BTW, I don't think I implied that you'eve ver been able to install apps to SD. That's brand new and, like I mentioned about the Nav, only half-baked. Maybe because I used the word "required" - I didn't mean that it was required for app storage, I just meant in terms of a hardware spec that the devices came with little NVRAM and advertised they could be expanded via SD. I suspect Android doesn't spell out that requirement itself, it's just something these manufacturers are used to doing.

My comparison was just one of having to swap in and out rather than having everything installed at once. Even on the 8GB device, how much capacity can be used for apps? I was pretty sure there were some other limitations on these devices.

Having a swappable SD slot is certainly very nice, if it's in a convenient, hopefully externally accessible, location. Great for data, such as pictures, etc. But internally it's really just a swappable HD equivalent. How often will you want to swap your HD? Usually only when upgrading. You certainly don't want to be doing that to move from one set of apps to another.

So with all prior Android revs, not being able to put apps on SD was an extreme letdown because there was really no point to upgrading the SD storage. If the solution weren't half-baked and requiring specific apps support, you could just treat it like HDs on a computer and slap in a 32 or 64GB card and simply just leave it in there as if it were internal memory. Most people however will want to upgrade their phones before they will need to upgrade the storage, so Apple's solution isn't really much of a down side.

It's just another area where I think Google just played along with existing (HTC) hardware norms which were originally defined and pushed by newer WinMo specs. Shit, at least they don't store applications and data in bloody SDRAM like all WinMo devices used to do. People wonder why WinMo didn't go anywhere. Hint: everything about it sucks. It wasn't/isn't even as good as the Newton was back in 1997 in many respects.

Anyway, the benefit of removable storage isn't as a replacement for fixed storage. It makes a wonderful compliment, but in the case of the Android phones, it's really to make up for an otherwise lacking hardware spec (at least on the NVRAM side).