Android 5.0 Makes SD Cards Great Again

An anonymous reader writes: Over the past couple of years, Google has implemented some changes to how Android handles SD cards that aren't very beneficial to users or developers. After listening to many rounds of complaints, this seems to have changed in Android 5.0 Lollipop. Google's Jeff Sharkey wrote, "[I]n Lollipop we added the new ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE intent. Apps can launch this intent to pick and return a directory from any supported DocumentProvider, including any of the shared storage supported by the device. Apps can then create, update, and delete files and directories anywhere under the picked tree without any additional user interaction. Just like the other document intents, apps can persist this access across reboots." Android Police adds, "All put together, this should be enough to alleviate most of the stress related to SD cards after the release of KitKat. Power users will no longer have to deal with crippled file managers, media apps will have convenient access to everything they should regardless of storage location, and developers won't have to rely on messy hacks to work around the restrictions."

Comments

About effing time

[Overzeetop]

I can only hope this is actually implemented transparently. Having to choose (and pay for) all the memory you'll ever use the day you buy your phone is ridiculous, and limiting people to what the manufacturer's cost targets are (and no mfr is interested in a bunch of expensive, slow moving stock) made no sense in the market.

Now if Verizon can get it's head out of it's ass and roll out 5.0 updates quickly after the mfrs release them, things might be looking up.

Re:About effing time

[pauljlucas]

Now if Verizon can get it's head out of it's ass and roll out 5.0 updates quickly after the mfrs release them, things might be looking up.

This is one of the things I hated most when I had my previous phone: software updates can only be had via your carrier. The problem is that there's virtually no incentive for carriers to do this: they want you to buy a new phone (and lock yourself into another 2-year contract).*

Even if you hate iPhones, you'll probably admit that it's much nicer to get software updates directly from Apple they day they make it available.

If only all other manufacturers forced carriers to allow end-users to get software updates directly, the mobile world would be better. The mobile market place, however, is fairly crowded and no single manufacturer (other than Apple) probably has enough power to bend the carriers to their will (when the carrier can simply opt not to carry their phone).

Of course it's not clear that other manufacturers want to be able to deliver software updates directly to end-users either. I suppose it would reinforce brand loyalty.

* This is starting to change since some carriers are now doing away with phone subsidies and instead moving to phone financing.

Still a second class citizen

[Freedom Bug]

I expected the Nexus 6 to have a microSD card slot because they were supposed to gain first-class support in Android 5.0.

But it doesn't, so external storage support must still be a second class citizen on Android.

At last.

[ledow]

For a long time, I've been hoping for an OS where, by default, the apps cannot access anything outside of their private areas.

It's possible with chroots and cgroups and other facilities but it's always a mess of third-party after-thoughts.

There's no reason I should have to give my satnav app full read-write permission to the entire SD card just so it can save my favourite places to permanent storage. It shouldn't even be able to know where it's saving them, that's for me to choose.

As such, these are all moves towards a safer, more secure environment. The problem, as always, is what happens in the meantime for the transition or if we mess up and stop apps doing what they need to do. No photo app needs read-write access to the entire SD card, nor can it cope with just read-write access to a private app area. It needs to share the files it writes with the user. Isn't this precisely what the amalgamation of several folders into, say, "Pictures" or "Music" is on several OS? All the app needs to do is say "this is a pictures folder that the user might want to use". And when uninstalled, it stays around because it's still one of the many listed pictures folders for that user.

Gone are the days of full-write-to-everything access. We don't need it. It's not necessary. But we do need the facilities to ensure apps can do what they need to do. This very much pushes into the filesystem-as-a-database idea that we've been wanting for decades. There's nothing stopping an app opening up a separate table for its photos and having the database just join the rows from several tables when the user wants to look at all their photos. And that does not require giving the app access to every table and row in the entire database.

Re:Too little too late

[Culture20]

You're going from modern China to modern North Korea. I say this as an iPhone user. No external storage. No file manager. Nothing open.

Re:Too little too late

[Overzeetop]

So because Android is less open than it originally was, you switched to the most closed platform available for phones? That's like being so pissed they dropped the speed limit on the highway from 65 to 55 to swore you'd drive on 35MPH surface streets from now on.

That's as bad as the guy who recently wrote that after 20 years as a loyal customer of CVS, having never once in those years used NFC payments until two weeks ago when ApplePay was turned on, is now boycotting CVS because they stopped taking NFC payments.

Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I, too, love the openness of iOS. Their SD card support, file management tools, inter-application data sharing, and overall system accessibility to users and developers is top notch.

Ha!

[ArcadeMan]

I would just like to point out that iOS users never had any problems with built-in SD card readers.

Because cloud

[swb]

Google has servers for this. You're supposed to be letting them index/scan/use your info, not storing it privately on flash.

Duh, it's a network device, everyone has unlimited network access everywhere don't they?

Re:Too little too late

[Overzeetop]

They don't see the need, and I'm not surprised. Why would you need 128GB of local storage if you're in the bay area? Wifi and cell coverage is everywhere, and the big corps still have unlimited cell data available for $20 a month (I'm on one of those plans...it's nice). Your company builds servers so that you don't have to worry about local storage on your handheld device.

They completely forget about those of us that live in the 90% of the country without high speed cell data cell coverage (not by population, but by land area). They forget that we need local maps of huge areas. That we have weird and unusual demands that make it impractical to stream music or video in many places. Heck, 10 years ago an IT friend from Dallas sent me a photo of the storm he just finished chasing. I just about killed him for it - he sent me a 5MB bmp file, which was no big deal for him, but I was still on dialup and that damned thing took half an hour to download. He didn't think anyone was still on dialup, much less me - just 15 minutes away from one of the most wired university campuses and less than 300 miles from Washington DC.

They fell into the "this is so awesome everybody is gonna love this shit" trap, and forgot that not everyone has the resources they have.