Re: [tlug] Smart phone vs Tablet: app on sd

["Nikolay Elenkov" <nick@example.com>]

Raymond Wan writes:

>
> What was the context of what I said?  Oh, right.  I asked an app
> developer if they could make their app install on the SD Card.  Or, at
> least, install on the phone but enable the "Move to SD card" option.
> They told me that Google has recently (this was about a year ago)
> disallowed apps from installing on the SD card.  Nikolay's point (back
> in the other thread) about SD cards being "floppies" is correct, but
> if your phone is >2 years old and has only 400 MB of internal space,
> then I'll take floppies over being "forced" into buying a new phone...
> :-)
>


This is getting a bit OT, but yes, with older phones you do need an
SD card. Nowadays even the cheaper phones have a at least 4GB of
internal storage, so there is really no need for SD cards. Some
vendors still do manage to fill about half of that with various
crapware you cannot physically remove though (without rooting).

Anyway, the whole "cannot move app to SD card" is really a silly
workaround for apps that have widgets, which do not work properly
when moved to external storage. This is due to the fact that
moving an app to external storage essentially creates an encrypted
DRM-like container so that it is not easy to copy paid apps off
the SD card. Due to the timing of mounting/initialization of
those containers (also called ASEC containers), widgets didn't
get picked up in some (all?) cases. Not sure if this problem
ever got a proper fix, but it's not that relevant on newer
phones/Android versions. Also see the angry comments here:

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8555


Keep in mind that Japan/US/HK/China etc. economy heavily
relies on you buying new phones and simply get a newer model :)