Filed under: Hardware, Mobile, Android
Droid Does... only have 256MB of storage for apps
by Jay Hathaway Nov 9th 2009 at 7:00PM
Motorola's Droid is a sweet piece of hardware that's hyped to give the iPhone a run for its money, especially since it's running the new Android 2.0 OS, and works on the Verizon network in the US. We care about software here at Download Squad though, and there's some dismaying news about the Droid on that front: it has only 256MB for app storage. Seriously. The Droid reportedly only packs a 512MB ROM (that's the built-in memory), of which only half is allocated for apps. There are some iPhone games that couldn't even fit in that teeny-weeny storage space! But at least it's expandable, right? Um, nope. Google doesn't support installing apps to the SD cards that Motorola relies on, so developers are pretty limited in terms of file sizes for their Android 2.0 software.
The Droid may have a solid CPU and GPU for gaming, but games that take full advantage of that hardware are likely to need 100 megabytes or more of storage space. That's going to make things pretty tough until Android 2.0 comes to a device with a lot more pre-installed flash memory.
[via Daring Fireball]
UPDATE: While it's true that the Droid only has 256MB for apps, commenters have pointed out that various resources for the apps (graphics, etc.) CAN be stored on the device's SD cards. It looks like the situation isn't as bad as the numbers seem to indicate at first.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DeoWulf said 7:45PM on 11-09-2009
Holy crap... that's like, a death sentence. I was really hoping it would do well, too.
Who made that decision?
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Cam said 7:56PM on 11-09-2009
This is inexcusable.... I thought this was going to be a cool phone too...
Wasn't there an android mod that allowed you to install apps on an sd card?
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subfuze said 7:59PM on 11-09-2009
This isn't totally accurate. Yes, it's true that the core of the application needs to live in the 256mb space (and yes, I agree that it's really dumb that apps can't be installed onto the SD card), but apps installed in the limited ROM can write to and read from the SD card. So for instance, a game engine could live in the core and download all of its graphics and sound onto the SD card and access them from there. I have a number of apps installed on my G1 that function in a similar way.
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Dafrety said 8:11PM on 11-09-2009
This isn't that bad. I have the G1 which has the smallest ROM to date. It was a bit annoying, at first, but now that I'm rooted I have AppsToSD with 456 MB for apps as apposed to around 70 MB. I could have allocated much more than that too. I'm sure eventually people will figure out how to do the same for the Droid, but until then at least you have more starting space than the G1!
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Evan said 8:16PM on 11-09-2009
Apps2SD was one of the great things that came out of the XDA forums. It proved the functionality of the concept and is currently being rolled into the official branch.
Lazy reporting.
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754Boy said 8:35PM on 11-09-2009
Wow, I wonder why this didn't show up in the list of features. That is a SERIOUS negative for me. My Blackberry didn't have that much app storage space but its damn near 2010 and its unacceptable now considering that apps are getting bigger and the games are getting more and more advanced.
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another guy said 8:36PM on 11-09-2009
as mentioned above the 256mb limit is for executable code only. if a game has say 100mb of data it can read/write that data from/to the 16gb sd card. An app with even a one mb of executable code, without auxilary data, is pretty substantial.
This article should have had a little more research on the topic I think.
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Level 5 said 8:57PM on 11-09-2009
It's called rooting. Jesus, DSq is now another Apple fansite? Lovely.
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ljohnso16 said 9:08PM on 11-09-2009
wow i think the comments just kicked the articles ass, yeaa it did
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gman2501399 said 9:23PM on 11-09-2009
Is it really that bad, it's a phone, it's not a laptop. I would imagine you could fit enough apps with 256 mb.
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sjhulse said 1:33AM on 12-19-2009
You Right on with analagy. It's a great phone with lots of potential...you can't always hit a home run on the first swing, (Apple) Go "Android" crush the "Store"
MiloJasper
George said 10:21PM on 11-09-2009
I'm running apps right now that use the SD card for storage. For example, I wanted on offline thesaurus and dictionary and it wasn't a problem finding ones that installed their DB's to the SD card.
The moral of story, of course, is to take anything from Daring Fireball that derides and Apple competitor with a large bucket of salt.
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Jay Hathaway said 10:51PM on 11-09-2009
To be fair, the source article DF linked to was also a bit ambiguous on this point. Thanks to some sharp commenters for clarifying things for me.
Scurr said 10:29PM on 11-09-2009
not to support trolling, here...
in essence the article is true in that it really only gives you that amount of room for app storage and relies upon data transfer from an SD card you must supply.
call me a fool, but for 200.00 they can add 8gb or 16gb of storage for pennies nowadays.
IMHO, getting closer to the iphone...but not there just yet.
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Matt said 10:31PM on 11-09-2009
Remember when 640K was supposed to be enough for anything?
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Scurr said 10:30PM on 11-09-2009
ALSO
anything that requires work around and rooting etc to function properly is in essence a broken product.
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milrtime83 said 9:03AM on 11-10-2009
You mean like jailbreaking?
Slappy said 10:44PM on 11-09-2009
Storing part of the app on SD cards seems tedious.
I thought one of the strong suits of having SD cards was to switch them in and out.
Now I'd have to label them and remember which was for photos and which was for apps.
Sounds like a floppy disk to me.
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DeadlYRage said 11:10PM on 11-09-2009
Who is the pea brain that decided the rom storage? o.0
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Cam said 11:27PM on 11-09-2009
Is it too much to ask for a decent smartphone, with a large capacity ROM, and an SD card slot?
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