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When Android was new, you could easily put what you wanted on your SD card. Pictures, apps, data, etc.

Progressing through Android 4, 5, and 6 (what I am familiar with), Google implemented various seemingly antifeatures to make things difficult for a user who wants to use the SD card for main, but still removable, storage.

What are the stated reasons behind this? What problems are they trying to solve? Why was this considered a good solution?

A great answer will have technical and nontechnical explanations. For example, how do you explain to Aunt Suzie that she can't use that shiny 200GB SD Card she got on sale from Amazon?

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    A slightly old but good source for the current state Android storage is a series of blog posts, especially the one on Removable Storage made by Commonsware.
    – Morrison Chang
    Commented Oct 1, 2018 at 4:01
  • That's good info. I'm not clear on you you linked to archived versions though. The main website seems alive.
    – YetAnotherRandomUser
    Commented Oct 1, 2018 at 12:08
  • You forget that Google has implemented the "Adoptable storage" feature that allows to use an sd-card seamless like the internal storage. However the device manufacturer are removing this feature to sell devices with more storage.
    – Robert
    Commented Oct 1, 2018 at 17:27
  • @robert that was implied when I said "...who wants to use the SD card for main, but still removable, storage." That feature formats the SD card in such a way that you can't pop it out and read it in an SD card reader to get to the files.
    – YetAnotherRandomUser
    Commented Oct 1, 2018 at 18:57
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    When I posted my comment, Commonsware's site was down, now site is live again. He did write a set of updates to the earlier blog posts in the series: The Storage Situation: Internal Storage, External Storage,Removable Storage His blog is geared toward developers.
    – Morrison Chang
    Commented Oct 1, 2018 at 19:01

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