Would you have bought the S4 if Samsung didn't include SD card slots?

[garublador]

Scenario #1 - Lets say I have a 64 GB phone and 80 GB of music and video (and growing) what do I do? The cloud? The cloud is great but I travel alot and want to listen to my music or watch said videos on a plane or a train so now I have to go through the inconvenience of downloading whatever I think I may want to listen to before hand to my phone. If my phone is is filled with other things like apps etc then what? Also I would have to find wifi because DL'ing it over the air would chew up a ton of data on my now capped data plan. So now I'm going over my data limit costing me $$ pus the costs of backing ALL of my media to the cloud, plus the ridiculous cost of my monthly plan and all of this inconvenience because I don't have an SD card slot. So lets say I use wifi on the plane or the train. I'm now shelling out an additonal $10 or so to use their service. All of this is costly and extremely inconvenient when I can have it right there - on my phone on an SD card.

But in the time frame we're talking about a 64GB phone will be the low end. Remember that storage will have quadrupled in three years and 16GB is considered too small for a baseline phone by some. So if 64GB is the top end now, 256GB will be the top end in three years. Your 80GB of media will fit on there just fine, no need to pay for a cloud service.

Scenario #2 - I get a new phone. All of my 80 GB of media is backed up on my SD card. Instead of simply popping the SD card out of the old phone and popping it into the new and viola its there!, I'm now without my music and videos because the new phone doesn't have the SD slot. So once again, I have to make sure I'm shelling out for cloud service to support that amount of storage (in addition to my monthly bill). That may be fine for some but this sh** can get expensive and for most people (with kids etc) the costs add up. I then have to go through the task of dl'ing stuff again to listen to offline because of data caps, areas with no data etc. It's simply not as convenient.

If you're saying that the only place you have your music stored is a microSD card then whether or not your new phone will have a microSD card should be the least of your worries. You really should worry about what happens if your card gets damaged or corrupt. You'll have lost all of that media.

The fact is you'll have your media stored somewhere else. Granted, downloading music from your PC to your phone might take a little while, but an overnight sync once every two years is hardly a major inconvenience. There is no need to pay for a cloud service. I never suggested that would ever be necessary. As long as you're OK with synching at home (which you apparently are already if you are totally against cloud services) then you don't need one at all. Your home PC is your "cloud."

So the only benefit anyone has shown of removable storage is not having to sync one time every two years. How many people are willing to spend money for that? That's the question the phone manufacturers will ask once internal storage gets large enough, which I'm predicting will happen in the next few years.

 

[rushmore]

The cloud has nothing to do with customer convenience and everything strategically to do with content control, data mining and busting data caps, for the masses that have them (a lot do, even with wifi).

I support Samsung and other OEs that offer sd and OTG storage. Okay, I do have an iPod 5, but it is 64gb and an iPad 4 that is 128gb- though local storage is there.

 

[garublador]

The one thing about cloud is that is it truly safe? Especially with the PRISM thing with the Government...that has always been my issue with cloud storage is that its not private. There is no privacy in it, no matter what claims any company says. Also all your information is being relied on someone else to take care of....so say their servers go down for some reason (which happened with Instagram during the hurricane i believe 2 yrs ago), then what???? lol

How many people actually lost data in the Instagram outage? Was the data wiped out or was it just not available for a couple weeks? I remember it being the latter. I'll bet that if you had a contest to see who can find a person who lost data off an SD card becasue of a hardware failure the winner would accomplish it on the order of seconds. It doesn't take a massive natural disaster for it to happen either. You just have to drop your phone at the wrong time, pull out a USB cable at the wrong time or be unlucky. If you did the same thing for a cloud storage company I'm not sure how long it would take. Those companies have redundant storage arrays in different parts of the country. They don't lose data. A house fire can destroy all of you data and backups. In 2010 there were 348,000 house fires in the US:

CDC - Fire Deaths and Injuries: Fact Sheet

What would it take for Dropbox to lose my data? Whatever it is, does it happen more or less than 348,000 times per year?

Either way, who says you have to rely on an outside company? A simple Google search gives ways to set up a personal cloud for minimal to no cost. Granted you'll be in danger of the house fire scenario that way but in reality the stuff you really need protected can be stored on flash drives in redundant locations as well.

