ok when we bought a tablet from best buy we bought the insurance on it and when the tablet died they replaced it … but the tablet they fibbed off on me was a Samsung galaxy tab a that only had 4gb on it needless to say its mostly filled
Well I turned off automatic updates but google stull updates things and i have to roll them back to the factory install … well today i had to roll things back but instead if rolling back google play and google its self it erased them …
Any way to reinstall them ? or should i do a factory reset ?
Also if i do have to do a reser do i need to empty my sd card too ?
I don’t know about the SD card, but I have an ancient tablet I inherited from my father that I factory-reset every 18 months to 2 years to thoroughly get rid of all the crap that keeps being downloaded and any infections I might not have otherwise caught.
Truth be told, I mostly use it off-line these days. Otherwise, only a very few trusted apps.
May I ask, what use do you - or anyone - get out of an offline tablet?
Reason I asked: I still have an elderly iPad that was gifted to my late Other Shoe while he was hospitalized. I’ve mostly kept it for sentimental reasons, but now that I’m moving, I am deeply in the middle of the “toss it? or pay money to keep/move with it?” argument with every item I can touch.
4GB sounds like how much memory (RAM) you have, not how much storage. How old is this Tab A? Because the current ones seem to have at least 32 GB of storage. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Android device with as little as 4GB of storage – even my old Motorola Droid Razr phone had 16 GB, and that was 8 or 9 years ago – if your device is older than that, recycle it.
Further, I find it unlikely that you were able to delete Google Play – maybe you just removed it from the home screen? If you go to the App Drawer (I don’t know how to do that on a Samsung Tab A, but maybe by swiping up?), you’ll probably find it with all the rest of your apps – hold your finger down and add it back to the home screen.
If, somehow, you were able to delete Google Play, I have no idea how you’d reinstall it, since Google Play is what you use to install software.
There are games and apps that can be used off-line. The games tend to be things like solitaire and crosswords (my usual ones). Apps are things like a calculator, but there are others.
You can download e-books and other documents and use it as an e-reader. Same for downloaded music.
Probably other uses.
It’s too old to use for web browsing anyway, far too slow. There are sites like CNN lite that it can still use, but it is very much outmoded for something like Facebook.
The other advantage to using a device off-line - it saves the battery.
What were the specs for your original tablet that died? When did you get it replaced? If you paid for insurance and they did not replace it with the same or better than I would be raising hell with them.
However I agree that the OP probably didn’t uninstall it, it just got removed from the home screen. As far as I know there’s no way to uninstall Google play.
Strong third. I have at least half-a-dozen older tablets and I have them loaded with music, movies, TV shows, and e-books. This allows me to take cheaper, nonessential tablets with me when I travel. After all, I’m not going to waste my data plan while sitting in an airport that doesn’t have free wifi. And it’s going to be in airplane mode while I’m on the plane. IMHO, being “on-line” all the time is greatly overrated.
When at home, I use them with my local media server to listen to music, podcasts, and audio books.
Full Disclosure: I don’t play on-line games at all.
On the other hand, 4GB RAM is a lot, only found on high-end models. The current Tab A 10.1 has 2GB RAM.
So 4GB doesn’t make much sense either way. Looking through the list of Tab A series models, the only model that didn’t have at least 16GB storage was the CDMA variant of the original Tab A 7.0, from 2010.
Agreed, you can’t delete a pre-installed app. You could disable it though. In which case it should still be listed in Settings -> Apps.
Anyway, I suggest the OP should do a factory reset. It may be different on other Android versions, but it should be Settings -> System -> Reset Options, or similar. During the reset, it should ask you whether you want the SD card wiped as well. If you don’t want to take chances, you may want to remove it first. If you have apps installed on the SD card though, those won’t work after the factory reset even if you don’t delete them.
Also, if the OP could post the actual model of the tablet, it may help. It should be written in very faint letters on the back of the tablet. You can also look at Settings -> About Tablet, look for “Model Number”. I think Samsung tablets are all SM-<1 letter><3 numbers>.
According to this (and confirmed by this) there were old CDMA Galaxy Tab [del]a[/del] with only 2 GB. No 4 GB Tabs, but there were some 8 GB ones, and while some systems and apps show the full built-in memory, some show only the memory available after excluding the OS and backup of the OS–for instance on the phone I’m posting from some apps say that it has 32 GB, some say 24.69 GB. So he could have an 8 GB with only 4 GB accessable.
yeah I just went ahead and did a factory reset and had almost no problems except for some stuff it put back on that id taken off or at least disabled although anyone know of a good root program I found one but they want you to pay for support … what id like to do mainly is install things diretly to my sd card instead of the weird to me way they do it
Than and i want console and arcade emulators … i miss having mame …
this is a galaxy tab a (2016) with android 5.1.1 the total space is 8.00 Gb with 3.19 for system memory
I’ve wondered if it was something specifically made for best buy because they had a lot of them and it was the only tablet under 200 when i replaced the dead one …
Not sure what you mean by ‘weird’ way to install to your SD card. AFAIK, you either choose to install it to your card during install or use a program to move it from your internal memory to the SD card.