Flashback: the rise (and fall?) of the microSD card
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- Hoo
- KgZ
- 05 Dec 2022
Tbh I didn't even use sd card since my first phone in 2015
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- Anonymous
- P@c
- 05 Dec 2022
well an extra storage can't hurt
- H
- Hanif Fikri
- ib4
- 05 Dec 2022
IgorS, 05 Dec 2022Fall? For who? And why? People that only see smartphone ... moreit could potentially replace external hardisk..
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- IgorS
- P02
- 05 Dec 2022
Fall? For who? And why?
People that only see smartphone brands removing the microSD slot even on midrange devices are looking to only one slice instead of the whole pie.
Professional cameras, handheld consoles like Nintendo DS and many other devices are beneficted with microSD slot.
Smartphone brands are just being greedy while claiming "it's for your own good", removing thing and almost never giving a counterpart. No charger in the box with an excuse of being "enviromental friendly" and the phone keeps the same price. No headphone jack, but without sending an adapter or even phones with USB-C connection. No microSD card slot, but the only options are 64GB or 128GB of maximum internal storage (with some exceptions that has 256GB and more).
It's a shame that microSD cards are so underrated. I think they are more reliable than pendrives. I never lost files using microSD and on the other hand, I had tons of problems with pendrives corruption everything.
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- Anonymous
- PZs
- 05 Dec 2022
at least, 1 high speed micro xd card slot MUST be equipped in smartphones, more slots are welcome and will be called extra luxury features
also ... a 3.5 mm audio plug ... is a MUST
bravo for Sony
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- Anonymous
- LB2
- 05 Dec 2022
Anonym, 04 Dec 2022Tapes are incredibly cheap per TB, while SD cards are sever... moreTheir point was older storage technologies are still being used which you entirely missed. You should reread their comment and if you still can't understand it then you are the one who is trolling.
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- Anonymous
- Sr6
- 05 Dec 2022
Vegetaholic, 05 Dec 2022Absolutely agree, it become redundant. Like having 128gb or... moreWithout sd card you can only make 1000 selfy videos (imaginary number). With sd card you can make UNLIMITED videos. Think about it for a minute...........
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- Anonymous
- yAL
- 05 Dec 2022
I have a NM card in my Huawei phone but realised that I only used it for backup. My photos, videos and files can be easily transfered wirelessly through Huawei Share across my Matebook and Matepad.
I seriously think that having such a convenient way of transferring files wirelessly is what killed memory cards.
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- Anonymous
- eW6
- 05 Dec 2022
Daemon Targaryen, 05 Dec 2022"We know some of you absolutely hate that most makers ... moreThere are hundreds of phone models. It costs little extra to have at least one more smartphone in your portfolio that has these things - Jack, sdcard, notchless, flat screen, wider screen ratio, removable battery, 5 year updates etc etc.
The market exists for these things. A phone with these things WILL sell, maybe not as much as regular flagship, but it WILL capture the market for people who want these things but downgrade to midrange because they couldn't get these.
Now here's the crucial thing - IF a smartphone maker offered an alternate flagship with the above features, it would get get very popular very quickly and the shittier flagships they sell now will gradually die out.
This is why all smartphone makers have an unspoken gentlemen's agreement not to make an actually good phone. It is mutually assured destruction, even if they capture more market share in the beginning, it will kill long term profits.
The same thing happens in virtually all markets.
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- PeterThePanda
- vx6
- 05 Dec 2022
OEMs stopped including MicroSD slots on their flagship and upper-midrange phones when they realized they can earn more $$$ by doing the Apple way: upcharging users to get the higher storage version of devices and making them use cloud storage subscription services.
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- Anonymous
- a0V
- 05 Dec 2022
Anonymous, 05 Dec 2022Because majority of people are the reason companies get awa... moreMajority is the reason high end phones are above €1000 while lacking functionality cheaper phones have.
Majority is the reason midrangers are mediocre and cost as much high end phones did 8 to 10 years ago, even with inflation counted this would not be that extreme.
Majority of people are the reason we can not have fun stuff, just look at how rotten the gaming market in the 10 years become, because of same stupid majority of people.
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- Anonymous
- a0V
- 05 Dec 2022
Daemon Targaryen, 05 Dec 2022"We know some of you absolutely hate that most makers ... moreThere is still a small market for smaller phones.
However in low (under €300) category, exactly the one being skipped by phones like Zenfone, iPhone 12/13 Mini or even the S10e.
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- Anonymous
- 0vE
- 05 Dec 2022
Daemon Targaryen, 05 Dec 2022"We know some of you absolutely hate that most makers ... moreBecause majority of people are the reason companies get away with EVERYTHING.
Had a discussion with a colleague, and in the end he said "if high end non foldable android phones go above €2000 I get them anyhow, because that is a fair price." Plus above that another colleague came and said "I hope everything goes exclusively to cloud and they go full on esim and wireless charging, because that's the future and it would make phones cheaper"
BIG FAT BS
They do that AND make them expensive, because people like them, the majority are the reason the smartphone market is rotten to the core.
