4 ms·

As with previous capacities, another use case is to have your entire music library available in your phone. I use one of the previous 200 GB uSD cards with my

by bhauer 9y ago

As with previous capacities, another use case is to have your entire music library available in your phone. I use one of the previous 200 GB uSD cards with my whole music library. It's nice to have everything available everywhere I go. Now even those with >200 but <400 GB of music are able to do the same.

rsync 9y ago
"another use case is to have your entire music library available in your phone." Unfortunately, almost all phones continue to support microSD cards "up to 32 GB". Some will (reportedly) work with 64 GB cards, but if I understand correctly, others need hacks/tweaks to access >32 GB cards ...
- errantblaze 9y ago
  I didn't realize this was an issue. Does this include flagship phones or is it mostly lower- and mid-range? From experience, the Galaxy S7 supports at least 128GB (a quick search returns a 256GB max). S6 didn't support microSD, S5 supports 128GB, S4 supports 64GB, S3 supports 64GB.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
    sdxc has been in the spec since 2010. Anything that supports over 32GB (sdxc) can support up to 2TB with no hardware changes. I still have an S4 and use a 128GB card, but I've got a custom ROM. Most of the "up to" values for support are simply the biggest card that was available when the device was released, not the biggest the device can read. That's almost always going to be 2TB, the maximum that exFAT can support.
- Leynos 9y ago
  My 2 year old Sony Xperia works quite happily with a 128 GB card. A quick survey of recent (2017) models of Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Huawei, and Xiaomi on GSM Arena shows that they all take up to 256 GB (with Motorola being the exception at 128GB). This also seems to be the case for older Samsung phones I looked at. Looks like you're in luck.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
  My phone and tablet work fine with 128GB cards. The phone is a Samsung Galaxy S4 running Android 7.1.1, the tablet is an Amazon Fire HD 5th Gen. Any device that supports sdxc cards must support up to 2TB. The exFAT filesystem is required for these, so you can't use FAT32 anymore. sdxc host devices started coming out in 2010, pretty much everything that uses sd cards these days has support for them.
  - userbinator 9y ago
    FAT32 has an individual filesize limit of 4GB, but otherwise works fine for a 2TB partition: http://www.cdrlabs.com/images/stories/reviews/silicon-power_armor_a30/silicon%20power%20armor%20a30%20properties.png http://www.cdrlabs.com/images/stories/reviews/silicon-power_...
    - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
      Yes, but SDXC drivers don't necessarily support FAT32 on SDXC cards. The spec only requires exFAT. SDHC used FAT32.
      - userbinator 9y ago
        That's interesting. It seems the SD specs (which include SDXC) are mandating a specific filesystem. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#SDXC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#SDXC Nevertheless, in order to be fully compliant with the SDXC card specification, many SDXC-capable host devices are firmware-programmed to expect exFAT on cards larger than 32 GB. Consequently, they may not accept SDXC cards reformatted as FAT32, even if the device supports FAT32 on smaller cards (for SDHC compatibility). That seems like a gross "abstraction layer violation" to me --- like making SATA controllers which work with SATA6 HDDs only when formatted with NTFS. The filesystem should have nothing to do with SD, which simply implements a block device abstraction. No doubt Microsoft was involved in this ridiculousness...
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- simlevesque 9y ago
  My Lg G4 has no issue qith a 200gb microSD card.
- lenkite 9y ago
  Nowadays phones are dropping SD card support because they want everyone to touch the 'cloud'.
gnicholas 9y ago
Are there any battery cases for iPhones that could use this? I know it's possible to have SD card readers over lightning, and it would be pretty cool to have tons of extra space for photos, music, or video. iOS would lock you out of certain use cases, but there are probably some that would make this worthwhile. So many people have big battery cases, and adding this in wouldn't take much (and would be a killer differentiator).
zanny 9y ago
I have about 175GB of music, but a lot of that is flac. If I were putting it on my phone, considering its DAC and the fact I'm probably using bluetooth headphones I wouldn't hesitate to make all that 96kbit Opus instead and have no recognizable quality loss. In my experiments in the past I was shrinking 80GB to about 15GB. So if anyone has a huge music collection, you can still probably fit it on your phone without going crazy on the sd card. Just checking my collection is 2 months uninterrupted runtime right now.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Seconded, Opus is amazing. Hell, 96kbps is probably overkill for a phone, the codec is that good.
- slackingoff2017 9y ago
  Opus is amazing. Also your DAC and phone sound processing don't matter when using Bluetooth. It's digital straight to the headphones
- jandrese 9y ago
  Phones support Opus now? Or is the decode entirely in the CPU? Phones have more than enough oomph to do it, but you'll probably lose some battery life that way.
  - zanny 9y ago
    Trying to find any info on this is next to impossible. I'd still be really surprised if modern SoCs were shipping hardware mp3 decoders still though, and if they do, they probably support Opus since almost all VOIP data uses it now.
rahimnathwani 9y ago
"Now even those with >200 but <400 GB of music are able to do the same." Some of us are already living in that future by using an mp3 player with two uSD slots :) https://www.head-fi.org/threads/xduoo-x3-dsd-24bit-192khz-cs4398-chip-lossless-music-player.782912/ https://www.head-fi.org/threads/xduoo-x3-dsd-24bit-192khz-cs...

