When it was announced that MicroSD cards were making a triumphant return
to the Samsung Galaxy S series, many exploded with excitement. However,
there is still a lot of confusion and misinformation surrounding the
value of MicroSD cards. Here I explain why internal storage is still
better than external memory.
The misconception
I don't wish to patronize here and I’m not
suggesting this is big news. Rather, some people genuinely aren't aware
of it and Android 6.0 Marshmallow has confused the situation somewhat.
You
might think that buying a handset with 32 GB of internal memory and
adding a 32 GB microSD card to is the same as buying a 64 GB smartphone.
It's not.
This important. It is always cheaper to add
external storage, and thus tempting to do so, but it’s just not as
effective. Why? To explain this we must look at life before and after
Marshmallow.
Pre Android 6.0 Marshmallow
On devices that don't run
Marshmallow, the kind of data that can be stored on the microSD card is
different to what can be stored in your phone. You can store movies,
music and image files easily, but app data (including sometimes large
game files) is trickier.
You can’t, for example, install an entire app or game onto a microSD card. You can move part of the data there, but that's all.
Because
of this, even with a 128 GB memory card stuffed into a 16 GB device,
you could still find yourself frequently running out of storage space.
So, first and foremost, microSD cards are more limited in terms of the
type of data they can store, while internal storage can hold any data.
Post Android 6.0
Google has made an attempt to unify the
MicroSD / internal storage experience in Android Marshmallow with a
feature known as Adoptable Storage. With this, you can use a microSD
card just like internal storage. The caveat is that once you do this the
microSD card can only be used in that device, and removing it can cause all kinds of problems.
Though it may act the same as your device's internal storage, it's still not quite the same.
The speed at which your device reads and writes information to storage mediums affects overall performance.
Traditionally,
accessing data on external storage mediums was almost always slower
than the dedicated drive. With Adoptable Storage, this is still mostly
true: the unification of these two storage mediums will have an adverse
affect on overall read and write speed.
But to make the situation even more complicated, performance may improve in rare cases.
On the HTC One A9 and confusion
With
the HTC One A9, a MicroSD card can actually improve the phone’s read
and write speeds. It depends on the type of SD Card, but when using the
SanDisk Extreme Plus 64 GB in our One A9, the overall read and write
speed actually increased. Truthfully, it was not to any visible degree,
but worth mentioning all the same.
On the Galaxy S7 and confusion
The
Galaxy S7 has made matters worse because its MicroSD cards don’t make
use of the Adoptable Storage feature, despite the fact that the S7 runs
Marshmallow.
Based on current
information, it seems that SD cards in the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge
will act the same way as external storage does in the traditional
Android sense, that is, they can only store photos, videos, app data,
and other such files.
Where does this leave us?
Android Marshmallow has attempted
to bring the warring factions of internal and external storage together.
There is currently a ceasefire: these storage forms are playing nice.
If you take advantage of Adoptable Storage, your MicroSD card will act
just like internal storage with few downsides. But some families, such
as LG and Samsung, haven’t implemented Adoptable Storage.
For now, I’d still advise against buying additional storage if you want the same function as internal storage, unless you know your
device supports Adoptable Storage and don’t mind a potentially adverse
effect on performance. Additionally, external storage mediums are prone
to corruption, and who knows what the long-term effects of
persistent data transfer will be when microSD cards are used like
internal storage.
If you just want another way to store pictures
and videos without clogging up your internal memory, a microSD card will
still do just fine.
It's still a hotly debated topic, so where do you stand on external vs internal storage? Give me your thoughts in the comments.
source: Androidpit
