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Why can't the Xoom be compatible with regular SD memory card instead of micro-SD?

I think it is ridiculous to have the Xoom only be compatible with only Micro-SD card instead of regular SD card. It is not like the tab is so small that the regular SD card would not fit. It is NOT a phone.
Regular SD card has the benefit of:
1. Much much cheaper for a bigger space.
2. Did I say it is cheaper for a bigger space...?
3. Faster speed
I am not sure if it will use more energy and decrease battery life. But even still, how much more energy can it actually drain compared to the micro-SD card.
Sometimes I have no idea what the designers/engineers are thinking when they develop technology. There is always a missing screw somewhere.
Wow...I am finish ranting...
What a relief.....

Erm, internal space?

Earthbrain said:
I think it is ridiculous to have the Xoom only be compatible with only Micro-SD card instead of regular SD card. It is not like the tab is so small that the regular SD card would not fit. It is NOT a phone.
Regular SD card has the benefit of:
1. Much much cheaper for a bigger space.
2. Did I say it is cheaper for a bigger space...?
3. Faster speed
I am not sure if it will use more energy and decrease battery life. But even still, how much more energy can it actually drain compared to the micro-SD card.
Sometimes I have no idea what the designers/engineers are thinking when they develop technology. There is always a missing screw somewhere.
Wow...I am finish ranting...
What a relief.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What you forget is that by sticking with MicroSD it's more compatible with other devices. If you want to put that same card into your phone or any other mobile device, you have greater compatibility with MicroSD. If you want to put it in a regular SD card device, you can do so with an adapter, but you wouldn't have that same versatility/compatibility with a regular SD card as you would with MicroSD.

EnderTheThird said:
What you forget is that by sticking with MicroSD it's more compatible with other devices. If you want to put that same card into your phone or any other mobile device, you have greater compatibility with MicroSD. If you want to put it in a regular SD card device, you can do so with an adapter, but you wouldn't have that same versatility/compatibility with a regular SD card as you would with MicroSD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Sent from my Xoom using XDA App

Maybe you can find some space behind the back cover to put one of these in? Might be worth a shot..
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/sd-to-microsd-transflash-card-converter-module-27001

While I agree that MicroSD is more compatible with other devices, I would imagine a normal SD card would give the Xoom a more competitive advantage over the iPads in terms of the amount of overall storage that they can use. There are already 64GB SD cards, while I believe the max for a MicroSD is still 32GB. (Correct me if I am wrong.)

blakejohnson86 said:
While I agree that MicroSD is more compatible with other devices, I would imagine a normal SD card would give the Xoom a more competitive advantage over the iPads in terms of the amount of overall storage that they can use. There are already 64GB SD cards, while I believe the max for a MicroSD is still 32GB. (Correct me if I am wrong.)
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Click to collapse
You're wrong MicroSD has support for SDXC however, most devices are not SDXC compatible. Just as you will find that most SD card readers are not SDXC compatible.

Earthbrain said:
I think it is ridiculous to have the Xoom only be compatible with only Micro-SD card instead of regular SD card. It is not like the tab is so small that the regular SD card would not fit. It is NOT a phone.
Regular SD card has the benefit of:
1. Much much cheaper for a bigger space.
2. Did I say it is cheaper for a bigger space...?
3. Faster speed
I am not sure if it will use more energy and decrease battery life. But even still, how much more energy can it actually drain compared to the micro-SD card.
Sometimes I have no idea what the designers/engineers are thinking when they develop technology. There is always a missing screw somewhere.
Wow...I am finish ranting...
What a relief.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I only wish that what is already there would work.

EnderTheThird said:
What you forget is that by sticking with MicroSD it's more compatible with other devices. If you want to put that same card into your phone or any other mobile device, you have greater compatibility with MicroSD. If you want to put it in a regular SD card device, you can do so with an adapter, but you wouldn't have that same versatility/compatibility with a regular SD card as you would with MicroSD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But if the Xoom had a SD slot instead of MicroSD you could just use that same MicroSD card with the adapter in the Xoom.
If you're gonne be swapping out a card from the Xoom to a phone, you might as well be using the SD slot to store the MicroSD to SD adapter.
It would cost Moto pennies to include the adapter in that slot, but still allow people to just dump it and use a regular SD card in there if they want to
In my opinion, its all about having options. (Thats why we like android after all) An SD card slot would give us options, to use a MicroSD in there with an adapter, or to use a regular SD if we'd rather do that. The MicroSD slot doesn't give us the same option in reverse.
Its really not a big deal to me, but thats just what the case in favor of it would be.

