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Windows phones and SD card storage

I knew I should have bought the iPhone. But the Windows one was £200 cheaper..

Have had mine for months and it's nice and stable, very quick, nice screen and so on. Not very much to fault.

Except just one thing..

Phone has 3.69GB of memory and an 8GB SD card.

Settings on the phone are to store music, files etc on the SD card. For music and photos, this happens. All good.

Just one app which won't do so, and that's the Audible.co.uk app. That insists on downloading titles to memory. Which is now almost all used up. I can have maybe 3 audiobooks at HQ on the device at most. Which is a bit of a pain.

I asked Audible about this. They said there is no way to store the files on the SD card. Which might mean that Windows itself imposes this restriction. Indeed when you try to download a book the phone helpfully tells you to change the settings to use the SD card as it's low on memory. But, they're already set that way.

There is a possible workaround involving Nero 9 and DRM protection removal enabling me to simply sync the files as standard audio files and listen to them in the music player but that's too much of a faff.

This problem is fairly terminal really and seems a very bizarre design decision by Microsoft if it's the OS that imposes this restriction. Does anyone know..?
 
This is one of the reasons why I stuck with Android. Windows Phone 7 and I'm guessing 8 too (not checked) treat SD cards as unique devices (you can remove them but you can't replace them with any old card) that it doesn't like replaced (a bit like the "internal storage" SD cards on some other mobiles). The SD card also becomes a part of the phones storage and so apps really should be using it just like internal memory and if they're not then that's quite poor IMO. Bit more detail here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2450831

Also I don't know if any of these might help but..

http://winsupersite.com/windows-phone/windows-phone-8-tip-manage-media-microsd

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/how-to/wp8/basics/use-an-sd-card-to-add-space

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone...7-microsd-card-why-you-can-t-change-it-910271
 
That's helpful - it does make sense that Windows "sees" the SD card as an extension of the drive space - reminds me of that thing called "Ready Boost" on Windows machines where you could extend the memory onto a flash card.

Except, this isn't what it actually does. Very little is on the SD card, the phone will by default try to store in internal memory, then find it has run out, and then helpfully tell you that you have space on the SD card. You know this already.

Where I am with this phone is that it's basically useless now as it's, er, full. I could buy another Windows phone with more memory but audio books are 300Meg each so no matter how much memory it has, it's going to run out fairly rapidly.

This one is Windows Phone 8.

Within the comments on one of those links "I'm considering switching from my aging iPhone to WP8. One of things that makes me reluctant to switch is that it is not clear to me if and how 3rd party apps use SD card storage. This article discusses SD card storage but it is not clear to me if it only applies to generic documents and media such as .doc, .jpeg, .mpeg files etc."

That appears to be correct. Apps cannot, in themselves, save to the SD card. So if you have an app like Audible, bye bye Windows phone. Do not buy.

I can't believe how poorly considered these things are at this stage. OK, Windows phone is new-ish, but Apple had all this sorted so many years ago now - yawn.

In response to my earlier supposition when I was looking at phones - no, Windows phones are not a replacement or substitute for Apple iPhones :(
 
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OK So I have a Windows Phone and wouldn't go back to Android and wouldn't touch an iPhone or give any money to apple for anything.

Windows Phone uses the SD card as a storage device for media. (Photos, Videos, Documents etc.) Not for apps and as far as I am aware not for propitiatory content for said app.

Most Windows phones now come with very large internal storage for this reason.

I really like the Windows Phone and honestly can't see myself moving to another OS. It does everything I want and it does it fast.
Faster than any android phone I've tested it against and from my point of view it's so much nicer than any kind of vowel-ed fruit phone:laugh:
 
I really like Windows phone. It's stable, fast, the screen on this one is quite large and good, the battery lasts for maybe four days on a single charge (that's the trump card and it even beats my old Apple one), it doesn't have Google Maps but then if I have to have Android to have Google Maps then I'll just go without Google Maps rather than have Android again.

All the main apps are well represented and work well. For £160 this thing was a bit of a steal (Huawei Aspire W1 I think).

The only things I would criticise are the keyboard which is crap (tiny characters, poor auto replace) and that the email sync isn't quite flawless. Can live with these. In terms of "match for my needs" this is about 9 out of 10.

Except that it has now run out of space, I can't delete any more, this was inevitable from the design.

To keep this phone I'll have to resurrect my old Apple iPod thing and put the audio books on that and carry both around with me.

I'm still baulking at paying the £350 for an iPhone 4s but these just never come down in price :(
 
Well that kinda explains it. For example a Nokia Lumia 920 is £220 at tesco just now. It has 32 Gig of memory which should be plenty.
Beats the price of that other phone.

I have the 820 and can't moan. Never had a problem with email or keyboard? Maybe it depends on the phone?
 
I thought the memory this one had was quite generous, although now I see why.

32GB would be enough for nearly 100 audiobooks. I have about 300 but they don't all need to be on the phone at the same time.

I have an SD card with nearly nothing on it and GBs free, and the phone is telling me it's full and I should use the SD card. There's something wrong with this design.

I've put in a final call to everyone I know to see if anyone has a very good 4S to sell to see if I can avoid shelling out £350 for a new one.

It's odd really in that with most things I'll spend the money to get something better, whereas with mobile phones the idea of paying much over £250 for one doesn't really work for me for some reason. I think it's the Apple fanboy status thing - I reject the idea of "status symbols" like these because it still feels to me like I've paid twice as much for something just for the name, but I've tried the alternatives and concede defeat.
 
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Sounds good but the big question there is, will the app need to be updated in order to make use of the change or will it be handled by the OS? I can see scope for the latter, especially given how WP7/8 already works, but equally it might need app support and then you have to wait for the developer to wake up.

Amazing though that it's taken them this long to fix such an obvious requirement.
 
It really is bizarre.

I'm pretty fatigued with mobile phones now.

Samsung Galaxy S2 - operating system useless, not even ready for market, worse than a beta. Had that for 6 months.

This one or one of theirs got banned in some countries for being such a clone copy of the iPhone. Yes, it was superficially quite a close copy, but unlike the iPhone, riddled with bugs.

Windows phone - operating system excellent, works really well, really pleased with it - oops, it's run out of memory now. Had that for 6 months.

For crying out loud, take a tip from Apple. Make it nice and stable first. Actually consider usability and stability. Then look at "gadgets" and the funky stuff. But first and foremost, just make the thing work.

I read quite a few review before I bought both. All the reviews crowed about them. But I don't really care if the camera is so great that you can't make out any red-eye on a rabbit in the far background. I'm not David Bailey. Does the battery last? Is it stable? Can you live with it? In the quest to get the phone out ASAP and get the scoop review, the detail is overlooked.

It really does seem that we've got to a point where the gadgets and the funky new features completely override the most basic of things. Does the battery go for 3 days without charging? Does it ever crash? Does it actually work properly?

If I'd just bought the iPhone 4S in the first place I'd have more money and a working phone.

Microsoft let everyone down terribly with their last go at doing mobiles.

This time they do a really, really good job on the OS but just "have to do it their way" on one aspect which has now rendered it useless.

Bye Microsoft.

Brand new iPhone on the way. They "just work".

No Apple fanboy. This is coming from a developer who works exclusively with Microsoft tech.

Lesson learned, rant over ;)
 
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