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Comment by zng | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one with a confused and blown mind why they refuse to offer a slot for MicroSD and insist on hard wired internal memory?

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Android Engineer, 2011:

"There's no particular hardware reason a device can't have both. The problem is that there is no good UI for it. One of the core Android principles is that you never need a file manager. Ever. We wanted to avoid the obnoxious "sneeze and a file picker appears" syndrome of basically every other OS. Local data that apps know how to handle should just be magically available within the apps, or stored in the cloud. You shouldn't have to go spelunking on your SD card to find data. The problem with having both internal storage and SD cards is that suddenly that goal gets a whole lot harder to achieve. For a given shot, should the camera save to internal-16GB, or to SD card? Should an app from Market be installed to internal or SD? etc. Yes, we can solve this by letting the user choose, or have it be in settings. But then, that's a file picker, or close enough to the file picker experience that we dislike it just as much. And besides that, there are API consequences: if you stick in an SD card with photos on it, do you add those to the system media content provider? If you do, you will screw up apps because they aren't designed with the concept that photos can come and go. What we will probably do eventually is add an import/export concept to removable storage. So the Camera will always save to internal-16GB, and when you pop in an SD card (or insert a thumb drive on USB host devices) you can start a migration or import/export dialog. But until we have that, devices will generally either have an SD card, or a large internal storage, but not both. I totally get that a lot of people like SD cards, and I miss USB Mass Storage myself. But then, that's why it's great that there are so many devices to choose from. :) tl;dr: it's a can of worms. We're thinking about compromises for future versions."

http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/11/18/impromptu-qa-session...

Head of UX, 2012:

"Everybody likes the idea of having an SD card, but in reality it's just confusing for users. If you’re saving photos, videos or music, where does it go? Is it on your phone? Or on your card? Should there be a setting? Prompt everytime? What happens to the experience when you swap out the card? It’s just too complicated. We take a different approach. Your Nexus has a fixed amount of space and your apps just seamlessly use it for you without you ever having to worry about files or volumes or any of that techy nonsense left over from the paleolithic era of computing. With a Nexus you know exactly how much storage you get upfront and you can decide what’s the right size for you. That’s simple and good for users"

https://plus.google.com/114892667463719782631/posts/JAAMUzx1...

tl;dr Technical/UX issues.

I'm not saying I like the idea, but Microsoft's way of handling SD cards is a solution for all of these issues. When you put an SD card in a Windows Phone, it becomes part of the internal storage in a way akin to Windows 8 storage spaces. There's no picking where a file goes, it just goes to internal storage which includes the SD card.

The major drawback of the way Microsoft did it is that if you take the card out of the phone, the phone needs to be reformatted and the card cannnot easily be reused.

That's really not a solution. At all.

It kind of is, yeah, in exactly the way I stated it. Did you read past the word "Microsoft"?

That sounds much, much worse. I'd take no SD card support at all over having to explain to people why, when they take their card out of the phone and put it in their camera, their phone shits itself.

The last phone I had that did this was an old Samsung Focus, and Samsung was very quick to point this out at every step of the way. The emphasize in the manual very clearly that this storage is a permanent addition, not a way of removable storage.

Is it any different from telling people if they unplug their desktop's boot drive, the computer will stop working?

People don't have an expectation of hard drives being removable(most people probably don't even realize they can be removed), whereas SD cards are explicitly designed to be mobile. People treat them as mini USB drives, so this behaviour is directly counter to most people's intuition, regardless of its technical merits.

What are the numbers of people swapping their SD cards out of their phone and into something else (and expecting it to work)? I don't know the statistics, but I'm willing to bet it's low. In fact, the number of people in general putting SD cards into their phones is likely to be very low, since a lot of phones don't support it.

I really don't understand your argument that phones just shouldn't support SD cards rather than having the option to expand the storage for cheaper than buying the next model up just to avoid user confusion. If every phone locked out useful features just for the sake of avoiding user confusion, Android wouldn't exist.

How is that in any way a solution? You have removable storage right up until you use it?

How is it not a solution? The problem is needing to add more storage. Microsoft lets you add more storage. That way you could buy the 8GB version of the phone for $200 and add 64GB of more storage, if necessary, for $50. The alternative is to pay $200 for 8GB or $350 for 16GB... which would you pick?

Removable storage is always going to be a problem, as Google points out. Adding storage after the fact is solved, and one of the solutions is what Microsoft offers.

Lots of hate for this idea, but makes perfect sense to me. I could buy an 8GB phone, decide later that I need more storage, then expand that with a 32GB SD card. No confusion as long as it's explained that the card is for expansion, not removal.

Really interesting insight and actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

Yeah, I think those are 2 really bad justifications. Android has file managers, you don't need them for most things, but the ability to transfer a file from a remote computer, an sdcard, a webdav server, etc. makes the OS more usable in those instances where you do need those things.

> Everybody likes the idea of having an SD card, but in reality it's just confusing for users. If you’re saving photos, videos or music, where does it go? Is it on your phone? Or on your card? Should there be a setting? Prompt everytime? What happens to the experience when you swap out the card? It’s just too complicated.

This is pretty easy to answer; you do it exactly like you do it when there is no sdcard. Leave 3rd party apps for power users to extend the base functionality with outside storage.

