[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] AlienTeck:
There is a much easier way now.. You can convert the portable storage SDcard to an adoptable sdcard which merges with the system. Now originally converted the portable storage to adoptable thinking it would move more apps to the sdcard and leave more free space. But it in reality did not do much more than manually moving the apps to the sdcard. So I ended up with 1GB or so of free internal memory.. But all the memory free and how much memory was present was screwed up because it says I have like 64gb memory when I only have 16gb and 32gb so total 48gb.. And it only showed the free memory of either the internal or the sdcard. And no google program allowed me to move it to the sdcard.. So all that work and having to reinstall everything and add in the accounts and such were rather useless.. Other than to see that samsung does have the option to format something as portable or adoptable.. Using the ADB shell ofcourse..

here you can add part of the sdcard to the adoptable memory and the rest as regular sdcard memory.. Rather pointless actually other than the adoptable memory is encrypted and unreadable on the pc using a card reader..

Using the ADB shell in the command within a windows command window.. I use TCC which is a replacement command.com for windows from long ago and works like the unix shell.. Microsoft has changed the command.com to cmd.com now and you can bring it up by typing CMD into the search programs and files window.

Type sm list-disks and record the disk IDs that come up like disk:179,64

use the format sm partition DISK:TYPE:RATIO to change the type...

Enter the disk ID where it says DISK, TYPE is either ‘private’ to adopt the entire microSD card or ‘mixed’ to use a portion of it. RATIO is only used if you select mixed. So a command would be something like: ‘sm partition disk:182:160 private’ to adopt the entire storage. Or ‘sm partition disk:182:160 mixed 50’ to adopt 50% of the microSD card.

sm partition disk:179,64 private

sm partition disk:179:64 mixed 50

also the command adb shell pm set-install-location 2

Which is supposed to set the location of the downloaded installs to the sdcard.. Which also does not really do much..

Now the command to turn that portable sdcard to adoptable..

adb shell sm set-force-adoptable true

would format the sdcard as adoptable.. Supposed to let you format it from the control panel and let you select portable or adoptable etc but not so.. You only get the option to format is as portable..

But internally it does have the option even if you normally cant get to it..

Well samsung pushed a new update from oct 18th and I got it a few days ago.. It was available for many months in like new zealand for some reason.. The oct update is named T355YDOU1BPJ1.. Since the last update was only a month before I was surprised as once its past an year samsung dont really care about such things.. so 2 updates in 3 months is kind of a shock..

Well anyway the update was like 440mb in size or the full mage is like 1.5gb.. It took over 15 minutes for it to re flash all the system files and over an hour to play with the apps.. so fully charge the device first..

I had the pixel launcher and it kept on crashing.. So went back to google now launcher which seemed stable.. And the tab was extremely slow to do anything.. For most things this is a rather fast tab even if the cpu is lame and slow at 1.2ghz only.. But for normal use it is fast for most things.. Sure wished I could go back.. I had it running for more than 2 days on a single charge by now.. Not really using it heavily but from a day it going to over 2 days is nice.. It gives almost 7-8 hours or playing or watching movies otherwise anyway.. Now the CPU was stuck above 50% and rebooting and all that after all the work was depressing..

But anyway now it is stable.. no reboots and speed seems to have come back to normal..

Now why would I post all this here.. Well that is because I just went and checked the free memory.. and WOW.. 3.5GB..... So it was migrating data off the internal memory to the adoptable sdcard memory before when it was acting up.. Yes that is an option now that shows up when you go to th storage internal memory option and once you use that ADB command to change it from portable to adoptable.. And it has given me an extra 2.5Gb of free memory.. How I dont know.. google still dont allow you to move their stuff to sdcard. Neither does microsoft and some others..

I suppose this new update actually moves the data part of those apps that does allow you to move them to sdcard to really move it to the sdcard like adoptable storage..

Well I dont know if this update also does the same thing with portable memory.. But before the data still stayed mostly in the internal memory even if the app could be moved to the sdcard.. OR the data was still in internal memory even after you moved it to the sdcard and there was a bug which never deleted the data from the android secure storage area and still took up space..

Apps like whatsapp wont let you move it to the sdcard now.. It could be moved before but the widgets would not work..

So those looking for debloated roms and such.. this might be a quick fix.. You can download the firmware yourself and use odin to flash it if you did not get the OTA.. I dont feel like voiding the warrenty on something that works so well.. Rooting and such is a real pain unless you want to spend a lot of time playing with things. But rooting and using titanium backup also lets you delete old system apps and replace it with new updates in the system partition and not use up valuable internal memory area.. Or it allows you to get rid of it entirely.. Just the Microsoft stuff takes up like a gb of space and they are useless apps all tied to online and their account and such. I suppose I am preparing myself for when the warranty runs out to root and get another 2gb of free space or so. by getting rid of the useless bloated apps but until then the 3.5gb of free internal memory will suffice. The sdcard has disappeared now from lock screen security and encrypt sd card says no sdcard present. and the entire memory is now encrypted.

https://samsung-firmware.org/all/

ps..my wife has a tab4 with a 64gb sdcard and even though it gives 2gb of free space out of the 8gb internal memory.. The facial recognization stay awake keeps storing useless pics and filling up the space even when the function is not used.. So every week have to delete 10,000 files to make space as it keeps saying no memory.. So samsung does not always fix bugs.. even though they pushed a security update earlier in the year for a 3 year old device.. it is like the little brother to this one and actually works much better if they fixed all the problems as this one is too big to carry around all day.. But this one is great when looking at maps travelling.