Link2SD guide – never worry about internal memory limits again

by XB on December 12, 2011

in Applications,Featured Content,Games,Tips & Tricks

One of the most common gripes we hear from Sony Ericsson Xperia owners is that it doesn’t take too long before you fill up the phone’s internal memory. Whilst most of the 2011 Xperia range has a 1GB ROM, only around 380MB can be used for apps or games. Obviously manually moving your apps to the SD card is one answer to this problem, but this can be a pain to manage and sometimes part of the app will remain in internal memory.


To get round this problem, we’ve written the following guide on Link2SD. In layman terms, Link2SD uses a secondary partition on your SD card and uses it as another segment of internal memory. Link2SD moves and links apk files, dalvik-cache (.dex) files and lib files onto this partition, which the OS mounts on boot. The great thing is that these linked apps remain available when your phone is connected in mass storage mode as Android only unmounts the first partition. Also, you don’t need to worry about linking something you weren’t meant to as Link2SD doesn’t allow you to link certain system applications.



Link2SD allows you to cherry-pick which apps/games to move to the SD card, you can auto-link new installs and the whole thing is wrapped in a user-friendly user interface. We’ve been using Link2SD for a while now and it’s a godsend, especially for the Xperia PLAY where we tend to download a lot of games. If you’re constantly managing your internal memory we highly recommend you give Link2SD a try, see the full guide below.

Guide to using Link2SD on your Xperia smartphone

This guide may seem lengthy, but trust us when we say it is straightforward. All steps have been documented which makes it look daunting. Read each section carefully and follow the steps outlined to install Link2SD.

1. PREPARATION
Please make sure you have completed all of the following before starting the tutorial.

On your PC:
– Install the necessary drivers for your Xperia smartphone onto your PC/laptop. The easiest way to do this is to ensure that Sony Ericsson PC Companion is installed on your PC. Once installed, connect your phone to complete the process.
– Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard onto your PC or laptop.

On your Xperia:
– Enable USB de-bugging mode: Setting –> Applications –> Development –> Tick ‘USB debugging’
– Enable the ability to install unknown apps: Setting –> Applications –> Tick ‘Unknown sources’
– Install Link2SD from Android Market onto your Xperia smartphone. It is a free download.

2. ROOT
Rooting your handset gives you the permissions necessary to install custom software on your handset.

a) First, download the ‘Xperia 2011 Easy Rooting Toolkit’ from here.

b) Extract the RAR file using WinRAR or 7-Zip.

c) Connect your Xperia to your PC.

d) Click on ‘RUNME.bat’ from the extracted RAR file, which should give you the following screen. Just press any button to let the program do its work.

e) When finished you should see the output as per the picture below. The phone should now be rooted, make sure you restart your handset before the next step. 

3. BACKUP MEMORY CARD
As we will be creating a partition on your microSD memory card, make sure you create a backup just in case anything goes wrong.

a) Create a new folder on your PC and name it anything you want, such as ‘SD_Backup’

b) Connect your phone to the PC, navigate to your memory card and copy the contents to the backup folder.

4. CREATE SECONDARY PARTITION
You now need to create a secondary partition on your microSD memory card that will enable you to use Link2SD.

Note: We will use MiniTool Partition Wizard to create a secondary partition on your microSD card. This partition can be ext2, ext3, ext4 or FAT32. We will use FAT32 as it is supported on all phones and should lead to less troubleshooting later. You can use any partition manager of your choosing, but the steps below guide you through MiniTool Partition Wizard.

There is no need to wipe your memory card when going through this process, just ensure you have at least 0.5GB to 1.0GB of free space to make it worthwhile. You also do not need to use a microSD card adaptor as the process below creates the partition whilst the phone is connected to your PC.

a) Connect your handset to the PC via USB and then launch MiniTool. You should see the details pop up under ‘Disk 2′.

b) Click on the memory card under Disk 2 in MiniTool and then in the left pane, press ‘Move/Resize Partition’. On the blue bar under ‘Size and Location’, move the right arrow towards the left to create the size of the secondary partition desired. In the example below we created a secondary partition with 1018.63MB of space. This value can also be typed in manually in ‘Unallocate Space After’.

c) Once this is done you should see that your memory card is now split into two partitions under Disk 2 of MiniTool. Right click this new partition and then press ‘Create’.

