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Droid Does... only have 256MB of storage for apps
Motorola's Droid is a sweet piece of hardware that's hyped to give the iPhone a run for its money, especially since it's running the new Android 2.0 OS, and works on the Verizon network in the US. We care about software here at Download Squad though, and there's some dismaying news about the Droid on that front: it has only 256MB for app storage. Seriously. The Droid reportedly only packs a 512MB ROM (that's the built-in memory), of which only half is allocated for apps. There are some iPhone games that couldn't even fit in that teeny-weeny storage space! But at least it's expandable, right? Um, nope. Google doesn't support installing apps to the SD cards that Motorola relies on, so developers are pretty limited in terms of file sizes for their Android 2.0 software.
The Droid may have a solid CPU and GPU for gaming, but games that take full advantage of that hardware are likely to need 100 megabytes or more of storage space. That's going to make things pretty tough until Android 2.0 comes to a device with a lot more pre-installed flash memory.
[via Daring Fireball]
UPDATE: While it's true that the Droid only has 256MB for apps, commenters have pointed out that various resources for the apps (graphics, etc.) CAN be stored on the device's SD cards. It looks like the situation isn't as bad as the numbers seem to indicate at first.
Comments
31
Subscribe to commentshonorelsuNov 10th 2009 1:15AM
The phone was probably based off some old windows mobile design they never used.
honorelsuNov 10th 2009 1:16AM
Its probably based off some old Windows Mobile design they never used.
Saint SeminoleNov 10th 2009 8:20AM
Since the only thing I care about on a phone is the reception, this one *has* to be a winner. After years with AT&T's spotty coverage -- even in large cities -- I've been with Verizon for about three months now and can't believe how much better it is.
I'm not a fan of big companies in general, but one of these is just better than the other when it comes to the ability to make and receive phone calls.
JoshuaNov 10th 2009 8:48AM
It becomes more and more obvious that the Moto DROID is not being marketed to the average consumer, because asking the average consumer to install one part of the app on the device and the rest of it on an SD card is, well, way above most people's heads.
Picking such a small and specific target market is what worries me about the DROID. If Verizon really does want to come out with an iPhone killer, than they will need to address a target market that is at least as large as the general iPhone market, which the DROID does not.
milrtime83Nov 10th 2009 9:06AM
"because asking the average consumer to install one part of the app on the device and the rest of it on an SD card is, well, way above most people's heads."
I doubt the user actually has to do anything different. It's probably automatic as to what goes where in most cases.
SchwinnNov 10th 2009 9:13AM
Not quite... the point is that the programmer can use the SD for extra data - the user doesn't have to do this work of segregating the data, if the programmer does his/her job. Hackers can certainly do more with the App2SD software, but it's not required.
That being said, from what I'm reading, apps on Android are tiny... one user says his average is 500-800k, which means you could easily install over 300 apps... hardly limiting: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1584434 (see posts 4 and 7)
This is a non-issue... FUD
BILLNov 10th 2009 8:56AM
SADLY SOME OF THESE FRIGGIN APPS FOR SURE ON I-PHONE AND PROBABLY ON DROID ARE CREATING SPAM. MAINLY IM SPAM WHICH SUCKS.
xbitNov 10th 2009 9:27AM
Users can install games to Read Only Memory? Really?
Money MikeNov 10th 2009 11:42AM
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the fact that the Droid comes with a 16GB microSD card pre-installed.
JayenkaiNov 11th 2009 11:57AM
All of my games ( http://bit.ly/JayArc 164 and counting) will happily fit into 256Mb, and those are big bloaty windows games, with Blitz-Basic-induced 1Mb .exe's
It's not hard, stop whinging!
JaredNov 11th 2009 9:28PM
This article is laughable. I'm not a gamer, but all you have to do is look at your executable file size on a windoze or Linux machine to get a chuckle out of this:
iTunes = 13.4MB
java.exe = 141K
excel = 13.9MB
Firefox = 887K
Quicktime = 7.34MB
MySql = 2.2MB (all files under bin for MySql is 140MB, so even if those files needed to be in the app space, which is not likely, you would still be able to run MySql on Droid)
GIMP = 4.39MB
Keep in mind that those are Windoze executable file sizes. Android app sizes are likely smaller. Well coded applications are typically small!
The binary size of Apache is roughly 3MB, which means you have enough app space to run the world's most popular web server and database server on your Droid