Database Users

Is a Class2 SD card sufficient for running Android?

Hi all,
I'm going to finally have some spare time this weekend and might even get to have a mess around with Android on my HD2 if I get lucky! My concern is that I have a 16GB Class2 microSD in my Leo and while looking at HD2 stuff on ebay came across this.
The seller states that Android won't run (properly?) on his 16gb Class2 and includes a Class6 8gb card aswell for this purpose.
What's everyone's experience with running Android on a slower card? From looking around I've seen people saying 'there isn't much difference' for most things but a lot of contridictions for others.
Thanks gang!

I have no issues with my Android build currently, and it's on a 4gb Class 2 SD card.
It does help having a faster one, but It's not the end of the world.
Phil

Have been testing out froyostone sense build on a 2gb class 2 card and it's like lightening So yes, would format first though otherwise you will get lag.

Cheers - yep I won't forget to format, been reading the threads while working this week... taken in loads of info, just need to find the time to actually get it rolling

I was wondering the same thing. I installed froyostone 08.07.2010 using miri Rom on stock radio on a friends hd2 and it freezes and comes back to life very often. Would a higher class sdcard solve his problem?

I think they guy on eBay is talking rubbish. I run darkstone's 2.2 perfectly well on a 16GB Class 2. A Class 4 would probably help a little bit, but I'm not that fussed really.
I'd be more concerned about getting dodgy copies of Transformers from them!!

murdaralph said:
I was wondering the same thing. I installed froyostone 08.07.2010 using miri Rom on stock radio on a friends hd2 and it freezes and comes back to life very often. Would a higher class sdcard solve his problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The whole OS and all animations etc, or just touch screen response?
If its the touch screen, that's a known issue and will be addressed in due course.
Phil

It's in german, but i guess u may figure it out.
h**p://***.chip.de/bestenlisten/Bestenliste-microSD-Karten--index/detail/id/867/

I have a kingston class 2 , not working.

qingcai said:
I have a kingston class 2 , not working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A Little more information would be useful, what's not working about it? How's it formatted? Has it even been formatted and then had a new build copied to it?
Phil

i never had issues with a class 2 before... no SOD or anything... although after switching to class 4, there is noticeable speed. now in class 10, a lot faster. but no real issues in class 2 except a tad slower (but decent speed nonetheless)

I use the 16gb class 2 card and its quick with decent quadrant tests. I think its because android loads into ram (please correct me if I am wrong, ill search for this later). I think there are apps that read or write to folders on the SD card that would gain from speed of a class 6 or 10 card and if I am right about loading to ram the boot up time could receive a benefit.
Personally I am looking to get one just to access media faster and for taking pics and vids as there is a write delay that's typical with all phones. If it helps android in its current state the cool but I'm not in a rush. Development here have made great strides in making android snappy and android is an awesome is as it is for handling background tasks. Much to the credit of Linux but I find android to be a faster evolution then most mobile oses. Much to the credit of being open source and encourage community development. Nothing here is illegal but maybe some grey areas in closed source distributing which cyanogen had an interesting situation that was resolved quickly with Google's assistance.
But I am off topic now. Yes it would help with some things but don't break the piggy bank over it.
Hope my thoughts are helpful. It would be better to get feedback from those that have done it and get before and after boot, quad, and market download responsiveness tests. I may have a class 6 8gb card somewhere I can test later tonight. I would do fresh sdformatter formats with nothing but android on the card to get a somewhat standard benchmark.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Mine is 16gb class 2, with the latest fullram zimage, i score 29.2fps in neocore test
and can play sparta! very smooth, also the asphalt 5

kerman19 said:
The whole OS and all animations etc, or just touch screen response?
If its the touch screen, that's a known issue and will be addressed in due course.
Phil
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the touch screen. The SD card was quick formatted. Would that make a difference in the builds performance ?

