Dealing with Android devices that don't need a SD card

Question

It seems that some Android devices like the HTC Incredible and the Archos 5 IT don't need a SD card for storage.

How should apps that read and write files to "external" storage (so far the SD card) deal with this in the most backward and forward compatible way possible?

Edit: Getting more reports about devices that use onboard memory as storage, like Pandigital Novel, in which IO operations that work with the SD card fail. Any ideas? Is it a permissions problem?

Answer 1

Use Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(). It works on the ARCHOS 5 Android tablet. It works on normal Android devices. And I have yet to confirm that the Incredible allows SDK applications to write to the large on-board flash area, so it may be you have no real choice. Note that Verizon is supposed to be shipping 2GB SD cards with the Incredible to help deal with this issue.