Apps on microSDHC card -- good idea or bad

[ghoonk]

As it were, people are already complaining about poor battery life from the G1. And a lot of people are clamouring for the ability to install/run apps from the card instead of internal memory, or even use the card for caching

If my memory serves me correctly, this would involve many read/write cycles to the card, and would increase power consumption even more.

Question is, how much more power consumption would one face from having apps, videos and MP3s run off the microSDHC as compared to having them run off internal memory?

[embrace LB]

Never really thought about the connection between more APPS on your external SD card and battery life. But i suppose you could be right. No idea how much more consumption it would take. But i get a FULL day of battery with my phone if not more on some days. That includes non-stop texting, BROWSER for 2hrs give or take(not all at once), MMS, taking pictures, phone calls, checking the APP store constantly. But i use my settings well, i make sure everythings off, i run EDGE all the time unless i'm planing to use the BROWSER, phone brightness down all the way, etc etc.

[ddlewis86]

All I know is that my T-Mobile Dash allowed me to store ALL of my apps to the SD card AND run them just as if they were installed on the phones internal memory. Google MUST fix this issue.

What's the point in having all of those cool apps if you are limited as to how many you can have installed on your phone??

[gateway]

If not the apps, what about using the SD card to store all that data that gets collected from the apps, the browser, and just from going to the market. That could clear up about 20+ mb. Just my 2 cents

[ghoonk]

All I know is that my T-Mobile Dash allowed me to store ALL of my apps to the SD card AND run them just as if they were installed on the phones internal memory. Google MUST fix this issue.

What's the point in having all of those cool apps if you are limited as to how many you can have installed on your phone??

It's about quality vs quantity. Also, I'm picky about what apps I install on my device, lest I find one or several that become problematic and cause issues. I learned this lesson well with the devices I have used in the past, as well as with Windows (especially Windows) and Mac.

Also, the way the apps drawer is set up, the last thing I want is to have to start scrolling through long lists to find apps that I am looking for. As it would be, my left Home screen panel functions as a quick dial/SMS panel, the middle one for my frequently used apps, and the rightmost one for system/info apps like Device Info, Battery Info, Field Test, etc, so there's not much space left for other apps that just take up space.

I'll probably start kicking up a fuss about this when someone comes up with a really good project management app that takes up most of the space on my device, but frankly, a device like the G1 is meant to leverage off web services, not local apps, as is the case with the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet.

[ghoonk]

If not the apps, what about using the SD card to store all that data that gets collected from the apps, the browser, and just from going to the market. That could clear up about 20+ mb. Just my 2 cents

True, but given the number of read/writes that take place, what kind of effect would that have on battery life? As much as I'd love to move my browser cache and other non-critical data to the card (I'd had card-corruption problems in the past - losing critical data on the go is not fun), it should not come at the expense of significant battery life, or system performance.

[DreamcastDC]

I think the only reason why Google doesn't allow us to install apps to our Microsd card right now, probably has to do with protection for pay apps.. They probably didn't had some sort of DRM ready yet when G1 released, I'm guessing once they have some way to protect pay apps, they would allow apps to be install on the microsd card.

[pllb]

The OP is indeed correct about battery life and SD cards. On that same note, I wonder how limited the G1 is going to be in terms applications and games that can be installed and run with it's very limited memory. For instance, a lot of games on iphone and symbian devices are rather large. I've got a couple of ngage games that are 30+ mb. I think if Android wants to see some really quality applications and games Google is going to have indeed fix this SD card issue.

[Gigaflop]

I doubt there is any battery life impact. The fact is, the apps have to be written to solid state memory.. PERIOD. Whether or not it is local solid state mem, or the external, a read/write is being performed on the same type of memory.

The thing is, for cost purposes, the solid state memory will be the exact same type. There would be little to no battery savings. Besides, reads are pretty infrequent. There is only the read when the data is loaded into local memory, then the solid state would no longer need to perform any more reads (and writes would depend on the app).

Apart from that, it is a GREAT idea. The local memory is EXTREMELY cramped and is making my life miserable. I disagree wholeheartedly with the person who said that the point of this phone is to receive data from the cloud. That is a core functionality, yes, but so is having developers create applications for the device. That would be.. the whole point of having it "open source" and "free market."

I also agree with the poster that said that it's likely related to DRM. They haven't figured out a way to let you put apps on the memory AND protect paid content yet.

As for the poster that is running out of desktop space, I highly recommend creating folders. You can essentially store unlimited numbers of icons, easily organized however you want using folders.