16 Gigs but what does that mean to me?

[DarrBeck]

Hello. I just got my droid(s) two days ago and I have never been happier. I can't believe that right out of the box this phone works like it's supposed to without hours and hours of tweaking. I am coming from an Windows mobile Omnia and I imagine I must have spent upwards to 80 hours tweaking, modding and just messing with things to get it running the way I needed it to.

Droid - Intuitive smart and tweak free !!!!!!!!

So my first question: 16GB of storage but what does that mean? Are apps, pictures, cache etc. downloaded there? What about temporary internet and anything else that would fill up and freak out a windows phone eventually? Is this OS smart enough to handle cleanup and storage without any hand holding? The storage card seems to be in the background but I don't see any settings pointing data to it. If my internal memory fills will it default to the card or how does that work. Trying to learn how this OS works!!!

Thanks in advance and I am SO HAPPY I have a reason to be here!!!

D

 

[JoeyNWZ]

Applications are stored in a seperate memory space, 256 mb I believe.. Data is mostly stored on the 16gig sd card, i.e. pics, music, movies, attachments (if you set that option), and some application data if they coded it that way.

Side note, they are apparently working on a patch to let you install apps to the SD card, but that is in the works and I have not heard an ETA on it.

 

[sir]

Droid Does... only have 256MB of storage for apps

It seems that the Droid only has 256M of memory allocated for apps to be installed on. It seems *very* limited to me, but a lot of functional apps aren't that big in size (it's mostly games that are huge).

Assuming that article is correct, it seems that even though apps are installed on the local ROM of the Droid, they can leverage space on the SD card for resources (graphics, etc.) which lowers the amount of total space required to store an app on the phone.

I believe pictures, videos, music, alarms, notification sounds, etc. are all items that are/can be stored on the SD card.

It also seems like it would be stupid-simple for them to update the Market app and some of the core OS to allow for downloading apps to the SD card - it would make it a lot easier if you had to replace your phone to get your apps back that's for sure.

 

[andjarnic]

I am sure it's easy to store to SD.. the code to do it is simple. That isn't the issue tho. The main issue is probably (guessing here) that up until now, no android device had this ability, so the icons (links) to programs always pointed to one location. The process to set it up so that not only can an icon/app/link point to more than one location (that is, the SD card or the internal memory location for apps), but ALSO what happens if you remove the SD card and click on the app that is a link to the SD card. So the code probably has to be written to handle this situation, hence an eventual update that should allow for all failure conditions when storing on the SD card. Bad SD card, removed SD card, new SD card without app on it, an SD Card with the app on it but data the app uses is NOT on this new card, etc.. tons of conditions that have to be handled.

 

[Trip]

The problem is not, what happens if the SD card is removed, its underneath the battery, so the phone WILL be off to remove the card, the problem is that you have to mount the SD card to the USB to access it from your computer, basically uninstalling it from the phone, now what happens if you have your phone downloading music from your PC and you try to run an app from the SD card? CRASH

Thats what they have to work out I guess.

 

[DarrBeck]

Thanks for your replies. That all makes sense. So, as much as I like tweaking stuff it's nice to have a device that may just do its own job.

 

[adol7]

The other issue is piracy, I'm sure. What would stop a paid app, installed to an SD card, from being copied to a dozen other SD cards for other users? Of course, if we were given the choice of "free apps to SD card," I'd take that as a compromise.