14 DAY TRIAL // Owners of the Google Edition Galaxy S4 smartphones were among the first to receive the new Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system, but it seems that many of them have started to experience issues after installing the update.
To be more precise, as soon as the new OS flavor landed on the device, apps could no longer write to the external storage, a recent post on Android Central explains.
The issue apparently affects most applications, which will show an error message when trying to write something to the microSD card.
The news site notes that it all revolves around permissions, as said applications need to be part of a special group that would allow them to perform the aforementioned action.
A temporary fix for this issue has already emerged, it seems. All that users need to do is to copy files to the microSD card by hand.
ES File Explorer is an application that was built with the right permissions, and it is part of the correct group of apps, the one that has access to both reading and writing files on the microSD card.
Of course, other applications that have the same capability might be available for download as well, though it seems that this file explorer is certain to include it.
Additionally, Android Central notes that users could try something more complicated, straight on their devices, provided that they have root access.
This method involves finding the /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml file and editing it. Then, go to line 71, and add the media_rw group to the list of apps that can write to the SD card, as can be seen in the screenshot to the left, available courtesy of SamMobile.
As soon as said change was made and the file saved, users will need to reboot the smartphone to take advantage of the new functionality.
Samsung and Google haven’t commented on this as of now, but chances are that they are already working on a fix for the issue, so stay tuned to learn more on the matter.
