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.
I agree not having micro SD cards is pretty frustrating. The way I have worked around it is to “self-host” the things that take up lots of storage space on a separate PC, and connect to that with my phone when I want to access it.
For example, instead of loading a bunch of movies onto my phone, all my movies/tv are on my plex server. When I want to watch something I just open the Plex app and go. The videos don’t take up any space on my phone (unless i will be out of service, then I can download them via the app for offline viewing).
I do the same thing for music, pictures, and other things. A benefit of this is all my stuff is accessible from all my devices (phone, tablet/pc/laptop/tv) without me having to manually load it on each device.
It takes work to get setup, and it’s important to make sure you have good data backup practices incase you have drives that fail. But once you have it setup it’s quite liberating not having to rely on all the BS cloud services that big tech tries to sell us.
While I would still prefer to have a micro sd card slot, this setup makes me miss them less.
Its beyond bleak – dead.
Samsung A series were the last hope. Now, that they are dead – and stuck on 256gb. Your only options are portable SSD/micosdcard with type C support, buying a phone with 512gb/1TB storage.
Honestly, the A56 makes literally no sense. You could just get the S24fe since it lost the one defining feature which would’ve made it worth Samsung’s asking price.
I just look at the next biggest smartphone manufacturer, Motorola.
The Moto G (2025) (USD $200) and Moto G Power (2025) (USD $300) both has MicroSD Card slot and headphone jack. The $300 one has IP68/69. Samsung’s A26 is also $300, but lack the headphone jack, MicroSD card slot,
doesn’t have eSim capability(nvm, it actually does have it), doesn’t have wireless charging, doesn’t have stereo speakers, stereo speakers that even the Moto G (2025) that’s $100 cheaper have.But the Motorola phones still use LCD, bummer for the colors. And also is a bit slower. Their flagships also don’t have SD card slot. Welp, I guess its the cost of wanting my favorite features. My phone aint breaking any time soon (I hope I don’t jinx it), so I don’t need to buy anything right now. But if I needed one today, its probably a Motorola.
But I fear one day, Motorola would kill it too, as with other manufacturers. And there’s also the issue of Google potentially dropping the SD card slot codes from AOSP Code, and small manufacturers would just go with the easiest option and drop SD card support, instead of spending time to write code for it.
I hate this future.
Welcome to dongle hell! (I have an iPhone) seriously though, my jaw has dropped a bit in empathy for Android users, that’s wild they’re taking that away. I don’t see how they think it’s a good idea for any other reason than money
I agree that the future is bleak. I also agree that it makes life more difficult for those of us who don’t conform to this “I own nothing and pay a subscription for everything” lifestyle that people seem to be blindly moving in the direction of. I don’t pay for Spotify or any other streaming service (not that they even have all the music I listen to, I always hate it when people justify their existence with the “iT hAs EvErYtHiNG” line), I have my own music collection that I’ve curated over decades which is entirely offline. It won’t fit on a smartphone unless I pay a ridiculous amount of money for a model with tons of storage or convert my entire library to inferior quality. Ultimately it’s not a deal breaker feature for me so I do use a modern phone without external storage. I am fortunate that I own an MP3 player and multiple older phones with microSD support, including an XZ1 Compact which is what I currently use for portable music instead. It would be more convenient if I could just have everything on a single device like I used to, though.
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?
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.
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.
I don’t think I’ve used a microsd in a phone for about 6+ years now, so I couldn’t really care less. Not a photographer and I don’t travel enough to need so much offline media on the go. Just a few albums for the commute.
Still using an old Galaxy S10 and appreciating the 3.5mm jack though.
Same, but even longer. I honestly can’t remember the last time I used additional storage in a phone. My current phone has 512GB (was cheaper than the 256GB model due to a promotion) and after almost two years of usage I still only have about 77GB in use. I don’t think I know anyone with a microSD card in their phone, which is probably why they’re removing them, not enough people care anymore.
The S10 is end of life, so the hardware probably doesn’t get firmware updates anymore from Samsung. Even with an up to date OS, the firmware is probably vulnerable at this point.
Aftermarket OS options are getting better as time goes by, which is nice. Come a long way since the old Cyanogenmod days.
But yeah, Sammy won’t be keeping the bones patched beyond what they already have. The risk for me is acceptable, and preferable to shelling out for new hardware every few years. It works and I’m not too stupid with it.
I might be an outlier on this one, but what was SD cards good for? Hear me out :-) It was good because you had a phone with 32GB storage (11.3GB free!). It also was good for swapping photos and films and such in/out of the phone.
I have a meager 128GB Storage space on my old phone, if I had to buy a new one (I buy used when I can) I’d opt for 512GB just to not nedding to care any more. I also have a ten dollar 64GB USB-A/USB-C key that I use to transfer stuff to and from the phone. I’m too lazy to set up a shared folder on my PC and maybe that’s a bit technical for some people but that could make things even more smooth.
So what’s your use case that absolutely needs an SD card nowadays?
Side note: they can try to pry the 3.5 jack from my dead hands though.
I have a phone with 128GB of space and an SD card with 256GB. To update to 256GB internal would have cost 250€ because price reductions often only happen on base models.
