Difference between onboard and removable storage?

[livendive]

Looking to order a Verizon phone and considering whether the upgrade to 32gb onboard is worth $50 for me. I'm a fairly casual user, plenty of web surfing, moderate document/pdf stuff, light movies/games/music. Spending $50 for 16gb of onboard seems on the surface to be foolish when for $10 more I can get 64gb of removable storage, but is there more to it? Is read/write of removable storage significantly slower than fixed? TIA

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[20blks]

I would go for the removable storage. Easier for you to switch when you change phone. Just my .02

 

[mavrrick]

Really depends on use case.

Personally Internal storage can be useful in some cases, but what I want as high as possible is System Storage. on my old Cappy it had a 16GB internal storage. 2gb of it was set asside for System Storage. That rocked not haveing to worry about how much space my apps took up. Even with my new note i still most have 1 GB left. the rest of the 16GB card is for music, pics, video, and such.

If you plan on doing allot with all that stuff then maybe the internal would be good to get as much as possible. Keep in mind the largest MicroSDXC card is currently 64GB so that would limit you to 80GB total, instead of 96GB. For some that feel they have to carry everything with them that could be an issue.

If you will be doing allot in the cloud, which the S3 comes with 50GB, then the storage isn't that big of an issue. Think of it like this, if you load all your music into google play why would you need the storage capacity for it locally on your phone? With that said there will be occasions you can't get a data connection on the phone and then you will wish it was local, but then most of the time services that pull from the cloud cache some of the content on your device locally so again that may not be that big of a deal. I have a 64GB MicroSDXC card, and I got it for the sole purpose of loading movies to watch at my GF's. She doesn't have cable and this way I can take some of my collection with me and with a MHL adapter still see it on a big screen.

 

[mavrrick]

One other thing. I had a 32GB removeable SD card go bad in my captivate, and it caused all kinds of issues and strange events on my Captivate till I realized the card was dead. Fortunately once I pulled the card and cleaned up a few apps everything was fine. That is an occasion were a external SD card isn't really a good thing.

 

[rlb]

So is there a noticeable speed difference between the internal and external?

 

[Suntan]

So is there a noticeable speed difference between the internal and external?

Not really. If it could bug you, I would suggest getting a Class 10 uSD card. There are a number of 32GB Class 10 cards for peanuts now.

IMO, the case for 32GB onboard is beneficial if you want to have a lot of data always on the phone *and* the ability to swap uSD cards.

Personally, the flexibility afforded by have 32GB always there on the phone *and* the ability to swap cards at will for $50 is a nobrainer for me. YMMV.

-Suntan

 

[Nashstruck]

Not really. If it could bug you, I would suggest getting a Class 10 uSD card. There are a number of 32GB Class 10 cards for peanuts now.

IMO, the case for 32GB onboard is beneficial if you want to have a lot of data always on the phone *and* the ability to swap uSD cards.

Personally, the flexibility afforded by have 32GB always there on the phone *and* the ability to swap cards at will for $50 is a nobrainer for me. YMMV.

-Suntan

I've read that the phone can't transfer above the speed of a Class 4 between the internal memory and sd card. You'd only feel the difference of anything above class 4 if you transfer files between your phone and the computer, cos that's where it shines.
Not worth the extra $ IMO. Just gonna get a Class 4 and be happy with it.

 

[robh2]

Kinda off topic but if you use Google Play Cloud instead of the music on your phone, dont you burn your data streaming the music? Sounds like a waste of 3 or 5 gig a month data limits.


Robert

 

[KreepyKen]

One other thing. I had a 32GB removeable SD card go bad in my captivate, and it caused all kinds of issues and strange events on my Captivate till I realized the card was dead. Fortunately once I pulled the card and cleaned up a few apps everything was fine. That is an occasion were a external SD card isn't really a good thing.

This has happened to me twice on my Captivate. I figured out the trigger and solution on the second round, but it took a while to fix and caused me to reformat the card and reinstall all the apps I had on it. Major PITA. This time around, I want a big-ass onboard partition for all my apps so if the same thing happens, I at least won't have to reinstall any apps...just wipe the card and put the media back on it.

 

[Set2374]

If your nit going to root you phone and mess with partitions, the is a real advantage to more internal memory, provided the the 32gb version allows more space for apps. There are quite a few apps that can be exported to the SD card and even those that can, still require space on in internal memory. I have about a 85 apps on my phone, including some games that take up Clare to a gig in space (50mb internal). I have hit the wall of my partition anyway. Larger internal storage can really help!


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[unopepito06]

For what it's worth, I will be getting it on AT&T, which only comes in 16gb., If I had the option, I would get 32, no doubt about it, even with the sd slot. Mostly because it would be very easy for me to fill 32 internal, plus 64 external. Will I likely actually need that much storage? No, but I like the option, for me that's worth the extra cost for the 32gb phone.

 

[hjmillre]

I have a related question for anyone that may know. I use both google music and spotify, and both give the option to download songs and playlists to your phone. Does anyone know if this ability is limited to the internal storage? My current phone doesn't have any external storage, and I don't know how Android distinguishes between internal and external storage when you have an SD card installed. I don't see any settings in the apps that relate to this, so I figure it all depends on how Android handles the SD card. I regularly encounter areas where I don't get a good enough data connection to stream music reliably, so the ability to store music on my phone is important, and I currently don't have enough space for all the music I want to download to the phone.