The Galaxy S7 And LG G5 Are Missing A Crucial Android Feature

Samsung and LG revealed new flagship smartphones in Barcelona over the weekend that will give Apple a run for its money by including a microSD slot for expandable storage. Unfortunately, that slot is lacking a critical Android Marshmallow feature that could have made it much better.

Users can add up to 2TB of extra storage, on top of the 32GB internal storage. With a new Android feature called adoptable storage, the card will merge with internal storage so that it shows up as one save location. Adding in a 32GB card will boost the space to 64GB instead of providing a second 32GB place to save. Sounds good, right?

Well, maybe not. The LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge won’t actually support adoptable storage. Samsung told Phandroid that it didn’t want to confuse users who might pull the card out while the phone is in use and mess up data. With adoptable storage, the microSD card is tied to the phone and won’t work with any other device, another source of confusion Samsung wants to avoid.

Unfortunately, it creates headaches of having to manage multiple areas of storage. Worse, apps need to support saving data to an external microSD card to make use of it inside the app. Until a recent update, Apple Music didn’t support this, so saved music took up the internal storage. Not only would adoptable storage solve this problem, it would have meant users didn’t even need to think about it.

One of the best Galaxy S7 deals, offered by Verizon, bundles in a 32GB microSD card worth $39.99 as part of a $79.99 “memory bundle.” The bundle is offered to new phone buyers, but the offer is somewhat dampened by the fact that it won’t directly expand the phone’s storage.

Preorders are now open for the S7 and S7 edge, with the devices set to go on sale March 11. The LG G5 release date is still a mystery, but the company is saying it should launch in April.