Samsung Galaxy S7, LG G5 keeps the SD card, but skips Android 6.0's Adoptable Storage

Google's Android 6.0 Marshmallow comes with a feature 'Adoptable Storage' that has the ability to combine the internal storage and external storage (microSD card) of a device and treat the resulting storage as one partition.

Adoptable storage makes use of microSD cards by formatting them with the same structure as internal storage. In simple words, once the feature is enabled, the device thinks that the microSD card is part of its hardware.

Unfortunately, the recently announced Samsung's Galaxy S7 and LG G5 will not support the Adoptable Storage feature, despite running Android Marshmallow, therefore the microSD card will be treated as a separate storage, instead of merging with the internal storage.

Samsung provided an explanation about the missing feature, and said that users mainly use microSD card to transfer files between their phone and other devices (PC, tablet, etc.). With Adoptable Storage, the microSD card may get formatted the first time inserted into the device, erasing all the files (photos, videos) which might surprise unsuspecting users.

Here's Samsung's complete statement, LG's reason could have been the same- 

"Samsung decided not to use the Android Marshmallow “adoptable storage” model. We believe that our users want a microSD card to transfer files between their phone and other devices (laptop, tablet, etc), especially the photos and videos they shoot with the camera. With adoptable storage, first of all the card may be erased the first time it is inserted into the device. This behavior may be unexpected by many users and we don’t want our users to lose their files. Second, once Marshmallow starts using a card for adoptable storage, it cannot be read by other devices, so it loses this ability to be used for file transfer. Adoptable Storage is also primarily targeted towards emerging markets where devices with only 4-8GB of onboard storage are common. We think that our model of using microSD for mass storage is more in-line with our owner’s desires and expectations for how microSD should behave."

Via