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The Galaxy Nexus is going to get many ROMs over time but one it has gotten today has added a feature that many seek in any Android phone – EXT4 file system support. EXT4 brings about faster memory operations, meaning multimedia, documents and apps can be opened and saved faster.
With a dual-core processor and an overall fast system in Ice Cream Sandwich the differences will probably be negligible, but every little bit always counts. The app also features a number of other tweaks, including its deodexed apps (for future theme support) and other general speed tweaks. Find it here. [via Android Community]
I thought EXT4 was the default file system since Gingerbread.
Why isn’t this the default file system for Android? Is there a downside to it?
Ext4 like Ext3 is a journaling file-system so all that journaling is good for issues with data integrity, but it probably slows down operations which would not be good. On the good side though the 4GB file limitation would no longer apply and would be good for playing 1080p videos on the phone. That’s what I’m planning to do with my TF201 once I go and buy it.
“but it probably slows down operations which would not be good”
Just barely. In fact, it only slows down file reading by a small fraction. (It has to check the journal when reading a file, and if it isn’t there, it will access the actual file system.)File writes are just as fast. (Since they are written straight to the journal.)
Yea I thought gingerbread used ext 4 by default
Windows cannot read ext4 file systems, but since the SGN uses MTP (and not USB Mass Storage), the file system on the SGN is irrelevant to any computer reading from it.
So no, I don’t think Gingerbread has ext4.
http://blog.gsmarena.com/android-2-3-gingerbread-uses-ext4-file-system-promises-better-dual-core-performance/
Also my Win7 PC could read the files on my Galaxy S2 with no issues, and the S2 uses the EXT4 file system.
Errm, they are likely referring to the system partition of the Android device. The part that you’re reading using Win7 does not use ext4. Trust me, Windows just isn’t compatible with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4#Compatibility_with_Windows_and_Macintosh
The distinction drawn in this article is that *all* of the SGN would be using ext4, hence “EXT4 brings about faster memory operations, meaning multimedia, documents and apps can be opened and saved faster.” You don’t get this with your Galaxy S2 because your multimedia/documents/etc. are on an SD card that isn’t ext4.
Your SD card is probably some sort of FAT file system type. If it were ext3/4, I can assure you that you wouldn’t be able to mount it to your Windows machine :-)
This. Mac OS cannot write to and Windows can neither read from or write to ext4, so SD cards (or the /sdcard partition in the Xoom/Galaxy Nexus) are completely unaffected by filesystem changes.
“so SD cards (or the /sdcard partition in the Xoom/Galaxy Nexus)”
No. The Galaxy Nexus *can* make the /sdcard partition ext4—that’s the whole point of this article. The reason this can be done is that the SGN uses MTP and not USB mass storage. That is, the file system is never directly exposed—only through the MTP protocol. Therefore, the choice of file system is arbitrary.
They use MTP because there is no removable storage. MTP allows concurrent access to your data from both your Android device and your computer.
I was misinformed. Thanks for the clarification of how MTP makes it so the host computer doesn’t need to be able to read the filesystem. Yet another benefit to an already superior protocol. Just need some more standard Linux and Mac support…
Aren’t these Revolution HD roms the ones everyone is saying to boycott?
Really? didn’t know that, what’s with that?
P3Droid: Ok Plz rt this, this guy is a scam artist http://bit.ly/sdw9DY the auto rotation is a two letter edit in the launcher manifest..he is just collecting $$ with no real effort put forth. He is repacking @PaulOBrien edits to fool people.
P3Droid: I call him a scam artist because the Nexus is AOSP he doesn’t need the phone to do crap, to state that he needs donations for a phone to make a simple change of “nosensor” to “sensor” in the manifest is either a lie, or he doesn’t know how to make a rom.
Cliffs: Basically he is claiming things are harder to do than they are in order to collect money and reusing other peoples work. At least that’s what I gathered from it. Both of those tweets are from P3Droid on November 28th.
Yeah, what he said >:) ^^^^^^^^^^^
Gingerbread was YAFFS2, not EXT4.
But why then CM7 being a Gingerbread-based is installed on EXT4, at least on Nook Color. It converts previously formatted EXT3 in the process of ROM flashing.
I’m not sure. But the Nexus devices use a YAFFS2 file system, which is a modified EXT4. At least that’s what I’ve read.