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Many devices have microSD card slots with artificially limited specifications or capabilities. In some of these devices, users have successfully worked around the artificial limitations.
Storage limits
Devices with microSDHC card slots are usually only officially rated for cards up to 32GB in size. However, this is often taken from the microSDHC specification, and not the actual capabilities of the hardware. On some models, users have achieved success with larger SD cards.
| Phone | DIGNO Keitai 3 | DIGNO Keitai 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Official capacity | 32GB | |
| Tested capacity | Untested | 400GB |
Adoptable storage
When an SD card is inserted into an Android phone, a notification or dialogue will appear to format the card. Kyocera's Settings app only exposes the ability to format the card as portable, or external, storage. Portable storage can only be used for photos, videos, and other files, and is readable by other devices.
However, Android has supported using an SD card as “adoptable storage” since version 6.0 Marshmallow1. Formatting a card as adoptable storage allows the user to store and run apps from the SD card. On Kyocera devices, this option is hidden.
Adoptable storage must be encrypted; as such, it is unreadable from other any other device, including a computer. System apps, as well as user-systemized apps, cannot be moved onto the SD card.
This has only been tested on the A202KC at this time.
Setup
On devices without the adoptable storage option exposed:
- Insert an unformatted (or incorrectly formatted) SD card into the phone.
- Navigate to `Storage > SD card`. Format the card as “Internal Storage.”
- The device will prompt you to move apps from the device's internal storage to the new SD card's “internal” storage.
- (Optional) App developers decide whether or not apps can be installed on adoptable storage. This can be bypassed by enabling “Force allow apps on external storage” in the developer settings, and moving the apps individually via the app list in `Apps & notifications > See all > App of your choice > Storage & cache > Storage used`.
Split storage
LINK TO SPLIT GUIDE