I have used 86GB of internal with the rest on the SD. That is near-zero photos, a few streaming playlists, 2 game apps, and almost no documents. Apps take up ridiculous amounts of space now because devs don’t give a fuck about space.
On my SD card I have used up 154GB of 256GB.
My music library, all of my photos and videos are stored directly on the SD card, backups from apps, etc…
See how 154 + 86 is way more than 128 and a 256GB SD card cost 30€ while to upgrade to 256GB internal would be more than 800% the cost? And the sum above would be at the limit of 256GB anyway? They didn’t offer a 512GB model.
The added benefit of if my phone dies or gets destroyed, the chance that I can just pull my SD card out and have all of my needed info including backups of my TOTP codes and everything without having to go to a multi-hundred euro recovery service.
That’s expensive! Kids phone got that +100€ 512GB a year or two ago when he needed a new one.
I’m no apple/samsung guy though so it depends I guess.
Also the cost of getting more internal storage is not just the difference between the two models. Because as you said the 512GB model wasn’t even available when you bought the phone but in 2-3 years it will probably be the default. But by then you can’t just buy more storage like you would by getting a bigger card, you need a new phone.
What if the SD card dies?
Backups
All their backups are on the SD card.
What if the phone dies?
The answer is always the same.
What if the user dies?
Obviously backed up to the chatGPT overlord!
SD cards are cheaper than paying for more storage on the phone and easier to manage. I have mine loaded up with my entire music library and game roms for emulation as well as a smaller selection of movies. I spend a lot of time at work in places with little to k ow network so it’s great to have on hand. I could fill the storage on any phone available today but I’d be constantly dealing with space when I wanted to install a new app or take video or whatever. I prefer to keep my media library separate.
Well, new phones have 512GB so I personally doesn’t see the need for more storage, and double-usb keys make for easy transfers.
I mean I’m not against it, I had a 128GB SD card before, I just, personally, doesn’t feel the need any more (and I’m only having 128GB base storage).
As I said I can fill that with ease. Leaving no space for apps. If I have everything on the separate card that is a non issue. Using USB dongles is not a solution. It’s more crap we have to carry around when we already have an ideal method with the SD card. It takes up practically no space and offers great utility for those who need it. It’s not like they’re using the space on the board saved by taking it out to add new features.
If you fill up half a terabyte with ease, but not want to offload it on a usb key, well Xiaomi has a 1TB phone out 😅.
You’re right though, why remove something that small just because? Shitty move.
I thought I was going to be that way with the 3.5 mm jack but once I bought a pair of Bluetooth headphones I’ve been chilling, they’re really good nowadays unless you’re going full audiophile with .flac files
My current phone has an SD card slot but I never used it. I sync my photos to my server via wifi. In 2025 I don’t really see it’s point.
Also type-c usb drives and external hdds are common nowadays, if you just want to backup huge data via a wire, you can do that via it’s port. It’s more convenient plugging-unplugging an usb drive than removing the sd card, I use this feature occasionally.
No SD card, no 3.5mm connector, no purchase
Unfortunately us techies on niche platforms like Lemmy aren’t who these manufacturers make their money from. People buy whatever shit is put out in droves, and they haven’t been punished for removing things like the SD card slot and headphone jack.
Cling onto your old phone for as long as you can, because we are screwed in that department.
Not having microSD isn’t a trend I like, since expandable storage with less reliance on cloud services and not being upcharged to move up a tier on internal storage is ideal. It is sad to see it is mostly dead over the years.
But, one good thing I do look forward to is the EU requiring user-replaceable batteries by 2027 that will hopefully make replacing batteries much easier than it is now. I miss the days when batteries could be popped out and swapped on the spot.
Might be expensive for the specs but there are a lot of pluses. On-the-go replaceable battery, no 3.5 jack though…
I’m quite happy with mine. Bought when the promotion was the extra battery.
I’m looking to switch from using Pixel phones to a more open alternate, I don’t know who I should order through to get these in Canada
I’m in the US and while Fairphone doesn’t sell the 5 here I was able to “import” it via Clover Technology.
Check with Fairphone if the phone is compatible with your carrier, and then order directly. Just a warning, check also about the warranty.
AFIAK you cannot get it directly to North America. You need a mail-forwarder. And of course, there’s no warranty. And if you need replacement parts, it also has to go through the mail forwarder.
And since they haven’t been “approved” they only work on 1/3 of the carriers, and T-Mobile could change their policy at any time.
Edit: Just checked the website, it only ships to EU countries.
Murena sells the Fairphone 4 (with e/OS) to North America, but not the Fairphone 5. Fairphone 4 is about to lose support in 2 years, so not really worth it.
I use an A15 and don’t use the SD card slot, but I have a home server and handheld gaming devices. I don’t use my phone to store much of anything.
I’m an outlier. I know a lot of users live in their phones without hardly any backup devices. Those are the ones who will be hit hardest by a decision like this.
I honestly was counting years when they would ax the microSD card slot on the A series
Next the Chinese brands will follow suit
All of the phone manufacturers must have telemetry data showing how little people use the slot. And of course this is yet another move cutting corners on the penny just for line goes up, as usual
