When Samsung introduced its Galaxy S6 last year, there was not a little criticism received for having eliminated two of the most interesting points of the previous model: the property that gave it resistance to water and the elimination of the SD card slot. That is why this year they have gone back and included both points in the Galaxy S7. The other most interesting smartphone that has been presented at the MWC in Barcelona is the LG G5, and both can use a microSD card to expand the memory of the device, but with nuances.
In previous versions of Android, the SD card could only be used to save data, but with the advent of Android 6.0 Marshmallow all memory can be used as a block, so the system does not differentiate between phone memory and SD card memory. In fact, there is no way to separate them and it can be used to install applications. But this good news seems not to be present in the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and LG G5.
The Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and LG G5 use the old file system
Samsung and LG have decided to keep the old file system, which means that applications cannot be installed on the MicroSD card. Of course, as always, it can be used to store music, videos, photos and other types of documents. The problem only affects applications and can be more or less serious depending on the use made by the user of the terminal: if heavy applications are installed, such as quality games, the MicroSD card will not work and the memory will have to be used. of the telephone.
Samsung's reason for using the old system is that the new system is confusing. In Android 6.0 Marshmallow, a MicroSD card has to be formatted from the device to be usable. As part of the system and to increase security, the data is encrypted. This should be a positive thing, but the downside is that the card cannot be removed freely, since it cannot be used on another mobile device or computer. It will only work on the device it was formatted on, so it is useless once out. LG has made no comment, but its reasons are likely the same as Samsung's.
The intention of both companies is to avoid confusion
Users who have been using these types of cards are also used to taking them out of the device to use them on another computer, so everything seems to indicate that both Samsung and LG have wanted to continue this trend and have decided to put aside the new Android function to continue using the old system.
Using the old system will certainly be less confusing, but it could be a problem for some users. Both the Galaxy S7, the Galaxy S7 Edge and the LG G5 arrive with a 32GB internal memory (at least in most markets). Samsung terminals accept cards up to 200GB, while the LG G5 accepts cards up to 2TB. We cannot say that it is precisely little, but all that storage is wasted if what we want is to install many and / or very heavy applications.
In addition, it is believed that, by subtracting the space used by the system, from the 32GB of storage users only about 23GB will be available. Logically, this will be more than enough for many users (I know cases in which they have enough with only 4GB or 5GB), but the "gamers" have to take all this into account. Many of the games with the best stories and graphics have a weight that ranges between 1GB and 2GB and by installing a few we could run out of space to install more applications. Be that as it may, in the worst case you can always eliminate games that are not going to be used at a certain time.
Does Samsung and LG's decision spoil your plans to buy one of their latest flagships?
Well decided by Samsung and LG. To move heavy applications to sd there are countless very popular applications for a long time. In my case I use link2sd. Practically the amount of ram of the device is indifferent to me thanks to this application.
It seems very good to me from the 2, since another problem that has not been described is that depending on the class of the sd card it will be faster or slower when reading and writing the information. Most people put memory cards class 3 (the cheapest) with the consequence that the mobile takes longer to open a game or application installed on the card. In this way they ensure that the mobile goes faster.