Applications on Phone vs. SD Card

[lexluthor]

I have a Droid X running 2.2.

I'm trying to understand the advantages of storing apps on the SD Card vs Phone storage.

Since the Droid X comes with 8GB of phone storage, I've got lots of room there.

What would be some reasoning behind moving apps to the SD card? I see lots of people get excited when a favorite app adds SD card support, but why exactly? Maybe it's more of an advantage for phones with less phone storage?

Also, how come in manage applications, it says that the app takes up way less space when it's on the SD Card?

For example, I just installed Angry Birds and it put itself on the SD Card when it installed. It showed 1.83MB in size. When I moved it to the SD Card, it showed 14.06MB.

Why is that?!

 

[Super_Six_Two]

I see lots of people get excited when a favorite app adds SD card support, but why exactly? Maybe it's more of an advantage for phones with less phone storage?

Yes


The other question about size I have no idea.

 

[lexluthor]

I guess that makes sense. I'm more worried about room on my SD Card than Phone Storage at the moment, so I guess I'll continue to install everything on the phone.

It's weird that Angry Birds and some others I've seen default to SD Card install.

Still curious about the 2nd question about the size differential though.

 

[Szadzik]

Still curious about the 2nd question about the size differential though.

My guess, and it is only a guess, would be that when you install an app to phone memory it puts all files onto phone memory and when you check its size it shows the actual size, say for example 10 MB

When you install it on SD, it puts most of the stuff lke graphics, sounds or whatever on the SD, but it also puts some stuff into phone memory because maybe some files need to be in phone memory regardless of where you install it.

Another scenario would be when you install an app and it shows more memory occupied when it is installed to SD that when installed to phone. That will be the case when the app installing itself to phone only puts the app files on the phone and the rest (graphics, sounds or whatever) on the SD and thus when installed on SD will show the size of both the app and the files it put on SD while it will only show the app files while it is installed onto phone memory.

The conclusion is that it will vastly depend on the app and how it manages the files installed with it.

 

[lexluthor]

I'm surprised no one knows the answer to the size question. I guess it doesn't matter that much anyhow since the phone I has does have a lot of phone storage.

 

[CarsnGadgets]

Its mainly because a lot of phones like the nexus one and desire only have about 147mb (depending on carrier and rom) of internal space available for apps, so being able to use the sdcard instead makes a lot of difference.

If you have space on the phone, install your apps to the phone rather than sdcard
as some apps will not run properly from the sdcard such as some live wallpapers, system related apps and apps with widgets.