I'm using a Kingston class 2, but it performs with 5,5MBs writing speed when used in a computer slot, so in practice its a class 5,5. Works great! Froyostone sense v1

pappadj said:
I use the 16gb class 2 card and its quick with decent quadrant tests. I think its because android loads into ram (please correct me if I am wrong, ill search for this later). I think there are apps that read or write to folders on the SD card that would gain from speed of a class 6 or 10 card and if I am right about loading to ram the boot up time could receive a benefit.
Personally I am looking to get one just to access media faster and for taking pics and vids as there is a write delay that's typical with all phones. If it helps android in its current state the cool but I'm not in a rush. Development here have made great strides in making android snappy and android is an awesome is as it is for handling background tasks. Much to the credit of Linux but I find android to be a faster evolution then most mobile oses. Much to the credit of being open source and encourage community development. Nothing here is illegal but maybe some grey areas in closed source distributing which cyanogen had an interesting situation that was resolved quickly with Google's assistance.
But I am off topic now. Yes it would help with some things but don't break the piggy bank over it.
Hope my thoughts are helpful. It would be better to get feedback from those that have done it and get before and after boot, quad, and market download responsiveness tests. I may have a class 6 8gb card somewhere I can test later tonight. I would do fresh sdformatter formats with nothing but android on the card to get a somewhat standard benchmark.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have experience with your G1, the class 6 I use on mine makes definite difference when running apps from your sd card. I've been alternating using my 16 GB Class 2 and my 8 GB Class 6 in my HD2 but I haven't seen any speed difference with android so I believe that it runs on the internal ram.

i think class 2 is enough

murdaralph said:
the touch screen. The SD card was quick formatted. Would that make a difference in the builds performance ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Touch Screen lag/freezing is a known issue right now and doesn't relate to the SD card.
It's being worked on.
Phil

I have a class 2 16GB sandisk drive and score 1578 in quadrant standard, that said i usually get write speeds of around 6MB/sec on my computer

i personally think it helps a bit ( i ws previously running Android off the 16GB class 2 card the HD2 came with) but experienced some lag when scrolling.
That said, it was an early build of Android so it was probably just that.
The thing is, 8GB class6 cards are relatively cheap to buy (i picked up an A-DATA 8GB class 6 for $21 canadian at CanadaComputers)
so..why not upgrade to the class6 card? I'm sure it wouldn't hurt and no matter what you'll experience at least have SOME sort of performance gain in other aspects (music, pictures, file managers, etc)

Sd card classes

Ok im not good at sd cards, can someone tell me what's the difference on sd classes? I know the lower the class is the slower the mbits/s is. I was looking up some micro sd on ebay the class 2 were the most expensive ones. Can someone tell me why?and whats the best sd for the phones were using now or at least for our g2? Thanks!
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App

G1rome said:
Ok im not good at sd cards, can someone tell me what's the difference on sd classes? I know the lower the class is the slower the mbits/s is. I was looking up some micro sd on ebay the class 2 were the most expensive ones. Can someone tell me why?and whats the best sd for the phones were using now or at least for our g2? Thanks!
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IDK why class two was the most expensive, I always run class 6, higher then that are extremely hard to find, and i'm not sure what the expansion port's max speed is, I have heard there is no difference with the one or two higher class 10 cards that are available

SD: Class0: below 2GB
SDHC: Class2(2MB/sec)
SDHC: Class4(4MB/sec)
SDHC: Class6(6MB/sec)
Class2&4 fit a smart-phone the most.
Class6 is kinda too quick for a cell...people often use it in a DSLR(Digital Single Lens Reflex)
The quicker speed of transferring a card has ,the bigger the capacity is.(well......usually.....)
BUT when you use a very very big card in you phone.Let's say 32 GB . Your phone WILL be burdened by the card,thus slowing down significantly.
Hope what I said was right..

8GB is the sweet spot.

Micro SD class speeds

I know the differences between the classes, but I'm more concerned about how the speeds effect some what I do on the phone. Currently I have a 16gb Samsung C2 that I took from an Epic. It seems to be working ok, just nothing to write home about. I am thinking about getting a 16-32gb c4 or higher. I'm just curious about what gains I would see
*would the camera be any quicker?
*I assume the gallery would be quite a bit quicker, can somebody verify?
*I use my phone as an mp3 in my car, would the lists load faster? as a player its just fine but it takes a while to load all the artists/albums, which is annoying when I am driving. I thought those were indexed but would a better card help that?
*any other daily activities that would see a direct effect?
I searched, but most people just asked questions I already knew. Thanks

