3 ms·
Well, if android phones still had the ability to masquerade as a USB drive (in order to move files/photos/whatever) on and off, then I could see leaving the SD
by rsync 11y ago
Well, if android phones still had the ability to masquerade as a USB drive (in order to move files/photos/whatever) on and off, then I could see leaving the SD card in place forever.
But android phones don't currently have the ability to behave as a simple USB drive when you plug them into the computer.
So if you're even a little bit discerning, and you refuse to install silly helper apps and photo-importers and android-buddy programs on your computers, you need some other (sane) way to move files on and off the phone - and that is the SD card.
They're just files. You don't need a little helper app or to open up iPhoto and "import" or any of this silliness. You just need a dumb block device that you can move back and forth.
- voltagex_ 11y agoAs far as I can tell, the decision to remove Mass Storage had two main drivers: * The removal of SD cards from mainstream phones * The use of ext4 as a main filesystem on a lot of phones. The removal of SD cards meant that you could no longer "unmount" part of the phone filesystem to present it as a mass storage device. The use of ext4 meant that many OSes had no idea how to mount the storage, even if you presented it as a block device. I'm not sure anyone will read this, but I think you could implement a FAT emulation layer over USB Gadget, at least enough to get car head-decks to play MP3s off the phone. If anyone wants to take a crack at this, please get in touch with me.
- rsync 11y agoMy impression was that the loss of mass storage was due to a licensing issue with fat32, wherein android (google) had to pay some little license fee to MS for each copy ...