On 04/18/2012 07:54 PM, Nadeem Hasan wrote:
On Tuesday, April 17, 2012 7:44:34 PM UTC-4, Kostya Vasilyev wrote:
It also hasn't prevented from existing a few hundred million
devices with removable, writable, user controllable and
understandable, officially supported "external" microsd memory cards.
Yes, I'm talking about phones running Android 1.* through 2.*.
Does anyone remember those? Incidentally, they still account for
something like 95% of all current Android devices.
I am not sure what you mean here.
I mean just what I wrote.
There is a few hundred million devices that have removable storage that's:
- accessible to third party application for writing
- is understood by users
- is discoverable
- has received attention and improvements from the Android team (the
switch to MTP, the recent Environment methods that let you pick file
path based on its type...)
How do you discover the removable storage through the pre-3.x API in
the first place?
Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() has been there since API level 1.
And how are you going to make sure that the user is not going to yank
out the sd card in the middle of a write operation possibly corrupting
the entire filesystem?
On most phone type devices, the memory card can't be yanked without
removing the battery.
No application can be in the middle of a write operation when the
battery has been removed.
On some devices there is a menu command to unmout the memory card.
Other than that, it's the user's problem, not the application's.
There is a way to corrupt the file system of a desktop computer by
throwing it out the window or dousing it with gasoline and burning it.
This does not prevent desktop computers from supporting multiple storage
volumes and APIs to enumerate them.
And it's beside the point anway.
I see you trying to paint removable storage as "bad", inherently laden
with technical issues, and therefore argue that us, application
developers, should just forget it exists.
From my experience, that's not how users see it.
They pay for devices with removable storage (in addition to "internal
external" memory and "internal internal" memory) and then would like to
use what they paid for - including the ability for third party
applications to save data there.
I've gotten requests for exacty this, and have implemented a directory
picker, but now seeing that it may not be enough, and that devices and
firmwares from various manufacturers can arbitrarily restrict write
access, I'm worried.
When you say "officially supported" external sd card, what kind of
support are you implying?
Is Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() that's been there since API
1 official enough?
To conclude, I do hope that this might be fixed in a future Android
release. Keeping my fingers crossed :)
-- K
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