If you see this pop-up below, just press ‘Yes’ to continue. 

d) You should then see this ‘Create New Partition’ window. Under ‘Create As’ click Primary and then under ‘File System’ click FAT32. Leave the cluster size as default and you can assign whichever drive letter you want. Once finished press OK.

e) This should bring you back to the main MiniTool screen. Now hit the ‘Apply’ button on the top-left of the screen, denoted by a tick symbol. 

This will bring up another pop-up window and will take several minutes to both resize and create the secondary partition.

If successful, you should see message below. Congratulations your card is ready to use in conjunction with Link2SD.

5. LINK2SD
This application makes it easy for users with root privileges on their phone to move applications to the SD card.

a) Open the Link2SD app on your phone. You should be greeted with the following menu, check the FAT32 option and click OK.

You will then see the Superuser Request, click ‘Allow’.

Once you see the following message, restart your phone. The app should now be ready to use.

b) To make sure everything is installed correctly. Click the Menu button and go to ‘Storage Info’. This will show you the internal memory and your two partitions on the memory card. In our case, you can see that the second partition has 1GB free.

c) Now you need to move the apps of your choice to the memory card. Click the Menu button and press ‘Multi-select’.

Choose which apps you want to move by clicking the tick box next to the app. System apps are greyed out and cannot be selected. Link2SD can only move apps that are already on the internal memory. If you have apps already on your SD card, you will need to move them back to the internal memory before you can link them with Link2SD.

If you want to move all of your apps, pressing the menu button will bring up another menu allowing you to do this.

d) Once you have chosen which apps you want to move, you then need to hit the menu button and press ‘Actions’, which will bring up the following menu. Press ‘Create Link’.

Leave all three check boxes ticked and press OK. Link2SD will now do its work and move/link the selected apps to your memory card. 

Once finished, you should see that the apps you have moved have ‘Linked -> SD Card’ in red font in the Link2SD app list. Reboot your phone.

e) Congratulations your phone is now using Link2SD! You should now go to Settings by pressing the menu button and configure how you would like Link2SD to work. The main decision here is whether you want to Auto Link newly installed apps to the memory card. Given that you’ve gone through the hassle of installing Link2SD we suggest you enable Auto Link and make worrying about your internal memory a thing of the past.

We chat with the developers behind Xperia PLAY exclusive FIFA 12

by XB on December 1, 2011

in Games,News,Xperia PLAY

EA Mobile has officially launched FIFA 12 today. The blockbuster game will be an exclusive on the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY until February 2012 and as confirmed yesterday it will be FREE for a limited period. You can find FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY game launcher and you’ll need around 1.5GB of space on your SD card.

FIFA 12 has improved upon FIFA 10 in several areas including gameplay depth, authentic commentaries, updated teams from the top leagues and new replay systems. Interestingly, we are told that FIFA 12 will also be available exclusively on the wider Xperia range in due course.

Sony Ericsson held a live webchat for the media yesterday with EA Mobile. We’ve included excerpts of the transcript below that is well worth a read. You can read how EA Mobile ported FIFA 12 to the Xperia PLAY, improvements it has made to the game as well as thoughts on the Xperia PLAY hardware. Read it all below.

Live webchat transcript discussing FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY

Below are excerpts from a live webchat that took place on 30 November to discuss the launch of FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY. In attendance was Tim Harrison, Head of Content Marketing & Strategy at Sony Ericsson who hosted the call and Andrei Lazarescu and Alexandru Ruse from EA Mobile. 

