Not exactly “news” but the recent Samsung Galaxy Ax6 phones (A26, A36, A56) all does not have the MicroSD card slot, only the Galaxy A16 still has it.
I fucking hate this. I love having a mini-TV with me. I can load up a Terabyte of TV shows I love rewatching. You know, maybe you travel or something. Also, good for recording like a lot of videos. Now, new Samsung phones cannot do that anymore.
Sorry for the rant, but honestly, I have to vent: Fuck Samsung. Fuck this capitalist bullshit.
I’m thinking of stop buying Samsung for the future, but honestly, other manufacturers might follow suit, so it ultimately might not matter. I hate this bullshit. I will carry a portable SSD if I have to, I ain’t buying your stupid cloud. I’m broke AF and I don’t got no money for subscriptions. (Also, they could hold your data hostage and refuse access for random “ToS” violations)
What are your thoughts? What’s the future of MicroSD card slots in phones?
(future looks so bleak)
I’m still pissed about the this and morons over on Reddit actually defended it saying “NoBoDy UsEs SD CaRdS. UsE tHe cLoUd”
Yeah ok buddy, like I want to pay infinite dollars for a $50 SD card? What about shit I don’t want on somebody else’s computer? What about if I’m in an area with low coverage? What if I want root my device and have an emergency firmware to recover from?
Eventually the smarter people showed up, but fuck the onslaught of idiots that tried saying cloud storage was better than SD. The future is fucked if the current generation is this brain-dead.
I like SD slots for all kinds of reasons, never had a single one die on me… As for subscription based stuff, even/especially apps, etc, they’re just a money drain and, let’s face it, a lot are not worth what they demand and are plain exploitative…
I need a slot but my phone doesnt have one. I keep having to offload videos to my computer extremely slowly via bluetooth. Slots matter. You WILL run out of space if you use your phone for more than calling texting and web browsing. Heck cant install giant games either unless i delete the others.
Nintendo Switch 2 just got it’s 1tb MicroSD Express (1gbps write / 3 gbps read) card announced so I see a bright future for MicroSD technology.
Yeah, but I see it as a “premium” product going forward.
Cool. More phones I won’t buy.
Just get a Motorola phone, the stylus 5g has a micro SD and headphones jack for $250 on sale. I got one after I broke my last Samsung phone, and I was pleasantly surprised coming from S and Z series phones.
How is your mileage on that? I tried out the stylus last year but found the headphone jack was garbage. Took my earbuds to an electronics shop and found every Moto phone had bad jacks. Every non-Moto jack worked fine. For reference, I would play any sound at low volume and there would be a hissing/static noise in my buds.
I haven’t really thought about extra storage in awhile, when most phones are 256GB or more it’s hard to fill up that much space. At most I keep my music (maybe 30GB or so), some offline shows when traveling, photos, etc… I’m barely at 60GB of usage on mine.
All I ever remember with SD cards in phones was how slow they are, how often they would randomly break and corrupt the data somehow, and how annoying it was to get stuff to properly work with content on an SD card.
I just bought a 1TB SD card and cloned the 512GB card that was in my phone over to it because I was running out of space. My phone is rooted which does make forcing or tricking apps to use the SD card for storage much easier.
That’s fair, the downside of rooting for me is the struggle with updates and it significantly compromises the security of my phone.
Yeah my buddies all buy the biggest phone capacity they can get, and I barely thought about my last phones 128gb. I had to check my current phones capacity just now, thought it was 256 but I guess it’s 512.
I’m using 180 ish, but I could easily be under a hundred again if I deleted a bunch of crap that’s built up 🤷♂️
I do remember losing a months worth of photos years ago when my SD card died, and my Dropbox had gotten full. That was the day I upgraded my Dropbox. I’m on a yearly subscription, it’s due to renew next month, I hope to be on immich by then. Just gotta find time.
Immich has been great, I started using it like 2 years ago now I think.
There will always be some small brands who will have phones with sd cards. I am not worried
I haven’t felt the need for one in years, probably ever. My current 128gb phone is less than half full.
Most of my music is streamed on Spotify, and my personal library is available on Jellyfin. I could make a local copy if I really needed to, but I don’t really need to. I have one or two Spotify playlists that I regularly listen to and those are cached.
I don’t watch movies on my phone, the screen is too small. Again, Jellyfin, on my laptop, desktop, or TV.
