It's weird reading the Android engineers rebuttals. It's something that really irritates me, and frankly it has put me off of owning a smartphone at all (not having a microSD slot).
I also noticed a few limititations for the first time with my partners Nook HD that does have an SD slot. I bought a 32gb MicroSD card for it to store video and music. When trying to download from the web browser files went to local storage. I also had issues with downloading in general, some of which would be incomplete or disappear. While downloading I expected to be able to move to another app, and have the download background. It was a pretty shonky experience. I tried to find some kind of setting for it and ultimately realised that Android wasn't that brilliantly suited to handle external memory.
I'm never that sure if a device is going to take ownership of something like a micro SD card when I attach it. The whole portable format thing is a pain too. Not being able to use ExFat easily on my Linux laptop is a pain. I'm surprised one of the free file systems haven't been chosen as the default for for usb sticks, memory cards etc. Probably a result of manufacturers looking to have Windows compatibility.
I'm not quite sure myself which way I think opening media should go, should I select an app first and then open something, or should I use a 'finder' to get to a file and then choose what to do with it? I guess the latter at least affords for the 'finder' to suggest what to do with it, if not have a sensible default. Should my 'finder' know if a piece of software can handle the file upfront? Should software register what it can handle to a central authority? Sometimes you might not know wihch is the best software to open something with.
From a users perspective, I'd at least hope that if the device had 8GB on it, and if I had a card plugged in with 32GB, when I went to download a 1GB file it may put that on the 32GB card. Maybe there should be named storage pools that you could select when downloading. Or a sensible default.
Perhaps when you plug in media you should get the option of integrating it to the devices storage, or having it as temporary or portable storage.
The whole file management thing doesn't feel like it's solved on the desktop, but neither does it feel particulary good on Android. I think I like to know where my files are.
I do get that this is an epic problem. My Aunt was hopeless with file management on her laptop, but is happy with her iPad, other than suggesting that she has no idea how to get the photos off of it, and hasn't succeeding in doing so yet.
Thanks, the problem really being that she has no idea how to file manage on her windows PC or add/remove software, and her attempt at installing the software failed.
Samsung has just released version 1.0 of their open-source implementation of ex-FAT [1]. Why aren't they using that? I think it should at the very least work with 64+ GB microSD cards, if not with smaller ones, which I'd be fine with.
If they still think it's risky to be sued by MS, I think that lawsuit would be well worth it. At worst, they risk losing a few tens of millions of dollars (I doubt the "damages" that can be claimed would be more than that for a single Nexus model).
But the potential upside is huge. If they win, then not only Google, but every other OEM can finally stop paying Microsoft for FAT/ex-FAT patents, and just use that. Heck, they can probably even convince Samsung and a few other OEM's to pony up a pool of money for the trial, if they don't want to take it all on themselves.
The value/cost would be orders of magnitude bigger than what Google paid for Motorola's patents. And if they win, the potential savings for all OEM's who still use microSD cards, would be in the billions of dollars.
As for my personal expectations of this happening, I think Google is too chicken to do it, as they usually are when it comes to such confrontations, but I see Samsung doing it soon. What is Microsoft going to do to Samsung? Beg them not to buy Windows from them anymore? (which is what they'd risk doing if they sued Samsung)
I have a strong suspicion that the only reason Samsung even agreed to pay them for the patents in the first place was because it was part of a deal with Microsoft, in which they got lower prices for Windows licenses, which means Microsoft may even lose or break even at most with Samsung in that deal. Microsoft would've definitely agreed to something like that, because having Samsung on their "extortion list" meant every other company would then start to give them money, too - which is exactly what happened as soon as Samsung agreed to pay, and Microsoft made it public.
