The story about Windows Phone 7 and SD cards

Over these few weeks we’ve been hearing reports about Windows Phone 7 and SD memory cards, and according to the folks over at engadget, they have figured out the whole story. WP7 was never meant to support expandable storage and because of the way the operating system handled memory usage- memory cards weren’t hot-swappable. The fact that the Samsung Focus had an easily accessible SD card slot is supposed to be a mistake. But even though we’re recommended not to use our own memory cards, we can. Whenever you insert a new memory card into a WP7 device, at first boot, the system will format the card accordingly so that it can only be used with the phone. Upon removal, a WP7-formatted card won’t work with any other device, but more on that later. Microsoft has warned people not to use memory cards that aren’t certified because of a good reason. WP7 reads SD cards using random access, but SD cards are meant to be read sequentially- so by using uncertified cards, it could affect the performance of the phone. And lastly, SD cards formatted by WP7 once removed from the phone won’t be able to be detected by other devices- except Nokia phones. Apparently the Symbian operating system is one of the few platforms that can properly handle an SD card, so while you won’t be able to read the data off it, you can use a Symbian phone to erase a WP7-formatted card. And that wraps up the whole WP7-SD card issue. How many of you have installed your own SD cards to your WP7 phones?