best to install things to phone or memory card?

It doesn't much matter if you install apps in your phone memory or on removable media - you are not likely to be able to have them transfer properly after firmware update or backup with nokia suite. Some will work fine, but it all depends upon how well they were coded, the caged data directories don't help out in this situation much either.

With your applications that keep trying to install every time you insert your memory card, go in to your application manager and try to install them from there, if they still fail, take note of the number, might be something like A0000143, write them all down.

Connect your phone in data mode to the computer, or use a memory card reder and delete all files with reference to the number above in their name.
Edit: The numbers you get will not be what I wrote above, please don't use A00000143 😊

This will fix the problem, it's a little tedious, but has worked for me every single time.

For stability ONLY install to the phone mem.

pa49 wrote:For stability ONLY install to the phone mem.

I disagree! (no offense intended)

I have been using Symbian Nokia Smartphones for about 4 years now and I always install apps on the memory-card, unless the option is not available.

My N95 is rock solid and never crashes or hiccups.

dez_borders wrote:I disagree! (no offense intended)

I have been using Symbian Nokia Smartphones for about 4 years now and I always install apps on the memory-card, unless the option is not available.

My N95 is rock solid and never crashes or hiccups.

True, I agree that for normal use it doesn't really make much difference, although certain applications may behave better on phone memory than memory card. But I would install things to the phone memory for the following reasons:

1. access time for the phone memory is faster than memory card, this may not be noticeable but applications on the phone should still load a tiny bit faster.
2. when you reset the phone/update firmware, applications installed on memory card will try to reinstall themselves when you first switch the phone on, and considerable number of them will fail, which causes lots of hassle. if the applications were installed to the phone memory you won't need to make any changes to the memory card, just reinstall the apps.
3. it's more efficient use of storage space. the amount of phone memory is way more than enough for stuff like contacts/messages/calendar/bookmarks/etc, if you don't use the rest it'll just go to waste, the space is perfect for installing dozens of applications. If you install on the memory card you are just taking up space which could otherwise be used for multimedia.
4. if you have several memory cards (perhaps for different videos/music), your applications will disappear when you change the card.
5. what benefit is there for installing to the memory card?

randomfan wrote: True, I agree that for normal use it doesn't really make much difference, although certain applications may behave better on phone memory than memory card. But I would install things to the phone memory for the following reasons:

1. access time for the phone memory is faster than memory card, this may not be noticeable but applications on the phone should still load a tiny bit faster.

This is true - but the difference is so small it's almost invisible to the user, especially since memory caching was added in V20 Firmware.

randomfan wrote:
2. when you reset the phone/update firmware, applications installed on memory card will try to reinstall themselves when you first switch the phone on, and considerable number of them will fail, which causes lots of hassle. if the applications were installed to the phone memory you won't need to make any changes to the memory card, just reinstall the apps.

Although all memory card installed JAVA apps and some .SIS/X apps do not re-install after a format or FW upgrade, the vast majority do re-install without issue. If you manually re-install those which don't work (to the memory card), then all your previous settings and configuration for those apps is usually restored/retained. This is not possible with phone memory installed apps as the Phone memory is formatted during FW upgrades. Also, have you never lost the original SIS/X install files in the months since you last upgraded FW? I know I have.

randomfan wrote:
3. it's more efficient use of storage space. the amount of phone memory is way more than enough for stuff like contacts/messages/calendar/bookmarks/etc, if you don't use the rest it'll just go to waste, the space is perfect for installing dozens of applications. If you install on the memory card you are just taking up space which could otherwise be used for multimedia.

Sorry but the above is just silly. If Nokia supplied enough internal memory nobody would buy memory cards. Phone memory should be reserved for contacts, calendar, cache memory and apps which cannot be installed elsewhere. If there was any technical reason why apps should not be installable in memory cards, Nokia would have removed the option several N-series handsets ago. Most Apps are so tiny compared to the capacity of 1/2/4/8 Gb Memory cards, space used has very little bearing on where they are installed.

randomfan wrote:
4. if you have several memory cards (perhaps for different videos/music), your applications will disappear when you change the card.

True, but I have a 4Gb card which is never more than half full. You can buy 8Gb cards now also, so why does anyone truly need more than one?
Also, if you have the time and the patience you could COPY the memory card apps & sys folders from the original to the 2nd card so that your apps are available whichever card is installed. However, once again I would rather have one large capacity card and not have to carry multiple ones.

randomfan wrote:
5. what benefit is there for installing to the memory card?