 

[Haalcyon]

Sadly, very few phones have an option for 64GB onboard today. I can only surmise that's because demand has been low. If I could buy a top-end phone (that I liked) with 64-128GB I'd be all over it. However the 32GB S4 I'm using and its 64GB Sandisk Extreme are adequate for now. :screwy:

Sent from my Element Eclipsed S4

 

[smooth4lyfe]

How many people actually lost data in the Instagram outage? Was the data wiped out or was it just not available for a couple weeks? I remember it being the latter. I'll bet that if you had a contest to see who can find a person who lost data off an SD card becasue of a hardware failure the winner would accomplish it on the order of seconds. It doesn't take a massive natural disaster for it to happen either. You just have to drop your phone at the wrong time, pull out a USB cable at the wrong time or be unlucky. If you did the same thing for a cloud storage company I'm not sure how long it would take. Those companies have redundant storage arrays in different parts of the country. They don't lose data. A house fire can destroy all of you data and backups. In 2010 there were 348,000 house fires in the US:

CDC - Fire Deaths and Injuries: Fact Sheet

What would it take for Dropbox to lose my data? Whatever it is, does it happen more or less than 348,000 times per year?

Either way, who says you have to rely on an outside company? A simple Google search gives ways to set up a personal cloud for minimal to no cost. Granted you'll be in danger of the house fire scenario that way but in reality the stuff you really need protected can be stored on flash drives in redundant locations as well.

No one has lost data with the Instagram thing, but I remember when MegaUpload was shut down, every user lost their uploaded media
And yeah I'd rather not pay monthly for cloud storage
And yeah, I know it is unlikely for their servers to go down, and I'm sure they back them up at data centers, but you still have no control over whats done with them, or with its possibly being used for
Me personally, I think SD Cards and External Hard Drives are a better storage system...I do use Dropbox for pictures and many other files, but I wouldn't solely rely on it is what I am saying

Its all personal preference

 

[garublador]

Me personally, I think SD Cards and External Hard Drives are a better storage system...I do use Dropbox for pictures and many other files, but I wouldn't solely rely on it is what I am saying

You shouldn't solely rely on anything. That's why it's called backup. If you have your PC, an external hard drive, your phone's internal storage and a cloud service (perhaps even a tablet as well) you'll not only have you data wherever you need it, you'll have it backed up several times over. Whether or not the phone storage is removable or not doesn't matter.

What I don't think people can get past is that they think they "need" an external SD card because they need one now to get a useful amount of storage. They can't get past that the removable part isn't important, it's only storage that they need. Once the "storage" requirement is gone (i.e. once internal phone storage gets large enough) all you're left with is the "removable" part, which has very limited benefits and several down sides.

 

[smooth4lyfe]

You shouldn't solely rely on anything. That's why it's called backup. If you have your PC, an external hard drive, your phone's internal storage and a cloud service (perhaps even a tablet as well) you'll not only have you data wherever you need it, you'll have it backed up several times over. Whether or not the phone storage is removable or not doesn't matter.

What I don't think people can get past is that they think they "need" an external SD card because they need one now to get a useful amount of storage. They can't get past that the removable part isn't important, it's only storage that they need. Once the "storage" requirement is gone (i.e. once internal phone storage gets large enough) all you're left with is the "removable" part, which has very limited benefits and several down sides.

Well believe me there are certain people who put everything they ever have on Cloud and use that only
And the removable part has plenty of advantages over internal phone storage in my opinion, especially for media users like myself

SD Cards allow you to access your media files without having to stream it or waste data, and also allow you to easily transfer files between different devices quickly
Also if you are in a place with no internet connection, you cant access your cloud files
Most other devices besides phones use SD Storage, and it makes it easier to transfer files
Internal phone storage forces you to sacrifice space for music and apps in one, so if you were running out of space on the phone, you would have to delete apps or music just to make space
SD Cards remove this annoying functionality...I used to have a Nexus and its something I will never go back to

Like you said, I only use cloud as a backup just incase I lose things, but I keep all my music on my SD Card and all ym other stuff on an External HD

