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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)
So I downloaded this app call H2testw.exe to test for legit sdcards but it also tells the read/write speed as well. I am testing my 8gb and 1gb cards. I set it to write a 300 mb files to the card and verify it.
Info about Android running on the two cards:
8gb = lags coming out of sleep, touch screen freezes, write~7.5 mb/s, read~12mb/s
1gb = no lags, no touch screen, write~4.3mb, read~13mb/s
I'm confused. The read speed is almost the same yet the 1gb microsd is more responsive running MDJ android compared to the 8gb microsd. Any thought?
UPDATE: Maybe this is what's causing the problem. Stolen from Engadget.
What we've learned from our tipsters and from documents culled from Microsoft, Samsung, and others is that the big issue is random access performance -- a figure that isn't taken into account in a card's class rating. Ironically, Microsoft discovered in its testing that cards with higher class ratings actually performed worse on Windows Phone 7 because the tweaks card manufacturers make to achieve high sequential throughput can actually hurt random access times. There's some rocket science involved here, but basically, it's a tradeoff and a bit of a gamble -- if a manufacturer tunes a card for a high class rating, it takes more time to access the first byte at a new location on the card because it's optimizing access for that area of memory, but once it does that, it can blast sequential bytes at very high speed. If you've got a lot of small reads or writes you need to make to different files at different locations in the card's memory, though, you really start to suffer. Cards with lower class ratings tend to spend less time optimizing sequential access prior to the first read / write operation, so it can move around the card (that is, access it randomly) much faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Source:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/windows-phone-7s-microsd-mess-the-full-story-and-how-nokia-ca/
They are probably different classes, plus it naturally takes longer with a bigger card because there's more files and more space to read and write
Sent from my HD2 Nexus One using XDA App
I get screen freezes with 8gb and up but rarely with new builds, haven't tried a card higher than class 6
Also I'm on radio 2.15
Sent from my HD2 Nexus One using XDA App
Oddly enough, I have two 8gb cards, one class 4 the other class 6, and they hiccup more than my 16gb class 2.
Now that is weird.
I'm lost myself...I'm thinking off just getting me a 4gb card and hope for the best...
I heard the 16gb class 10 is perfect but it still cost to much for nand to be around the corner
Sent from my HD2 Nexus One using XDA App
16 gb class 10 no lag cost me over 100 pounds tho
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Cheapest 16GB - lags from time to time :/
Maybe defragmentation may help?
tomus said:
Cheapest 16GB - lags from time to time :/
Maybe defragmentation may help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Defrag wont help...scan for errors...try to have only the android folder and see if it makes a different ..
Btw, guys...
all sd cards are not created equal. all sd cards of the same CLASS are not created equal.
Check out the ongoing drama with win7 phones with SD slots....
class measures throughput, what affects the SOD and related issues is random access speed, not throughput so much.
It's just my 2 cents, but I've tested Class 2, 4, and 6 MicroSDHC cards and found very little noticeable difference once Android is fully booted up and running on the HD2. Moreover, none of the cards create screen freezes or SOD issues or high battery drain problems here. That said, I have noticed that the actual boot time and file transfer speed (from the PC to the card) can be faster on average with quality higher class rated cards of the same size. Also, I've found that the larger the card size, the longer the android boot time, no matter the class. Guess that makes sense, as the system need to read more sectors with larger size cards. Please note that I've only tested Sandisk, Toshiba, TopRam and Samsung cards to date. What's kind of strange is that the Class 2 16 & 32GB Sandisk cards run just as well or slightly better for some reason than some of my higher class rated cards. Go figure...
As far as issues go, I recommend only using quality brand name cards, no ebay fakes or cheap no name brands. Also, I've had great luck formatting all my cards with SD Formatter v2.0 and v3.0, using the quick format mode with the standard 32kb cluster size.
Best to all,
R
rhacy said:
It's just my 2 cents, but I've tested Class 2, 4, and 6 MicroSDHC cards and found very little noticeable difference once Android is fully booted up and running on the HD2. Moreover, none of the cards create screen freezes or SOD issues or high battery drain problems here. That said, I have noticed that the actual boot time and file transfer speed (from the PC to the card) can be faster on average with quality higher class rated cards of the same size. Also, I've found that the larger the card size, the longer the android boot time, no matter the class. Guess that makes sense, as the system need to read more sectors with larger size cards. Please note that I've only tested Sandisk, Toshiba, TopRam and Samsung cards to date. What's kind of strange is that the Class 2 16 & 32GB Sandisk cards run just as well or slightly better for some reason than some of my higher class rated cards. Go figure...
As far as issues go, I recommend only using quality brand name cards, no ebay fakes or cheap no name brands. Also, I've had great luck formatting all my cards with SD Formatter v2.0 and v3.0, using the quick format mode with the standard 32kb cluster size.
Best to all,
R
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great info here. I think I will just order me a new card from a reputable brand. Maybe my card is just getting old. Maybe a 16gb from Amazon will do. They aren't too expensive nowaday. ~$26.
