Why do cheap phones only accept 32gig micro-sd cards as max?

JEDI · May 9, 2016

all these phones came out in 2015 and were on sale for $20-$30 @Best Buy this year:
Moto E, LG Tribute 2, Alcatel Elevate

they have a 32gig micro-sd card as the limit.

whats so special about a 64gig micro-sd card?

mvbighead · May 9, 2016

I'm assuming they don't support SDHC. I suppose they gotta make them cheap somehow, right?

JEDI · May 9, 2016

mvbighead said:
I'm assuming they don't support SDHC. I suppose they gotta make them cheap somehow, right?

you mean sdxc?

interesting.. did not know 64+ gig sd was in SDXC format.
also did not know that the limit for fat32 for sd cards was 32gigs.

I thought the fat32 limit was 2terabytes (ie: hard drives) thus it never occurred to me that there was a format change between 32gigs and 64gigs sd.

now the obvious question:
why is it 32gigs the limit for fat32 in sd cards where as it's 2tb for hard drives?

JeffMD · May 9, 2016

I believe the sd card support is baked into the SoC, so low end SoC would have less features.

mvbighead · May 9, 2016

JEDI said:
you mean sdxc?

interesting.. did not know 64+ gig sd was in SDXC format.
also did not know that the limit for fat32 for sd cards was 32gigs.

I thought the fat32 limit was 2terabytes (ie: hard drives) thus it never occurred to me that there was a format change between 32gigs and 64gigs sd.

now the obvious question:
why is it 32gigs the limit for fat32 in sd cards where as it's 2tb for hard drives?

Yep, looks like an SDXC limitation. I got the wrong subversion there.

Gunbuster · May 10, 2016

My $30 Lumia 640 takes a 128GB card. You have the wrong cheap phones

(Though I admit Windows 10 Mobile is an epic cluster)

Dahak · May 10, 2016

JEDI said:
now the obvious question:
why is it 32gigs the limit for fat32 in sd cards where as it's 2tb for hard drives?

Cause... reasons......

Not sure if there would be some technical reason other than maybe it need more processing power or need to bake in a better controller hence it would cause the soc to cost more and cause the phone to cost more too.

It still better than flagship phones having NO support for any external storage at all

Gunbuster · May 10, 2016

Dahak said:
Cause... reasons......

It could also be the larger cards work fine and they just didn't bother to validate on larger cards when the handsets were released. Testing, validation, updating the specs, documentation, and website costs $$$$

Mr Evil · May 10, 2016

Supporting SDXC requires paying Microsoft for the privilege of using exFat.

JEDI · May 10, 2016

Mr Evil said:
Supporting SDXC requires paying Microsoft for the privilege of using exFat.

yeah.. but making sdhc at 32gigs max is still

mohit9206 · May 11, 2016

Yeah i agree its bullshit.I had to buy 32gb for my Moto E because it couldn't take more and my card is almost full.

Nashemon · May 11, 2016

JEDI said:
yeah.. but making sdhc at 32gigs max is still

Because 32GB was a lot in 2006 when SDHC came out. In 2026, when modern SD cards are 32TB, will you wonder why the limit on SDXC was 2TB?

Mr Evil · May 11, 2016

Nashemon said:
Because 32GB was a lot in 2006 when SDHC came out. In 2026, when modern SD cards are 32TB, will you wonder why the limit on SDXC was 2TB?

Given the known rate of advancement in storage, and computing in general? Yes, I will wonder why they limited it 2TB. This will happen well before 2026; with capacity increasing by a factor of 1000 every decade, and the largest SD card (full size, not micro) at 512GB already, you can expect the limit to be hit in only 2 years time. Micro SD cards will take a little longer to go from 200GB to 2TB - about 3 and a half years. If I was the cynical type I would assume it was planned obsolescence.

p.s. I didn't mean for all the links to be SanDisk, that's just what came up first in Google.

JEDI · May 11, 2016

Nashemon said:
Because 32GB was a lot in 2006 when SDHC came out.

lol.. but fat32 harddrives were ~1tb already around that time.
its puzzling that the creators of the sdhc spec didn't also follow the 2tb theoretical limit of fat32

monkey333 · May 11, 2016

My moto e plays just fine with the 200gb card I put in it.

thesmokingman · May 11, 2016

monkey333 said:
My moto e plays just fine with the 200gb card I put in it.

'cause they paid for the license to use the format for larger capacities, just like Samsung paying for the license to use UHS2.

monkey333 · May 11, 2016

thesmokingman said:
'cause they paid for the license to use the format for larger capacities, just like Samsung paying for the license to use UHS2.

Your point? The op was stating his phones spec said up to 32g cards, I was merely stating that mine works beyond 32.

Muse · May 12, 2016

I just bought a 29.99 Lumia 640 LTE and put a 128GB microSD in it. That's a fair amount of storage, would be more than I could imagine using except that I have a ton of MP3 files. I could fill the thing with them, but finding stuff wouldn't be simple unless I work up a more sophisticated tagging system than I'm using. That's one more project...

Mr Evil said:
Supporting SDXC requires paying Microsoft for the privilege of using exFat.

I suppose that's why Microsoft baked it into my Lumia 640, they own Lumia (they bought out Nokia's mobile phone operation), I guess exFAT is their baby too. It's funny, I tried copying a bunch of data to the card by plugging it into a USB card reader and that into USB input of my Synology DS214play NAS last week. Wouldn't work. I called Synology support and they said they don't support exFAT. I didn't ask why, but I guess the answer is quoted above -- they didn't want to pay Microsoft.

Well, I got the data in by copying it over my network.

thesmokingman · May 12, 2016

monkey333 said:
Your point? The op was stating his phones spec said up to 32g cards, I was merely stating that mine works beyond 32.

How much or type of card support is licensed. It's not free, that's why cheap phones don't support high end standards like UHS, etc. I thought that was obvious by my post?

monkey333 · May 12, 2016

thesmokingman said:
How much or type of card support is licensed. It's not free, that's why cheap phones don't support high end standards like UHS, etc. I thought that was obvious by my post?

All I was stating before was, my cheap phone does. Was that not obvious in MY post?

thesmokingman · May 12, 2016

monkey333 said:
All I was stating before was, my cheap phone does. Was that not obvious in MY post?

Goof for you? I don't understand why you're being argumentative?

Graze · May 12, 2016

thesmokingman said:
Goof for you? I don't understand why you're being argumentative?

I dont see how he was being argumentative.
The op was making a broad and incorrect statement. He was just pointing it out with proof

monkey333 · May 12, 2016

thesmokingman said:
Goof for you? I don't understand why you're being argumentative?

I'm not. My first post was to refute manufacturer specs stating that the limit is 32g, it is not. As with many devices, the spec limits do not match the real world. Many times it seems that companies print this limit 'just in case'. Most, if not all the devices I've owned have allowed for larger sd cards than the specs outline. If you have a disagreement, spell it out. Just posting my experience.

JEDI · May 12, 2016

monkey333 said:
My moto e plays just fine with the 200gb card I put in it.

200gb is an odd size.

32-64-128-256-etc

monkey333 · May 12, 2016

JEDI said:
200gb is an odd size.

32-64-128-256-etc

Yeah I know, but it was the biggest mainstream card at the time. Got it for 63 from best buy of all places.

Why do cheap phones only accept 32gig micro-sd cards as max?

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