"Storage Anxiety" and nexus devices

[deputc26]

Matias Duarte recently stated that nexus devices do not include sd card support because sd cards negatively impact the user experience.

My own experience however is that user experience is worse without an sd card, I experience a sort of "storage anxiety" knowing that I can't increase storage should I run out. And this anxiety is completely rational as I in fact do often run out of space on my mobile devices. The cloud is supposed reduce the need for storage but the cloud is neither fast enough, nor everywhere-enough to supply me with an experience that is not frustrating. Further, I don't think that simply increasing internal space will totally cure the problem as with sd cards one has the option of owning multiple sd cards and swapping them out, effectively making your storage unlimited.

Anyone else experience "storage anxiety" or am I possessed of an unusually delicate mobile-device-psyche?

And for the record I'm not bashing android, I'm just seriously puzzled as to why nexus devices don't support sd cards. I always want to buy them and am always turned off by lack of sd card support.

 

[zerocool84]

They've done polls to show that people would rather have a slimmer phone than expandable storage. Sells have also shown that people don't care about expandable storage either. Do I like expandable storage? Yes, but I wouldn't totally dismiss a great phone because of that.

 

[dguy6789]

I'm rather confident not including SD card slot is entirely a cost cutting measure and not about size. Moto's Razr Maxx HD is about as thick as the N4, has a significantly larger battery, and a microSD slot.

 

[pm]

So I will say that my experience with an SD card on my SGS2 was a bit confusing. I ended up just storing music and movies on it, but I never understood why I couldn't move any random thing that I wanted onto the SD card. I figured it out eventually, but I will say that I can comprehend the idea that people are confused.

That said, I like to have 32GB on my phone. Between offline topo maps for hiking and snowshoeing, a few graphic intensive games, and then a whole lot of podcasts and music, a movie or two to watch at airports, and then I use my phone as a video camera and camera for life events, I find that I use ~22GB most of the time, and thus 16GB doesn't really cut it.

You could say "move your music to the cloud" but my big sport is cycling in the foothills west of town and there is no cell phone service at all once you hit the first crest. The cloud is only useful if you have access to internet, and I don't even have access to the phone system after 20 minutes of cycling. So instead what I'll end up doing is reducing how much music I have, and then doing a better job managing photos and videos (as it is, I keep more or less everything that I've taken for the last year or two on the phone). But I'd gladly have paid another $50 or even $100 more for 32GB. But I'd just as soon have gotten integrated memory and skipped the SD card and the SD slot.

 

[vi edit]

It's not about costs, thinness or any perceived consumer perceptions. It's intently there for the purpose of control in how people use the device and coercing/forcing them into other ways to store/retreive data. Apple *wants* you to use the cloud/iTunes for your music and storage. Same with Google as it's app portfolio goes that route. Microsoft is the same way with Skydrive.

This is a control issue by the makers and nothing more.

 

[God Mode]

It's not a user experience thing. It's a gouge customers by charging $50 for 8gb of additional storage thing.

8-16gb leaves almost no space for my music, movies, apps/games and HD picture/video recording. Maybe $2-300 phone bills are nothing to Google engineers but there is no realistic way a working person can afford to use "cloud" to fulfill their needs. It's insulting.

 

[TuxDave]

Matias Duarte recently stated that nexus devices do not include sd card support because sd cards negatively impact the user experience.

My own experience however is that user experience is worse without an sd card, I experience a sort of "storage anxiety" knowing that I can't increase storage should I run out. And this anxiety is completely rational as I in fact do often run out of space on my mobile devices. The cloud is supposed reduce the need for storage but the cloud is neither fast enough, nor everywhere-enough to supply me with an experience that is not frustrating. Further, I don't think that simply increasing internal space will totally cure the problem as with sd cards one has the option of owning multiple sd cards and swapping them out, effectively making your storage unlimited.

Anyone else experience "storage anxiety" or am I possessed of an unusually delicate mobile-device-psyche?

And for the record I'm not bashing android, I'm just seriously puzzled as to why nexus devices don't support sd cards. I always want to buy them and am always turned off by lack of sd card support.

Haha, I have to say I don't suffer from storage anxiety because the lifetime of your phone isn't long enough for you to have to plan that far in advance. Since this is not your first smartphone, you should have a good idea of how much space you currently use. If you are close to 75% of your capacity on your current device, I would definitely pay to move up to the next tier of storage on your next phone. (that or figure whether or not you really need to hoard all that data).

