I don't understand the architecture of the Android phone yet I'm about to do my research while I wait for someone answer this question. so I'm not really sure if this phone has two different storage cards because downloads and installations are stored differently. you have an option to store to your phone or to store into your internal sd card then there's the external sd card which is the actual SanDisk you have in your phone. I was just wondering if I could partition internal sd card and set it up differently. because I want to download and install apps but I only have a few hundred megabytes of internal storage left and yet there's over a gig of free space in the phone storage. again I am assuming that the phone storage and internal storage are on the same chip built into the phone. everything is installed into the internal storage and for some reason I can't install anything to the phone storage which I'm assuming is the SD portion of memory. I want to minimize the phone storage and maximize internal storage because that's where apps are installed.
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partition internal sd card
- Thread starter Delta9
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- zte warp 4g
svim
Extreme Android User
Here's a link with a good explanation of Android's internals:
https://sites.google.com/site/tomsgt123/adb-fastboot/understanding-android
Re-partitioning (as in re-sizing and/or altering individual partitions) your phone's internal storage is going to be a tricky process, and I'm guessing will involve a lot of trial and error. Just a reminder -- backups are important! Also keep in mind the default file system for your phone is ext4 (Android is based on a Linux kernel and ext4 is one of many common file systems for Unix/Linux) and most external microSD cards are FAT32 (Microsoft's proprietary file system that's unfortunately become the common default for most 'platform agnostic', shareable media) so if you rely on a microSD card as a back up, FAT32 doesn't support Linux style file permissions very well.
https://sites.google.com/site/tomsgt123/adb-fastboot/understanding-android
Re-partitioning (as in re-sizing and/or altering individual partitions) your phone's internal storage is going to be a tricky process, and I'm guessing will involve a lot of trial and error. Just a reminder -- backups are important! Also keep in mind the default file system for your phone is ext4 (Android is based on a Linux kernel and ext4 is one of many common file systems for Unix/Linux) and most external microSD cards are FAT32 (Microsoft's proprietary file system that's unfortunately become the common default for most 'platform agnostic', shareable media) so if you rely on a microSD card as a back up, FAT32 doesn't support Linux style file permissions very well.
svim
Extreme Android User
Ahh, sounds like you want is something similar to setting up a RAM disk like on a computer, using RAM as storage media. As far as I know that's not possible on smartphones. Even if it is, keep in mind RAM is not functionally the same as storage media -- files written onto storage media stay there even if the phone is powered off, files loaded into RAM are gone if the phone is powered off. With a typical computer a RAM disk is good for things like temp files and cache files, but not as storage or archival purposes.
I dont think thats what I was asking, I wanted to know if I could use my phones "Phone Memory" to install apps. I can install them on my phones Internal memory but im out of space, I was wondering if I could repartition the phone to minimize phone memory, and use that space as Phone Memory for app installation.
svim
Extreme Android User
What you want isn't practical and as far as I know isn't possible in a smartphone. The RAM memory and the storage memory are two different chips on your phone's motherboard, so it's not a matter of you wanting to re-partition your storage memory, you want to re-purpose it. They're not just different chips, they function differently and are by design not interchangeable nor sharable. The graphics chip inside your phone has its own memory too, but again, isn't shared with the storage memory nor the RAM memory.
At this time if your smartphone needs more RAM or you want a larger amount of storage memory, you need to buy another phone. Customizing a desktop computer's internals is one thing, doing the same on a smartphone is pretty limited.
At this time if your smartphone needs more RAM or you want a larger amount of storage memory, you need to buy another phone. Customizing a desktop computer's internals is one thing, doing the same on a smartphone is pretty limited.
Im not talking about the RAM, Im just talking about the storage card in the phone, it has two partitions, one for system apps and the other is called the internal SD card, for videos and music you download; downloaded apps are not always installed to this larger partition. I want to minimize that because thats what my external SD card is for, I want to increase the memory set aside for apps and minimize the phones partition for your storage space and keep it all for apps. THeres 1.5gb but I cant install apps onto this partition
svim
Extreme Android User
Actually there is no internal SD card, your phone's internal storage is a hardware chip soldered to the phone's motherboard. And there are actually at least six partitions on your Android phone, (again, read through that link mentioned previously), the system and user partitions are simply the most discussed ones because even when you root your phone those are the two most likely partitions that we interact with. Theoretically it's probably possible to re-size your phone's partitions, after all at its heart Android is a Linux kernel running on a common ext4 file system. If anyone has actually done this I hope they post something about it.
Tweaking partitions on a computer is challenging but nothing a typical hobbyist doesn't do on occasion, re-sizing live partitions on a smartphone will require a pretty high skill level. Plus you'll need a Linux PC or laptop, Windows or OS X won't suffice. You need to be able to mount your phone and work on it at a file system level (oh, and a good, full back up/clone of your phone).
Looking up the specs on your ZTE Warp 4G, with only 8 GB of storage you need to keep your expectations based on the reality of what you have to work with. I have a Galaxy S3, a model that's over three years old now. It runs well and serves my needs but when it comes to something like high resolution content when I play around with Google Cardboard it'll just choke and sputter, so I choose to be entertained by standard res 3D.