Andrei Lazarescu has produced FIFA games on mobile platforms since 2009 and when not creating FIFA for mobile devices, he enjoys gaming and getting on the pitch himself.

Alex Ruse has been working in mobile gaming for the past six years and on FIFA since 2010. He considers it an honour to work on such a globally renowned franchise with such a talented team, heralding FIFA as one of the most challenging yet exciting projects he’s worked on during his career.

FIFA12 requires no introduction, it’s a huge global franchise and the release has been a huge hit, most recently on consoles with the recent FIFA12 launch, so what will this latest instalment bring to Smartphone gaming?

Andrei Lazarescu: This year, fans can expect greater gameplay depth, authentic commentaries, updated teams from the world’s top leagues, and new replay systems and stadium designs to make for a more powerful FIFA mobile experience.

What was the most challenging aspect of taking a huge game like FIFA 12 and porting to the Xperia PLAY?

Andrei Lazarescu: A lot of things, but surely the most important one is optimizing the engine so that it could run on a mobile platform. We’re really proud of what we have managed to achieve this year, we think fans will agree that the game is a beautiful game and also adapted to the Xperia Play.

How has the game been optimized for the Xperia PLAY?

Alex Ruse: One of the things we spent the most time on was the controls. We went through a lot of iterations to make sure they fully exploit both the touchscreen, and the hardware PLAY controls.

Regarding the multiplayer aspect of the game: is it going to support servers or only have local options like Bluetooth.

Alex Ruse: For our first foray into Android, we wanted to make sure we get the football gameplay just right, and that we fit perfectly with the platform. So no multiplayer right now, not in the first release. We want the single-player to be 100% right first.

Did you feel limited in any way by the Xperia PLAY hardware when developing FIFA 12, or were you able to keep your original vision intact?

Andrei Lazarescu: We have managed to include in the initial release all the features that were planned for and the Xperia Play hardware even allowed us to have top notch graphics.

What do you think has been the biggest step forward with this iteration?

Alex Ruse: Definitely the graphics and the football engine. It’s an amazing experience, and everyone play testing this was blown away by the new visuals. It runs silky smooth, and the PLAY controls really blend in with that.

When you look at FIFA 12 for the consoles: where there any key aspect like physics or something you definitely wanted to carry over to the Xperia PLAY version?

Andrei Lazarescu: We would have definitely wanted to emulate the ball and player physics from the console version. However, the mobile platform doesn’t yet allow us to use the full engine of the console version.

Based on the other titles EA have produced as exclusives for the PLAY, do you think PLAY owners sway towards the sporting genre as it’s most popular? What kind of gamer has the PLAY predominantly attracted, based on the sales of your titles?

Tim Harrison: Certainly sports is a popular category. Shooters too. The physical gamepad certainly lends itself very well to any games that utilise directional rather than gestural controls
Andrei Lazarescu: I think we got really close, the game flow is very enjoyable and users have a lot of possible plays at their disposal.

With graphics being a huge part of gaming do you see a Tegra 3 version of the game coming in the future or will the current version perform better with that type of CPU?

Alex Ruse: At the core of the FIFA franchise, our vision is to create the most authentic FIFA experience that fosters one of the largest football communities on the planet so the team took special care to ensure that authenticity carried through on PLAY.

Tim Harrison: That said, we’re seeing a very broad range of content downloaded on PLAY – it isn’t easy to generalise. PLAY just makes good games even greater and owners are responding!

In terms of market share where do you see mobile gaming for this series in comparison with the PSP market? Will it outsell in volume the number of units sold?

Alex Ruse: The current version won’t be significantly improved running on Tegra’s but the engine we built is very capable and expandable. It will should allow us to scale gracefully on anything I can think of at least for a year.

How long is the Xperia Play exclusivity period? Once this comes to other devices will we see it optimized for Android tablets as well as handheld devices?

Tim Harrison: The title will be exclusive on Android to Xperia until February. And we’re delighted it will also be coming to the wider Xperia family very soon.

