A mess around Jolla Tablet's microSD support is a sum of mistakes, expectations, disagreements, misunderstandings and the sound of the Jolla community.



Let's go through the facts and see where this all might take us in the end.

The facts

The conclusion

The solution

One 32GB SDHC card, used in transferring data between the tablet and any SDHC/SDXC supported devices

Another 128GB memory card (maybe bought without the SDXC trademark from an Open Source hardware manufacturer), used for bigger files on Jolla Tablet and Linux systems.

At the same time, this is a company statement: Jolla is fighting against the main stream here, a closed source file system of Microsoft. And they are doing this on purpose - they need to stand up on this to be a real alternative, and to hold on to their own values, transparency, aim towards Open Source.





No, this is not nice for all the end customers. All we can do is to advice the customers who find this a dealbreaker: Go with the mainstream, be like all the rest, accept Microsoft monopoly and so on. You decide.





Is this the end?





Tablet facts are due to change - Jolla is still listening to their customers. Now that we know, what should we do? In the end, Jolla will probably do exaclty what the most of us wants on this - but this isn't easy for us, nor it's easy for them. Please remember to value the opposite opinions as well, and share your opinions in a way which is nice to listen to.





What is actually nice, at least, is the fact that this issue brings the community into a discussion, maybe bringing us closer together and helping us realize what we want together. Keep up the DIT sailors!

"We’ve decided to move forward with an open source memory card solution. This enables the use of memory cards up to 128GB on the Jolla Tablet for backups and additional storage, but due to Microsoft’s licensing limitation, cards over 32GB that are formatted in Jolla Tablet will not be readable with Windows computers or devices that advertise microSDXC support (cameras/phones/tablets). We apologise for the lack of full Windows support here, but we feel that this suits best with our community's wishes and the Jolla values."The community have had their word and Jolla listened to them. Jolla has informed us about this, but the outcome in practice includes more than this:1. When you go to a store and buy a bigger (more than 32GB) memory card, you usually find "SDXC" printed on the card. Already by purchacing this card you are (via the manufacturer) paying money to Microsoft. In this case you are buying a memory card preformatted to their exFAT filesystem.2. To enable the full capacity for the card on Jolla Tablet, you need to manually format the card, giving up the exFAT, to another format using a Linux computer. Popular formats supported by Linux are, for example, ext2, ext3, ext43. You can now use the card in your Jolla Tablet, and in any Linux powered computer/laptop/other device with a memory card reader. But in any other systems, if the memory card reader includes the trademark "SDXC", it will probably not read the data saved in the card - these card readers are expecting to find a FAT formatted card.The easiest way for common customers: Go with two separate memory cards.