On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:46:33 AM UTC-7, Nadeem Hasan wrote: > > That hasn't stopped many devices from making the removable storage their >> primary one. But if this is by design, I'd like to link to the design >> philosophy document. Maybe I can send that to the users. I can't find >> anything official, though. If the other devices are going to be unwriteable >> 90% of the time, I can't spend much more time on it. >> > > I find it hard to believe that devices exist that treat removable storage > as primary. >
I am not talking about removable as in a thumb drive, more like replaceable/upgradable. Most 2x and earlier phones allowed you to remove the one and only storage card, possibly by opening the battery cover. Droid Incredible had a removable and non removable storage, and chose the removable storage as their primary. Dumb decision, yes, but they are not the only ones. > > If your app/users need to create very large files, you need devices with >>> huge amounts of internal storage or you need to work out an alternate >>> mechanism such as cloud storage. Handheld portable devices are not general >>> purpose computers (yet). You should not expect to use them as one. >>> >> >> I do no subscribe to that philosophy. Compared to computers of not very >> many years ago, 2Gig or 8gig is already lots of space. If there is another >> card slot, users are going to put a 32gig SD card. In practice, it is not >> removed all that often. It is only natural that users expect apps to be >> able to use that space. Then they find out some can and some can't. >> > > At the same rate, the storage demand of a typical user has gone up. Today > we have a need to store gigabytes of media files (music, pictures and > videos) which did not exist many years ago so 8 gigs is not a "lot of > space" anymore. Did we have 8 megapixel cameras in devices or ability to > view HD videos a few years ago? > > No argument with that. In truth, my users would like to store 32 terabytes. But 32 gig vs 8 gig makes a difference to them. > I agree that it would be great to have ability to discover the removable > storage in a sane and predictable manner but as I said, it looks like the > platform wants to treat the removable storage as a transient readonly > storage for media files. > I still can't find official info on that and whether they should blame Android or the manufacturer, but it appears that is the trend. > I understand by now that I don't have any say, but this idea of tight, >> arbitrary control of what content a user puts on their own storage volume >> seems more Apple like than Android like. Apple users don't, in general, >> have file access to their own volume, so Android *could* be very >> competitive in this area. But at present, we are frustrating users enough >> that they are crawling back to iOS. >> > > Funny you mention iOS in this context when you don't even have *any* > removable storage in devices running iOS. So what is the reason the users > are "crawling" back to iOS? What is it buying them? > I am in no way saying that said users are being logical. Just repeating what I've heard from conversations and a dozen forums around the internet. On the other hand, if I bought an Android tablet, thinking I can add a 32gig sd card and use it for "whatever I want", I might feel betrayed to find out that I can't use the space for whatever I want. Furthermore, the restrictions were never explained before the sale. I'd take it back to the store. For some, they might go back to Apple, who never promised them external storage and never promised them they could use space for whatever they want and certainly never made them type anything like /mnt/storage/ext-storages/ext_sdcard1 into an app. Nathan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
