The storage space in the most modern Android terminals has increased a lot in recent years, going from 16 GB 3 years ago to 64 or even 128 GB. At these huge amounts of storage space, we need to add the expanded storage space that to be able to add making use of an SD card.
All Android devices store all applications natively in internal memory. The same happens with the photographs and videos that we make. Over time, the device begins to call for help through messages such as "There is not enough space in the storage of the device." When this happens, the best solution is transfer the applications to the SD card.
The reason why the devices natively store all the applications that we install in addition to the photos and videos is because storage is much faster than the one that we can find in many SD cards.
Being a faster storage, applications tburn less time to run and photos and videos are stored much faster than on an SD card.
Move apps to SD on Android 6 or higher
With the release of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Google introduced a new feature that allows users to move installed applications in internal memory from devices to SD memory cards.
This is one of the best features that have come to Android in recent years, especially in those days when the 16GB space was quickly falling short, which forced us to move photos and videos to an SD card or copy them to a computer to free up space.
This functionality came a few months after the launch of Google Photos, the platform for storing photos and videos in the cloud completely free of charge that it allowed us to have a copy of our entire photo album.
However, in 2020, Google stopped offering free storage through Google Photos, so this great option was no longer available. forcing the user to redo a backup on a PC or SD card of all photos and videos.
If your terminal is managed by Android 6.0 onwards, below I show you the steps to follow to get the applications to the SD on an Android smartphone.
- The first thing to do is analyze the space occupied by applications that we have installed in our terminal to move all those that really take up a lot of space on our device to the SD card.
- To check the space occupied by installed applications, we go to Settings - Applications.
- Within this section, all applications are displayed along with the space they occupy on our device.
- Once we are clear about the applications we want move to SD card, click on the application in question in the Settings - Applications section.
- Next, click on Storage. Within storage click on Move to SD.
This happens for example with WhatsApp, an application that we can only use from the internal memory of the device.
Move apps to SD on Android 5 or earlier
If our terminal is a few years old and is managed by Android 5.0 or an earlier version, this function is not available so we will be forced to download other applications such as Link2SD or App2SD.
The problem with these applications is that need the terminal to be rooted, since otherwise we will not be able to use the applications available in the Play Store to move the installed applications to the SD card.
Although both applications are only available in English, they are very easy to use, so even if you have the basic knowledge, you can move apps to an SD card easily.
The oldest terminals they are easily rooted, so you will not have any problem finding a tutorial online to help you root your device.
Tips to avoid filling up your device storage
If you want to avoid encountering the Android message where it informs us that we do not have enough storage space and lose valuable time that can spoil a video or photo What we want to do at a certain time, the best we can do is periodically review our terminal, specifically the following sections.
WhatsApp is the worst for a smartphone in terms of storage space. If you regularly use WhatsApp and receive a large number of photos and videos, unless you have the application configured so that it does not save all the multimedia content you receive, quickly will take care of leaving our smartphone without space.
To prevent this from happening, we must access the WhatsApp configuration options and modify the permissions so that it only saves the content that we want to keep on our device, that is, content that we manually save.
Space occupied by the album
As the storage space of devices has expanded, so has the resolution and quality of the videos we can do with the device's camera. In the same space where before we could record 10 images, now we can only store one.
If to this we add that we record video in 4K quality, turn off and let's go. It is clear that the higher quality the device offers us when recording videos or taking photographs we should take advantage of it, even if the storage space fills up quickly.
The solution to this problem is regularly move photos and videos to an SD card. In this way, we will never have to worry about not having space at the most inopportune moment.
Delete the applications that we no longer use
As in any other operating system, installing applications with the sole excuse of trying them, for the only thing that serves, in addition to satiating our curiosity, is to fill our device with garbage.
This garbage, over time affects the performance of our device, so as far as possible, we must remove the mania of installing applications that we know in advance that we will not use.
One of the best applications to manage both the applications that we have not used for a long time, and to move photos and videos to SD card es Files by Google, one of the most complete applications available on Android to manage files.
Store photos and videos on SD
If we do not want to worry about the storage space of our device, we can configure the application so that all the photographs and videos that we take, are stored directly on the memory card.
So that the saving process does not last forever, the writing speed must be high, since not all SD cards are the same. SD cards are classified into the following classes, so we must take this into account when buying one:
- Class 2: Class 2 offers us a read, write and read of up to 2 MB / s. Intended primarily for photographs.
- Class 4: Class 4 offers us a read write and read of up to 2 MB / s. Intended primarily for photographs.
- Class 6 V6: Class 6 offers us a read, write and read of up to 6 MB / s. Intended primarily for photographs.
- Class 10 V10: Class 10 offers us a read, write and read of up to 10 MB / s. Ideal for recording in 4K and Full HD.
- V30: SD V30 cards offer us a read, write and read of up to 30 MB / s. Ideal for recording in 4K and Full HD.
- V60: SD V60 cards offer us a read, write and read of up to 30 MB / s. Ideal for recording in 4K.
- V90: SD V90 cards offer us a read, write and read of up to 90 MB / s. Ideal for recording in 8K and 4K.
How can we see the classes of SD cards are associated with the speed of reading and writing, so it is very easy to recognize them when buying them.
If habitually we record videos in 4K quality, it is best to use Class 10 OR V30 cards as they offer us the highest reading and writing capacity.
Although it does not offer us the same speed as that offered by the internal storage system, we are not going to have any kind of problem when saving long 4K videos
If we record videos in 1080 qualityWe are also going to need a Class 10 or v30 SD card. The higher the speed of writing and reading, the greater storage capacity it offers us and therefore, the price of the cards is higher.
Another aspect that we must take into account when buying a memory card is the manufacturer. On Amazon we can find a large number of little-known Asian manufacturers that they do not inspire any confidence.
SanDisk is one of the oldest manufacturers in the world of storage cards. In recent years, Samsung It has become an interesting alternative for those looking for high-speed storage.
Other brands that also offer us good results and quality are Lexar and Kingston. From the rest of the manufacturers we can forget if we do not want to lose the content that we store on the SD cards.