- A
- Anders
- 39y
- 05 Dec 2022
Anonymous, 05 Dec 2022Do people not record videos with all those fancy cameras th... moreExactly. If you're regularly recoding videos in 4K, 128GB or even 256GB is going to fill up pretty quick
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- Anonymous
- 0vE
- 05 Dec 2022
sadh, 04 Dec 2022Asus gives everything from sd slot to compact size and even... moreAsus doesn't give microsd slot...
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- Anonymous
- 0vE
- 05 Dec 2022
Asd, 04 Dec 2022Exactly. IPhone fans got it personally because IPhone can&#... moreThere no such thing as android or iphone fans.
Thatsa fantasy created by the internet.
- Daemon Targaryen
- IbE
- 05 Dec 2022
"We know some of you absolutely hate that most makers have stopped equipping their phones with microSD slots, especially in the flagship class. Unfortunately, the average consumer seems to care about the card slot about as much as they do about compact phones. The same goes for the average smartphone maker."
This statement holds true. Commenters on websites like this or on YouTube are a very vocal minority.
Just two weeks ago, I was mad that we no longer have headphone jack. Since getting my Sony WH-1000XM4 for $130 brand new and sealed from OfferUp and a used $80 Bose QC35 as backup, I now don't care if we don't have headphone jack. A lot better than the hideous AirPods with 3-hour battery life.
People will praise the iPhone SE (2016) or 12/13 mini. How they want compact phones back. But reality tells me majority doesn't want compact phones back. I've never seen a 12/13 mini owner. Never seen it being used for a TV show or movie either. Commenters speak for a small crowd.
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- Vegetaholic
- C9n
- 05 Dec 2022
Anonymous, 04 Dec 2022I don't really care how much storage I have on my phon... moreOmg. You can litteraly back-up your entire phone data to PC in a blink of an eye. Take USB cable connect to PC and copy paste, try to do that simply with sd card. You need to look for needle to remove that tiny card and then to look for adapters to try to connect to PC 😀
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- Vegetaholic
- C9n
- 05 Dec 2022
Absolutely agree, it become redundant. Like having 128gb or 256gb on an average phone is way too much for avarage user. I have phone with 128gb and cannot even fill half of it and I have been using it for almost 4 years.
- Super Android 22
- mx}
- 05 Dec 2022
Ren, 04 Dec 2022“how many MP3s and video files do you have on your phone?”
... moreSo you're probably a more heavy user for locally saved data vs a lot of people and yet you aren't using half a 128gb storage phone and 1/5 of a 256gb phone (I don't even need to include 512 or 1tb memory configs), still why do you need microsd?
I mean I used to have 15gb of saved data like songs, videos etc on microsd cards all the way from the early 00's but I just swapped it to cloud or just the phones internal, quicker disk space from device to device, not even had the itch for a microsd slot or come close to using up my internal storage (last time space was an issue was the galaxy s3 days with 4/8/16gb emmc storage options).
Also data can easily be swapped between devices even with broken screens, you have a USB port on your phone you know that can even be used to display on a tv/monitor/laptop/pc and most devices have NFC or USB to USB data transfer abilities or worse case having professionals to pull the data off the chip if its that important.
If you have rubbish data plans but decent WiFi at home with decent data caps then just download everything you need on WiFi? (UK has plans just like that, very few actual cheap data sims or its stupidly high monthly contract deals for anything half decent on data. We're talking 2gb for £15 on PAYG, £40 on monthly with cheaper flagships, "unlimited" on contract being £50 or over unless you get just sim deal for about £20-30)
I've got about 10gb of Spotify songs saved locally with about 5gb of YouTube vids saved locally for offline viewing so you can still save locally even with streaming sites/apps for and I've never even thought about having enough space, I just download anything I need too to internal storage, or cloud if I want instant access to something where ever I am.
Don't need a microsd card to do this and I've got about 60gb, possibly more now I've not checked in a while of photos and 1080p/ 4k video with documents too saved to my cloud drives, have done for about 8+ years now (steadily using more and more data) without a single issue too so that's stubbornness to not use cloud storage, really not an inheritant fault of anything or saving to just 1 cloud device (I've got like 4 and 3 of them are completely free).
I'd take a biometric face unlock sensor or the under screen electromagnetic speaker/dual facing speakers, dolby vision/atmos screen/speakers for content viewing or improved battery tech over tech that's not been needed in phones for almost a decade now (same as the headphone jack, the type C port works as a headphone jack so just use the supplied 3.5 dongle or get cheap BT headphones, you won't hear sound difference unless you're spending hundreds/thousands on equipment).
Microsd slot and 3.5 port didn't make phones fun or more interesting, if anything removable backs and batteries is the real painful loss on phones or pop up selfie cams for all screen displays for "fun" features.