"There's no particular hardware reason a device can't have both. The problem is that there is no good UI for it.
One of the core Android principles is that you never need a file manager. Ever. We wanted to avoid the obnoxious "sneeze and a file picker appears" syndrome of basically every other OS. Local data that apps know how to handle should just be magically available within the apps, or stored in the cloud. You shouldn't have to go spelunking on your SD card to find data.
The problem with having both internal storage and SD cards is that suddenly that goal gets a whole lot harder to achieve. For a given shot, should the camera save to internal-16GB, or to SD card? Should an app from Market be installed to internal or SD? etc.
Yes, we can solve this by letting the user choose, or have it be in settings. But then, that's a file picker, or close enough to the file picker experience that we dislike it just as much.
And besides that, there are API consequences: if you stick in an SD card with photos on it, do you add those to the system media content provider? If you do, you will screw up apps because they aren't designed with the concept that photos can come and go.
What we will probably do eventually is add an import/export concept to removable storage. So the Camera will always save to internal-16GB, and when you pop in an SD card (or insert a thumb drive on USB host devices) you can start a migration or import/export dialog.
But until we have that, devices will generally either have an SD card, or a large internal storage, but not both. I totally get that a lot of people like SD cards, and I miss USB Mass Storage myself. But then, that's why it's great that there are so many devices to choose from. :)
tl;dr: it's a can of worms. We're thinking about compromises for future versions."
"Everybody likes the idea of having an SD card, but in reality it's just confusing for users.
If you’re saving photos, videos or music, where does it go? Is it on your phone? Or on your card? Should there be a setting? Prompt everytime? What happens to the experience when you swap out the card? It’s just too complicated.
We take a different approach. Your Nexus has a fixed amount of space and your apps just seamlessly use it for you without you ever having to worry about files or volumes or any of that techy nonsense left over from the paleolithic era of computing.
With a Nexus you know exactly how much storage you get upfront and you can decide what’s the right size for you. That’s simple and good for users"
I'm not saying I like the idea, but Microsoft's way of handling SD cards is a solution for all of these issues. When you put an SD card in a Windows Phone, it becomes part of the internal storage in a way akin to Windows 8 storage spaces. There's no picking where a file goes, it just goes to internal storage which includes the SD card.
The major drawback of the way Microsoft did it is that if you take the card out of the phone, the phone needs to be reformatted and the card cannnot easily be reused.
That sounds much, much worse. I'd take no SD card support at all over having to explain to people why, when they take their card out of the phone and put it in their camera, their phone shits itself.
The last phone I had that did this was an old Samsung Focus, and Samsung was very quick to point this out at every step of the way. The emphasize in the manual very clearly that this storage is a permanent addition, not a way of removable storage.
Is it any different from telling people if they unplug their desktop's boot drive, the computer will stop working?
People don't have an expectation of hard drives being removable(most people probably don't even realize they can be removed), whereas SD cards are explicitly designed to be mobile. People treat them as mini USB drives, so this behaviour is directly counter to most people's intuition, regardless of its technical merits.
What are the numbers of people swapping their SD cards out of their phone and into something else (and expecting it to work)? I don't know the statistics, but I'm willing to bet it's low. In fact, the number of people in general putting SD cards into their phones is likely to be very low, since a lot of phones don't support it.
I really don't understand your argument that phones just shouldn't support SD cards rather than having the option to expand the storage for cheaper than buying the next model up just to avoid user confusion. If every phone locked out useful features just for the sake of avoiding user confusion, Android wouldn't exist.
How is it not a solution? The problem is needing to add more storage. Microsoft lets you add more storage. That way you could buy the 8GB version of the phone for $200 and add 64GB of more storage, if necessary, for $50. The alternative is to pay $200 for 8GB or $350 for 16GB... which would you pick?
Removable storage is always going to be a problem, as Google points out. Adding storage after the fact is solved, and one of the solutions is what Microsoft offers.
Lots of hate for this idea, but makes perfect sense to me. I could buy an 8GB phone, decide later that I need more storage, then expand that with a 32GB SD card. No confusion as long as it's explained that the card is for expansion, not removal.
Yeah, I think those are 2 really bad justifications. Android has file managers, you don't need them for most things, but the ability to transfer a file from a remote computer, an sdcard, a webdav server, etc. makes the OS more usable in those instances where you do need those things.
> Everybody likes the idea of having an SD card, but in reality it's just confusing for users. If you’re saving photos, videos or music, where does it go? Is it on your phone? Or on your card? Should there be a setting? Prompt everytime? What happens to the experience when you swap out the card? It’s just too complicated.
This is pretty easy to answer; you do it exactly like you do it when there is no sdcard. Leave 3rd party apps for power users to extend the base functionality with outside storage.
>> "Yeah, I think those are 2 really bad justifications."
I disagree. The SD card confuses people. I have several friends who bought a Galaxy Ace. It had very low internal memory but they thought that was ok as they could put an SD card in. Problem is they had no idea they couldn't store apps on the SD card. Now they're pissed off. They don't understand this limitation and don't care. It makes Google/Android look bad.
"There's no particular hardware reason a device can't have both. The problem is that there is no good UI for it. One of the core Android principles is that you never need a file manager. Ever. We wanted to avoid the obnoxious "sneeze and a file picker appears" syndrome of basically every other OS. Local data that apps know how to handle should just be magically available within the apps, or stored in the cloud. You shouldn't have to go spelunking on your SD card to find data. The problem with having both internal storage and SD cards is that suddenly that goal gets a whole lot harder to achieve. For a given shot, should the camera save to internal-16GB, or to SD card? Should an app from Market be installed to internal or SD? etc. Yes, we can solve this by letting the user choose, or have it be in settings. But then, that's a file picker, or close enough to the file picker experience that we dislike it just as much. And besides that, there are API consequences: if you stick in an SD card with photos on it, do you add those to the system media content provider? If you do, you will screw up apps because they aren't designed with the concept that photos can come and go. What we will probably do eventually is add an import/export concept to removable storage. So the Camera will always save to internal-16GB, and when you pop in an SD card (or insert a thumb drive on USB host devices) you can start a migration or import/export dialog. But until we have that, devices will generally either have an SD card, or a large internal storage, but not both. I totally get that a lot of people like SD cards, and I miss USB Mass Storage myself. But then, that's why it's great that there are so many devices to choose from. :) tl;dr: it's a can of worms. We're thinking about compromises for future versions."
http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/11/18/impromptu-qa-session...
Head of UX, 2012:
"Everybody likes the idea of having an SD card, but in reality it's just confusing for users. If you’re saving photos, videos or music, where does it go? Is it on your phone? Or on your card? Should there be a setting? Prompt everytime? What happens to the experience when you swap out the card? It’s just too complicated. We take a different approach. Your Nexus has a fixed amount of space and your apps just seamlessly use it for you without you ever having to worry about files or volumes or any of that techy nonsense left over from the paleolithic era of computing. With a Nexus you know exactly how much storage you get upfront and you can decide what’s the right size for you. That’s simple and good for users"
https://plus.google.com/114892667463719782631/posts/JAAMUzx1...
tl;dr Technical/UX issues.