You could host the files on a local HTTP web server running on your PC (or even another android phone).

Connect the phone to a PC, use ADB to install the APK.

Danger Manfred wrote on 2026-03-13, 14:29:

Now if I could just find a file upload service that still works on the damn phone, my hope is that I could just upload my DOSBox APK there, download it on the phone, then install it from there.

There is a service I use all the time to transfer files when the device only has a web browser. It's free, no registration and is 100% safe to use - it's called your PC.

http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/

Set this up on your Windows PC then drag the files you want transferred to the files window.

Samsung Galaxy S SGH-T959 Android 2.2 Froyo using the built in browser.

Has been very helpful for downloading from my PC with any practically any web browser. My phone has a built in file manager named "Files" but it could be named something else on your phone. I think I tried DOSBOX Turbo on this phone and its performance was sub-par.

P.S. Good luck finding APKs that still work on such an ancient Android version. Please let us know if you were able to get DOSBOX Turbo working and what kind of performance you get.

I've still got an ancient 2.x Android tablet which I still sometimes use and have gotten things to install (It's a weird one - a 7" tablet, but partially thinks it a phone - has a SIM slot and a couple phone related apps)

If you are lucky, you may be able to connect to a PC via USB and access some folders, and "drag" your APK into "Download" or whatever it's called and activate it from there within your "Downloads" app.

Or - old Android sometimes treats the SD card as an extension to main storage, and recognizes certain directories under it, maybe it will recognize a certain directory as an extension to downloads, and you could put the APK there - this will involve some reasearch on the phone to see if/where file system extensions are on the SD.

I've also seen phones which would auto-offer to install .APKs on the SD root or even more often, root of attached USB flash (assuming you phone supports OTG usb).

Or, there might be some app (even browser) where you can manually put in path to file to have it activate.. Depends a lot of the apps and OS implementaion.

-- If you are able to figure out a way to install things, also put on a proper file manager - I've used "ESfileExplorer" on some (It likes to "phone home", but can be blocked)
... And, as someone anal about "not losing stuff" I have backups of almost all the .APKs that I've used over the years, even going back to some very old ones .. I might be able to help you out if you need something old enough to work on 2.3

Btw, DOSBOX Turbo on Android was the main reason I wrote my KEYSUB tool - super tiny key-remap that happens at the BIOS INT 16h level. Remap keys by raw scancodes... only way I could get DosBox on Android with an external keyboard truly usable.

Android phones of that era were not plug-n-play. They required device drivers and an Itunes-alike software to transfer files and only supported media types (Audio and video) could be transferred. As I recall when I first got this phone it came with Android 2.1 Eclair but the upgrade to 2.2 offered not only built in Adobe Flash Player but an optional USB Storage mode that treated the phone as a standard USB storage device.

Turns out even the App Installer is missing from the phone.
How I found out: I used minimal adb and fastboot to push a file manager app to the phone, that even installed somehow.
But then when I wanted to use the file manager to navigate to the .apk and install it, I got an error message that there is no app for that.
Okay, no problem, I'll just push an app installer app next.
Suddenly, nothing gets pushed/installed any more, see attachment.
(ai.apk is an app installer, the filename was horribly long and contained special characters so I renamed it)

Norton Commander wrote on 2026-03-13, 19:28:

Android phones of that era were not plug-n-play. They required device drivers and an Itunes-alike software to transfer files and only supported media types (Audio and video) could be transferred. As I recall when I first got this phone it came with Android 2.1 Eclair but the upgrade to 2.2 offered not only built in Adobe Flash Player but an optional USB Storage mode that treated the phone as a standard USB storage device.

Hmmm, I think some of your experience was deliberate vendor lockout of features by the phone carrier. Remember at this time they wanted to charge you a couple of bucks per ringtone and that sort of shenanigans. Still happens, some android devices can't do hotspotting because carrier locked it.

