Save apps and games directly to your memory card, on Lumia 530

With a 4-inch LCD display and a powerful 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor running the latest Windows Phone 8.1 software, the Nokia Lumia 530 is a great compact mobile gaming smartphone.

While the on-board 4GB of memory should be enough for most gaming apps, the Lumia 530 can also run apps and games from a memory card (otherwise known as an SD card).

SD cards have always been a great place to store your photos and videos. And, while that’s still the case here, with Windows Phone 8.1 you can now download content from the Windows Phone Store directly to your SD card.

This may not seem like a big deal, but it is, explains Matthew Crocker, Product Manager for Lumia 530 at Microsoft:

“Take Asphalt 8: Airborne for example; it’s about 1GB in size to download, and then needs even more when installed. You don’t have to be a mathematician to realise that if you’ve already got media content, or some other apps installed, you may need additional space to even download it.

That’s why being able to download directly onto your SD card is important, as you can with Lumia 530.”

While many manufacturers also allow for the SD card storing of apps and games, some still require that the apps and games are first downloaded to the phone’s local storage and only then can they be transferred to the SD card.

“Moving apps to the SD card once downloaded isn’t a great solution. It’s an extra process that people don’t really want to do. Plus, you may download the file only to realise that it fails half way through due to lack of space, wasting valuable data allowance and time. Our method does away with all of that,” explains Matthew.

“It’s worth noting that you can move apps from your phone’s memory to the SD card with the Lumia 530, but we’d recommend setting it up to download there automatically,” continues Matthew.

Taking advantage of this feature is simple; you’ll find the settings already in place under Settings and Storage Sense. Look for the ‘Store new apps on my’ option and change to ’SD card’.

The Lumia 530 supports MicroSD up to 128GB, meaning there should be no limitations when it comes to downloading apps or games from Windows Phone Store.

“You can use any SD card, but I really recommend using a fast performing card from a well known supplier,” tells Matthew.

If you’re worried about security, fear not! Windows Phone has been designed to be secure. Applications cannot access other applications’ data regardless whether they’re stored on the internal memory or a SD card.

The Lumia 530 comes in Single and Dual SIM variants, with an expected retail price of under 100€.

Do you love apps and games? The more the merrier? Is this news to your ears? Share your thoughts with us, below.