Why can't my aunt have male genitals... then she'd be my uncle and we could play basketball together.
WHY?????

gbenj said:
But if the Xoom had a SD slot instead of MicroSD you could just use that same MicroSD card with the adapter in the Xoom.
If you're gonne be swapping out a card from the Xoom to a phone, you might as well be using the SD slot to store the MicroSD to SD adapter.
It would cost Moto pennies to include the adapter in that slot, but still allow people to just dump it and use a regular SD card in there if they want to
In my opinion, its all about having options. (Thats why we like android after all) An SD card slot would give us options, to use a MicroSD in there with an adapter, or to use a regular SD if we'd rather do that. The MicroSD slot doesn't give us the same option in reverse.
Its really not a big deal to me, but thats just what the case in favor of it would be.
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Click to collapse
That is my thought exactly.
That is why I made this post.

EnderTheThird said:
What you forget is that by sticking with MicroSD it's more compatible with other devices. If you want to put that same card into your phone or any other mobile device, you have greater compatibility with MicroSD. If you want to put it in a regular SD card device, you can do so with an adapter, but you wouldn't have that same versatility/compatibility with a regular SD card as you would with MicroSD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uh, in the situations you described, an SD card slot would be a MUCH better choice. Having an SD card slot would give you the OPTION to use an SD card, and the OPTION to use an SD to microSD converter and use a microsd card. So if you were concerned with sharing media between phone and tablet, you would just need that little SD to microsd converter.
Edit: I see now that this point has been made multiple times.

cwizardtx said:
Why can't my aunt have male genitals... then she'd be my uncle and we could play basketball together.
WHY?????
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Click to collapse
You too?!?! I thought I was the only one who wondered that! Lmfao classic
Sent from my Xoom using XDA Premium App

I wish it had an SD card primarily for viewing pictures from digital cameras.
I do not want to put a microSD card and an adapter into my DSLR, and as many have mentioned, the larger storages and faster read/write speeds are cheaper for an SD card versus the same capacity microSD counterpart.
SD card would have made so much more sense. Hell, I don't even care if Motorola included an adapter, who the **** here has more than one microSD card and zero adapters? I think I have like 2 adapters, maybe even 3.

Micro SD jus the universal mobile standard
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

Sorry man I don't really see it as a problem unless you have a camera with a regular SD card slot. If this is the case buy a MicroSD with the adapter thats what I do. If I buy any new cards I get Micro and make sure it comes with the adapter. That way I am #winning. The cards are so cheap anyway. Who would have thought you could buy and 8gb card for less then 20 bucks?

zone23 said:
Sorry man I don't really see it as a problem unless you have a camera with a regular SD card slot. If this is the case buy a MicroSD with the adapter thats what I do. If I buy any new cards I get Micro and make sure it comes with the adapter. That way I am #winning.
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Click to collapse
"and as many have mentioned, the larger storages and faster read/write speeds are cheaper for an SD card versus the same capacity microSD counterpart."
That is why I don't want to put a microSD card in it!

pekosROB said:
"and as many have mentioned, the larger storages and faster read/write speeds are cheaper for an SD card versus the same capacity microSD counterpart."
That is why I don't want to put a microSD card in it!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand the cost factor. When you get into the larger capacities the prices between a 32gb card doubles for a Micro SD. Its just another way for the man to stick it too ya.

I'm glad it's microsd, the xoom is thick enough as is imo
Sent from my Xoom using XDA App

Honestly guys? You make think the tablet has "plenty of space", but if you've ever done product design or circuit board layout, you'll find that anything smaller makes a big difference. I used to think the change to MicroUSB from MiniUSB was lame, but I've laid out some circuit boards with both connectors, and *MAN* are Mini USB connectors huge!
I felt the same way about the change from SD, to Mini SD, to MicroSD, but honestly, regular SD is huge.
They did it because of size guys, thats all there is to it.
If you want to connect your camera, the Xoom supports USB hosting so you can just plug it right in (Does it work with cameras? I don't have my Xoom yet, but I thought they said it does or will support this), or just use a MicroSD card in your camera. 8GB cards are like $15, and do you really need that much space in your camera? I'm a photographer (well, its a hobby) with a Canon 40D and I only carry like 6 gigs of cards on me (a 4 and a backup 2).
If you never take the pictures off your camera I could see it being an issue, but I never do that for fear of losing them if I lose the camera or the memory fails.
Anyway, none of that matters. They did it because of size. It really does make that big of a difference.

External SD Capability/Support

Like the title says, does the Nexus 7 support external sd? I think it does, but I want to be sure before spending $50 more for 8GB, when I can go and buy 16GB micro SD card for $15-$17. So yeah, does the Nexus 7 support external SD cards (micro or regular)?

