Brian & Anand Hate SD Card's in Phones

[you2]

I disagree on both factors. First SD card is more than just additional memory it is ease of transportation between devices. I also think this is the reason the sd card was killed by google; they prefer the model cloud everything which is not the model i wish to use (at least for everything).
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As for battery - sure if i'm around town having a fix battery is mostly ok - cept they don't age that well. When a device cost $1000 it is kind of nice if it would last 4 years. For travel a small fix battery kind of sucks - esp an OLD small fix battery. I've seen my friends plow through 3 portable battery backs a day for their iphone on trips; while my 4 year old phone with a $10 new battery keeps on ticking as if it were 1 day old.

Wow, super-old thread. Anway, I'd say that IP67/IP68 ratings would more than make up for losing a removable battery. Most phones nowadays are good to go 8-10 hours with moderate usage (more than enough) and fast charging has also negated the need for extra batteries.

As for SD cards, I think as Android evolved it became more difficult to manage SD storage securely, and memory standards/speeds weren't keeping up for a while (UFS could change that.) At best, I'd imagine future Samsung phones might only give you the option of external storage for photos and videos only, and limit its use for other apps.

iPhones now come with 512GB at nearly NVMe speeds...more than enough for most folks.

 

[WelshBloke]

As for SD cards, I think as Android evolved it became more difficult to manage SD storage securely, and memory standards/speeds weren't keeping up for a while (UFS could change that.) At best, I'd imagine future Samsung phones might only give you the option of external storage for photos and videos only, and limit its use for other apps.

Sdcards are great for music, video, and photos. All the things that take up the majority of space on a phone.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I won't (easily) purchase a cell phone (smart phone) without a microSDHC/XC slot, and highly preferably, a removable battery. All three of my Samsung Galaxy-family phones have had these things, along with a headphone jack.

I don't need IP67/68/69-whatever, I'm not a stupid moron that tries to take my phone into the shower with them, or leave it in my pocket when I go swimming, or try to take underwater photographs in Maui with it.

I also, thus far, haven't spent over $140-150 on a cell phone.

I echo lxskllr's point, if there were ever a phone that ran an Open Source / Free Software platform, that had a workable docking station, then I would be willing to pay a quite reasonable sum for such a thing, assuming that it also had my pre-requesites met.

 

[WelshBloke]

I like a good camera, an Sdcard, headphone jack, wireless charging, good screen, waterproof/resistant (it rains a lot here!)...

Just the hardware requirements pretty much scream top end Samsung.

I'd like a swappable battery but that ship has sailed at the high end I guess.

 

[zebrax2]

I agree with the others that an SD card slot for me is still a must have feature.

For the removable battery I'm slightly torn. While having the ability to replace an old battery for a newer one or instantly reviving your phone with a spare one is nice, waterproof/resistance is a pretty great feature to have specially if you live in a where it rains a lot. Also the availability of power banks (some even feature quick charging) helped soften the blow of losing removable batteries.

 

[WelshBloke]

About the battery thing.

I work 13 hour shifts and I don't really get tome to charge it at work. Fast charge in the car on the way to work means I'm fully charged when I get there and that seems to last me well.

I just checked my up time and it's 340 hours so the battery life is obviously working for me!

 

[lxskllr]

Anway, I'd say that IP67/IP68 ratings would more than make up for losing a removable battery.

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s5-6033.php

 

[DAPUNISHER]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...-literally-catch-fire/?utm_term=.6a66e98a91fa

This article got me thinking about this thread and why i wanted to revive it.

