sd card - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Apr

Sony's Xperia Tablet Z Up For Pre-Order In The US

Posted by Liam Spradlin in News, Sony, Xperia Tablet Z

Sony's Xperia Tablet Z, the tablet first announced for Japan about three months ago, and spotted again at MWC, is finally up for pre-order for those customers awaiting the device's US launch.

When we saw the Tablet Z in person at Mobile World Congress, its super thin, super light water/dust-resistant frame impressed. Its 1920x1200 10.1" display, S4 Pro processor, 2GB of RAM and promised Android 4.2 base also sounded good on paper, but we concluded it could still be held back by two things: a 6000mAh battery, and a $500 price point for the 16GB model.

Sony announced the tablet's pre-order availability in a post to its official blog today, adding a new video featuring Dreyfus, Sony's loveable three-legged spokesdog.

Oct

Here Is Another Reason Google Continues To Shun SD Cards - Multiuser Support

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Google, News, Nexus 10, Nexus 4, Nexus 7

The lack of expandable storage in Nexus devices becomes one of the hottest and most controversial topics every time Google does a refresh and we find out that the next generation lacks SD cards entirely yet again. Couple that with the decision to limit onboard storage options to 16GB max, which is the case with the Nexus 4 at the moment and was the case with the Nexus 7 for a while, and you've got a full-blown revolt.

You may have read one explanation of Google's aversion to SD cards, which was brought up by Android engineer Dan Morrill last year: it's confusing to users to have multiple storage points, the insecure "free-for-all" area was not meant for private app data but rather for media, and essentially SD cards are the sources of all evil.

Apr

[One-Day Amazon Gold Box Deal] SanDisk Ultra Class 10 SD Cards - 16GB ($17.99), 32GB ($29.99), 64GB ($57.99)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Deals, News

Today's Amazon Goldbox deal is going to be welcomed by, well... pretty much everyone who uses products that utilize flash memory - specifically full-sized SD cards. That includes such Android tablets as the Toshiba Thrive, Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet, and ASUS Transformer TF101 (with dock), among others. Of course, once you look past Android, you can use these SD cards in cameras (both DSLR and P&S alike), computers, MP3 players, and many other gadgets.

As you can probably tell from the title, the deal involves 3 sizes of SanDisk Ultra - 16GB SDHC, 32GB SDHC, and 64GB SDXC:

The 16GB SDHC version is listed at $32.99, on sale today for $17.99.

Nov

[New App] Undelete Beta Promises To Recover Deleted Files From Your Device's SD Card (For Root Users)

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Fahrbot Mobile, the developer that brought us Screenshot ER, Root Call Blocker, Call Master, and a handful of other useful apps, recently released Undelete Beta to the Android Market, an app that promises to help find – and recover – files deleted from your SD card.

The app will quickly scan the contents of your SD card and detect deleted items that may be eligible for restoration. While this sounds like a super handy app, the developer warns that – as with any recovery solution – users shouldn't expect a 100% success rate. There are many things that must be taken into consideration when attempting to restore files, not the least of which being whether the data has become corrupted since being deleted.

Jun

Mount Your SD Card To Your Phone And PC At The Same Time With Dual Mount SD Widget

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Apps/Games, News, Tips & Tutorials

While I may love many, many things about Android, that doesn't mean that it lacks any annoyances. Of those annoyances, the inability to mount the SD card in the phone and PC simultaneously ranks close to the top of the list. Thankfully, there are apps like Dual Mount SD Widget to save the day.

This app is for rooted devices only.

What Dual Mount SD Widget does is quite simple, but extremely helpful: it allows you to mount your SD card to your phone and PC at the same time. This means that you'll be able to transfer files to and from your phone via USB without losing the ability to run apps that are stored on your SD card.

Apr

Fixing The "Couldn't Install On USB Storage Or SD Card" Problem On Android

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, Froyo 2.2, Tips & Tutorials

Today, for the first time ever, my EVO 4G had an unexpected failure installing updates for some of my Android apps. All update attempts would inevitably end in an almost instant failure with the message that read:

Installation error

Couldn't install on USB storage or SD card

The weird part was that some apps installed OK but some got stuck in a perma-fail mode and could no longer be updated. After mucking around for a bit, I dug into the logs and found the following relevant log line:

Failed to create secure container smdl2tmp1

Aha! Now what the heck is smdl2tmp1?

Apr

[Download] ClockworkMod Recovery 3.0.2.5 Now Available For Motorola XOOM

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Development, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

Last week saw an update to the Tiamat kernel that enabled the XOOM's SD card slot, and now the modders are back with another hack (ugh, that rhymes, doesn't it?) for Motorola's Honeycomb tablet: ClockworkMod Recovery.

For those not familiar with Koush's geeky masterpiece, ClockworkMod is a universal recovery renowned for its ability to create full backups (aka nandroids) of a device to its SD card. To be clear, ClockworkMod has been available for the XOOM for a while now, but it hasn't really had a purpose since SD card functionality wasn't enabled. But with the aforementioned Tiamat kernel, that barrier no longer stands, and ClockworkMod's usefulness is undeniable.

Apr

Tiamat Kernel Adds SD Card Support To Motorola XOOM, Modders Show Up Google Once Again

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Development, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

The XOOM's currently nonfunctional microSD card slot has likely turned off many a potential buyer, but – if you're willing to take your chances with unofficial software from the Android dev community – the problem has finally been solved.

The solution comes by way of an update to Tiamat, a custom kernel from XDA member bigrushdog. Installation is more or less identical to any other kernel, but if you need instructions, knock yourself out:

1. Reboot into the bootloader by running:
adb reboot bootloader
2. Flash the boot image to your boot partition, then boot back into Android by running:
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot reboot
3.

Apr

Increase Your SD Card Read Speeds By 100-200% With A Simple Tweak [Hands-On, Benchmarks]

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Development, News, Tips & Tutorials

Poor SD Card performance can definitely have a negative effect on overall experience with your device, especially when considering apps that rely on speedy SD Card access, like the Gallery, or features, like Apps2SD.

XDA forum member brainmaster has been hard at work on tweaking some settings in Android to improve the situation in this very department. By adjusting a certain SD card cache value, he, along with many others on xda who tried this out, were able to significantly improve read speeds, usually at least doubling or tripling them, and in certain cases going even higher.

I thought it was a pretty interesting concept, so I decided to give it a run on my OG Moto Droid and outline my results here.

Feb

Froyo Update For Samsung Epic 4G Halted After Reports Of SD Card Access and Data Connection Problems

Posted by Zak Stinson in Android OS, Epic 4G, Froyo 2.2, News, Samsung, Sprint

Samsung has a reputation for not being the greatest at updating their devices, but this week has been especially rough for them. First, Microsoft had to halt an update to the Samsung Omnia 7 due to reports of bricked devices. Today, Sprint has just stopped pushing the Android 2.2 update for the Epic as users have found hardware problems after applying it.

According to Sprint's support forum, there have been an increased number of calls into their Care Centre about issues with wireless data connectivity and the ability to access the SD card. While it's a relief that no one has reported a bricked phone, I can imagine the long wait for Froyo would be made that much worse by having it break some core functionalities of your device.