As a user of an Android device, I've always been a little confused about the various types of data storage that are available, and where exactly my apps are storing their (well really, my) data. There's "internal storage", which I've always assumed is akin to the internal hard drive on a normal computer: durable, persistent storage. And then there's "external storage", which I've assumed meant a removable SD card. So I always assumed that if I were to take the memory card out of my phone and toss the phone in the water, I would at least maintain in my possession all of the data that I've explicitly moved to (or configured apps to automatically save to) "external storage". Well, it turns out that's not quite the case. What Android docs call "external" storage is really just a "non-private" data space. And a removable SD card may or may not be where this non-private storage resides, as it can actually be a partition of the internal storage! Come on Google! Why call this "external storage" at all? It's "non-private" or "public" storage. Please rename it.
Here are the official docs:
Using the External Storage
Every Android-compatible device supports a shared "external storage" that you can use to save files. This can be a removable storage media (such as an SD card) or an internal (non-removable) storage. Files saved to the external storage are world-readable and can be modified by the user when they enable USB mass storage to transfer files on a computer.
It's possible that a device using a partition of the internal storage for the external storage may also offer an SD card slot. In this case, the SD card is not part of the external storage and your app cannot access it (the extra storage is intended only for user-provided media that the system scans).
