This post is my own personal opinion about the use of external storage versus internal storage. Please do not attack or vilify my opinion on this usage, but rather provide your well thought-out views on this topic. Your views and opinions most likely will be much better than mine.
In this writing supporting the Droid 3, I have defined the following phrases:
- ext-SD card refers to the optional micro-SD card that is installed by me or at my request (The Droid 3 app "Files' calls this SD Card)
- int-SD card refers to the internal storage that came with the Droid 3; part of this area is called "Media Area" under the "Manage Applications" setting. (The Droid 3 app "Files' calls this Internal phone storage)
In addition to the 16 gb int-SD that came with my Droid 3, I installed the 16 gb micro-SD as the ext-SD.
I have actually been thinking about this a great deal. At first, I was concerned because the ext-SD card was, and is not, being accessed by the developers of most apps. Many are primarily using the int-SD for data storage.
Now that I have been using the Droid 3 for the past 6 weeks, this is no longer a major concern, but rather a small amount of work to use it in this fashion.
1. At this time (10/14/2011), I have 6.7 GB available out of 16 GB on my ext-SD. I made a fundamental switch and I only keep music, videos, and pics on the ext-SD card. This gives me a storage area, that is under my control and not under the control of the developers. Every app I use for music, video, and pics has no problem with recognizing the appropriate data on the ext-SD card. In addition, they all recognize the the appropriate data on the int-SD card, so I have additional storage capability. I wish the camera and the video camera had the ability to save to the ext-SD card rather than the int-SD card. In reality, I am actually storing less and less in the area of music and pics on my ext-SD card as I am increasing my use of cloud storage for these items. By taking this approach, I have added a little work, in that I manually move items from the int-SD card to the ext-card, such as pics taken with the camera, video taken with the video camera, or files transferred via Dropbox, SugarSync, Awsome Drop, etc.
2. At this time (10/14/2011), I have 11 GB available out of 16 GB on my int-SD. I use the storage on the int-SD for app data storage and needs. All music, pics and videos I manually move to the ext-SD card. This area also holds ebooks for the various ebook readers, and is the on-device storage area for DropBox, SugarSync, Awsome Drop, etc.
I am not 'moving' apps form the 2 GB "app area" to the "media area" of the int-SD. This is because there appears to be a problem in that sometimes the addressability to the apps is broken when apps are moved to the "SD Card (int-SD)". Once this is resolved, I will move apps to the "media area" of the int-SD. I still have 1.25 GB within the app area, so today it is not critical to me that this functionality does not work. It may be in the future.
It would be nice if the developers added a choice between the int-SD and the ext-SD. One of the reason I see for developers using only the int-SD, is that their apps use the exact same path to reach storage regardless of device. I am not totally versed in the file structure of the Android, but to move to the ext-SD card requires programming changes in the access of 'additional data areas' such as on the ext-SD within the Android family. I cannot tell you if this is a minor or major change. At a a minimum, programming changes would be needed to support not only the selection screen of the proper 'path' (int-SD or ext-SD), but also some file manger capabilities to allow one to select the proper 'path'.
Good Luck,
Bob
A bigger concern is the lack of consistency in the nomenclature for these two storage areas, even within the Android operating system they are not consistently called the same.