In all fairness, with the release of Jelly Bean and even Ice Cream Sandwich, you cannot do much in Android with the an SD card anymore; unless you root your phone. Not since Gingerbread could you load your apps on your SD card (again, unless you rooted your phone). I have a 64 GByte mircoSDHC card in my Note 2 and, honestly, the thing I find myself using it for most is as an extra drive for my computers, especially when transferring files between them.
And speaking of honesty, I hate iPhones but my wife loves them (see my screen name) but I cannot think of a single occasion where her phone battery died when she needed to use it. Although she is not on it constantly playing music and watching movies (that's what her iPad is for), she is probably a typical iPhone user at least and the lack of a removable battery has not been a detriment to her.
Honestly, I fear that the HTC One may be the future of Android: no SD card (or memory expansion of any sort) and a non-removable battery. In other words, Android is becoming more and more like the iPhone. And I for one, am not looking forward to it: look at my screen name.