It hasn't micro sd card slot!!
** and no memory card slot expansion at all!!

The lack of SD slot really annoys me (the damn Raspberry Pi has one, FFS), but after some him-hawing around, I decided to get it. I just wish my ISP was not so sucky. I imagine I will do lots of reading and gaming on it, mainly.
Despite the lack of microSD, it is a nice piece of kit.

it may support usb otg but the micro usb port needs to be at 5v not 3.3v. no one has confirmed this officially but if it has the requirements then you can use a flash drive with an adapter. asus's other devices have supported it so hopefully this will too.

Not having external SD support is only a minor inconvenience but this device is still worth buying.

Help of flash drive

Hi,
I need some advice here.
I was about to back the kickstarter project for the mini microsd card reader http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-smartphones-and-ta/posts/458396?ref=activity
However, I saw a usb drive that has a micro usb slot. http://list.qoo10.sg/item/UNUS-SMART-X-OTG-USB-FLASH-MEMORY-4GB/409872086?banner_no=3053
I am intending to use it to store games on it.
I tried using the long otg cable with my sd card to store games previously but i found that there is a certain lag to it.
Do you guys think getting the usb drive will speed up the perfomance? or will the mini microsd card be better?

delonicdevil said:
...Do you guys think getting the usb drive will speed up the performance? or will the mini microsd card be better?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not necessarily. It's probably the class rating of the SD card. I would first try to verify what the speed class rating is of your microSD card. If it does seem to be substantial, then you might pursue one of those devices. I'm willing to bet that you just need a faster card.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sd_card#Speed_Class_Rating

For those hoping for a MicroSD card with the rumoured active S6, We're doomed.

While the headline might seem familiar with the same keywords of Samsung producing 128GB flash storage modules, this story is different from the previous one. Last month, Samsung announced a 128GB storage based on the new and anticipated UFS 2.0 standard and targeted for flagship high-end devices — it made its debut in the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. This new module, however, is based on the established eMMC standard and it will appear in mass market mid-range devices.
If you missed the previous explanation about the difference between eMMC and UFS, you should know that eMMC is the de-facto standard for storage on smartphones right now. It differs from the swanky UFS 2.0 in two areas: it can't read and write simultaneously and it doesn't have a Command Queue system to sort and re-order the tasks it needs to perform. By comparison, it is slower than UFS, but it remains significantly faster than external MicroSD storage.
Samsung's new 128GB flash uses eMMC 5.0 (there's a newer 5.1 standard that is slightly faster), and can deliver sequential reading speeds of 260 MB/s, random reading at 6000 IOPS (input/output per second), and random writing at 5000 IOPS. It is a "value-focused" module and the company's aim is for "mid-market smartphones [to] be able to increase their storage capacity to 128GB." There's no word on when this module will start appearing in phones and tablets, but you should hear about 128GB devices from Samsung and other OEMs later in the year.
It's worth noting that Samsung also highlights the speed gains compared to external memory cards in its press release, so you might want to take the hint that the company's devices that will be equipped with this new flash module won't have a MicroSD slot. Financially, it makes a lot of sense given the mark-up difference that added built-in storage incurs compared to external storage. And Samsung can rake in that extra casheesh instead of sending it SanDisk's (or Kingston's or other companies') way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/0...rage-module-for-mid-range-phones-and-tablets/

Complaining about the lack of micro SD is still a thing? I thought we went over this... multiple times...
It's time to accept the reality that all of the S6 versions will not have micro SD. If you need a micro SD then simply grab another phone.

I don't buy it. Does that mean USB OTG isn't going to work, either?

lopri said:
I don't buy it. Does that mean USB OTG isn't going to work, either?
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Click to collapse
Why wouldn't it work?

I actually am not bothered by lack if sdcard support as long as bigger storages wont be overpriced like hell. Anyways personally, for me speed and responsivness > sd card support
Sent from my HTC One using XDA Free mobile app

kerelberel said:
Why wouldn't it work?
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Click to collapse
Well, if it's too slow compared to the built in flash...

istperson said:
Well, if it's too slow compared to the built in flash...
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Click to collapse
There's nothing in the software which prohibits it from being discovered by a file browser. It works but read/write speed in the music/video player apps is slower than if the files were on the internal storage themselves.

So, is this a confirmation on a feature which may or may not exist, on a phone which doesn't currently exist?

The SD card was an issue when the phone only had 8 or 16 GB of internal storage. Now that the phone has minimum 32 GB with an option of having 64Gb (of much faster storage) for a manageable price I don't think the SD card is a problem anymore. Most people i know only use a 32 GB SD card anyway.

