Introduction
The HTC Desire mobile phone is one of the best android phones on the market. Unfortunately it lacks internal memory. That’s why installing apps from Google play can be a pain. If you use big or many apps there’s just not enough internal memory for them all. Some apps support moving them to the SD card.... but many don’t. Especially the big ones like Google Maps, Facebook and Google Chrome for Android. End of the story... no!
If your Desire is rooted there are tools to move even apps like Google Maps, Facebook and Chrome to the SD card. One of these tools is Apps2SD. And here’s my journey which shows how to set up Apps2SD on an HTC Desire.
Preconditions: Sandvold ICS for Desire
Before you can install Apps2SD make sure you have installed ICS for HTC Desire. I’ve walked through this howto using v0.15.0.1. I also expect you have installed the Revolutionary Boot Loader.
Also make sure you’ve backed up all your data. This includes the following:
- Your whole SD card’s content... we’re going to format it later.
- All your apps on the phone, app settings, device settings, etc... we’re going to reset all these later too. I recommend you to sync all your settings, contacts into the Google cloud.
Now say “If something goes wrong it’s my own fault because I didn’t backup all my data” (This also applies for incorrect descriptions in this guide).
Format the SD card
Normally there’s only one VFAT partition on your SD card. In order to swap apps from the phone’s internal memory to the SD card you need an ext partition on the SD card.
Revolutionary can format the SD card accordingly for you. To do so boot your phone into recovery mode and choose ‘advanced’ -> ‘Partition SD Card’. This will create two partitions on your SD card. One ext partition for the apps + other stuff and one VFAT partition for your photos, music, etc. You have to decide about the size of the two partitions!
My setup was the following. I’ve got a 4GB SD card. I’m using 2GB for ext and 2GB for VFAT. Some people recommend not using more than 2GB for the ext partition. I had no problems using 2GB.
‘Partition SD Card’ will also ask you about the size of your swap partition. 0M is enough.
Finally reboot your phone.
Get Apps2SD onto SD card
Now you have to download Apps2SD and put it onto the SD card. In my case the most recent Apps2SD version was 2.7.5.3 Beta 04 but it didn’t work for me. Using v2.7.5.3 Beta 04 made my device freeze on boot which is not cool. So I’ve used v2.7.5.2-1. Now download dtapps2sd-2.7.5.2-1-signed.zip and copy it onto the SD card’s VFAT partition. You can do this by connecting your Desire as a mass storage device to your PC.
Set Up Apps2SD
First you have to boot into recovery again. Now choose ‘install zip from sdcard’ -> ‘choose zip from sdcard’ -> ‘dtapps2sd-2.7.5.2-1-signed.zip’ and install Apps2SD. Reboot your phone again.
When back in android launch the ‘Terminal Emulator’ app. We need to set up Apps2SD. Type the following into the shell:
$ su
$ a2sd reinstall
This will move your installed and all future apps onto the ext partition on the SD card. Apps2SD will reboot after it’s done.
We should also move the dalvik-cache onto the SD card. Otherwise there will be space for a few new apps but not many. To move the dalvic-cache onto the SD card launch the ‘Terminal Emulator’ app again and type the following:
$ su
$ a2sd cachesd
This time a2sd will not reboot... now you might think: I’m done. Unfortunately not... maybe you have noticed that your hardware ‘home button’ is no longer working... more on this in the next chapter.
Resetting to factory defaults
The broken ‘home button’ can be fixed with a little factory reset. You can reset your device below ‘Settings’ -> ‘Backup & reset’ -> ‘Factory data reset’.
Your Done
Have some cake!
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