by bhauer 9y ago

rsync 9y ago

"another use case is to have your entire music library available in your phone." Unfortunately, almost all phones continue to support microSD cards "up to 32 GB". Some will (reportedly) work with 64 GB cards, but if I understand correctly, others need hacks/tweaks to access >32 GB cards ...

errantblaze 9y ago
I didn't realize this was an issue. Does this include flagship phones or is it mostly lower- and mid-range? From experience, the Galaxy S7 supports at least 128GB (a quick search returns a 256GB max). S6 didn't support microSD, S5 supports 128GB, S4 supports 64GB, S3 supports 64GB.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
  sdxc has been in the spec since 2010. Anything that supports over 32GB (sdxc) can support up to 2TB with no hardware changes. I still have an S4 and use a 128GB card, but I've got a custom ROM. Most of the "up to" values for support are simply the biggest card that was available when the device was released, not the biggest the device can read. That's almost always going to be 2TB, the maximum that exFAT can support.
Leynos 9y ago
My 2 year old Sony Xperia works quite happily with a 128 GB card. A quick survey of recent (2017) models of Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Huawei, and Xiaomi on GSM Arena shows that they all take up to 256 GB (with Motorola being the exception at 128GB). This also seems to be the case for older Samsung phones I looked at. Looks like you're in luck.
SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
My phone and tablet work fine with 128GB cards. The phone is a Samsung Galaxy S4 running Android 7.1.1, the tablet is an Amazon Fire HD 5th Gen. Any device that supports sdxc cards must support up to 2TB. The exFAT filesystem is required for these, so you can't use FAT32 anymore. sdxc host devices started coming out in 2010, pretty much everything that uses sd cards these days has support for them.
- userbinator 9y ago
  FAT32 has an individual filesize limit of 4GB, but otherwise works fine for a 2TB partition: http://www.cdrlabs.com/images/stories/reviews/silicon-power_armor_a30/silicon%20power%20armor%20a30%20properties.png http://www.cdrlabs.com/images/stories/reviews/silicon-power_...
  - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
    Yes, but SDXC drivers don't necessarily support FAT32 on SDXC cards. The spec only requires exFAT. SDHC used FAT32.
    - userbinator 9y ago
      That's interesting. It seems the SD specs (which include SDXC) are mandating a specific filesystem. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#SDXC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#SDXC Nevertheless, in order to be fully compliant with the SDXC card specification, many SDXC-capable host devices are firmware-programmed to expect exFAT on cards larger than 32 GB. Consequently, they may not accept SDXC cards reformatted as FAT32, even if the device supports FAT32 on smaller cards (for SDHC compatibility). That seems like a gross "abstraction layer violation" to me --- like making SATA controllers which work with SATA6 HDDs only when formatted with NTFS. The filesystem should have nothing to do with SD, which simply implements a block device abstraction. No doubt Microsoft was involved in this ridiculousness...
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
simlevesque 9y ago
My Lg G4 has no issue qith a 200gb microSD card.
lenkite 9y ago
Nowadays phones are dropping SD card support because they want everyone to touch the 'cloud'.

gnicholas 9y ago

Are there any battery cases for iPhones that could use this? I know it's possible to have SD card readers over lightning, and it would be pretty cool to have tons of extra space for photos, music, or video. iOS would lock you out of certain use cases, but there are probably some that would make this worthwhile. So many people have big battery cases, and adding this in wouldn't take much (and would be a killer differentiator).

zanny 9y ago

I have about 175GB of music, but a lot of that is flac. If I were putting it on my phone, considering its DAC and the fact I'm probably using bluetooth headphones I wouldn't hesitate to make all that 96kbit Opus instead and have no recognizable quality loss. In my experiments in the past I was shrinking 80GB to about 15GB. So if anyone has a huge music collection, you can still probably fit it on your phone without going crazy on the sd card. Just checking my collection is 2 months uninterrupted runtime right now.

StavrosK 9y ago
Seconded, Opus is amazing. Hell, 96kbps is probably overkill for a phone, the codec is that good.
slackingoff2017 9y ago
Opus is amazing. Also your DAC and phone sound processing don't matter when using Bluetooth. It's digital straight to the headphones
jandrese 9y ago
Phones support Opus now? Or is the decode entirely in the CPU? Phones have more than enough oomph to do it, but you'll probably lose some battery life that way.
- zanny 9y ago
  Trying to find any info on this is next to impossible. I'd still be really surprised if modern SoCs were shipping hardware mp3 decoders still though, and if they do, they probably support Opus since almost all VOIP data uses it now.

rahimnathwani 9y ago

"Now even those with >200 but <400 GB of music are able to do the same." Some of us are already living in that future by using an mp3 player with two uSD slots :) https://www.head-fi.org/threads/xduoo-x3-dsd-24bit-192khz-cs4398-chip-lossless-music-player.782912/ https://www.head-fi.org/threads/xduoo-x3-dsd-24bit-192khz-cs...