Installing application on SD-card in Android sdk 2.2

Question

Hello all,

I am facing this problem and finding solution for this issue since last 2 weeks.

Right now i have developed an android application for the client perpose, whose size is 54 MB, from which 52 MB of only Images/Photos.

[Edit: I need to keep images in "drawable" folder ]

So i want to install it in sd-card on Android SDK 2.2 for that i have already set android:installLocation="preferExternal" in the AndroidManifest.xml file. I have created 256MB sd-card while creating an avd , heap size - 192 , ram size - 192

but it still showing me an error:

[2010-08-27 17:58:28 - demo_test] Failed to upload demo_test.apk on device 'emulator-5554'
[2010-08-27 17:58:28 - demo_test] java.io.IOException: Unable to upload file: No space left on device
[2010-08-27 17:58:28 - demo_test] Launch canceled!

Edit:

1. Is this memory related issue of internal memory or external memory?
2. What i have to do to run application and still test with emulator?
3. How do i install application in sd-card in Android sdk 2.2?

Answer 1

Is the sd-cards size really 256MB? I sometimes forget the suffix and end up with.. something very small.

You can also always raise the sizes to like 512, 256,266 and try again to be certain it's something else.

Also, Logcat output would be nice too.

Edit: As it seems, you cant just "install" the app on the SDcard even if you have 30+Gigabyte free on it. Installation depends also on the internal memory of the phone even in 2.2.

Example: Nexus one has 512mb internal memory. The android os takes the needed ram for the camera, gpu, kernel etc leaving a user with only around 190MB app space (which will be even lower due to apps already installed etc).

HTC Hero on the other hand has only 288mb internal memory, leaving it with a very small "app size ram".

Depending on the phone, 90mb app will install to SDcard on nexus one, but won't on Hero due to memory limitations.

The reason you are getting that error is that, after the android os takes the needed ram out of those 192MB, the "app size ram" is not enough to hold that 50+mb application.

I thought that installLocation would install directly to SD, but that is not the case.

Vidar Vestnes blog confirmed what I described above by performing a test with different app sizes on his HTC Desire..

Answer 2

you can check if the sd card is really mounted and enough space is available by the running

adb shell df

command in the android-sdk/tools directory it shows you which partitions are currently mounted, how big they are and how much free space is available

Answer 3

I suggest you try increasing the internal memory available (screenshot says 43MB), in case the .apk is being copied there first before it is installed to the SD card by the OS.

Answer 4

A better approach would be to put your resources in their own directory on the SD card. Then your app can load them when it needs.

Answer 5

Assuming you need the images on your device instead of on the cloud, the easiest way would be to make the app connect to a server of yours and download a zip containing all the images on its first run. Until devices get a larger "app ram size" this might be your only solution.