Gibs679 said:
I know the differences between the classes, but I'm more concerned about how the speeds effect some what I do on the phone. Currently I have a 16gb Samsung C2 that I took from an Epic. It seems to be working ok, just nothing to write home about. I am thinking about getting a 16-32gb c4 or higher. I'm just curious about what gains I would see
*would the camera be any quicker?
*I assume the gallery would be quite a bit quicker, can somebody verify?
*I use my phone as an mp3 in my car, would the lists load faster? as a player its just fine but it takes a while to load all the artists/albums, which is annoying when I am driving. I thought those were indexed but would a better card help that?
*any other daily activities that would see a direct effect?
I searched, but most people just asked questions I already knew. Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a 16gb class 4 and I haven't noticed any significant increase in speed from a 8gb class 2 card both were from sprint don't know the name of them yet
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Class 4 cards will record HD without any hiccups. Class 2 skip all day long, because they can only right at 2mb a second which is far to slow for HD.

thanks for the info.

I just put a 16GB Class 6 card in my Evo and it more than doubled the write speed and more than tripled the read speed. I had the stock SD card that came with the phone. I believe it was an 8GB Class 2 SD Card.
I do alot of flashing of new ROMs and such, so the increase in write speed is very noticable when copying files to the SD card. I use to hover around 1.9-2.0MB/sec and now I'm seeing 4-5MB/sec write speeds.

[Q] Performance tweaks?

Hi everyone,
could someone please explain me what all those "performance tweaks" are that the chefs are cooking into their roms?
i cant find anything about what they did... (search is offline for 20-30 min and other external searchengines also not find anything intressting)
i can see in some videos on youtube that the phone is faster - but why?
im using a class 6 16gb sdcard, so thats not be a problem i think...
can someone please enlighten me?
Thx!

whopper_g said:
Hi everyone,
could someone please explain me what all those "performance tweaks" are that the chefs are cooking into their roms?
i cant find anything about what they did... (search is offline for 20-30 min and other external searchengines also not find anything intressting)
i can see in some videos on youtube that the phone is faster - but why?
im using a class 6 16gb sdcard, so thats not be a problem i think...
can someone please enlighten me?
Thx!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ah somebody else noticed this, i believe they messed with some caches and that about somes it up, to be perfectly honest i dont see any where a noticable speed improvment could be made with regards to the UI so its all a bit of FUD if you ask me.
with regards to your speed, just because its a 16GB class 6 doesnt automatically make it work, infact, if its stable at all your on to a winner, ive got a class 2 thats quicker than a 4, its just luck of the draw, most slowdowns are SD related, try other cards, dont splash out because it might not even work but play around and see what you can get.

Most chiefs use these tweaks
Not really "performance", more "optimizations"

dazza9075 said:
with regards to your speed, just because its a 16GB class 6 doesnt automatically make it work, infact, if its stable at all your on to a winner, ive got a class 2 thats quicker than a 4, its just luck of the draw, most slowdowns are SD related, try other cards, dont splash out because it might not even work but play around and see what you can get.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, it's not the rated class that matters with wp7... the class just rates the sequential write speed. It's random access speed that matters with wp7 (or when running any os off a sd card)... it's the time it takes to access small random bits of data when to os needs it. Higher class cards actually tend to have lower random access speed because of the tweaks the manufacturer does to raise the sequential write speed.
To raise the sequential read and write speed, the higher class card will initialize the part of the chip thats being used before actually using it so it can then write or read to that part more quickly... but that takes time to initialize, and ends up taking longer if you are just grabbing one little bit of data from one part and a bit from another part, etc than it will take a class 2 card which doesn't do the initializing process and just starts grabbing the data when it's asked to.
Microsoft found this when testing sd cards for wp7... class 2 cards tended to work better than class 6 or 10 cards. It doesn't necessarily mean a class 6 or 10 card won't work, or that a class 2 card will definitely work, but more class 2 cards worked than class 6.
Also, since card makers don't really rate the random access speed, they don't keep the speed very consistent batch to batch... even with a card that's the same brand and class. You might get a Class 4 sandisk that works great, but someone else gets the exact same class 4 sandisk, but it was made a week later at the same factory and it may not work. The chips they use can be different from batch to batch, and they only watch and keep the sequential read and write speeds consistent.
Hopefully now that wp7 needs cards with good random access speed, card makers will rate that speed and sell cards good for wp7. And also when running android off SD, I've found that random access speed is what makes the biggest difference in performance. I remember reading about people having more lag in sd android builds with higher class cards... well that's why.