It's more or less planned obsolescence from all of the manufacturers but the battery portion has a significant environmental impact. All of my galaxy phones are designed to last 2 years- battery wears down, internal memory starts to slow down (hell my note 4 literally bricked itself 1 month after the 2 year warranty, failed emmc), screens start to burn in, and updates keep getting pushed to the phone that slow it to a crawl. pisses me off, but what can we do. and to hell with the premium materials. i'll take a plastic body with a good looking screen. it all gets beat up anyways

I felt similarly until I got an Essential phone for under $300 BNIB. It is currently running stock Pie and is confirmed to update to Q when it comes out. It is titanium and ceramic which is bonkers for that price. No headphone jack, no waterproof, no SD card slot (what the thread was originally about), no OLED. None of those things are of consequence for me. I have never gamed on a phone, though this one can do it, and do not know if or when I will. Have no interest in VR for now, have BT headphones (it comes with an adapter for corded though) have zero use for waterproof, and 128GB is plenty for my needs. I can always offload to cloud, flash drive, or laptop if I run out due to video or such on vacation. The 360 camera can be had for $40 or so now too. As to the camera on the phone, it has improved significantly with updates. Most of the bashing this phone took at launch is invalid now, particularly given the radical price drops and improvements since then.

In the end, I think this is the least planned obsolescence phone I have had thus far. Q being confirmed, and more accessories being planned are encouraging too, provided the company sticks around of course.

On a final note: tech recycling boxes are under $10 or so, and they take anything you can cram in them. I presume they are doing the best job possible with the batteries materials, or is it one of those feel good things where the reality of it is depressing?

 

[Ichinisan]

Sdcards are great for music, video, and photos. All the things that take up the majority of space on a phone.

Not great for recording 4K. Many cards can't keep up.

 

[Red Storm]

I understand devs and OEMs are worried about people installing apps on SD, and then having suboptimal experiences and then blaming the app/OS/OEM for the problems. To me Google should implement mSD cards in such a way that they can only be used as file storage, or some kind of system check to verify/require a certain speed for the cards.

I used to think I needed mSD cards but after experiencing issues and some failures with them, I became much less enthusiastic about them. I've been just fine using the phone's built in storage plus the cloud.

 

[QueBert]

Huh? iCloud doesn't extend the storage on a device. You can't have more than 8GB of content on an 8GB Apple device...even if you paid to expand your free iCloud account to 50GB.

But it kinda does, my best friend is a female who takes a bazillion pics of her grand kids. While yes, she can't have more than 8gb of stuff on her phone, she has what's equal to about 40 gigs of pics and video on her phone. Since they're all accessible as if they were physically on her phone. For pictures, video and music iCloud's great because it's seamless. I don't know what songs are on my phone and which are on the cloud. I just know that they wouldn't all fit on my phone.

 

[Ichinisan]

But it kinda does, my best friend is a female who takes a bazillion pics of her grand kids. While yes, she can't have more than 8gb of stuff on her phone, she has what's equal to about 40 gigs of pics and video on her phone. Since they're all accessible as if they were physically on her phone. For pictures, video and music iCloud's great because it's seamless. I don't know what songs are on my phone and which are on the cloud. I just know that they wouldn't all fit on my phone.

Yeah...I figured that out a long time ago

Been on the 2TB plan for a very long time. Family Sharing lets friends and family share my storage quota, so they can all enable iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Backup as if they paid for their own storage.

 

[Zaap]

Cloud storage - in my view- is an addition to, not replacement for, a decent amount of on board storage. For me, it's backup, not primary. And talk about "try recording 4k video to it..."

 

[CZroe]

But it kinda does, my best friend is a female who takes a bazillion pics of her grand kids. While yes, she can't have more than 8gb of stuff on her phone, she has what's equal to about 40 gigs of pics and video on her phone. Since they're all accessible as if they were physically on her phone. For pictures, video and music iCloud's great because it's seamless. I don't know what songs are on my phone and which are on the cloud. I just know that they wouldn't all fit on my phone.

There’s nothing “seamless” about it. iCloud CONSTANTLY deletes files while I’m in the middle of working with them and several applications just crash.

For example, I might be editing a movie in iMovie and I had to wait an extra 15 minutes for it to download the project files from iCloud. I might need to multitask to Safari to grab a bookmarked URL that I need to insert into the captions. I spend all of 5 seconds outside of the app and when I return it says that it has to download my files AGAIN. It literally deletes them from my device right out from under me. ...and Lord help you if you don’t have 15+ minutes to sit there and stare at a progress indicator: if you dare to do anything else, even take a phone call, it will dump all progress and start over.

