How to move apps to SD card? Android 4.1.2

[eti_erik]

I have only had my Samsaung Galaxy Xcover 2 (Android 4.1.2) for a little over a month and already I am getting problems because it is full. The SD card isn't, but the internal memory is.

For some reason, the phone won't display my pictures (which are on my SD card as far as I know) if there is less than 50 MB free space on my internal memory.

I cannot check my internal memory with My Files - that will only show me my SD card. I cannot access it on my PC either: it will only give me a bunch of empty folders-in-folders. But there must be about 1 GB of occupied space. I don't have any apps that are particularley heavy.

My PC said I have around 50 MB free on my internal storage. AppMgrIII said I had about 200. I don't know who is speaking the truth here, it's all a bit foggy to me.

But here comes the weird part: On AppMgrIII I can get a list of apps that can be moved to the external storage. When I hit 'move all apps' it will open the App Info for all of those apps - without any option to move them to SD card! There simply is no button that says 'move to SD card'. Only Force Stop and Uninstall.

So I tried Apps2SD. It finds 26 apps that can be moved to the SD card. By clicking any of those apps, I am brought to the same App Info page - and still no button to move the apps to the SD card! And those are simple apps I downloaded and that do not have a widget.

Without rooting my phone, what can I do to move downloaded non-widget apps to my SD card?

 

[Fox Mulder]

You won't be able to move any apps without rooting, Apps2SD won't do anything.
With root you can use Link2SD to move apps (but not their data files) to the SD card. If you aren't comfortable with rooting, then you may need to find a different phone with more internal storage.

 

[eti_erik]

Thanks for your reply.

It really puzzles me, though... Why can't I move apps, is that new on Android 4? On Android 2 it was possible... and the phone is brand new and quite expensive, so it is really quite absurd to get claims about the phone being full within 2 months!

As to rooting, I rooted my old phone, moved all the apps to SD card that according to some app could be moved, after which Google Play stopped working and my whole phone was useless... that's why I'm a bit weary about rooting now.

 

[Goodspike]

Yes, that's new on Android at some point after Gingerbread, but Samsung brought the feature back on the S4 and I'm pretty sure the S3. I'm not familiar with your phone, but I'm surprised Samsung doesn't do that on all devices.

Google isn't very hot on microSD in general. Note that few if any Nexus devices have microSD.