>> "Yeah, I think those are 2 really bad justifications."

I disagree. The SD card confuses people. I have several friends who bought a Galaxy Ace. It had very low internal memory but they thought that was ok as they could put an SD card in. Problem is they had no idea they couldn't store apps on the SD card. Now they're pissed off. They don't understand this limitation and don't care. It makes Google/Android look bad.

Google wants to push the idea that local storage is just a cache for the cloud. There's no need for extra storage. Also see the chromebook example.

Many chromebooks have sdcard slots, all have usb.

Google wants you to store your files (music, documents, pictures) online instead of in a local card.

Yeah, you are of course right...

(I disapprove though)

If that's true, then that's a pretty "evil" thing of them to do, so I really hope that's not the main reason.

Much simpler an explanation is that having removable storage means that everything in the stack needs to understand removable storage and that that imposes a cost on library authors, app developers, and most problematically, on users. Better to do away with the possibility than have to deal with explaining to someone why their pictures have all of a sudden magically disappeared.

No SD, no need for FAT so no patents

That would be interesting, however after launching adb shell:

  shell@mako:/ $ grep vfat /proc/filesystems
          vfat
  shell@mako:/ $ grep vfat /proc/mounts
  /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modem /firmware vfat ro,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0337,dmask=0227,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 0

So fat is being used in spite of not having an SD card.

Samsung has just released version 1.0 of their open-source implementation of ex-FAT [1]. Why aren't they using that? I think it should at the very least work with 64+ GB microSD cards, if not with smaller ones, which I'd be fine with.

If they still think it's risky to be sued by MS, I think that lawsuit would be well worth it. At worst, they risk losing a few tens of millions of dollars (I doubt the "damages" that can be claimed would be more than that for a single Nexus model).

But the potential upside is huge. If they win, then not only Google, but every other OEM can finally stop paying Microsoft for FAT/ex-FAT patents, and just use that. Heck, they can probably even convince Samsung and a few other OEM's to pony up a pool of money for the trial, if they don't want to take it all on themselves.

The value/cost would be orders of magnitude bigger than what Google paid for Motorola's patents. And if they win, the potential savings for all OEM's who still use microSD cards, would be in the billions of dollars.

As for my personal expectations of this happening, I think Google is too chicken to do it, as they usually are when it comes to such confrontations, but I see Samsung doing it soon. What is Microsoft going to do to Samsung? Beg them not to buy Windows from them anymore? (which is what they'd risk doing if they sued Samsung)

I have a strong suspicion that the only reason Samsung even agreed to pay them for the patents in the first place was because it was part of a deal with Microsoft, in which they got lower prices for Windows licenses, which means Microsoft may even lose or break even at most with Samsung in that deal. Microsoft would've definitely agreed to something like that, because having Samsung on their "extortion list" meant every other company would then start to give them money, too - which is exactly what happened as soon as Samsung agreed to pay, and Microsoft made it public.

[1] - http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQzODQ

It's weird reading the Android engineers rebuttals. It's something that really irritates me, and frankly it has put me off of owning a smartphone at all (not having a microSD slot).

I also noticed a few limititations for the first time with my partners Nook HD that does have an SD slot. I bought a 32gb MicroSD card for it to store video and music. When trying to download from the web browser files went to local storage. I also had issues with downloading in general, some of which would be incomplete or disappear. While downloading I expected to be able to move to another app, and have the download background. It was a pretty shonky experience. I tried to find some kind of setting for it and ultimately realised that Android wasn't that brilliantly suited to handle external memory.

I'm never that sure if a device is going to take ownership of something like a micro SD card when I attach it. The whole portable format thing is a pain too. Not being able to use ExFat easily on my Linux laptop is a pain. I'm surprised one of the free file systems haven't been chosen as the default for for usb sticks, memory cards etc. Probably a result of manufacturers looking to have Windows compatibility.

I'm not quite sure myself which way I think opening media should go, should I select an app first and then open something, or should I use a 'finder' to get to a file and then choose what to do with it? I guess the latter at least affords for the 'finder' to suggest what to do with it, if not have a sensible default. Should my 'finder' know if a piece of software can handle the file upfront? Should software register what it can handle to a central authority? Sometimes you might not know wihch is the best software to open something with.

From a users perspective, I'd at least hope that if the device had 8GB on it, and if I had a card plugged in with 32GB, when I went to download a 1GB file it may put that on the 32GB card. Maybe there should be named storage pools that you could select when downloading. Or a sensible default.

Perhaps when you plug in media you should get the option of integrating it to the devices storage, or having it as temporary or portable storage.

The whole file management thing doesn't feel like it's solved on the desktop, but neither does it feel particulary good on Android. I think I like to know where my files are.

I do get that this is an epic problem. My Aunt was hopeless with file management on her laptop, but is happy with her iPad, other than suggesting that she has no idea how to get the photos off of it, and hasn't succeeding in doing so yet.

> but is happy with her iPad, other than suggesting that she has no idea how to get the photos off of it, and hasn't succeeding in doing so yet.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083

Thanks, the problem really being that she has no idea how to file manage on her windows PC or add/remove software, and her attempt at installing the software failed.

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