Question about MicroSD?

[Preach2k]

Has anyone have been having the problem that is in this article?

S4 Micro SD Card is Useless
Josh Smith ?

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is a great smartphone, but after a week I only have 3.5GB of storage left and dumbed down Micro SD card support on Android highlights the missing 32GB and 64GB Galaxy S4 models.

Currently the 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4 is the only model available for purchase from U.S. carriers, and several confirmed it will be the only model they offer. Some sources claim a Samsung Supply chain issue is behind the problem, but carriers are quick to point out that users can rely on a Micro SD card and the Cloud instead of the internal storage, but that?s not completely true.

Read: Samsung Galaxy S4 Review

There are limitations to what users can place on a Micro SD card and using the Cloud will push data usage up, which could force customers to spend $10 to $20 more a month.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Micro SD card is worthless for apps, purchased movies and most music.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Micro SD card is worthless for apps, purchased movies and most music.

Don?t get me wrong, I love the inclusion of a Micro SD card to store media and USB OTG support makes it possible to plug a USB drive into the Samsung Galaxy S4 when I need even more, but this doesn?t solve the problem of limited internal storage.

Google is focused on pushing consumers towards internal storage with changes in the ability to move apps to the SD card in Android 4.2 and in the design decisions of the Nexus 4, which only offers internal storage.

After using the Samsung Galaxy S4 for a week, and only downloading some of the apps I traditionally use, I am left with only 3.5GB of storage left on my 16GB Galaxy S4. That?s after a week of use, and forcing 1080P HD video and my photos onto an SD card.

Currently the biggest data hogs, after Samsung?s implementation of Android, are games, Google Play movie purchases and a few other apps. I?m afraid to download all the games I?ve purchased and to store any Google Play Music on the phone.


Why is this such a big deal with a 32GB Micro SD card waiting with 90% open?

Simple. Google won?t let me move any of this data to the Micro SD card.

Samsung Galaxy S4 data used after one week thanks to a few games and one HD movie.

Samsung Galaxy S4 data used after one week thanks to a few games and one HD movie.

Apps need to be on the Internal memory in order to work, likely because Google is worried users will purchase cheap, slow Micro SD cards that will impede performance. With many popular games clocking in at over 1GB in size, internal storage space disappears fast.

Google Play Movies and TV shows are also restricted to the internal memory. This is probably a concession to prevent piracy, which is especially annoying because there?s no apparent way to buy or rent content that I can store on the Micro SD card. If I were to pirate movies or break DRM to rip them to my computer I could store them on the Micro SD card.

When it comes time to listen to music, I?m not able to download the 1,645 songs I uploaded to Google Music without wasting internal storage. Some of them I can side-load from a computer onto my Micro SD card, if I want to give up the convenience of cloud sync. The same goes for music apps that allow offline playback, most of which will store songs on the internal memory.

With all of this in mind, the Micro SD card is basically good for photos and videos taken with the camera, as long as the photos aren?t taken in Burst Mode, which only supports saving to the internal storage.

There is the option to rely on the cloud for movies and music, but with a limited plan on AT&T this isn?t the best option for me or for many users. This also means more time spent picking and choosing apps and media when I will be offline on a plane or long trip. Apple offers the iPhone 5 with up to 64GB of storage and the HTC One comes with up to 64GB of internal storage.

Until Android improves on the ability to use built-in apps and services on the Micro SD card, it cannot be a replacement for 32GB or 64GB Android smartphones.

 

[mavrrick]

There is no doubt that this is a issue. 16GB just doesn't really cut it any more for allot of thing. Especially when you consider how much space the Android OS with all of the Samsung add-in's takes up.That doesn't mean though that it will be a problem for all. My guess is that with the note being a high end device, there is a pretty good change people will fill it up quickly. The more I think about this the more I am pondering holding off on my order and see if ATT gets a 64GB version.

The big point of that problem as stated above is that even though you can add a SD-Card it isn't usable for everything, and on top of that nothing is better then having the storage internal. With that said there are somethings to keep in mind. It isn't exactly useless. It is just limited. If your apps can write to it and there aren't DRM concerns with the content in question you are fine with a SD-Card. My example is Plex in which I can sync my video content directly to my sd-card.

