"It used to be possible for Android apps to access any kind of storage on an android device through the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. Writing to the SD card is useful for many different kinds of apps, e.g. file managers or cloud storage synchronization. However, the latest version of Android will no longer allow apps to write anywhere on external storage media, instead apps will only be allowed to access app-specific folders on SD cards. Android Police has an excellent writeup of the changes and the implications for users."
[ED Note: This is bound to irritate power users that rely on their SD cards for additional device storage.]
(Score: 1) by cykros on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:57AM
The use case that can read other apps' data? If that includes save content, I can see a very large number of use cases. Any time you're editing a file in one app and viewing/listening to the content in another, you need that ability.