Yeah I'm about to give up.
ADB (for pushing apps) says could not read from device.
Shell (via ADB) lets me ls and cd but nothing else, I always get "permission denied". Can't sudo or user either.
Flashtool (for rooting) seems to work via ADB ("ADB: could not read from device") and therefore cannot root it.
I attempted to factory reset it by pressing and holding VOL DOWN + POWER while powered off to get into the recovery menu, but the damn thing just boots normally. I then also tried VOL UP instead, and both at the same time (together with the power button of course), to no avail.
I believe I am out of options.
How can I be so damn locked out?
There simply MUST be a way.

One thing to consider trying to push would be APP2SD or similar, especially if you have root access (which with a device this old, I would advise, since you can alleviate a lot of problems if you dont have mittens on)

The internal storage in these very old devices is very crippled, and many apps will not willingly run from anywhere except the internal storage. There are ways around that, with things APP2SD, or even just editing /etc/vold so that the order of the mmc devices is swapped. (Internal storage is treated like the external SDcard, and viceversa)

What APP2SD does is abuse ext3/ext4 mountpoint behavior. You create an EXT3/4 partition on the SDCard, and then the app manages creating folders on that partition, and either softlinks that point, there, or " mount -o bind" style remounts of the whole /data section of the internal storage.

It can do app installation, and management to move stuff around.

As for your error messages, the "permission denied" things when working with /tmp suggests that you have run out of tmpfs storage there. Rebooting the phone may fix it.

As per my previous post, I cannot root the phone, but have rebooted it a lot of times during my attempts, which sadly did not solve any of the issues. I have about 50% of internal storage free, plus 30 Gigs on the SD card, but without root access from outside (or an app installer inside) that's worthless :<

You mentioned that you CAN get an ADB shell though.

If you can get the .apk anywhere on the device (including on the FAT formatted SDcard), you can install it with pm, if you have an active shell.

1
2pm install /sdcard/Download/your_app_name.apk
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wierd_w wrote on 2026-03-14, 20:45:

You mentioned that you CAN get an ADB shell though. […]
Show full quote

You mentioned that you CAN get an ADB shell though.

If you can get the .apk anywhere on the device (including on the FAT formatted SDcard), you can install it with pm, if you have an active shell.

Copy code to clipboard

1
2pm install /sdcard/Download/your_app_name.apk
3

PM works (thanks, I tried it without pm and that just got me a permission denied error) but I could not install the app:

$ pm install dosbox-turbo.apk
pkg: dosbox-turbo.apk
Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_OLDER_SDK]

You need an older version of the app. It was built for a newer device.

If you are not *that* picky about the dosbox package, adosbox has a min requirement of 2.2, which your device meets.
https://huftis.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/en/pa … android.dosbox/

The nonfree dosbox packages really only just offer support for more than one dosbox.conf, more or less. The issues with that can be alleviated with an oldschool dos menu program.

I use DirectAccess 5 on my tablet this way. Works like a charm.

Hm, at least I know 100% that *a* version of DOSBox-Turbo was running on the device years ago. But I cannot find a version prior to 2.2 (which I tried). I'll keep searching.

edit: maybe this could be compiled for the SK17i (running Android 2.3.x)?

https://github.com/gururise/DosBoxTurbo

I finally found an alternative (Magic DOSBox) and it works well.
Will post a picture and video in a few hours, but it was definitely worth all the frustrating effort.
I would probably prefer another app, because Magic DOSBox does start a GUI where you add games which are then opened in a traditional DOSBox, instead of just showing you the DOS prompt, but it's fine fow now and I can always keep looking for another version later.

Love it.
The keyboard isn't so great that I would play fast-paced action games with it, but I mainly play RPGs and strategy games anyway.

Very cool to see - congrats.

I've used MagicDosBox - I don't recall the exact steps, but I believe you can disable/get-by much of the "Startup fluff menu". It's been a while, but I think I only had one option that I hd to hit to start. ... Might have been something like defining a "game" which launched the command prompt (assuming thats what you want do do)

I also don't recall details, but I think it was one of the apps that liked to "phone home" often, so you might want to disable network access by it.