Norton Mobile Security

[tufftybob]

Hi all u experts!

I use Norton Internet Security 2011/12 on all my Win XP Pro/Win Vista Home Basic/Win Vista Home Premium pc's. (2 pc's with each version of the Win' OS).

I have an HTC Desire running Android 2.2.2. The 'available space' on the phone is 'currently' 44.37Mb. I don't know how many Mb's the phone has by default before any 'extra app's are installed from Android Market.

I have a 32Gb(actual space = 29.81Gb) micro sdhc card in the phone that has 7.38Gb remaining space on it.

How much of this 'available PHONE storage' would be needed to install and run NMS, and can it be installed on and 'run' from the micro sdhc card?

If it IS installed on and 'run' from the micro sdhc card, can it also be UPDATED while still being stored on the card?

This VERY important as ALL of the app's that are currently 'on the card', (Adobe Reader, Amazon Kindle, Auto Trader, BBC iPlayer, ColorNote and Google Translate) can NOT be updated while 'on the card', even if the Android Market says they can.

This means that each app 'on the card' that has 'available updates' must be moved from the card to the phone, then updated, then moved back to the card again.

Any attempt to update an app 'on the card' will return 'errors' and may even result 'breaking' the app, so you then have to uninstall from the card, re-install on to the phone, and wait a few days for the updates and then update, and THEN move the app back to the card.

After a few weeks there will probably be 'another' update, and the whole process has to start again!

This doesn't even take into account any 'phone stored' app's that may have updates, that will require some of this 'available storage' to remain constantly 'free', so that they can run properly AND be updated without crashing or causing some other unexplained error.

This is such a pain in the a@!£!!!.

I would have thought that when these app's were being written for android devices - especially those devices with card slots - that developers would have thought that it would be obvious that users who run app's from the card would also want update those same app's from the card as well!!!

Is allowing the app's to be UPDATABLE will still 'on the card' even possible?

Thanks for any info,

Many Regards to all present,

Bob

[Andmike]

Hi tufftybob.

Welcome to the Community.

Not sure about being an "expert" but I will have a first shot and answering some of your many questions.  Where I am not clear or miss something important please come back and ask again.

Norton Mobile Security (NMS) is free in its "Lite" form and is the same size as the fully paid version so you can just download and install it and see if it works for you.  If you are happy with it you can keep it (and possibly upgrade to the paid version) or if not just uninstall with no problems.  Ditto for the Norton Mobile Utilities (NMU) which is still in Beta form but gives you much of the information you seem to be seeking about how apps take up space etc on your phone. 

I run NMS from on the phone where it takes up about 5 MB.  I think it has to run from on the phone because of its nature.  NMU I run from on the SD card but this still leaves a stub of around 1MB on the phone.  The Norton Anti-Theft plugin which is often used along with the paid version of NMS seems to take an extra 4 MB on the phone.

I have several apps installed on my SD card and they are happily updated when the Android Market (aka Google Play) gets an update.  I am aware of updates getting out slowly across Google Play but I am not aware of it not working on apps installed on the SD card.  I am aware of apps that have worked on the SD card being upgraded and having to move back onto the phone.  This has happened for instance with the Dropbox app and I have chosen not to upgrade for the time being but Google Play keeps on reminding me that the update is there.  So I don't know if you have just had a bad experience with this or if it is something odd with your phone.  I am on Android 2.2.

However....If the apps you refer to came with the phone they may be part of the original install and such apps are often not detected by Google Play and you are not offered an update.  The logic may be that it is part of the vendors original build which is know to work with that configuration - why update and risk breaking it?  Not sure about this but it strikes me that it may have something to do with what you are seeing.  Can you tell us if the apps you are concerned about (re updates) are ones you have installed yourself or came with the phone?

So ... will it ever be possible ... yes it is possible now and happens regularly.

I think I have gone on enough for now.  I hope that helps a bit at least.

Please feel free to come back.

[erik_carlstrom]

For any App that needs to run as a service you'll have to have it installed to internal memory.  It sounds like you need to clear up some of your internal memory.  I Settings > Applications > Name of App you can clear data or move to the sd card.  If it doesn't run as a service the app will move and Gogle Play will know how to update it.  

Since you also mention problems updating on the sd card there could be either a problem with the card or you might want to do a reset as there may be something broken in the OS that isn't properly managing the sd card.