All these points are arbitrary depending on your use!
However, I have never experienced a unstable phone with all apps on the phone mem becoming more stable once they were installed to mem card!
The opposite however is well documented and I have been able to induce instabilty during my farting about with Symbian S60 and WM5/6 phones as well as Pocket PC PDAs going back many a year.
Anyone who has a memcard installed phone and enjoys issue free usage is the exeption rather than the rule and this can be usually attributed to the set of installed apps in use. But, put on a wrong 'un and this will induce wobble and if this happens then where the app is installed is in my opinion the crucial factor. Remove that factor and the problems is solved.
So my advice remains always phone mem.

I used to install all my apps on the memory card (especially with my N70 since 20mb would fill up pretty quickly) but I've experienced problems having them on the memory card in my N95:

• When I connect my phone to my PC in data transfer mode, it would fail because something was using the card. I would have to restart the phone in order for it to work.
• When I try to remove the card, the screen would show a progress bar continuously, with the message "closing applications" or something like that. I would have to restart the phone again.

pa49 wrote:All these points are arbitrary depending on your use!
However, I have never experienced a unstable phone with all apps on the phone mem becoming more stable once they were installed to mem card!
The opposite however is well documented and I have been able to induce instabilty during my farting about with Symbian S60 and WM5/6 phones as well as Pocket PC PDAs going back many a year.
Anyone who has a memcard installed phone and enjoys issue free usage is the exeption rather than the rule and this can be usually attributed to the set of installed apps in use. But, put on a wrong 'un and this will induce wobble and if this happens then where the app is installed is in my opinion the crucial factor. Remove that factor and the problems is solved.
So my advice remains always phone mem.

The points are not arbitrary, they are very valid. The opposite is not well documented at all, what it is is just a bunch of hand waving from fringe dwellers who are comprised of exactly the same people that think a firmware update can modify the physical absolutes of their CCD/CMOS chips to produce better or worse happy snaps.

You list a bunch of phones that are not the N95, not sure why.

I guess I, along with millions of others are the exception then. I enjoy trouble free use.

Where applications are stored, from a technical perspective, makes NO difference, absolutely none at all. To think otherwise is simply to make statements without any basis in fact. It is like you have just told a hundred nokia engineers that they had no idea what they were doing.

The phone simply sees external storage as another drive and maps accordingly - this is by design, and it works flawlessly.

The only thing that will cause any instability is a faulty memory card, or the programmers lack of knowledge of symbian. If you've ever used unsis for anything, you'll see that the vast majority of applications spray their trash all over the file system, their installers don't really care if you choose 'external', they still fill the internal memory with their config files and other guff. Programmers even go so far as to hard code the assumed locations of their files. Of course if you make any modifications to your internal memory, your externally stored applications can easily become unstable or break.

The correct place to focus your blame is on the programmer, not the phone.

File bug reports if you have instability.

dchky wrote:The points are not arbitrary, they are very valid. The opposite is not well documented at all, what it is is just a bunch of hand waving from fringe dwellers who are comprised of exactly the same people that think a firmware update can modify the physical absolutes of their CCD/CMOS chips to produce better or worse happy snaps.

You list a bunch of phones that are not the N95, not sure why.

I guess I, along with millions of others are the exception then. I enjoy trouble free use.

Where applications are stored, from a technical perspective, makes NO difference, absolutely none at all. To think otherwise is simply to make statements without any basis in fact. It is like you have just told a hundred nokia engineers that they had no idea what they were doing.

The phone simply sees external storage as another drive and maps accordingly - this is by design, and it works flawlessly.

The only thing that will cause any instability is a faulty memory card, or the programmers lack of knowledge of symbian. If you've ever used unsis for anything, you'll see that the vast majority of applications spray their trash all over the file system, their installers don't really care if you choose 'external', they still fill the internal memory with their config files and other guff. Programmers even go so far as to hard code the assumed locations of their files. Of course if you make any modifications to your internal memory, your externally stored applications can easily become unstable or break.

The correct place to focus your blame is on the programmer, not the phone.

File bug reports if you have instability.

I think the meaning of your somewhat 'damning' post is that installing on mem card has no negative effect on the overall stability of the end-user experience.
I think that zxon's post indicates otherwise.
But a few comments on your post.
Arbitrary-
capricious; unreasonable; unsupported
In mathmatics-
undetermined; not assigned a specific value
Whilst the points you refer to may well be valid they are still arbitrary as are the points that I made.
'hand waving from fringe dwellers'
Mmmmm, not sure what has you so heated here? Seems like you must be one of those 'must label everyone types', which is hardly a helpful and constructive approach. Most definately an arbirtrary statement.
I list my pedigree of experience with the issue at hand in order to assign my credentials (happy to expand!). Yours would be?

>'I guess I, along with millions of others are the exception then. I enjoy trouble free use.'<

A massive generalising, sweeping statement/statistic of absolutely no value other than to bolster a possible feeling of self satisfaction. However, I am truely pleased that that you enjoy trouble free use. If it were possible for you to expand and provide a full rationale as to why this is, then 'millions of others could benefit' from your esteemed input to the discussion.