My wife and I definitely have different usage models. My storage is dominated by apps but I also delete apps that I don't use. I'm probably sitting around 4GB out of 8GB used. My wife is close to 7GB because she likes taking pictures (and keeping them) and so for her, the next device will probably get bumped to 16GB. We have one more year on the contract and so I'm sure we'll be fine until the next upgrade.

 

[Chrono]

It's not about costs, thinness or any perceived consumer perceptions. It's intently there for the purpose of control in how people use the device and coercing/forcing them into other ways to store/retreive data. Apple *wants* you to use the cloud/iTunes for your music and storage. Same with Google as it's app portfolio goes that route. Microsoft is the same way with Skydrive.

This is a control issue by the makers and nothing more.

Skydrive... really? The surface has a microSD slot in the back closed by the hinge. I believe the some Windows Phone 8 devices also have MicroSD slots. I love additional storage and it makes my user experience a lot better actually. Cloud storage would be practically if we all had unlimited data connections 100% of the time. How about games/apps too? Seems a lot of games are increasing in size (up to 2GB+ I believe). My HTC One X barely cuts it with my mp3s a few games/apps.

 

[vi edit]

I'm thinking in terms of W8 phones. So far the "flagship" W8 phones - Lumia 920 and HTC 8x are lacking the SD card. Only the low end phones have SD slots. Which is sort of a paradox.

People buying low end phones likely aren't power users and don't need/won't use the space. While the buyers of flagship devices likely are and would use the space for other things. But you can't get them with it.

 

[vi edit]

That's one thing I really have to give Samsung some credit for. They seem to have embraced the SD card slot and bring their high end devices to market with it available.

 

[Bateluer]

Removing the sd slot has little to do with use experience and more with pushing the user to the cloud. Which lets them charge you more money.

 

[boomhower]

It's not so much as anxiety as it just plain isn't enough. 16GB just isn't enough storage for me. I went with a 32GB iPhone with the 5 as I had run out of room on the previous 16GB I had. For this reason alone I'd have to go GSIII or with one of the new Razr's.

 

[Mopetar]

Matias Duarte recently stated that nexus devices do not include sd card support because sd cards negatively impact the user experience.

My own experience however is that user experience is worse without an sd card—

The people on this forum aren't most users though. If average Joe puts in a low-grade SD card into the phone, it's going to create a bad user experience which Joe is going to associate with the phone.

Removing the sd slot has little to do with use experience and more with pushing the user to the cloud. Which lets them charge you more money.

I don't think it's about charging money, as Google gives out a lot of stuff for free. Maybe they'll change that later, but I think it's more about platform lock-in. It might not necessarily be completely about keeping people on Android so much as keeping people using Google's services so Google can get that data, which is what the company wants. Even Android itself is an extension of that goal.

 

[bearxor]

Can't we just go with this being something completely up to the end user and that different people are going to have completely different needs?

I had a 8GB i3G, 16GB i4, 16GB GNex, and now a 16GB i5 and never felt a storage crunch at any level. But that's me. I'm much more in a position to stream whatever I want vs carrying around everything locally. When I do take a trip, I grab low-res versions of movies or TV shows I want to watch locally because the quality doesn't make a difference to me on a 4" or 10" screen.

I understand there's plenty of people out there that need to keep whatever they might use at any given time on their device. As long as this segment of people is large enough, there will be phones with expandable memory options.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I had trouble giving up micro SD, but at this stage I've come to expect that from Android (sad).

What troubles me more now is how Google is limiting the internal storage and still charging a hefty premium for higher capacities. No 32GB option just seems criminal for anything now.

I saw someone comment that maybe Google is doing this more to make OEMs happy, since Google is selling their hardware much cheaper, they maybe feel obliged to gimp it in some way to that it's partners can still sell their more expensive phones with more storage.

Or it could be Google just pushing hard on Nexus owners to be more loyal to Google cloud services.

If the cloud was more reliable, I'd be all for embracing it completely. But I just don't find it reliable enough. Sometimes I don't have a good signal strength, sometimes I have great signal strength and still the cloud lags and buffers. The cloud just isn't good enough yet.

