This is a crock of you know what. It's all about money, new streams of revenue, period. Samsung has watched Apple make astronomical amounts of money for more than 7 years now using this on board storage only model, even when memory cards were at the height of their popularity and a mainstay in every mobile device.
There is a reason that Samsung is charging $100 per incremental increase of memory. If they are concerned about preparing for the future then start with a 64 gb base model and add another $50 for the 128gb model. Instead they have now priced their phones above Apple, whose prices were outrageous to begin with. Memory simply does not cost them nearly that much.
Another thing is this cloud nonsense. Yes the cloud has its virtues but it is simply not a convenient technology right now, except for the phone manufacturers, storage companies, and carriers who are hoping to gouge the hell out of us. It's clearly the new age revenue stream for companies. The cloud is totally useless when you have no free WiFi or WiFi at all, when you have a bad signal or no signal, and downloading files takes a while even on a speedy connection. Not to mention if your available data is low, you will incurr additional charges. A blind man could see that this is a consolidated money grab and the next big thing as it relates to a new revenue stream for mobile related companies as well as others.
Don't get me started on streaming music. Same applies with no signal or bad signal, no music or choppy, intermittent music. Not to mention that a lot of music services don't play what you listen to and certainly not in the order you would choose. A memory card takes cares of all of these issues and a lot more. A memory card may be a millisecond slower than onboard storage but is a million times faster and more convenient than the very best cloud storage. Maybe when high speed broadband is readily available everywhere, with no additional cost, cloud storage will make more sense. I speak from experience by the way, as it may differ from person to person. Please forgive any typos, as I wrote this on my Note 4, which I am keeping, the first time in my life I am not the first one in line on release day to upgrade.
Posted via the Android Central App