>Where applications are stored, from a technical perspective, makes NO difference, absolutely none at all. To think otherwise is simply to make statements without any basis in fact. It is like you have just told a hundred nokia engineers that they had no idea what they were doing.<

I take it that you have a technical background in order to be able to make this statement.
Technically there is no reason to install your operating system and apps on your main hard drive in your PC and indeed some don't for a variety of reasons, but, most agree that the practise produces a more stable setup of the equipment. But, maybe you would disagree on that as well?
I'm not sure what a hundred nokia engineers have to do with anything, but, the three that I know now install to their phone mem as a matter of course after I requested that they try it to eliminate instability.

>The phone simply sees external storage as another drive and maps accordingly - this is by design, and it works flawlessly.<

Yes I agree, until you debrand and update and use restore or install certain 'rogue' apps. If you have forgotten, we are trying to avoid the instabilty thus caused!

In your last paragraph your last sentence contradicts your first! You give a reason for questioning everything that you have said! This is exactly why over many years I have conducted countless installs and reinstalls in an attempt to pin down the causes of the effects were are discussing!

In the final analysis if one has a phone working to ones liking then that is good. If not then I stick by my assertions about the pros of good management of assets by way of the approach that I have outlined.

I didn't want to add to any heated discussion. I was just voicing what experience I've had with the matter. I can understand why I have problems using the memory card when there are apps installed on it. It'd be like asking windows if you can remove your second hard drive when there are important system files installed on it. It's going to kick off big time and crash, even though there's nothing technically wrong with installing apps on anything other than your primary drive.

Wow, some major arguments here over quite a simple question.

The fact is that some people install everything to memory card and have no problems. Some do this and see stability issues. I have not read anyone report the same stability problems when installing to phone memory so I do that.
It's just playing the odds at the end of the day since no-one has any firm evidence as to the cause of any problems

I install everything to phone memory particularly memory resident apps. The only exception is games.

Messages likewise also on the phone memory, Anything like video, photos etc get placed on the memory card.

This is not the first strawman argument you've made against one of my posts. You don't like me do you.

My background is in defense, electronics, specifically SIGINT and ELINT, so yes, I have a technical background with a little bachelors degree on the side in computer science. Nothing exciting, but enough to allow me the confidence and knowledge to answer the question in this simple way: It doesn't matter squat where applications are installed. Period. All your arguments hinge on screwing with a static system until it fails. If you want to go swapping memory cards, upgrading firmware, or whatever, then you have no expectation to expect flawless operation there after. I already said this, you are acting like I disagree with you. You don't upgrade your windows operating system and keep all your old programs running flawlessly, same with Symbian - Linux is a different matter though.

If you don't mess with your memory layout, then you don't have problems. You don't yank out your spare hard drive with the computer running and expect it to operate just peachy either.

Now you kids get off my lawn.

pa49 wrote:I think the meaning of your somewhat 'damning' post is that installing on mem card has no negative effect on the overall stability of the end-user experience.
I think that zxon's post indicates otherwise.
But a few comments on your post.
Arbitrary-
capricious; unreasonable; unsupported
In mathmatics-
undetermined; not assigned a specific value
Whilst the points you refer to may well be valid they are still arbitrary as are the points that I made.
'hand waving from fringe dwellers'
Mmmmm, not sure what has you so heated here? Seems like you must be one of those 'must label everyone types', which is hardly a helpful and constructive approach. Most definately an arbirtrary statement.
I list my pedigree of experience with the issue at hand in order to assign my credentials (happy to expand!). Yours would be?

>'I guess I, along with millions of others are the exception then. I enjoy trouble free use.'<

A massive generalising, sweeping statement/statistic of absolutely no value other than to bolster a possible feeling of self satisfaction. However, I am truely pleased that that you enjoy trouble free use. If it were possible for you to expand and provide a full rationale as to why this is, then 'millions of others could benefit' from your esteemed input to the discussion.

>Where applications are stored, from a technical perspective, makes NO difference, absolutely none at all. To think otherwise is simply to make statements without any basis in fact. It is like you have just told a hundred nokia engineers that they had no idea what they were doing.<

I take it that you have a technical background in order to be able to make this statement.
Technically there is no reason to install your operating system and apps on your main hard drive in your PC and indeed some don't for a variety of reasons, but, most agree that the practise produces a more stable setup of the equipment. But, maybe you would disagree on that as well?
I'm not sure what a hundred nokia engineers have to do with anything, but, the three that I know now install to their phone mem as a matter of course after I requested that they try it to eliminate instability.

