Poll on the importance of interchangeable battery and/or SD card.

SD Card / Replaceable Battery Importance


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natehoy

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There's been a lot of discussion on this, but I'd love to see some numbers to back the discussion up.

I realize this is an enthusiasts forum and the numbers may not reflect those of the general Note 4-using public, but I wanted to see how the numbers worked out here.

How important is the ability to add mass storage to you, and how important is the ability to replace/extend the battery?

Please note that this is assuming no revolutionary change in battery technology that allows a 7-day battery life with the current size of battery or the inexpensive availability of a terabyte of storage on the phone's native storage.
 
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mumfoau

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Oct 29, 2010
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They're both nice to have but after using several iPhones and Android with sealed batteries and no expandable storage, you learn to make it work. I will state though that if you're going to have a sealed battery the software better be optimized.
 

dedhedAndy

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I'd rather have Quick Charge 2.0 than a removable battery. It has eliminated my need for extra batteries.

Posted via Galaxy Note 4
 

Rukbat

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Feb 12, 2012
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Battery:
Carrying a spare battery extends the usable chare time. Since you should never drop a lithium battery below 40% charge (see The Care and Feeding of Lithium Polymer Batteries), you get 60% from the first one plus 60% from the second one, or more than a full single battery charge.

Swapping batteries every month also extends their total life. (I have 2 original batteries for my Motorola V-551 that are 11 years old. I'm still getting about 95% capacity from them.)

If the battery goes into thermal runaway (and we've been seeing a few posts on overheating batteries recently), it's easy to pop off the back cover and drop the battery out, get upwind of it and if it burns, it burns. (Most replaceable batteries sell for $15 or less - not a huge price compared to the price of the phone.) If the battery isn't removable, you drop the phone, get upwind of it and watch it melt. (Thermal runaway isn't covered by most insurance plans.) If you don't believe me, ask Sony how much their burning batteries cost them. (I'm estimating at least 8 figures in US dollars.)


SD Card:
Of course having one means that we can carry gigabytes of music, movies, etc., in a shirt pocket. Most people would be hard pressed to fill the internal storage on a 128GB phone, though.

It also means that if your aboot - the first code that runs when you turn the phone on - gets corrupted, you put a bootloader on an SD card, put the card into the phone, turn it on and you can flash a new ROM and fix the problem. No external SD card and you need a box of the type that initially loads the ROM into a newly-manufactured phone. They're not cheap and you have to know what to do with it. Or you have to pay someone who has bought one and learned how to do it. Oh - and you lose everything on the internal storage of the phone. Booting from the SD card won't do that, so you can recover all your data.

And if you store all your data on your external card, and things get deleted somehow, recovering files from an external card isn't just trivial, it's boring. If you sit and watch the recovery happening, you'll probably go crazy - hours and hours of staring at your screen saver until something happens. Setting thing up to do the recovery takes 5 minutes - if you're slow. Recovering from internal memory? It can be done, but not easily.

Want to run more than 1 ROM (multi-boot, the way you can run a few different versions of Windows and a few different Linux distros on the same computer, choosing which one to boot to)? A custom recovery and an SD card to hold the images of the different ROMs. (I can boot my Note 3 into a Note 4 port at the moment. It's the only ROM that interests me, but back in 4.3 I had about 5 different ROMs on the card. [Someone come up with a Note 3 pure Linux ROM? Please?])

The cost of making the battery removable is ... well, non-removable batteries cost more, so the cost of a removable battery is negative - it costs less.

The cost of an SD card slot? If it's internal (you have to pop the back cover to get to it) - probably about a dime. Maybe as much as a quarter. (Remember, these ports that you can buy for 98 cents shipped from China, the manufacturer is buying in million-unit lots. There's a discount for that.)

So if it costs $2 more for them to make a phone with a removable battery and an SD card slot, and they want $10 more for the phone, I'd pay it. Even if I were buying the cheapest phone made.

If phones keep going no SD, non-removable battery, until there's no such phone, my last phone will probably be a Note 4 or a G4. Since I'm 73, that will probably last me the rest of my life. But I wouldn't want to be starting out now, facing a future of iPhones running Android (that's what they're doing, except that Apple - controlling all phases of the phone, hardware and software - does it better). I just hope that Project Ara bears fruit.
 

Ntchwaidumela

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Rukbat, thanks for the most logical analysis of this situation I've seen so far. I'm with you. If Sammie doesn't have the removable battery and SD option on the next Note, I'll do one of two things; keep my Note 4 or switch to the LG G4. I really like what LG has done with their G line, and it's only going to get better. This G4 is a winner, and the G5 will be even better. Don't get me wrong. I love my N4. And I figure there will be at least one more software upgrade down the line. I do believe that Sammie is smart enough to keep the Note line different from the S line. So, hopefully, future Notes will keep the battery/SD card options. Even now, I'm thinking of getting the G4, especially with the incentives offered by LG and T-Mobile.

