This sort of thing (lack of memory) was why people rooted (“jailbroke”, in the IOS world) their phones or tablets. You could get full access to the SD card, for a start.
Unfortunately, rooting a device stops it working with banking apps (apple pay, google pay), Jeppesen apps, Foreflight, and probably other stuff. AFAIK SD works on a rooted device but if it does they will have to block that if they start including 3rd party paid-for data. For Android, there are ways around that, with cloaked rooting, but not trivial.
Modern devices (phones and tablets) have tons of memory so much of the need for rooting has disappeared. Other reasons have remained but for obscure reasons they tend to not be worth the hassle anymore.
Generally, rooting an IOS (Apple) device has been much more of a hassle than rooting an Android device.
OTOH, Foreflight and Jepp stuff run on IOS only, no Android. Many previous threads; in the US the pilot population is > 95% IOS.
SD and EVFR are among the few good apps which still run on Android. Others have moved to IOS-only, partly because the difficulty of rooting protects their revenues better (or so they think).
Peter wrote:
if they [SD] start including 3rd party paid-for data
They already do and have done so for at least as long as I’ve used it (5+ years). SD also runs on Windows and there is no question about “rooting” there.
Whose data is it, and how much is it extra?
Sure it can be done, and even Jepp didn’t always protect their data. One of their products (no longer sold) could be easily updated by side-loading the data (on a non jailbroken Ipad). But they are gradually blocking these options.
I’ve been using it since 1 year on a Huawei mediapad 8.4 and am really pleased. It has 4g sim and absolutely no issue with battery that can run 4 to 5 hour continuous with SD, much more than all my flight legs. In case I have a power bank that can make it longer.
No overheat in sun this summer, just a bit weak in brightness. The past Samsung galaxy tab 8.4 is better on that point. Form factor is great, for this and approach charts in ifr into small planes (using it on yoke mount on pa28 and suction cup on DA42 or even dr400).
And SD is just great!
OK; the German DFS VFR package is perhaps the one of value, but (a) it’s not much (€50-100?) and (b) not many SD users, especially in its main market, will have bought that add-on, so a given user won’t have many friends who to copy it from 
The enforcement of non-rooting tends to be on more high value products. For example, Jeppview / JeppFD worldwide is about 10k for the standard 4 user package, a few k for the single user.
As a data point, the DFS package cost me 59£ earlier this week. Good value, I think. I did not own any personal access to the DFS plates before and always had to scrape them together from the club/flight school, which makes planning and preparation cumbersome.
Jujupilote wrote:
My friend who is a long time user of EVFR says it seems to be slowly dying (his feeling).
Hi Jujupilote,
That may be your friends feeling, but it’s certainly not the case!
EasyVFR has more users now than it has ever had in the past, and has been growing its user base consistently over the past few year. It has more users every year than the year before for quite a while now.
I suspect that the reason your friend has that feeling, is because they are using EasyVFR version 3, and they are seeing little in terms of development of that or little activity on the EasyVFR 3 forum.
However most of the development work is now being put into EasyVFR 4, which is a complete rebuild of the system. When you build software, and keep updating it with new versions and features, eventually you hit a point where decisions taken in the past start to place too many restrictions on things you want to do now. EasyVFR 3 has had so much development since EasyVFR 1 that, that EasyVFR 3 is effectively reaching this stage now.
So it was decided it was time to build a new version from the ground up which would be a more modern basis for future development and provide a better foundation for future developments, while taking into account all the things that has been learnt since PocketFMS (later EasyVFR) was first developed 16 years ago!
EasyVFR 4 is currently in beta, but is available in for beta testing by all EasyVFR users. However it’s on a separate website and with its own forum while it is in beta I suspect your friend has chosen not to take part in the beta and therefore is not seeing all the activity that is happening there with regular updates (2-3 per month now) and all the user interaction on that forum.
I’m not criticising you for making your comment! I appreciate that it was made in good faith. It’s just that I felt it necessary to correct it because such an incorrect comment can have a damaging effect if left uncorrected!
Colm
Arrogance strikes again. Several other related threads on that forum today.
They have quietly removed the SIA and Avioportolano Chart styles (probably fair enough since relatively few people have been using it and I guess they create additional work). But they have also totally messed up the German DFS Chart style, with Germany being their second most important market and a good share of German customers using and preferring that charts style. Not really a clever move, particularly in times where ForeFlight is (admitttedy, very slowly) catching up. Skydemon at the same time removes their own competitive advantage, better charting.
They got rid of the SIA chart style, which is one of the clearest in Europe.
