Microsoft Clarifies Windows Phone 7 & The Use of MicroSD Cards

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It seems as if there is some confusion with Windows Phone 7 handsets and microSD card slots. But perhaps most important, despite what you may have heard early on, some Windows Phone 7 devices will indeed have a microSD card slot.

That was the good portion of the news, however the microSD card usage is not going to function as many current smartphone users will expect. In some ways it sounds nice and in some ways there are some annoying limitations. One example of a Windows Phone 7 device is the Samsung Focus which is going to be available in the US with AT&T and Canada with Rogers.

Taking this handset as an example, it has 8GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot that can support cards of up to 32GB in size. And in theory that means a total maximum storage of 40GB, sounds good. But that is just what it is — 40GB in total as opposed to 8GB internal and 32GB on the card.

Lets break that down a little. According to the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 “SD cards and my phone” page;

Windows Phone uses a special high–performance SD card that works differently than SD cards in other devices. When your phone is built and first set up, its internal storage and SD card are combined and recognized as one storage system.

Yes, one storage system, hence the warning that follows that little tidbit which reads as follows;

You should not remove the SD card in your phone or replace it with a new one because your Windows Phone won’t work properly. Existing data on the phone may be lost, and that SD card can’t be used in other devices or Windows Phones.

And while this may be confusing for some smartphone users, some will likely never realize as the SD card slots are hidden under the battery. What this means for some of the geekier is that you are not going to be swapping cards in and out depending on your needs. It also means that you cannot hook your phone up to your computer and drag files over (specifically) to your memory card.

A further explanation of this comes by way of Paul Thurott, who just so happens to be writing the book on Windows Phone 7, literally, the book is called Windows Phone Secrets. Anyway, he further explains that;

What you can’t do is swap it out without hard resetting the device. That’s because the storage on the card and the internal storage is comingled, and the system makes no differentiation. There’s no way to know where something (an app, song, whatever) is stored, and if you do pop out the card, the phone will complain. And it won’t be readable on your PC, so you can’t use it to transfer content in either direction.

Or perhaps a little simpler is that;

Windows Phone does support expandable storage. But it does not support removable storage.

Either way, I am just happy to learn that (at least some) Windows Phone 7 devices will be able to top out at 40GB of storage space as opposed to being limited to 8GB or 16GB.