During Google I/O 2015, which is the company's annual developer conference, Google announced a handful of features that would take the world by storm. This included the company's mobile payment platform called Android Pay, along with its latest operating system update, Android M.
While Android M will present several performance improvements and features that will allow it to be placed above the capabilities of Android Lollipop, storing app data on MicroSD cards is a flexible addition to a growing list of features that will only be exclusive to handsets running Android M.
According to Phone Arena, users complained about not being able to transfer their app data to their high capacity storage cards. Although Google was moving sluggishly to roll out the feature, transferring app data to storage cards now, will allow a plethora amount of storage to remain free from on-board memory chips. Specifically, the new feature is being referred to as Adoptable Storage Devices.
Google did not jump on to the subject of this feature, but information concerning Adoptable Storage Devices is present on an online documentation for the Android M developer preview. There is one condition that needs to be satisfied in order to make this feature work. App developers will specifically have to allow this to work in the Android app's manifest.
According to the official documentation, it states that Adopted Storage Devices will be encrypted and will gain the properties similar to those of the device's internal storage. Once encrypted, other devices will not be able to view that data. One hurdle that stands in the way is when the data on the MicroSD card becomes corrupt or if the need ever arises for the user to pull out the card and install a new one.
For that scenario, Adoptable Storage Devices also features the transferring of data to external USB sticks, or more specifically USB OTG flash drives. Android M will natively support USB OTG, allowing users to transfer that app data to these flash drives temporarily before inserting a new MicroSD card.
Android M is expected to be officially released by Google later this year.
