If you demand to use an old phone every bit a terminate-gap, your biggest business concern is probably the storage. But that'due south no problem, right? You tin can just throw an SD menu into the expandable storage slot, and everything volition be fine.

Except that might non be the case. Using an SD card as your main storage can give rise to a lot of unexpected issues.

Here are some of the disadvantages that come when using an SD card with Android.

1. Speed Suffers

There's a broad spectrum of SD cards available, all of which have wildly different performance levels. If y'all employ a low-quality carte, yous'll quickly become frustrated with all the delays.

This is particularly truthful if y'all move lots of apps onto the SD card. Loading times, refresh rates, and sync speeds could all decrease dramatically. Sadly, most people likely suffer from this. They apply whatsoever former SD bill of fare they have lying around without considering whether it'southward the best tool for the chore.

If you merely program on storing photos and files on your SD carte du jour, either of the two fastest menu types—UHS-I and Class 10—volition be sufficient.

However, if you plan on installing entire apps on your menu, y'all too demand to look out for the carte's app functioning class. A1 and A2 are the ii options available; A2 is faster.

microsd card
Epitome Credit: Lexar

ii. Vanishing Shortcuts and Forgotten Passwords

During my own recent usage of an SD card in my Android telephone, I ran into a curious consequence. Every time the phone'southward bombardment died (which, due to the device's age, was often), any shortcuts for apps I had moved onto the SD card vanished from my telephone'southward home screen.

As I like to go on my home screen organized into folders, it was seriously annoying.

And worse notwithstanding, some of the affected apps—including Twitter, MyFitnessPal, and Reddit—as well lost all their saved passwords, settings, and other user data.

I'm not going to pretend to know why this happened, nor tin can I promise information technology volition happen to you. It is, nevertheless, indicative of the types of unexpected bug that can arise when you utilize an SD card with Android.

3. Finding Files Is a Nightmare

Although you lot can format your SD card and then it becomes adopted internal storage, that doesn't mean that your telephone will run into both disks as a single entity. Therefore, depending on your usage patterns, it might get cumbersome to find the files you demand at a given fourth dimension.

For instance, you could end upwardly in a situation where dissimilar types of data are stored across the disks. You lot might have photos and local music on your SD card, but your offline Google Docs and downloaded Chrome files on the internal retention. The more apps y'all use, the more than problematic this fragmentation will become.

Are you confident you can think which apps save their files on which storage unit, months later on the initial setup?

It could all hinder your productivity. It might leave you with duplicates taking up unnecessary space, and upshot in a breakup of your file management systems.

4. SD Card Failure

SD cards have a limited number of read/write cycles. Every time you admission data on it, the remaining lifespan decreases. Naturally, the lifespan also varies depending on the quality of the SD carte du jour. A SanDisk production volition alive longer than a inexpensive no-name carte du jour from eBay.

To further complicate the problem, you might not know how old a spare card is. If you use an onetime SD that sat around gathering dust for years, y'all probably have no thought how much use it got in the past. You'll thus not know how long it might go on plodding along.

And remember, unlike traditional difficult drives, there might not be any warning signs before an SD bill of fare fails. If you don't have backups, y'all could lose lots of vital work in seconds.

To reduce the chances of issues down the road, check out our list of mistakes to avoid when buying a microSD card.

5. Migrating to a New Phone Is Frustrating

Perhaps reverse to many people's understanding, an SD card on Android is not necessarily analogous to an SD card (or USB wink drive) on a PC. On a desktop or laptop computer, you can motion your bill of fare or flash drive between dissimilar devices and access your files without a problem—they are portable.

If you try to movement your Android phone's SD carte du jour into another phone or endeavor to access its contents on a reckoner, yous volition probably exist out of luck. Why? Because when y'all set up an SD carte every bit local Android storage, the card becomes encrypted to its host device.

Thus, if you buy a new telephone, you cannot but motility your menu and carry on. You have to format the card's data (losing everything) and start over again from scratch.

6. Reduced Gaming Operation

Some of the most significant storage hogs on Android phones are games. This doesn't mean simple titles similar crossword games, merely rather those with loftier-terminate graphics and extensive gameplay. The app'south files and your saved games can add upwards to several gigabytes' worth of data.

It might be tempting to motility such games onto your SD card, just this is a bad idea. Even the best A1 Class 10 SD cards will not perform fast enough for modern Android games.

Y'all'll cease upward with gameplay glitches, missing graphics, and frequent crashes. These are the types of drawbacks you lot don't think virtually when you consider the pros of using an SD card with Android.

Are You Still Planning to Use an SD Card?

If you've read and understood the points nosotros've made, simply you still want to press ahead and use an SD carte in your Android device, and so go ahead. It might all work out fine. Simply you need to exist aware that bug can occur, and when they do, they volition likely accept you vehement your hair out in frustration.

To save yourself the hassle, it might be best to have that you'll have performance and storage issues while using the stop-gap phone, and just pray for the Amazon commitment driver to turn upward ASAP!

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About The Author

Dan Price (1606 Articles Published)

Dan joined MakeUseOf in 2014 and has been Partnerships Manager since July 2020. Reach out to him for inquires about sponsored content, chapter agreements, promotions, and any other forms of partnership. You tin can as well find him roaming the bear witness floor at CES in Las Vegas every year, say hello if you're going. Prior to his writing career, he was a Financial Consultant.

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