I would point out though as much as we complain about the SD card usage now, don't forget it wasn't long ago, that the app storage was almost nothing and all we had was the SD card. My Note 1 still only has 2GB of it's 16GB internal flash storage for apps. My friends Evo only had 256 MB when he bought it. The usage of moving content to SD-Cards was to fix the problem of almost non existant app storage. Now we have many GB we just can't use it to store DRM sensitive material.

I just don't get why the Iphone can have 4 storage capacities up to 64GB but no other phone maker can do get the phone companies to do it.

 

[karsdroid]

to be honest i'm not a huge gamer....so i'm not downloading huge apps, however after nearly a year with the note 2 i have 7.8gb of storage available.

i do have a 64gb sdcard, on which i keep my ebooks, music, movies, docs, pics, and whatnot. i admit to sometimes breaking drm on content i have purchased since its mine dang it and i want to store it or use it on whatever device i choose. ( i'm afraid the bad old days of microsoft reader with activation that was linked to specific emails and devices has left me to this day with a bad taste in my mouth and early ebooks that i purchased but will never recover.)

frankly i like having my content backed up to my sd card in the case of having to reset the phone. although since i've had the note 2 i haven't had to, it's not like the early motorola's i had not to mention the htc thunderbolt that had me in the 7th circle of hell often.

so for me the note 2 has been great and i anticipate another awesome experience with the note 3!

 

[NJRonbo]

I currently have a SanDisk 64GB Micro SD card in my Note II.

Bought it on Amazon last year and recommended it to my friends who
also purchased from the same vendor.

For the past year, all of us have had issues with our SanDisk card
unmounting itself. At first, we thought it might be a compatibility issue,
but now looking at reviews posted on Amazon, it seems that it could
be one of two problems...

1. Samsung's motherboard does not support a 64GB Class 10 microSD
card. This may be easily disproved by any of you that have been using one
and have had no issues.

2. The cards sold by the vendor are fraudulent.

I just want to make certain that these cards will work in phones like the
Note 2 and Note 3.

 

[mastervm]

I currently have a SanDisk 64GB Micro SD card in my Note II.

Bought it on Amazon last year and recommended it to my friends who
also purchased from the same vendor.

For the past year, all of us have had issues with our SanDisk card
unmounting itself. At first, we thought it might be a compatibility issue,
but now looking at reviews posted on Amazon, it seems that it could
be one of two problems...

1. Samsung's motherboard does not support a 64GB Class 10 microSD
card. This may be easily disproved by any of you that have been using one
and have had no issues.

2. The cards sold by the vendor are fraudulent.

I just want to make certain that these cards will work in phones like the
Note 2 and Note 3.

I have a SanDisk 64GB in my Note 8 that became corrupted when I removed it to read on another device. I'm currently in an RMA process to have it replaced. I received the same message as in the article below from their customer support. You should contact them for a "fixed" replacement.

"SanDisk has been made aware of potential product issues involving a very small percentage of its 32GB and 64GB SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSD cards. Under certain circumstances the cards may lock up and the card becomes inaccessible. The issue has been identified and a manufacturing fix has already been put in place. SanDisk stands behind its products and any customer who experiences this issue with the microSD cards cards is asked to contact the SanDisk support center for a resolution immediately."-SanDisk

SanDisk says it produced some bad 32GB and 64GB microSD cards

 

[NJRonbo]

Thanks.

I forgot to mention in my post that I contacted SanDisk last week and already have a RMA in process.

 

[taxiron1]

I currently have a SanDisk 64GB Micro SD card in my Note II.

Bought it on Amazon last year and recommended it to my friends who
also purchased from the same vendor.

For the past year, all of us have had issues with our SanDisk card
unmounting itself. At first, we thought it might be a compatibility issue,
but now looking at reviews posted on Amazon, it seems that it could
be one of two problems...

1. Samsung's motherboard does not support a 64GB Class 10 microSD
card. This may be easily disproved by any of you that have been using one
and have had no issues.

2. The cards sold by the vendor are fraudulent.

I just want to make certain that these cards will work in phones like the
Note 2 and Note 3.