 

[skipatrol]

Bitcasa's entire selling point is to replace your hard drive. While I like bitcasa and use the free 10gb to back up personal stuff that I never want to lose. The thought of having a cloud based everything is crazy to me.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 2

 

[garublador]

Internal phone storage forces you to sacrifice space for music and apps in one, so if you were running out of space on the phone, you would have to delete apps or music just to make space
SD Cards remove this annoying functionality...I used to have a Nexus and its something I will never go back to

No, more space removes that functionality. There is nothing special about the storage being removable. You also keep twisting what I'm saying to "cloud storage will mean we won't need more storage" and I have not claimed that. I'm saying that the extra internal storage we'll get will mean that we won't need removable storage. The trends in cloud storage and streaming media are just showing that demand for larger storage devices will go down, not that it will go away.

The only advantage to removable storage is the transfer rate for really big transfers, and it assumes you only want the data on one device at a time. So if you need to move all of your media from one phone to another or a phone to a tablet in a short period of time then it's useful, but that situation is rare if you keep your devices synced. Also consider that there are other ways to accomplish that that don't involve a micro SD card and some of them have much faster transfer rates than what's possible with a micro SD card.

 

[smooth4lyfe]

No, more space removes that functionality. There is nothing special about the storage being removable. You also keep twisting what I'm saying to "cloud storage will mean we won't need more storage" and I have not claimed that. I'm saying that the extra internal storage we'll get will mean that we won't need removable storage. The trends in cloud storage and streaming media are just showing that demand for larger storage devices will go down, not that it will go away.

The only advantage to removable storage is the transfer rate for really big transfers, and it assumes you only want the data on one device at a time. So if you need to move all of your media from one phone to another or a phone to a tablet in a short period of time then it's useful, but that situation is rare if you keep your devices synced. Also consider that there are other ways to accomplish that that don't involve a micro SD card and some of them have much faster transfer rates than what's possible with a micro SD card.

More internal storage also means higher phone costs, which is another disadvantage
MicroSD Cards are inexpensive easier to work with
Also when you need to do a factory reset, or in some cases, something happens with the internal memory that ir crashes or something of that nature, or in somecases the phone freezes and wont turn on, you will lose everything
SD Cards help with this by being able to remove them in case something like this happens

As for Syncing....I had an iPhone, and constantly syncing with iTunes (or in this case, using Kies or another software to sync) is very time consuming in my experience

I just think removable storage is much easier to work with, especially for media users. Other users may not need it, but I know I do
I do agree that cloud storage is booming, and I think it has many many benefits. I just hope phone manufacturers decide to completely remove removable storage from their devices in order to be forces to use cloud services

 

[markbc]

Probably not..but having the removable SD card and removable battery were two essential requirements for me..those are two of the reasons that I did not pick the HTC One...(even though the one was nicer looking and had an appealing Sense/skin...)

Posted via Android Central App

 

[skipatrol]

But in the time frame we're talking about a 64GB phone will be the low end. Remember that storage will have quadrupled in three years and 16GB is considered too small for a baseline phone by some. So if 64GB is the top end now, 256GB will be the top end in three years. Your 80GB of media will fit on there just fine, no need to pay for a cloud service.

If you're saying that the only place you have your music stored is a microSD card then whether or not your new phone will have a microSD card should be the least of your worries. You really should worry about what happens if your card gets damaged or corrupt. You'll have lost all of that media.

The fact is you'll have your media stored somewhere else. Granted, downloading music from your PC to your phone might take a little while, but an overnight sync once every two years is hardly a major inconvenience. There is no need to pay for a cloud service. I never suggested that would ever be necessary. As long as you're OK with synching at home (which you apparently are already if you are totally against cloud services) then you don't need one at all. Your home PC is your "cloud."

So the only benefit anyone has shown of removable storage is not having to sync one time every two years. How many people are willing to spend money for that? That's the question the phone manufacturers will ask once internal storage gets large enough, which I'm predicting will happen in the next few years.