Does the Radio version effects the lag of the sd card? Or the kernel?
distruct said:
Does the Radio version effects the lag of the sd card? Or the kernel?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, not on the sd but radio does effect how the build will run, your phone calls, your battery.
Could this be the reason why class don't matter on hd2 android? I mean even some class 4 & 6 have lag and sod problem. I pulled this bit from engadget. It's an article on wp7 and memory card issues.
What we've learned from our tipsters and from documents culled from Microsoft, Samsung, and others is that the big issue is random access performance -- a figure that isn't taken into account in a card's class rating. Ironically, Microsoft discovered in its testing that cards with higher class ratings actually performed worse on Windows Phone 7 because the tweaks card manufacturers make to achieve high sequential throughput can actually hurt random access times. There's some rocket science involved here, but basically, it's a tradeoff and a bit of a gamble -- if a manufacturer tunes a card for a high class rating, it takes more time to access the first byte at a new location on the card because it's optimizing access for that area of memory, but once it does that, it can blast sequential bytes at very high speed. If you've got a lot of small reads or writes you need to make to different files at different locations in the card's memory, though, you really start to suffer. Cards with lower class ratings tend to spend less time optimizing sequential access prior to the first read / write operation, so it can move around the card (that is, access it randomly) much faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Source:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/windows-phone-7s-microsd-mess-the-full-story-and-how-nokia-ca/
azzzz said:
Could this be the reason why class don't matter on hd2 android? I mean even some class 4 & 6 have lag and sod problem. I pulled this bit from engadget. It's an article on wp7 and memory card issues.
Source:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/windows-phone-7s-microsd-mess-the-full-story-and-how-nokia-ca/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Obviously.
Been saying this for a while, myself - I have experimented, and I get SOD every time with my 16gb class 6 card, but rarely with my class 2 8gb, and never ever (and, tbh, better responsiveness overall) with my 2gb NON-HC card
enneract said:
Obviously.
Been saying this for a while, myself - I have experimented, and I get SOD every time with my 16gb class 6 card, but rarely with my class 2 8gb, and never ever (and, tbh, better responsiveness overall) with my 2gb NON-HC card
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope so...my class 2 16gb will be here in a couple of days...i hope it's faster than my current 8gb class 4....
Update: my 16gb class 2 sandisk is here. Things have improved alot. Wake up is faster now with less lag, market download speed is faster now (10kb vs 100kb). Hopefully system performance will be better...
I looked for a thread like this but couldnt find one. I apologize in advance if it does exist.
But it seems like people here rarely mention the type/size of SD card to be used when running android - which seemed odd to me, because i though the SD will be extremely important, performance wise.
So do u guys have any idea what SD card type performs the best and what partition size?
Logically, I bought a class 10 8GB SD card. Well it performed poorly and worse than my 4gb Class 6 card (testing the same BUILD by copy pasting the card contents).
I tried changing the sector size to 64kb. Performance improved a little but still bad.
So I am getting confused and would appreciate some help, maybe from those you who know more.
Simple question: what's the best SD card for running android on HD2 (if there is such a thing)?
And is the SD card speed important and does it affect the smoothness of the Android build radically?
Thanks in advance guys
BSAKSOUK said:
I looked for a thread like this but couldnt find one. I apologize in advance if it does exist.
But it seems like people here rarely mention the type/size of SD card to be used when running android - which seemed odd to me, because i though the SD will be extremely important, performance wise.
So do u guys have any idea what SD card type performs the best and what partition size?
Logically, I bought a class 10 8GB SD card. Well it performed poorly and worse than my 4gb Class 6 card (testing the same BUILD by copy pasting the card contents).
I tried changing the sector size to 64kb. Performance improved a little but still bad.
So I am getting confused and would appreciate some help, maybe from those you who know more.
Simple question: what's the best SD card for running android on HD2 (if there is such a thing)?
And is the SD card speed important and does it affect the smoothness of the Android build radically?
Thanks in advance guys
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The size is up to you, as you can make a data.img to your liking which allows you to have more apps.
It's not "radically" significant for smoothness.
As far as brand; many different brands with many different opinions. Just make sure to format it correctly before you begin.
i'm quite happily running Android from my SD card. Thinking about going down the NAND road
but the question is...is it worth it? Will i notice a big change or should i just stay as it is?
Thanks
No, you will most likely not.
I still recommend doing it if you don't use WinMo, because there sure are advantages but don't expect miracles.
Personally, I've found battery life better with all the NAND builds I've tried - probably about 50% better. I assume this is because it takes more power to read/write to/from the SD card all the time.
This is obviously just my personal experience though.
Well, you will get some better battery life, as well it will be smoother.
If you don't use WinMo, I'd recommend it.
Just my personal experience.
Battery life simply cannot be compared to SD versions. It's much better in nand. Also file transfer works as it should.
Sent from my HD2 using XDA App
You can also connect to the phone in debugging mode, with NAND, which I never could using SD builds.
