Help Hey guys, have an idea and a question regarding internal space!

[Joelgp83]

So, the wife and I were given a pair of optimus F3's (and new T-Mobile service, to boot) for christmas.

My wife, being the app fiend she is, filled up her internal storage within 30 minutes. Naturally, she came to me crying about how "this phone sucks, I can't load my games, you said this phone is 10x better than what I had", etc. I checked, and sure enough, she was using these games that are downloading huge amounts of additional app data.

I attempt to mitigate this by ordering her a 16GB sd card, only to find out the phone is treating the internal storage as the primary SD, which games are targeting......you can probably tell where this is going and are already prepping links.

I've looked, and I think that this is quite the promising solution, but my wife adamantly does NOT want to root.

The question is, since I can't root and I already know where the games are going (/SDcard0/Android/), and since I have write permissions there already, can I not just symlink to /external_SD/Android/ and be done with it? Second, I'm a little out of practice with the linux mklink command, so what would be the exact level of the directory structure to create the symlink and have it be permanent/transparent enough for games to be fooled?

I've rooted mine, on the other hand. Since my primary gaming is done via emulators, I just put all my roms on my own 16gb card and avoided the whole problem in the first place.

 

[kdude63]

I don't much understand the inner workings of symlinks and Android in general, but I've tried linking files from my phone's storage to my SD card and it doesn't work. I have no idea why.
The Apps2ExternalSD mod is what I'm using, along with Link2SD (my card is just formatted into 2 FAT32 partitions) and it works great. Why doesn't your wife want to root?

Also, mklink is a Windows command. The 'nix equivalent would be ln.

 

[loonycgb2]

LG has disabled anything from being executed from the sd card meaning sh or binaries.

This also includes symlinks created by the system.

Only way to fix this is link2sd program and partition sd card since link2sd has its own chown permissions.

 

[Joelgp83]

I don't much understand the inner workings of symlinks and Android in general, but I've tried linking files from my phone's storage to my SD card and it doesn't work. I have no idea why.

One would think that making hard links should work, as that's supposed to fool everything....

The Apps2ExternalSD mod is what I'm using, along with Link2SD (my card is just formatted into 2 FAT32 partitions) and it works great. Why doesn't your wife want to root?

Ugh, its the games she wants to play. A bunch of anime-choose-who-you-want-to-date sim games, which will explicitly check for for root and exit, with prejudice and a nag screen telling you to unroot if you wanna play. She doesn't wanna give those up, but wants to actually use the 16gb card she spent her money on for storage.

I told her that any developer that tries to enforce such draconian measures shouldn't deserve her, or anyone's, support.

Also, mklink is a Windows command. The 'nix equivalent would be ln.

DO'H! Well, just goes to show how out of practice I am with symlinks.

LG has disabled anything from being executed from the sd card meaning sh or binaries.

This also includes symlinks created by the system.

Only way to fix this is link2sd program and partition sd card since link2sd has its own chown permissions.

I should mention that my plan isn't to move the apps to the sd card, just their asset files. For example, you know how Final Fantasy 3's apk is relatively small, but its associated .obb file is much larger? I could care less about what and where google play installs apk-wise, its the additional app data I want to move/link to the external SD, preferably without root.

Would link2SD let me do this? I was under the impression that it requires root to work its magic.

 

[duper1]

- If it was me I would just saferoot the thing behind her back slap a sd card and mod that thing. Others have confirmed that saferoot works on Tmobile. If you ever want to unroot the phone just use the unbrick tool from LG. All she needs to know is "oh it works now honey, they did an update" and you will be a hero.

- root > Link2SD > App2external SD Mod


Sources:
- Saferoot Guide

- Link2SD Guide

- App2external SD Mod Guide

If you need to unroot:
- LGMobile Support Tool

 

[Joelgp83]

LOL. A hero, huh? That'd be nice.

I am aware that Saferoot works, I've used it twice on my F3 (Rooted > Got the "b" OTA update > Rooted again), and I'm keeping it in my back pocket should I need it again.

While I've rooted her previous phones behind her back (then told her when she asked what all this new stuff is) she had not been playing those root detecting games then, and towards the end of her use of the previous phone, she started to _try_ to play them.

Naturally, when she asked me to unroot her then-phone (Samusng Transform Ultra), I said I couldn't, as the stock ROM was literally crashing her phone every half-hour, and regularly lost radio signal (boost has NO signal quality where we live -- one of the reasons we switched to T-Mobile), and I had rooted and ROM'd it with MegaTron ROM just to get some stability out of the thing. The ROM comes pre-rooted.

Anyway, with the F3, she saw her chance to play those games that kept taunting her with "Please Unroot the phone" and exiting, so she did. Now she wants to add her other games like Simpsons Tapped Out and doesn't comprehend why simply adding a 16gb sd card didn't make them stop complaining about a lack of space, like they did on her old phone when I last upgraded her SD card.