dazza9075 said:
ah somebody else noticed this, i believe they messed with some caches and that about somes it up, to be perfectly honest i dont see any where a noticable speed improvment could be made with regards to the UI so its all a bit of FUD if you ask me.
with regards to your speed, just because its a 16GB class 6 doesnt automatically make it work, infact, if its stable at all your on to a winner, ive got a class 2 thats quicker than a 4, its just luck of the draw, most slowdowns are SD related, try other cards, dont splash out because it might not even work but play around and see what you can get.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your are right. i have to correct me - i got an 16 GB Class 2 SanDisk Card.
But why is there no info on how they speed up the MarktPlace that much? Its obvious that it is indeed faster - at least on Mobile network...
Sakem said:
Most chiefs use these tweaks
Not really "performance", more "optimizations"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah i see that - but, as you allready said, those are no perfomance tweaks ... but thanks for the hint...
zarathustrax said:
Yeah, it's not the rated class that matters with wp7... the class just rates the sequential write speed. It's random access speed that matters with wp7 (or when running any os off a sd card)... it's the time it takes to access small random bits of data when to os needs it. Higher class cards actually tend to have lower random access speed because of the tweaks the manufacturer does to raise the sequential write speed.
To raise the sequential read and write speed, the higher class card will initialize the part of the chip thats being used before actually using it so it can then write or read to that part more quickly... but that takes time to initialize, and ends up taking longer if you are just grabbing one little bit of data from one part and a bit from another part, etc than it will take a class 2 card which doesn't do the initializing process and just starts grabbing the data when it's asked to.
Microsoft found this when testing sd cards for wp7... class 2 cards tended to work better than class 6 or 10 cards. It doesn't necessarily mean a class 6 or 10 card won't work, or that a class 2 card will definitely work, but more class 2 cards worked than class 6.
Also, since card makers don't really rate the random access speed, they don't keep the speed very consistent batch to batch... even with a card that's the same brand and class. You might get a Class 4 sandisk that works great, but someone else gets the exact same class 4 sandisk, but it was made a week later at the same factory and it may not work. The chips they use can be different from batch to batch, and they only watch and keep the sequential read and write speeds consistent.
Hopefully now that wp7 needs cards with good random access speed, card makers will rate that speed and sell cards good for wp7. And also when running android off SD, I've found that random access speed is what makes the biggest difference in performance. I remember reading about people having more lag in sd android builds with higher class cards... well that's why.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the good explanation from the hardware point of view. but again all tweaks they made are software side.
Could it be that this is just a subjective speed improvement?

Extreme Speed Streak - 45mb/s

Hello to all Streak owners
I've just bought a Streak that requires a new screen, and whilst replacing that I will be looking into replacing / upgrading the 2gb internal Micro SD card.
Now I've read some threads on here and believe you have to set it up correctly as it only recognises 2gb at a time, but thats not my query now, I'll find the info and if not then I'll post for help.
Q)
My question is with Micro SD cards getting ever cheaper, and faster, higher performance ones dropping also in price, is it worth going in for these faster, higher performance cards???
Either for general Micro SD storage or internal storage, replacing the 2gb.
I know it seems common sense, by putting a faster or higher performance card in, should make it faster. But...
???)
Can the Streak make full use of the higher performance, faster cards?
When do you reach the point of overkill, or diminishing returns?
Can the streak support higher speed technology? (I believe I read somewhere that in fact the lower class cards were faster, although I don't understand this) If this is correct, someone please explain...
Ideally I'd like to know what is the fastest card the Streak can make use of? And what Micro SD technologies it can support?
Also if anyone has real world speeds for cards, (as I understand, often the numbers, classes manufacturers quote often mean nothing, compared to how they actually perform) or preferred manufacturers they could recommend, or links to tests, benchmarks, reviews etc.
Many, Many, Many thanks to this site and all its contributors,
I've used this site for many years, back when I had an XDA II from O2, lost / forgot that username, then again when got MDA Tmobile, AKA (Blueangel), but I don't post much as usually I'm able to find what I want, buy searching on the site or by xyz or whatever I want site:xda-developers.com in a popular search engine.
Best wishes and Seasons Greetings to you all,
John

Keep this in mind: at a certian point even if the card is compatable, the controller on the device itself will eventually be the bottleneck. Would this be the case? I have no idea, but adding in a faster card then the stock one has shown benefits.