I have the same card on my Note 2 and have had no problem. I store tons of videos on the card. I use Google Music all access, so most music is cloud stored.

 

[karsdroid]

I currently have a SanDisk 64GB Micro SD card in my Note II.

Bought it on Amazon last year and recommended it to my friends who
also purchased from the same vendor.

For the past year, all of us have had issues with our SanDisk card
unmounting itself. At first, we thought it might be a compatibility issue,
but now looking at reviews posted on Amazon, it seems that it could
be one of two problems...

1. Samsung's motherboard does not support a 64GB Class 10 microSD
card. This may be easily disproved by any of you that have been using one
and have had no issues.

2. The cards sold by the vendor are fraudulent.

I just want to make certain that these cards will work in phones like the
Note 2 and Note 3.

bummer.....i think i probably got the same deal on amazon, i couldn't pass it up. i haven't had any problems at all with it though.

 

[dpham00]

It depends on your needs, but certainly less of an issue on the Note 3 with the 32gb internal compared to the s4 16gb.I store music, pictures and videos on my sd card, and no issues here, but I don't use large apps.

With regards to the sd card issue, I just get the class 4 microSD card from Sandisk. No issues with those. The newer class 10 Sandisk manufactured after a certain date are okay, but I wouldn't take the risk myself, unless I was sure of the manufacture date.

Also when buying, make sure to buy from a reputable vendor like Amazon. I avoid amazon 3rd party and ebay as it is hard to tell whether it is a fake or not

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II via Tapatalk 4

 

[Raptor007]

You can get a GS4 32GB version, Verizon makes you order it online citing lack of customer interest for in store availability and you can get the 32GB GS4 at AT&T in store I did so I don't know what they are talking about.

 

[xderiwx]

It depends on your needs, but certainly less of an issue on the Note 3 with the 32gb internal compared to the s4 16gb.I store music, pictures and videos on my sd card, and no issues here, but I don't use large apps.

With regards to the sd card issue, I just get the class 4 microSD card from Sandisk. No issues with those. The newer class 10 Sandisk manufactured after a certain date are okay, but I wouldn't take the risk myself, unless I was sure of the manufacture date.

Also when buying, make sure to buy from a reputable vendor like Amazon. I avoid amazon 3rd party and ebay as it is hard to tell whether it is a fake or not

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II via Tapatalk 4

Do you happen to know how/where to locate this manufacture date, and what that date is? I recently purchased from Amazon, and have been reading about all the mixed reviews on the ultras in 64gb.

 

[Raptor007]

If you have a 10x magnifying glass handy there may be info on the front of the microSD card. There is some info on mine but my jewelers loop is at home.

 

[xderiwx]

If you have a 10x magnifying glass handy there may be info on the front of the microSD card. There is some info on mine but my jewelers loop is at home.

Damn, don't think I have one of those handy. I have a new sandisk ultra 64 that I recently purchased from Amazon though. Received it a few weeks back.

 

[Raptor007]

I will check my memory cards when I get home tonight and see if I can read anything useful on the front. I can see some text but just can't read it.

 

[NJRonbo]

By the way, Amazon having a Gold Box Deal today on Transcend memory...

Gold Box Deals | Today's Deals - Amazon.com

 

[the1m.polo]

stated above is

I just don't get why the Iphone can have 4 storage capacities up to 64GB but no other phone maker can do get the phone companies to do it.

I wrote a post about this and how i almost bought an iphone over it and people lost their panties over it on AC. Lol... I 100% agree.. I don't understand why either

Sent from my SCH-I605 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[mavrrick]

It really makes no sense at all when you consider that most of these companies do manage to announce up to those capacities to. The NOTE 3 was announced in 32 and 64GB capacities. I would of lost my @%@^ if ATT did what the did with the SGS4 and forced a 16GB version after it was only announced with 32 and 64 GB capacities.

 

[Raptor007]

I wrote a post about this and how i almost bought an iphone over it and people lost their panties over it on AC. Lol... I 100% agree.. I don't understand why either

Sent from my SCH-I605 using AC Forums mobile app

Because Apple forces the carriers to carry all phones, all colors or they don't get it. Simply economics and control by Apple.