How To Get The Samsung Galaxy Player 5 (US) to Mount The External SD Card as the Default SD Card

[Hook]

I suppose this is a nitpick, but it annoys me and I'm surprised I have not found any utility for dealing with it out there, which tells me there is something about this that is hard to change.

Samsung decided at some point that it should treat internal memory as if it is the SD Card, meaning (in Linux terms) they rig the system to mount the internal memory at the SD Card mount point and give it that reserved name. The SD card gets mounted as a sub-folder to the internal memory.

I'm sure they did it so that they didn't have to create two Android systems for phones that have and don't have external storage. However, since Android developers simply use the SD Card mount point, there is no good way to get a program to use the real SD card instead of the internal storage. Some programs, most notable music players, do have options for telling the program what folders to use and those can use the external storage, but many programs can't and none of the App2SD utilities send programs to your internal storage only. It's not horrible most of the time, but when I downloaded 1.3 Gb of off-line North American maps for my GPS program, guess where they went. If I move them, the GPS can't find them. Yes, I don't really need all those maps and I can delete and download smaller, more relevant maps, but it's the principle. One of the main reasons I use Android is to be able to do things the way I want.

I don't know if this is true of all Samsungs, but I don't think it is something exclusive to the Galaxy Player.

Hopefully, some day, a developer will come up with a work-around.

Other than this, I love my Samsung. I'd also be curious to know if this is carried over to ICS.

[raspabalsa]

This is something exclusive to Samsung devices? I thought all Android devices did the same thing (but I've only used Samsung ones). But yeah, it's confusing and annoying for the very reasons you mention.

Sent from my Galaxy Player 5 using Tapatalk 2

[Hook]

This is something exclusive to Samsung devices? I thought all Android devices did the same thing (but I've only used Samsung ones). But yeah, it's confusing and annoying for the very reasons you mention.

Sent from my Galaxy Player 5 using Tapatalk 2

I thought it exclusive to Samsung. Maybe I'm wrong. If it is Android and not Samsung, I'm really hoping ICS changed it.

[Varjak]

I'm not a programmer, but I'd think it wouldn't be that hard to have even phones that have no internal memory work within one system by having that type of phone just read as a null set and default to the actual card. That way, phones with internal memory (and no phones should have no internal memory in my opinion) and card slots would have two 'cards.'

In more general terms, the other issue is that of defaults. In my opinion, automatic defaults almost always cause problems like these.

[RickAgresta]

I can only speak for Motorola (Droid X, Gingerbread and Froyo) and HTC (Droid Eris, 2.1, whatever 'treat' that was), but the microSDHC cards are treated as just that, external memory.

[Hook]

I can only speak for Motorola (Droid X, Gingerbread and Froyo) and HTC (Droid Eris, 2.1, whatever 'treat' that was), but the microSDHC cards are treated as just that, external memory.

But do they have an internal user memory? My Nexus One is fine too, but it has no significant internal user memory.

[Hook]

I must be a wider problem. I found this.

Makes External SDcard read as Internal SDcard | smartphone and tablet review, tips,tweak and hack

It should, in principle, work. It uses the Android equivalent of the Linux Fstab file which controls the mounts. I'm just deciding how brave I am, but I may go ahead and give this a try. Maybe. ;-)

[Mi An]

Not that you need it, but here's a little encouragement:

[RickAgresta]

But do they have an internal user memory? My Nexus One is fine too, but it has no significant internal user memory.

The Eris is so old, I'm guessing not; the Droid X has 8Gb internal memory where apps can reside.

[r0k]

I noticed this on that Sylvania Froyo device I had and it's also true on my GP5. I haven't tried putting anything on the 16 GB SD I bought. Now that I've seen this thread I won't underestimate how tricky it might be, especially since an offline nav app is one of my first priorities.