I'll turn 70 in December, so I'm thinking more long-term usage than I did when I was going-on 60.
 

Mst99

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I just swapped my battery out at 2pm. I would never have a phone without that option unless they no longer existed. I am a heavy user with lots of push apps, battery technology and the amount of data used makes it impossible for me to make it through the day. The SD card I can live without. Quick charge is cool, but swapping a battery is a zero to full 30 second charge...
 

natehoy

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So far, there are as many comments as votes, and a few of the comments don't indicate preferences that are consistent with any of the votes.

Comments are great - the reason behind your vote is obviously important to you and I'm loving it - but the numbers are really what I'm curious about.

Please vote! :)
 

Kelly Kearns

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Jan 10, 2012
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As far as both issues, the SD card is number one for me. Both are important, but I could do without the removable battery before doing without the SD card.
 

Christine Aflak

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Neither of them are of importance to me. I used to have an SD card with about 150 songs on it but as soon as I got my Note 4 i didn't even bother putting it in. I just redownloaded all my songs. The removable battery would only come in handy if after a year the original started playing up and I'd have to swap it. But I've never swapped batteries for the sake of not charging.
 

TB222

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The only reason I went ahead and upgraded from my S3 that was working perfectly fine for me. I was afraid if I waited much longer the option of the SD card and replaceable battery would go away.
 

Kelly Kearns

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The only reason I went ahead and upgraded from my S3 that was working perfectly fine for me. I was afraid if I waited much longer the option of the SD card and replaceable battery would go away.

I'm not expecting it to go from the Note series. The Note series is also really geared towards a work phone also. I put a lot of files from work on my card that go back and forth from the office and home.
 

Douglas Yarnold

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Batteries can go bad, I want the ability to replace batteries in my smartphone. I just upgraded from the S5 to the Note 4, based solely on the fact that the genius's at Samsung decided to "upgrade" the S5 to the S6 without the battery replacement/memory card option. What are they trying to do? Be more like the iPhone? Wake up Samsung. 85% of Samsung users want a replaceable battery, according to the poll on this forum. Listen to us. Without us, your product will be just yet another smartphone option, instead of the best phone on the market.
 

PlanetPluto7

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Jan 7, 2013
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Don't think the battery means as much to most with fast charging and portable battery packs. Although Samsung's new memory standard is faster than sd I need my 128 cards. The phone has all my music and tons of videos plus can go into computers and other devices as needed. Like just popping it in the next phone and restoring my stuff.
 

Climb14er

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Jan 23, 2014
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I dropped my willingness to purchase the S6 when they dropped the removable battery and even inserted a smallish battery. I'm a heavy business user who goes to rural areas frequently. Popping in a spare battery and rebooting takes 45 seconds. I could care less about a glass good looking back of phone. I care about function first and foremost!

I'm now looking at Note 4 and will wait for Note 5 release. If they seal the case on the Note 5, I will buy Note 4 or look elsewhere.

I have four batteries for my S4 and I find it's a great method for not getting tied to a wall charger. There's a certain amount of 'freedom' associated with popping in a fresh battery.

Regarding the SD card, I think it's a way for Samsung to charge one hundred bucks more for added storage. I'd rather have an SD card.
 

heavyvino

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I must have the replaceable battery, and I really want an sd card, that is why I came across from a Motorola Droid Maxx HD which was Damn near perfect until I met the Note 4. I call the note 4 a pocket ciniplex, as I have 54 movies on my 128 gig card.

Posted via the Android Central App
 

aokusman

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May 17, 2013
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There is an easy fix for the no replaceable battery, portable powerbanks. For lack of SD card, there is no convenient remedy.
 

cadjak

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For some reason, people think that having an interchangeable battery is only about being able to have a second back up battery to extend power. Batteries have a limited life cycle. They die. I've run through several batteries on my current S3. If you are a heavy user, your battery run time will eventually get less and less. I use my phone for offline navigation, on trails. I keep the different TOPOs on different sd cards. These phones are spendy, so I prefer to keep mine till the wheels fall off. My S3 is running 5.1.1 and I have a Moto Xoom running CM 11 (4.4.4).
 

Mr-Guy

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Dec 16, 2014
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I am concerned about the SD card because I use a 64gig, and I like the idea of being able to replace the battery myself, so they are important to me

Posted via the Android Central App
 

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