There is no intelligence to it at all. It’s doesn’t prioritize the files I’ve already had to download again several times, it doesn’t prioritize Favorites, and there is no flag you can set or album you can use to manually keep it on your device. Even if you’re OK with it deleting the video as soon as you are done with it, there isn’t even an elegant way to manually download it for when the “seamless” integration with other apps fails.

For example, YouTube will crash and say that the audio is corrupted when you try to upload a video that iCloud uncontrollably offloaded from your device. It will just do that over and over without ever triggering iOS/iCloud to properly download the file. The only reliable way to do that is to go to the Camera Roll, find the placeholder/stub video, and attempt to “Edit” it. It will often inexplicably just hang until you do something like plug in, get on WiFi, or disable Power Save mode.

I don’t blame YouTube because they are just using Apple’s API as it was intended. If it were truly “seamless” then Google wouldn’t have to treat the offloaded file any differently. It should automatically reload and YouTune will just take a bit longer to preview it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as advertised. I’ve literally exported a movie from iMovie and multitasked straight over to YouTube to upload it and had it delete the file while switching between apps. WTF?! It doesn’t help that iMovie can’t be interrupted while exporting and will leave multi-GB phantom files on your phone if you do multitask (or even answer a call), and that crap definitely doesn’t get deleted/offloaded to iCloud! Only way I know to reclaim the storage without jail breaking is to successfully export the same project again at the same resolution, but most users just go on wondering why iMovie is suddenly using another 10GB on their phone.

Allowing iCloud to “seamlessly” manage your storage sounds like a great idea until you realize that it doesn’t work in practice.

 

[WelshBloke]

Not great for recording 4K. Many cards can't keep up.

Good luck recording 4K video and constantly uploading/downloading that on cloud storage!
Even if the Sdcard isn't fast enough for it (and I've not had that problem, although I tend to keep to 1080 for other reasons) it allows you to maximise the phone storage by off loading all your other files there.

 

[Zaap]

One thing with SD cards is I wish places like Amazon would crack down on the fakes.

It still amazes me that search for say a 256GB mSD card on Amazon and you'll find legit ones from reputable makers, and then hold on, what's this? One from GooPlop for $9.99?? Well let me get that...! (Ignore the screaming comments and one star rating, click buy)

Then later I'm sure it's: "yeah SD cards suck! Mine couldn't hold more than 8GB and lost all my data!"

Its pretty clear the shady businesses selling fakes make outrageous profits... selling barely working junk for even $10 would be. But when non-techie people get bit this way, it sure doesn't help the removable storage camp.

 

[Ichinisan]

Good luck recording 4K video and constantly uploading/downloading that on cloud storage!
Even if the Sdcard isn't fast enough for it (and I've not had that problem, although I tend to keep to 1080 for other reasons) it allows you to maximise the phone storage by off loading all your other files there.

Yeah. iCloud works the same way. For iCloud Photo Library, iCloud Music Library, iCloud Drive, etc --- there's an option for each one that lets you choose "optimize [iPhone/*Mac*/iPad/iPod Touch] storage" instead of keeping everything stored locally.

 

[WelshBloke]

Yeah. iCloud works the same way. For iCloud Photo Library, iCloud Music Library, iCloud Drive, etc --- there's an option for each one that lets you choose "optimize [iPhone/*Mac*/iPad/iPod Touch] storage" instead of keeping everything stored locally.

It's just that moving/storing stuff to an Sdcard is way faster than uploading stuff to the cloud plus it doesn't hit your data allowance and you don't have to worry about not being able to get your stuff if you lose signal.

 

[wilds]

One thing I often do when out and about with my DSLR and phone is place the DSLR sdcard into my phone to view images. I purposefully cheaped out and got the cheap 360p display on my DSLR because the 1080p display still looks ancient compared to my Note 8's.

I love taking a few hundred shots, and look through them all on my phone while sitting at lunch or something. No cables required; all offline.