Enhancement request: Install to SD card

[OhioTex]

Here is a prior post on space worries...
viewtopic.php?f=3&p=18416#p18416" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It takes somewhere around 100Kb to 200Kb per game to store it on your device. That works out to a single song being the equivalent of around 20 games or more.

[Hasbro35]

Hi Folks,

I would strongly suggest that you make it possible to install to SD card or "Move to SD" card. Most android phones (I have an HTC EVO 3D) fill up very quickly on their internal hard drive, especially with the bloat-ware that the mobile phone companies pre-load on the phones. A lot of Android phones have a minimal internal storage as opposed to the iPhone which has large drives. Android phones allow for storage expansion through the SD card and it is expected that most applications can be run from the SD card now.

On my device iScore is taking up 17.41 MB and is the second largest application on my internal HD. Usually there is no reason to run an application exclusively on the internal HD. Here is an article explaining how to enable your application to be moved http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/an ... o-sd-card/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; If there is no plan to add the "move to sd" feature, which would literally take your developers five minutes to implement, then I would like to request that at least the storage data be allowed to be stored to SD. This would take more development time. The expanding size of the application due to the additional games will eventually cause your customers to look for other solutions. Once I can root my phone then I would consider using Force2SD to move the application and test if it will work, but most of your customers won't do that. They will only move the application if it is allowed through the standard method and most users don't root their phones since it invalidates the warranty. Please read the article above. I think you will change your mind about applying a half hour of your development team's time to allow users to move the application to their SD card.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Best...Chris H.

[FTMSupport]

Hi Chris - thank you for the suggestion.

If it was truly 5 minutes of work as you first state, or half hour as you later state, we would have already done it. There is a lot to consider beyond where the physical files are stored. Keeping the integrity of customer's data is our number one concern, and moving the data to an SD card starts to introduce risk to that. There could be issues with a user moving the SD card to another device, the data could become corrupt if a user remove's the SD card in the middle of a write operation, or the user may think they can just remove the SD card, wipe their device, then replace the SD card and things will just work, etc. It is easy to say "do not remove the SD card while using iScore", but believe us when we say users do a lot of things they are told not to do, and then expect us to be able to recover from that situation.

The HTC Evo 3D has 4 Gigabytes of internal storage. You are saying iScore is using 17.41 Megabytes. That is less than 0.44% (less than 1/2 of 1 percent) of the storage space on the device.

We understand people wanting to move the data to an SD card, and have it on our list of things to do, but please don't be fooled into thinking it is 5 mintues or even 30 minutes of work. It is something that needs careful consideration, testing, and code modifications to make sure it would work in a way that does not risk customer data.

[Hasbro35]

Hi Support,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm always amazed at how responsive you guys are.

I think you misread the EVO 4G specs. It has internal memory of 512MB of which only 407MB is available. Currently your app, with one season's data no less, is taking up 4.3% of my available internal storage space. If you substract all the default programs that the cell phone provider requires on the phone your application takes up approximately 10% of the available free space I have for internal applications. I don't have metrics available, but this is a common problem for android phone owners; which is why the option to move to SD was introduced in Froyo. I wish I had 4GBs available! If I did then internal storage space would be a non-issue.

Understanding your concerns about "support" I would suggest the following. Allow an option in iScore that would allow data to be saved to the SD card. It would be less than ideal since the application itself takes up 9.37MB of space, but at least I could manage how much data I would like to save and not have to clear out last seasons data since I don't have storage space to spare. Also, this should alleviate the concerns about customers wiping their device and expecting the app to work. Honestly, I don't see someone removing their SD card while a write is taking place. Most SD cards are inside the phone and covered by the back plate, but I guess some phones may offer an eject option or maybe even a tablet. That would be a major user fail! I can definitely understand the SD card swap issue; although, I'm sure standard recovery procedures can be used.

Weighing the risks I think the metrics would bear out that using 10 or more percent of a users available storage space is a much bigger support concern than a user possibly corrupting their SD card by popping it out or a user wiping their device and expecting iScore to work after they restore their phone. People wiping their phone tend to be advanced users. Those that pop out their SD card (that is if they even have ready access to it) during a write probably should have their device taken away from them.

Thanks again for letting me know the feature is on the list. I hope it comes around before next spring when I'll need to use iScore again.