I have my media on a micro SD and also backed up to my PC as well as various cloud providers because I never want to lose it. You're assuming that phone storage will expand the way you are saying. I hope you're right but I never like to assume anything. That being said, even if it does expand to 256 GB in 3 years, I'll still be in the same situation as the amount of memory that I use for things like photos and HD video (3 kids will do that to you) will also grow. I wont remain at 80 GB forever.

 

[skipatrol]

More internal storage also means higher phone costs, which is another disadvantage
MicroSD Cards are inexpensive easier to work with
Also when you need to do a factory reset, or in some cases, something happens with the internal memory that ir crashes or something of that nature, or in somecases the phone freezes and wont turn on, you will lose everything
SD Cards help with this by being able to remove them in case something like this happens

As for Syncing....I had an iPhone, and constantly syncing with iTunes (or in this case, using Kies or another software to sync) is very time consuming in my experience

I just think removable storage is much easier to work with, especially for media users. Other users may not need it, but I know I do
I do agree that cloud storage is booming, and I think it has many many benefits. I just hope phone manufacturers decide to completely remove removable storage from their devices in order to be forces to use cloud services

All of this is spot on.

 

[garublador]

More internal storage also means higher phone costs, which is another disadvantage

That's now. I'm predicting that memory pricing will mean that won't be an issue in the future.

MicroSD Cards are inexpensive easier to work with

Tell that to everyone who's posted a thread about their SD card not working. In the past they've had apps that you would run to automatically remount your SD card when it stopped working. They eventually just got to the point where they built that into the OS's. If eMMC's were harder to deal with phones would be crashing right and left. They're also faster than uSD cards. The fastest eMMC and uSD both came out recently. The fastest eMMC transfers data at 400MB/s. The fastest eMMC is 80MB/s. So the "easier" way is also less stable and slower.

Also when you need to do a factory reset, or in some cases, something happens with the internal memory that ir crashes or something of that nature, or in somecases the phone freezes and wont turn on, you will lose everything
SD Cards help with this by being able to remove them in case something like this happens

No, you'll only lose what you haven't backed up. The same can be said for what will happen when a uSD card gets corrupt or breaks. You'll lose everything on it and that's not a horribly uncommon thing to have happen.

There's always the possibility of partitioning up a larger chunk of internal memory to a smaller, boot drive and a larger, storage drive. So a factory reset would only wipe out the boot drive and the rest would be left untouched, just like what happens with a uSD card? Eventually internal memory will be cheap enough that it will cost them less to add another, reasonably sized eMMC over a uSD slot. Internal memory is getting cheaper, but keeping the uSD slot is getting harder and more expensive.

As for Syncing....I had an iPhone, and constantly syncing with iTunes (or in this case, using Kies or another software to sync) is very time consuming in my experience

My Dropbox photos and videos are done whenever I connect to WiFi. My iTunes music is synched at night when I'm sleeping without me having to do anything. I can set up my SMS to be automatically backed up whenever I want, too. I can also make whatever I want my phone automatically sync with Dropbox, Drive or a couple other free services. Syncing doesn't have to be hard or time consuming. I found it pretty easy to make it take up none of my time at all.

I just think removable storage is much easier to work with, especially for media users. Other users may not need it, but I know I do
I do agree that cloud storage is booming, and I think it has many many benefits. I just hope phone manufacturers decide to completely remove removable storage from their devices in order to be forces to use cloud services

I haven't seen anything that's easier with removable storage except for transferring large amounts of data. Newer chip sets are including USB 3.0 which will give higher transfer rates (rates way higher than what's they've achieved with uSD cards) so that will be less and less of an issue as well. That's also a benefit that's used relatively rarely while the benefits of internal storage are seen every time you use your phone.

 

[garublador]

I have my media on a micro SD and also backed up to my PC as well as various cloud providers because I never want to lose it. You're assuming that phone storage will expand the way you are saying. I hope you're right but I never like to assume anything.

It's a prediction. I have to make some assumptions when it comes to predicting the future. You're making assumptions as well every time you say something I'm predicting might not be right. The assumptions I'm making with regard to storage expansion are based on decades of data. There isn't really anything in the near future that's pointing to this stopping, either. Moore's Law, and laws related to it, have been the safest prediction in technology for the last 48 years. People have predicted that it will stop soon for years now and have all been wrong. Here's an article where the top guy at SanDisk predicted that 32GB drives would be where they'd hit a brick wall with their uSD cards:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/counting-down-to-the-end-of-moores-law/?_r=0

How did that turn out? I have a 64GB SanDisk card in my phone right now. Samsung as 128GB eMMC's already.

