which was also bought recently.
Does this means my external SD card is useless since I cant move anything into it?

 

[BLeClair12]

A couple of articles have suggested that that is in fact the case. Seems pretty counterproductive. Apparently the microSD storage is meant for media only. I'm guessing someone can find a workaround, but may involve rooting. Don't really understand why Samsung would block something like this.

 

[DroidBoardr]

It was the same story with the S3. If I had known I would have bought the larger version, but it was never advertised that the SD card is for media only. Apps must stay on the phone's memory. I assume it is to stop people from sharing apps/ stealing.

 

[DessoThumbs]

Well, we all know Verizon really limits the amount of unwanted apps pre-installed.

 

[cybertec69]

A couple of articles have suggested that that is in fact the case. Seems pretty counterproductive. Apparently the microSD storage is meant for media only. I'm guessing someone can find a workaround, but may involve rooting. Don't really understand why Samsung would block something like this.

It is not Samsung but Google that has done the blocking, ever since the JB update, Google wants you to use their cloud. This is real old news, use Google, it's your friend.

 

[leeshor]

Well, we all know Verizon really limits the amount of unwanted apps pre-installed.

LMAO

In all seriousness I don't think it's quite as simple as everyone thinks. At one time phones had two SD cards internally, 1 for android and general data, and another one that you could move apps to. Both of those cards, whether it was to cards or one card partitioned, were essentially permanent storage. The current microSD card expansion naming convention is slightly different in some phones so it becomes difficult for Android to understand where the apps would be stored on external storage.

As crazy as that might sound, it starts making sense when you look at some of the apps that allow you to store data on microSD cards, you can't just say store it on external storage you have to specify the location. Also, if it's removable storage and you removed it you'd be in some deep trouble.