apps can only be stored on phones internal memory?

[jasonb]

i have read in numerous places that apps can only he held on the internal memory and not on the SD card. is this really true? do we really only have about 250MB of storage for apps? if so, then we really have no room for any good games.

 

[skourg3]

Apps have to be installed to the phone's internal, but apps can pull from the SD card. Like, if you have an emulator, it can read a ROM on an SD card for example. I'm sure that configuration could be extended to a system where you install a game on the phone but, for example, store the levels on the SD card or something.

 

[takeshi]

Apps have to be installed to the phone's internal, but apps can pull from the SD card. Like, if you have an emulator, it can read a ROM on an SD card for example. I'm sure that configuration could be extended to a system where you install a game on the phone but, for example, store the levels on the SD card or something.

The binaries (the actual code) need to be in the Droid's memory but resources can the on the SD card. Binaries are tiny. It's the other resources (music, video, textures, etc etc) that really take up space.

 

[Mayze]

Why can't the internal memory be a few GB instead of a few MB? Is there some sort of limitation to how much internal memory can be installed?

Apps are a huge part of smartphones today. Its no secret, just ask apple. If apps have to be installed into the phone's internal memory then they need to expand the memory tremendously. I'll never fill up the 16 GB of SD memory but I know I would come close if I had that much internal.

 

[tah]

On Palm there was an app called "Power Run".

It allowed an installed app to be moved entirely to the card. When you opened an app that was on the card it would copy the critical operation procedures to the internal memory, run the application and when you closed the app, all the files went back onto the card including settings, scores....etc...... Lag time was minimal, if you had a 5MB Dictionary program (HUGE for a Palm file!) lag was 10 ~ 15 seconds. I think Power Run had to "look" at all the associated files before running. Most apps ran like they were in the regular memory.

We need an app like this for the Droid. Makes your phone virtually limitless.

Of course Palm apps had a very small and friendly footprint. For example, Documen'ts To Go was about 1/10 the size on Palm then it is in Android. AND it had morre features which are coming an Android.

Still I'm loving this phone...........