I can manage with 16GB. But I would prefer more breathing room from having 32GB of space. Yet I won't pay $100 more for that extra 16GB of storage either. It already annoys me that I have to pay $50 for 8GB more, but it's impossible for me to live on 6GB of storage, so I'll have to pay that premium.

But... for $350 for a Nexus 4 16GB or $400 for a Nexus 10 16GB, I can get over it.

 

[ponyo]

It's not so much as anxiety as it just plain isn't enough. 16GB just isn't enough storage for me. I went with a 32GB iPhone with the 5 as I had run out of room on the previous 16GB I had. For this reason alone I'd have to go GSIII or with one of the new Razr's.

iOS apps tend to be much bigger in size than Android apps.

I can live with 8gb but I need 16 to be comfortable. But I'm one of those weirdos with zero music and movies stored on my phone. And I'm not a gamer.

I suffer from battery anxiety more than storage.

 

[gorcorps]

If they take away my SD slot at least give my a 32gig+ option. These new phones are giving me neither and it's pretty f'ing irritating.

 

[s44]

I'm thinking in terms of W8 phones. So far the "flagship" W8 phones - Lumia 920 and HTC 8x are lacking the SD card. Only the low end phones have SD slots. Which is sort of a paradox.

Doesn't the ATIV have SD?

This may be Duarte's party line, but I get the feeling that low storage and no SD is Google's way of leaving space for the OEMs, given how otherwise awesome the Nexus devices are. Of course, HTC left out the SD before that... which makes their phones already outdated.

 

[quest55720]

I can easily live with 16gigs on a phone personally. I have done it for years so it is not an issue. I get price Anxiety more than anything with cell phones and plans. This gets rid of that as this is the first reasonably priced unlocked phone that is not completely outdated or a POS.

 

[vi edit]

Doesn't the ATIV have SD?

Tentatively yes, the ATIV S is slated to have an SD card. But it's getting fuzzy on what will actually be available for the US market. Verizon is supposed to get the Samsung "Odyssey" which from what I gather just a renamed Ativ S. But there are no specs on it. So who knows what it ships with.

Samsung is one of the few bucking the trend of keeping SD cards on their flagship devices.

 

[Raduque]

I am getting by with 16gb in my GS2, but only because I have an 8gb uSD card with my music on it. Which, btw, is getting a little full.

 

[BladeVenom]

Samsung is the biggest seller, and they offer removable storage on their Samsung Galaxy S III.

 

[podspi]

It's not about costs, thinness or any perceived consumer perceptions. It's intently there for the purpose of control in how people use the device and coercing/forcing them into other ways to store/retreive data. Apple *wants* you to use the cloud/iTunes for your music and storage. Same with Google as it's app portfolio goes that route. Microsoft is the same way with Skydrive.

This is a control issue by the makers and nothing more.

It's not a user experience thing. It's a gouge customers by charging $50 for 8gb of additional storage thing.

8-16gb leaves almost no space for my music, movies, apps/games and HD picture/video recording. Maybe $2-300 phone bills are nothing to Google engineers but there is no realistic way a working person can afford to use "cloud" to fulfill their needs. It's insulting.

Basically this. The argument that the ability to expand storage capacity makes the user experience worse is just nonsense. If polls actually showed that, my guess would be that these people ran out of space, and couldn't figure out how to use the SD card due to Android's semi-confusing use of Internal and External SDs. These people would probably have had a poor experience because they ran out of space anyway.

This movement towards non-removable batteries, storage, and even SIM cards (Photon Q) is driving me nuts. Yea, I get that people like thin, but there is definitely too thin, and there is definitely a point when the trade off isn't worth it.

Sadly, I already have pretty odd phone preferences (physical QWERT FTW!) so I am afraid I will be left out in the dust as firms (ok, Motorola) relentlessly pursues teh thinness.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

for now i dont mind not having removable storage. that way google can go to the carriers and tell them they need to lower wireless prices or include some free data so we can all use the cloud. i think google is also creating their own service in certain cities as well

i dont know anyone sayin' "we gotta have thinna fones instida removaba storage". i DO see people complaining about battery life

 

[ChronoReverse]

Honestly, if the Nexus4 were 16/32GB then it wouldn't be a problem at all. But 8Gb is just ridiculous. How could you go LOWER than last years model?