Looks like USB OTG will work fine:
http://www.androidcentral.com/dealing-local-storage-backups-galaxy-s6-and-galaxy-s6-edge

kerelberel said:
There's nothing in the software which prohibits it from being discovered by a file browser. It works but read/write speed in the music/video player apps is slower than if the files were on the internal storage themselves.
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Click to collapse
It was supposed to be a joke.

Samsung's Galaxy S6 Active may come with a microSD card slot, but at a high cost
Reddit user “garshol” sat down with a Samsung rep a couple of days ago to discuss the new Galaxies, and the Active was among the topics at the table. The ruggedized version of Sammy's latest flagship will boast “similar” hardware under the hood, according to the report, and will come with an SD card slot. However, it will also come at a cost – according to garshol's posts, the Active's camera will be a lower class than the one on the flagship model, but at least it may still have OIS. Additionally, the endurance model will not have a fingerprint scanner, and will lack a heartbeat sensor.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Sams...-microSD-card-slot-but-at-a-high-cost_id67615

These tradeoffs would be acceptable to me. I'm curious about what the dimensions and weight of the phone will be.
I've read a few comments on some sites that suggest including an SD card slot and its associated controller slow down the overall performance of a phone, even if there's no SD card inserted. I have no idea if this is true, but if so, I can at least understand why the S6 lacks SD from a performance standpoint. I've assumed that Samsung's assertion that SD was too slow for the S6 was because they didn't want benchmarks/comments that the built-in internal storage is lightning fast, but SD card is still slow. More of a "we don't want any suggestions that ANY aspect of the S6 is slow", even though most users are well aware of SD's limitations and are primarily interested in simply having the ability to easily expand the storage space despite it not keeping up with the phone storage speeds.

I definitely will not be getting the S6 due to the lack of removable battery and lack of micro SD slot. I think that HTC and LG are going in the right direction here.

Max SD speed & capacity supported by Huawei P8lite? Different sources confuse me!

Can someone provide some insight about this total mess? I got this Huawei P8lite (or P8 Lite? damn hipster names!) and no idea about what faster and bigger capacity microsd card supports!
Android Pit, CNET, Car Phonehouse and XDA says 128GB.
Ubergizmo says 144 GB (16GB+128GB?)
Notebook Check says the specifications are 32GB, but it worked with a 64GB SDXC card.
Phone Scoop says "up to 32GB".
GSM Arena says it supports 256GB.
256GB can be too much space, but I find convenient to use the phone as some kind of HDD and use some syncing tool (Syncthing, Dropbox) to have all files on all my systems and backup online. I'm worried about those slim microusb connectors, something I need to solve
What's the maximum speed this device is able to support? I'm unable to locate it too? Why isn't specified? How to locate it? Sandisk Xtreme PRO has U3 (UHS 3) and supports reads up to 275MB/s* and writtings up to 100MB/s, for example. Can this mobile support it?

timofonic said:
Can someone provide some insight about this total mess? I got this Huawei P8lite (or P8 Lite? damn hipster names!) and no idea about what faster and bigger capacity microsd card supports!
Android Pit, CNET, Car Phonehouse and XDA says 128GB.
Ubergizmo says 144 GB (16GB+128GB?)
Notebook Check says the specifications are 32GB, but it worked with a 64GB SDXC card.
Phone Scoop says "up to 32GB".
GSM Arena says it supports 256GB.
256GB can be too much space, but I find convenient to use the phone as some kind of HDD and use some syncing tool (Syncthing, Dropbox) to have all files on all my systems and backup online. I'm worried about those slim microusb connectors, something I need to solve
What's the maximum speed this device is able to support? I'm unable to locate it too? Why isn't specified? How to locate it? Sandisk Xtreme PRO has U3 (UHS 3) and supports reads up to 275MB/s* and writtings up to 100MB/s, for example. Can this mobile support it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It can support class 10 and above sdcard(I inserted a slow sdcard so it showed a notification that use class 10 or above sdcard(on emui 3.1) . I think 128 GB the max capacity.

Suleiman01 said:
It can support class 10 and above sdcard(I inserted a slow sdcard so it showed a notification that use class 10 or above sdcard(on emui 3.1) . I think 128 GB the max capacity.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your input, it's greatly appreciated. What capacity that SD card had?
Yes, it said the same here. I know that's going to be an issue, as I want a massive SD card for different stuff.
Are there someone that casually has big SD cards (128GB+?) and wants to do some tests? What about speed tests?

timofonic said:
Thanks for your input, it's greatly appreciated. What capacity that SD card had?
Yes, it said the same here. I know that's going to be an issue, as I want a massive SD card for different stuff.
Are there someone that casually has big SD cards (128GB+?) and wants to do some tests? What about speed tests?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't really use that space. I am fine with 16GB class 10 external SD card(the slow one was class 4 8GB). I don't think this phone can handle 128GB sdcard well since it's a midrange phone. However I can ask Huawei care center about this.