>The phone simply sees external storage as another drive and maps accordingly - this is by design, and it works flawlessly.<

Yes I agree, until you debrand and update and use restore or install certain 'rogue' apps. If you have forgotten, we are trying to avoid the instabilty thus caused!

In your last paragraph your last sentence contradicts your first! You give a reason for questioning everything that you have said! This is exactly why over many years I have conducted countless installs and reinstalls in an attempt to pin down the causes of the effects were are discussing!

In the final analysis if one has a phone working to ones liking then that is good. If not then I stick by my assertions about the pros of good management of assets by way of the approach that I have outlined.

dchky wrote:If you don't mess with your memory layout, then you don't have problems.

I have a degree in Computer Studies and I wholeheartedly agree with the above statement. I think it's a simple matter of this: It should work fine for anyone who keeps their memory card in the phone all the time. If you're likely to remove the card frequently, you're best off using phone memory. I'm sure there are many people who buy a large memory card and just leave it in the phone. This is probably one reason, I think, why the N95 8Gb model was so popular (as well as dynamic paging and larger screen etc).

i have a n95 8gb and i cant tell a difference no matter where the apps are installed.
so unless the installation info about the app states where to install it,it does'nt matter.
For other phones though i think it should work pretty much the same as long as the card is never removed, like a few people have already stated.

dchky wrote:This is not the first strawman argument you've made against one of my posts. You don't like me do you.

My background is in defense, electronics, specifically SIGINT and ELINT, so yes, I have a technical background with a little bachelors degree on the side in computer science. Nothing exciting, but enough to allow me the confidence and knowledge to answer the question in this simple way: It doesn't matter squat where applications are installed. Period. All your arguments hinge on screwing with a static system until it fails. If you want to go swapping memory cards, upgrading firmware, or whatever, then you have no expectation to expect flawless operation there after. I already said this, you are acting like I disagree with you. You don't upgrade your windows operating system and keep all your old programs running flawlessly, same with Symbian - Linux is a different matter though.

If you don't mess with your memory layout, then you don't have problems. You don't yank out your spare hard drive with the computer running and expect it to operate just peachy either.

Now you kids get off my lawn.

I guess my view is somewhere in the middle between you and pa49. If you want to install to the memory card that's fine, it's going to work just as well. My point about efficient use of space all comes down to personal preference.

But you have to see that when you update firmware, things will get messy if all your applications are on the memory card; not necessarily for everyone as it depends on the specific applications, but definitely for a considerable percentage of user. I agree that if you update firmware you have to expect things to not work flawlessly just like before, but by installing applications to the phone memory and reinstalling them after firmware update, at least that's a consistent approach to guarantee everything to work smoothly, and you won't have to mess around with the memory card.

Until further notice, I install important software in the internal memory. Why? Simply because the system has become unstable (the reason for this is under investigation, perhaps a buggy application, perhaps a defective memory card). As a result, data in the memory card are often damaged, including installed programs (when I read the card in the PC's MMC bay, many folders appear to be corrupted).
When I reformat the card, then restore its content from the PC backup (including the system files), phone-based applications work, mmc-based applications need to be reinstalled.

Most applications I install to the internal memory, and data like music and movies I keep on the memory card. I wouldn't be surprised if the internal memory was an SD card anyways but because I swap external cards often I want to still be able to access some applications regardless of the card in the slot.

waxup wrote:I swap external cards often I want to still be able to access some applications regardless of the card in the slot.

By the way, Nokia says the maximum acceptable size of memory card is 2 Gb. Now it's easy to find 4 and even 8 Gb cards. As I my current 2 Gb card might be defective (or not fast enough to comply with Nokia requirements), I am considering to purchase a bigger card. Recommended or hazardous?

Actually Nokia only lists 2Gb becasue that is all that was available when the phone came out. I have an 8gb and works fine and fast. A few people here have even bigger I believe.

The next one is a 12Gb isn't it? I thought it wasn't coming out for a couple of months.

OK, let's get this straight! I have no gripe against anyone, personal or otherwise!
My asertions are based on many, many long hours of 'playing about' with many different platforms. If that counts for nothing then so be it, but if anyone wants tangible evidence then install Route 66 on a v.12 firmwared N95 onto the mem card and see what happens.
Then try it by installing on the phone mem.
There is definately a stability difference. Something is going on (regarding which I have my own theories) and if asked I would still say install to phone mem to avoid instability.

I agree with pa49, demanding apps should be installed to the phone just to avoid any hangups or issues.

cedesguin, You can purchase larger than 2GB. As 3shirts has stated, 2gb was the maximum size at the time of testing. 8gig is the largest publicly available right now, but expect a 12gig sdhc card in near future (no reported release dates as of yet).

There have been no known issues with any card larger than 2gigs that I know of so don't hesitate in purchasing one.