Will Android M revitalize our SD-cards?

[Netherscourge]

Came across this article on Ars Technica:

Five under-the-hood features to look forward to in Android M | Ars Technica

Goes over the Android M reveal. But it also points out something dear to my heart, mostly because the past few iterations of Android have made are SD-cards "media-only" cards.

(Scroll down to the bottom of the article)

Android M will, supposedly, allow people with internal SDcard support (cough Galaxy S5 cough) to "adopt" that extra storage space into full Android-app accessible space.

So, instead of being stuck only using your SDcards for music, photos and movies, you can run apps natively on them too.

Android M will "format" them so they can be encrypted along with the device's own internal storage.

Enter something called “Adoptable Storage Devices.” If your devices use what Google software engineer Jeff Sharkey calls “storage devices in long-term stable locations” like internal SD cards, Android M can “adopt” that storage device, encrypt it, and then use it in exactly the same way that Android treats internal storage currently. This means you can move any installed app and its data out to the SD card, and Sharkey’s post indicates that the entire /sdcard directory can be migrated to external storage if you want.

Sounds promising. Not sure EXACTLY what devices are or will be supported though.

 

[TimmyTwo2]

I hope so, I just installed a 128 GB card, it would be awesome if it was treated as internal memory.