That being said, even if it does expand to 256 GB in 3 years, I'll still be in the same situation as the amount of memory that I use for things like photos and HD video (3 kids will do that to you) will also grow. I wont remain at 80 GB forever.

Does your media library double in size every year and a half? Was it only 40GB at the beginning of 2011, 20GB in the middle of 2009 and 10GB at the beginning of 2008? I don't think we won't reach spots where the memory sizes won't coincide with media library sizes in the future. We're in one of those spots now and I don't doubt we'll be in that spot again in the future. I just don't think we'll have removable media on our phones when it comes up next.

 

[skipatrol]

Does your media library double in size every year and a half? Was it only 40GB at the beginning of 2011, 20GB in the middle of 2009 and 10GB at the beginning of 2008? I don't think we won't reach spots where the memory sizes won't coincide with media library sizes in the future. We're in one of those spots now and I don't doubt we'll be in that spot again in the future. I just don't think we'll have removable media on our phones when it comes up next.

I'm not sure what the size of my media library was back in 2009 or even 2 years ago. However, in 2009 I was taking 3 megapixel shots and 320x240 video clips on my Samsung Impression. Times have changed now that I'm taking 13 MP shots and HD video. Plus I like music just as much as the next person and my music library continues to grow. It isn't inconceivable to think that I will be at 256 GB in one year let alone 3 years. One 5 minute video in HD is 500 MB alone. Again with kids it's easy to rack that up.

Look you have your opinion, I have mine. You can never have to much memory and you will never have too much memory in your phone, hence the need for removable storage.

 

[garublador]

Look you have your opinion, I have mine. You can never have to much memory and you will never have too much memory in your phone, hence the need for removable storage.

But why does it have to be removable? Again, you're just making arguments for more storage, not for removable storage. Why not just put two eMMC's instead of one and a uSD card slot? Right now the big factor is cost of the eMMC's. That's going down while the performance of them is going up. The cost of the uSD card slot will likely stay the same. It isn't going to get easier to put uSD slots into phones, especially when people are demanding bigger batteries which take up more space. So there will probably be a time when it makes more sense to add another eMMC than it does to add a uSD slot, especially when the only reason people want removable storage is becasue they just want more storage.

 

[skipatrol]

But why does it have to be removable? Again, you're just making arguments for more storage, not for removable storage.

Re-read my posts.

 

[STARGATE]

But why does it have to be removable? Again, you're just making arguments for more storage, not for removable storage. Why not just put two eMMC's instead of one and a uSD card slot? Right now the big factor is cost of the eMMC's. That's going down while the performance of them is going up. The cost of the uSD card slot will likely stay the same. It isn't going to get easier to put uSD slots into phones, especially when people are demanding bigger batteries which take up more space. So there will probably be a time when it makes more sense to add another eMMC than it does to add a uSD slot, especially when the only reason people want removable storage is becasue they just want more storage.

Are you been paid by someone or some company to try to change our ways???

Seems you want to drill into our heads and implant YOUR predictions and preferences! :banghead:

You need/have to understand there's a lot of people that, for one reason or another, just don't think like you on that and many other subjects.

Anyway, all's good. Everybody has different needs and wants.

Sent From a Galaxy S4 Away

 

[garublador]

Re-read my posts.

I did and can't find anything about why the storage needs to be removable. I'll ask this way, say you had 50TB of storage on your phone. You have the ability to transfer files faster than you can swap out cards. All but 10GB would be safe during a factory reset. What would be the advantage of a removable 64GB uSD card?

I made a prediction and others have been saying they don't believe it's true. I've been defending my points. Who's paying you guys to try to change what I think? I'm not forcing anyone to argue with me. If people don't want a debate they don't have to have it, but as long as anyone wants to try to refute my points I have the right to defend those points as long as I follow the site's TOS agreement.