Certified Windows Phone 7 microSD cards appear

The memory expansion situation on Windows Phone 7 continues to remain bizarre, especially on the Samsung Focus, the only device to publicly tempt you with an accessible microSD card slot, but which still warns the user not to use it.

A recent official support forum post suggest that Windows Phone 7 certified cards are set to appear soon, finally solving the impasse.

The post readers as follows:

Thank you for your inquiry. Hi, actually the Samsung Focus has a 16GB internal memory and expandable up to 32GB. So you can insert a 32GB micro SD card on this device. However there are certain limitations when it comes to the micro SD card. Compatible micro SD cards will be branded as Windows Phone 7 Compatible on the packaging. Approved cards can be obtained from the manufacturer or carrier. (The SanDisk 8GB class 2 micro SD card has been certified.) Many commercially available retail micro SD cards are not approved for use in Windows Phone 7. Use of unapproved cards may cause performance degradation or device instability, including unexpected reset and loss of user data. A micro SD card class is not an indication of meeting Windows Phone 7 requirements. Microsoft Phone 7 does not support freely swapping micro SD Cards in and out. Once inserted and properly formatted, the memory card becomes an inseparable part of the phone. A micro SD card inserted into a Windows Phone 7 device, and integrated into the device’s file system, is intended to be a permanent modification to the device. Once a micro SD card has been integrated into a Windows Phone 7 device’s file system, it will no longer be readable or writable on any other devices such as computers, cameras, printers, and so on. This includes an inability to format the micro SD card for use in these devices. I hope I was able to give you accurate information about the Samsung Focus Storage. For further details regarding this phone, we advise you to visit our website www.samsung.com to check for other specifications that you may enjoy with this phone or you can always send us your questions and we will be happy to check our resources and answer it. Thank you for your continued interest in Samsung products. Sincerely, Technical Support

Now a number of cards have shown up on Sandisk’s website, claiming to be Samsung Focus i917 compatible, including 16 and 32 GB ones.

Hopefully this will resolve some of the issue, but does not offer any solution on the one way street associated with these (sometimes expensive) cards, but I hope Microsoft will also provide a formatting solution so cards can be re-used for other purposes.

Thanks Chris for the tip.