I do take a bunch of pictures, and I use Google Photos, but even if I didn’t, I’d offload them periodically instead of letting them fill up my phone.
Stuff like backups or large file transfers I do over USB anyway.
Forcing you on to “The Cloud” (i.e. other peoples disk space) so your data can be rummaged through. I don’t like it.
That and they get unlimited money and/or force you to a more expensive model of a phone.
My pixel also does not have it. I don’t like it. The only slot is usc c.
I gotta admit I don’t really care. Back when I used MicroSD Cards in my phone, they kept dying, and even midrange phones now have more internal storage then I need.
I can see why people want the option, but I personally haven’t missed it.
I had the same microSD card in my various phones for 8 years. In the end, it didn’t fail, I just upgraded. I’ve had my current one for about 3 years now, still going strong
they kept dying
Curious, in your experience, how often do they die? What brand MicroSD cards where they, or was it random nameless cards?
First SanDisk, then Samsung. The Samsung ones usually lasted a bit longer.
I think the Card that has held up the longest (still in use, currently in some Raspberry Pi) is one from SiliconPower. Also, some Samsung 128 and 256 cards (from their Endurance Series I think) that I gave away to a friend who uses them in her camera.
Yeah maybe I’m just a soft user but all of my SD cards have held up over the years. Although to your point I try and always get brand name cards.
If there is no expandable storage, you have to buy the 2x expensive phone with more internal storage. That’s the game they are playing.
I think it’s also pushing subscription based cloud services. To me, the SD card slot is a convenient backup target when away from home. It fits my 3-2-1 backup strategy. Without it, more people will consider backing up to paid cloud services, like how Apple does it.
For the record, I hate this trend. Hands off my sd slot and my 3.5mm jack. But I also want GrapheneOS or something similar. Can’t have it all…
Step 1: Buy portable SSD
Step 2: Duct tape said SSD to back of phone, connect USB-C cable
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit?
That’s just it.
You are butthurt because you are the tiniest sliver of phone users…those cheap enough to buy low end phones while also being savvy enough to need additional storage.
Meanwhile every phone on the market now has USB-C.
Just get a thumb drive and stop crying ffs. Or buy a decent phone.
Not sure what the need to be a dick about this it, but I don’t agree that just because they are a “sliver of phone users” doesn’t mean what they’re talking about isn’t still important. It’s good for users to try and think of ways to keep things the least expensive for themselves, while increasing their technical knowledge. I’m seeing a lot of younger people without any basic knowledge of technology who are going to be at the whim of changes made by tech giants because they don’t know how to modify their own systems.
The more people work together and ask questions to try and grow as well as try and share their discontent with design decisions of those tech giants in hope others might take note and stop, the better. It’s a small effort by one person, but it’s more than just throwing up their hands and saying “just get a thumb drive and stop crying”.
I use syncthing to a second drive on my pc in case my phone gets lost or stolen. It just syncs when I connect to wifi. This sucks for people who take or store a lot of videos.
I wish syncthing would work for me. Spent a week testing and trying to get it to work.
I buy phones with plenty of onboard storage. I haven’t needed a sdcard slot for ten years
Cool! Now maybe put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Someone who doesn’t want to pay an extra $500 for $30 worth of extra storage.
Or someone’s shoes who use their phone for a lot of recording, so maybe they need a terabyte, or more. And those phones don’t exist.
Or someone’s shoes who are offline for weeks at a time and want to load their phone up with movies or tv shows to watch.
Or someone’s who doesn’t use music streaming services so wants to keep all their music on their phone.
There are many cases in which sd cards are useful or even necessary, so try not to think your use case is universal. It comes across as ignorant
I’m not shitting on anybody for wanting extra storage. You do you. I literally don’t care
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” - Elie Wiesel.
Dude it’s a fucking port on a cell phone, not the rise of fascism. Chill out.
A 1TB phone would cost $1500 USD, the base storage are around $1100 USD.
A $150 1TB MicroSD card is much cheaper. Pair it with a $400 ish midrange and you got a 1TB phone and save about $1000.
I don’t need all the processing power of flagships, midrange specs are good enough.
The only reason for absurd levels on onboard storage is people that are regularly shooting 4k+ video. Not for storing episodes of Whose Line.
How many episodes can you even watch without getting in front of a computer again? Like, you know you can put stuff on and take it off, right?
