Help Is Maxing Galaxy S4 Memory to 64GB Hard?

[NatGreen]

hey guys,
Just about to by my first Android and will be going with the S4.

I'm aware that I need a micro SD card if I want to expand the memory but I'm confused about one thing.

I see people on Youtube who are using 64GB cards and get like 55GB or whatever which takes the operating memory into account but I was chatting with someone at Samsung.com and they said the phones will only take up to 32GB (which didn't seem to be the case from what I saw in the videos).

Today I went to a Best By Mobile store and when I asked why that was, the 20 something sales guys said that he has an S4 as well but only uses a 32GB card cause he doesn't want to deal with rooting.

I have an idea of what rooting is (similar to "unlocking" I'm guessing)

My question is do I need to root the S4 before I can access all the memory of a 64GB card?

Is it easy to do if so and are they any risks in doing so?

Or am I just getting bad information?

The guys I saw in the video didn't mention having to do anything other than just putting the card in the phone so I was kinda surprised by al of this.

I'm in Canada and will be using either Telus or Koodo if that matters for any reason (which uses the same network anyway).

Thanks!

 

[barryl85]

No need to do anything the S4 supports 64GB Micro SD cards

Heres mine....

Card is a Samsung 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 Grade 1 70MB/s MicroSDHC

 

[NatGreen]

That's a relief.

Any idea why Samsung rep and the guy at the Mobile store would say otherwise?

Kind of perplexing...

 

[sntaylor]

Probably because most people I've met in the phone shops don't actually have a clue about what each phone can do/is capable of doing, particularly in android phones, maybe this is due to the large choice, but you'd have thought they'd at least learn about the top range phone from each manufacturer

 

[Hadron]

Retail sales staff often are not experts. My guess is that they guy had read some misinformation somewhere, or had got sd compatibility muddled up with something different (e.g. using an sd card to expand app storage, which would require root). Rooting incidentally is gaining administrator access - there's a subforum on it here, but it's strictly optional.

Why the Samsung rep would say it I don't know, because I just looked up the spec on the Samsung UK site and it clearly says "MicroSD Slot (up to 64GB)".

 

[NatGreen]

I can understand the sales guy in the store didn't know the right answer (even though he has an S4 himself) but I thought it was weird that someone from Samsung's website directly said that...

Either way, you guys have done it and I've seen others do it on Youtube, so I'll go with that cause that's the answer I want to hear

 

[rushmore]

That's a relief.

Any idea why Samsung rep and the guy at the Mobile store would say otherwise?

Kind of perplexing...

Probably because for some reason, most of the carriers/retailers across the land think you can install apps to the sd card. This MIGHT have something to do with Samsung publicly implying this as a solution to the near 50% space of the 16GB.

 

[IMAC1977]

I wonder if anyone on here can help, I have a 32gb micro SD card and the files on it keep getting corrupted, I then get a message on screen saying SD card blank, and reformat SD card.

I am using it for movies played through VLC player for my daughter. Is this an issue with phone or SD card, as I have transferred files to it on 4 occasions now and sometimes when moving files to it, my old files disappear.

WTF is going on??

Please help

 

[lotus49]

I wonder if anyone on here can help, I have a 32gb micro SD card and the files on it keep getting corrupted, I then get a message on screen saying SD card blank, and reformat SD card.

I am using it for movies played through VLC player for my daughter. Is this an issue with phone or SD card, as I have transferred files to it on 4 occasions now and sometimes when moving files to it, my old files disappear.

WTF is going on??

Please help

You didn't buy this card cheaply on eBay by any chance did you?

A lot of cards are fake. They are described as 32GB but are actually nearer 2GB but falsely report that they are 32GB. Anything sent to the card over the real size is just silently dropped.

Download h2testw (a quick search on Google will lead you to it), which is the standard utility for testing memory cards. It will tell you for sure whether your card is what it claims to be.