Alex Ruse: We’re certainly seeing major growth on mobile gaming right now, with the platforms becoming increasingly more powerful. Hard to speculate on who will come out on top, but we’re really excited about the upcoming mobile games, and the market trend.

According to you, what part of FIFA 12 is more awesome in this version?

Andrei Lazarescu: The whole game is more awesome! To highlight the two things I am most excited about I would have to say the graphics and the controls. The player models and animations are top notch and the controls are beautifully adapted to both the PLAY hardware buttons and touch screen.

Did you use a previous FIFA android engine or the engine from a FIFA 12 console game?

Alex Ruse: The engine is not based on a previous Android one. We used a lot of knowledge and libraries from the Console team into building an optimized, high-end smartphone engine.

Is FIFA 12 cross platform between Xperia Play and PSP for example?

Alex Ruse: No, FIFA 12 Xperia and the PSP version are quite different games right now. There won’t be any cross-play or anything like that for now.

And what are the key differences/improvements between FIFA 10 and FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY?

Andrei Lazarescu: The most significant difference is the engine. As mentioned earlier, for FIFA 12 we have created a completely new engine and have adapted it to the mobile platform. All game areas have been completely revamped: AI, controls, speech, chants, graphics and menus.

As developers, how confident are you in the Xperia Play’s ability to compete as a gaming platform alongside faster multi-core phones over the next year?

Alex Ruse: We were pretty amazed by the PLAY’s performance during development. It really is a very powerful device. I don’t think it will become obsolete in a year’s time, developers won’t really build for just one super high-end device. And upgrading game engines takes time too.

Will Ultimate Team ever be part of the game on the mobile?

Alex Ruse: Nothing to announce on Ultimate Team just yet. That said, we feel it really fits with the mobile gamer, the freemium mobile model, and it’s a superb game mode to take on the go.

PES and FIFA have always been compared, with this mobile variant are the key features that make FIFA stand out, the same as with its console counterpart?

Andrei Lazarescu: We’re on a different market here, the mobile one. We have adapted the game to fit both the device and the market we’re in so for this release we have focused on the core features: controls, AI and graphics. Right now, we believe these are the features that make the game stand out. At the same time, this version meets the same FIFA brand values that we are used to.

Was it challenging to provide the same feeling of playing FIFA like on consoles?

Andrei Lazarescu: I believe PLAY is the closest to replicating the console experience in smartphone gaming.

What is the minimum hardware spec needed to make the game run when it’s released for other handsets?

Alex Ruse: Ballpark figures, the engine should run smooth on at least 600MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX 535 graphics and at least 256 MB of RAM. That’s the lowest, but it can scale very well to monster devices, with dynamic shadows, lighting, weather conditions, antialiasing, background audio mixing and animated crowds.

Have you had any feedback from footballers who have played FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY? And were any of them involved in the development of the mobile game?

Tim Harrison: Well, we sent Jack Wilshere a PLAY to take his mind off things, and he thanked us at least.
Andrei Lazarescu: We know that footballers, as well as athletes outside the sport are loyal FIFA fans. PLAY gives them another way to experience it.

Thanks Xperiablog!

FIFA 12 for Xperia PLAY released early, it’s FREE right now!

by XB on November 30, 2011

in Games,Xperia PLAY

Electronic Arts biggest mobile game for this Christmas is undoubtedly FIFA 12. The game is due to launch imminently on the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY and will be an Xperia PLAY exclusive on Android until 21 February 2012.

The game must be coming soon as it is listed in the Xperia PLAY launcher, not only that, but the game is FREE! We don’t imagine it will last long so you’d better download it quickly. Go to the Xperia PLAY games launcher and click on ‘Free EA Games’, this should take you to the download. It’s worth noting that the game requires a hefty 1.5GB download, so make sure you’re on a strong wireless network.

Thanks RagingRambo!