Not much of a deal to most people, but for anyone interested in developing for Android it's a BIG deal!
johncmolyneux said:
Personally, I've found battery life better with all the NAND builds I've tried - probably about 50% better. I assume this is because it takes more power to read/write to/from the SD card all the time.
This is obviously just my personal experience though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some people have had drastic improvements because they used 'bad' SD cards (as in badly compatible with Android, not 'bad' in se). If you compare the battery life of an SD build with a proper card, NAND really doesn't give much more juice, simply because the major part of battery consumption is due to hardware stuff such as screen, CPU, ...
The biggest difference for me is battery life aswell, as others have already stated.
I get 2-4mA in standby on most builds
StephanV said:
Some people have had drastic improvements because they used 'bad' SD cards (as in badly compatible with Android, not 'bad' in se). If you compare the battery life of an SD build with a proper card, NAND really doesn't give much more juice, simply because the major part of battery consumption is due to hardware stuff such as screen, CPU, ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like I said to OP, it was just my personal experience. I was using a SanDisk 8GB Class 6 card that I've had 0 issues with, so I could only put the battery life difference down to r/w times. It's apparent in other things as well, like when you bring up the application list in settings. It used to take a good 5-10 seconds to get the icons for all the apps, but now it's less than a second.
It's only little things like that that I really notice. Overall performance doesn't seem much better.
Hey nothing personal man, I was just informing you why you experienced this drastic improvement. Like I said, with a bad card I didn't mean bad as in not good, but just not well compatible with Android on SD - no one really had an explanation as to why certain cards performed better than others, and there wasn't a predictable pattern either. The most expensive cards could very well be the worst compatible.
StephanV said:
Some people have had drastic improvements because they used 'bad' SD cards (as in badly compatible with Android, not 'bad' in se). If you compare the battery life of an SD build with a proper card, NAND really doesn't give much more juice, simply because the major part of battery consumption is due to hardware stuff such as screen, CPU, ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true... I just went back to using SD builds because I'm dual-booting with wp7, and battery life on my sd builds are pretty much the same for me. I get as low as 3ma on standby with my jdms and hd2one sd builds. I'm using a class 2 sandisk, which seems to have the best random access speed out of all the sd cards I tested, and has a very low power consumption. For anyone buying a new card to run wp7 or to run android off of, I would definitely suggest a class 2 sandisk over any other class or brand of card. Quality class 2 cards generally have better battery life and better random access speeds (which is what matters the most for running an OS off the card) than higher class cards, which are made to have higher sequential write speeds.
StephanV said:
Hey nothing personal man
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
???
I know mate! If I sounded defensive, then I shouldn't have. I was just responding to what you said
Sorry if I came across wrong.
I ordered a ADATA 8GB MicroSDHC Class 10 memory card for my HTC HD2. I'd like to know if it will work well on my phone since the transfer is so high. I'm asking this because I want to use a SD version on android.
Thank you in advance for the answer!
When i asked my friend who was the Sales Director of Sandisk Australiasia, he said that the read and write speeds of the supplied Class 2 was more than enough, since these Class 2 is the minimum guaranteed write speeds for that card.
Personally, i'd like to use a faster card, but i think that the key here is the quality of the card over the speed. Im using android over SD and dont mind the negligible lag.
Perhaps someone who has tried a faster card can comment on Droid on SD, as NAND speed offers the fastest, but without the flexibility.
GLO said:
When i asked my friend who was the Sales Director of Sandisk Australiasia, he said that the read and write speeds of the supplied Class 2 was more than enough, since these Class 2 is the minimum guaranteed write speeds for that card.
Personally, i'd like to use a faster card, but i think that the key here is the quality of the card over the speed. Im using android over SD and dont mind the negligible lag.
Perhaps someone who has tried a faster card can comment on Droid on SD, as NAND speed offers the fastest, but without the flexibility.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found a really old thread where people were saying it is fully supported. Thanks for the answer! I want to use android on the sd too because I don't really want to risk messing up my phone with a rom install.
It's been around for ages that the speed of the SD doesn't matter for SD android.
what matters is the access time, here's a thread for benchmarks:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1048649
the smaller the access time the better. in other words, you might get a class 10 card with long access time, and a class 2 with short access time, the class 2 will perform better overall (faster system loading, etc). but when you copy large files the class 10 will be faster.
meaning: for running android on SD you need a faster access time, and each millisecond counts.
[edit] forgot to say that random read and write speeds play a good role as well.
I use PNY 32GB class 10 MicroSD card in my HD2. No problem at all. Phone is only one week old and haven't installed any cooked ROM yet so 32GB card on stock ROM.
yes, a class 10 would work perfect with stock or custom windows ROMs. and with NAND android to some point.
I'm talking about SD android which, in case you haven't read the previous posts, he wants to run a build on his SD. and that's where the class 10 cards start to look bad. they mostly have slower random read/write speeds. In usage terms that's: lags, lags, errors, and more lags.