 

[Fox Mulder]

No choice but to root to address the storage issue.
As good a phone as the F3 is, and I really like mine, due to the limited storage it's not the best choice for heavy gamers especially those not comfortable with rooting and other modifications. Since you got these as gifts you obviously didn't have the opportunity to do your own research and pick out a phone that would best suit your needs. Not sure what T-Mo's policy is, but as new customers you might have a trial period during which the phone can be returned and exchanged for another one without penalty. Give their cust service a call or check the T-Mo website.
If you are going to keep the F3's and root them, Link2SD will not be your solution for games. It moves apk and library files but not the data files for apps. For games, you should also get GL to SD which is specifically for moving large game files.

 

[Joelgp83]

No choice but to root to address the storage issue.
As good a phone as the F3 is, and I really like mine, due to the limited storage it's not the best choice for heavy gamers especially those not comfortable with rooting and other modifications. Since you got these as gifts you obviously didn't have the opportunity to do your own research and pick out a phone that would best suit your needs. Not sure what T-Mo's policy is, but as new customers you might have a trial period during which the phone can be returned and exchanged for another one without penalty. Give their cust service a call or check the T-Mo website.

The phones, and the T-mobile contract they come with, are a christmas gift from my dad. He figured out that he can add a 3rd and 4th line to his account and have us pay substantially less than if we had our own, separate account (Everybody Wins? ). Part of the deal was that we had to get these particular phones, as they were the cheapest, and the payment plan fit out budget. Sure, we can exchange them for more capable phones, but the per-month device payment is more than what my dad considered reasonable for going along with this plan.

Of course, his terms of agreement also included that I would not hack the devices....but since he's an iPhone guy, he doesn't know what to look for.

Also, I had (wrongly) assumed that these phones would behave like our prevoius ones in regards to storage -- that it was still possible to have over a gig of internal storage and still have the SD card show up as an SD card, where games expect it to be. I had no reason to think otherwise.

In the end, she gave up. She doesn't want to root, and she said she'll just have to live with trying to constantly swap out the games she doesn't play with the ones she wants to play with.

If you are going to keep the F3's and root them, Link2SD will not be your solution for games. It moves apk and library files but not the data files for apps. For games, you should also get GL to SD which is specifically for moving large game files.

I'll keep those in mind for when I start to need more space.

For the record, I find this phone to be quite capable. With a little more optimization, stuff like PPSSPP should run beautifully on this little device. The Wiimote controller app seems to fail miserably, yet the ".emu" series emulators can connect to my wiimotes just fine. Should we get cyanogen running, it'll really become a beast, like the Galaxy Prevail (my last personal Android device) did/is.

 

[chucksaysblah]

The phones, and the T-mobile contract they come with, are a christmas gift from my dad. He figured out that he can add a 3rd and 4th line to his account and have us pay substantially less than if we had our own, separate account (Everybody Wins? ). Part of the deal was that we had to get these particular phones, as they were the cheapest, and the payment plan fit out budget. Sure, we can exchange them for more capable phones, but the per-month device payment is more than what my dad considered reasonable for going along with this plan.

Of course, his terms of agreement also included that I would not hack the devices....but since he's an iPhone guy, he doesn't know what to look for.

Also, I had (wrongly) assumed that these phones would behave like our prevoius ones in regards to storage -- that it was still possible to have over a gig of internal storage and still have the SD card show up as an SD card, where games expect it to be. I had no reason to think otherwise.

In the end, she gave up. She doesn't want to root, and she said she'll just have to live with trying to constantly swap out the games she doesn't play with the ones she wants to play with.



I'll keep those in mind for when I start to need more space.

For the record, I find this phone to be quite capable. With a little more optimization, stuff like PPSSPP should run beautifully on this little device. The Wiimote controller app seems to fail miserably, yet the ".emu" series emulators can connect to my wiimotes just fine. Should we get cyanogen running, it'll really become a beast, like the Galaxy Prevail (my last personal Android device) did/is.

I havent had any apps look for root and exit ever in the past 3 smart phones i have had way back to eclair. I use link2sd plus http://androidforums.com/lg-optimus-f3/801368-mod-app2external_sd-fixed-duplicate-files.html to handle the space issue completely i havent used this but did you look into something like this? [MOD][XPOSED][4.0+] RootCloak - Completely Hide Root from Specific Apps [2013-12-28] - xda-developers

 

[Joelgp83]

Any and all games from Voltage, inc on the play store will detect root and exit. I don't know why they have such a stick up their but about it.

Rootcloak, on the other hand, looks interesting. I was just thinking about the fact that the bloatware T-mobile device health app detects root, and I can only assume phones home to have on record that I've voided my warranty.....And what I can do to stop that.

It seems to require xposedframework to work, though, and I thought exposed wasn't compatible with the F3 yet.....

 

[chucksaysblah]

Any and all games from Voltage, inc on the play store will detect root and exit. I don't know why they have such a stick up their but about it.

Rootcloak, on the other hand, looks interesting. I was just thinking about the fact that the bloatware T-mobile device health app detects root, and I can only assume phones home to have on record that I've voided my warranty.....And what I can do to stop that.

It seems to require xposedframework to work, though, and I thought exposed wasn't compatible with the F3 yet.....

I bought my phone at Radio Shack and purchased their 1 year long,replace for any reason insurance so I need not worry about voiding warranty. I will look into the xposed framework. I remember reading somewhere that someone made it work. I will return with links if I find them.