@Suleiman01 i think it should, i have the G play/ Honor 4x (same hardware specs than p8 lite, except internal storage, battery and screen size), and it says max support 64gb, but a 128GB sdcard works too

panchovix said:
@Suleiman01 i think it should, i have the G play/ Honor 4x (same hardware specs than p8 lite, except internal storage, battery and screen size), and it says max support 64gb, but a 128GB sdcard works too
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then you are right. But it might not be able to handle 128GB+ sdcard. I have emailed Huawei lets see what they say.

Basically it can support all sizes but depends on the file system used. I have a Sony 32GB Class 10 which by default was formatted in FAT32 and i have formatted it to exFAT and it works great on my P8. If the phone supports officially at least 64GB cards then it'll support bigger sized ones because SD cards with capacity of 64GB and up by default come in exFAT file format so this means that it can support higher capacities. Here's the proof
If you are going to buy one then go for the fastest possible or you will have stutters while listening to music and doing some file transfers at the same time. ????

I have a Sandisk 128GB (Obviously formated to FAT32) and works good as hell. All SD cards formatted to FAT32 should work.

pilililo2 said:
I have a Sandisk 128GB (Obviously formated to FAT32) and works good as hell. All SD cards formatted to FAT32 should work.
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What about using EXT4 instead? I use Linux.

Ive never seen a microsd card formatted to ext4. Bigger cards are formatted to exFat which is the formatting that a lot of phones dont support and thats why they say thay they dont support sdcards over xxxGB, but what they actually dont support is exfat. Thats why if you format any size card to FAT32 it will work on any phone regardless of what the manufacturer specifies as the maximum sdcard size. Also ive heard EXT4 is not very nice on flash memories since it wears them out very quickly because of indexing, but I might be going way far here.
Edit: Anyhow linux will support FAT32 so i dont think that makes a problem

@pilililo2
It would be very interesting to know. I know EXT4 provides extensions for SSDs and such since years, but not sure about flash drives (that it seems to use some kind of "HDD emulation in them", right?).
There's this 2010 article about what's the fastest filesystem for cheap flash devices
Arnd Bergmann replied on August 2015 the following in the "ext2 vs ext4 vs exFAT for XO content SD cards?" forum thread:
arnd at arndb.de
Thu Aug 20 16:55:07 EDT 2015
SDXC cards are mandated to be using exFAT (just like SDHC cards have to use VFAT, and indeed this is the only difference between the two) by the SD card standard. If you don't use this, you are strictly speaking
in violation of the standard and the cards might not behave as designed.
In particular, the card is allowed to only do efficient garbage collection for the access patterns that you get with a single exFAT partition that spans the entire card and has all its metadata aligned exactly in the way that the spec defines.
In practice, things tend to work mostly ok with other file systems, but if you use NTFS or ext3 (rather than ext4), you are usually asking for
trouble.
The best longevity would be provided by f2fs, which is designed to work fine on most SD cards. The downside is that it only works on relatively modern Linux kernels (3.x or higher).
I would expect that cards today use only dynamic wear leveling, not static wear leveling as real SSDs do. This means that content on a read-only partition will decay with the normal life of the card (several years, but depending on the quality of the card and the environmental conditions, e.g. not too hot), independent of the presence of partitions you write to.
Dynamic wear leveling works best if you have a lot of unused blocks, so a good strategy for long life would be to leave a whole partition (e.g. 20% of the size of the writable partition, the more you have, the longer the card will survive) that never gets written after manufacturing, or at least gets erased using the fitrim ioctl command after the initial imaging.
For a 128 GB card with 115GB of actual space, you could then use something like:
* 80GB zisofs/cramfs/squashfs for static data
* 30GB f2fs/ext4 for writable data
* 5GB unused space for wear leveling
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You very probably already know that exFAT is totally owned by Microsoft and that there's a leaked GPL-based.exFAT driver for Linux kernel, but this filesystem it's patent encumbered and not merged into mainline.
Why do I mention this?
Because it's a pain in the butt to use it across operating systems and needing to use a custom kernel on your Linux box makes things harder.
I know many custom ROMs with custom kernels use exFAT and very probably even official kernels too, but that's a gray area. Phone manufacturers are able to pay the Microsoft's Android Tax if they want to.

Sooo, what about the bus speed? Is p8 lite compatible with UHC 3 even?