Yeah if that was the case then yeah it wouldn't be needed because I could transfer files to the next phone, but more likely this would require an Internet connection and for those without unlimited data it would not be good
Good, someone decided to actually try to listen to what I'm saying. We now have reasons why people like removable storage
now.
1. Faster data transfer assuming you're moving files rather than copying them.
2. The non-volatile nature of them compared to how internal memory is treated.
3. Cheap, extra storage.
None of those are being disputed as current advantages.
I made my thought experiment the way I did to eliminate areas where there is clear, relatively predicable advancement happening. Storage is getting cheaper and data transfer rates are going up. Deciding what to erase and what not to erase in a factory reset can easily be solved.
I believe 3 will not be anywhere near as big of an issue for phones in a few years. People will always want more storage, but remember my prediction was that those people will be disappointed, not that they will go away. I'm assuming data caps will rise in the future. That means that cloud storage and streaming media will get more popular. That's fewer people who need more storage at a time when we're getting more storage. It's a double whammy. Because storage capacities rise faster than media library sizes, especially considering the popularity of streaming media, we'll eventually get to where most people can fit everything they want on a phone. In other words, the number of people who can fit everything they want in internal storage will rise. All that means the demand for the number 3 benefit will drop.
2 has not been addressed by Android yet but it's easy enough for them to implement, especially when demand for 3 goes down to the point where manufacturers would rather just have two eMMC than one eMMC and one uSD card slot that has many engineering disadvantages. If the demand for this feature is really there then it will be implemented in the OS as well. It probably makes sense to implement it at the OS level for other, technical reasons eventually (or already, perhaps), too.
1 will probably be the last to go, but the advantage you get is geared up to drop by an order of magnitude. USB 3.0 is already being put in some mobile chip sets and it has a throughput of about 10 times that of USB 2.0 (and way beyond what uSD is capable of). It will be a while before it's actually faster to transfer data through USB than it is to move it using a card (unless you're copying the data, then it's longer to use uSD), but once it gets to a manageable level the demand for this will drop dramatically. Spending 6 minutes to the hour (transferring though USB 3.0) doesn't sound so bad that you're willing to pay extra to drop it down to 1 minute (swapping cards), especially since there are also disadvantages to removable storage and it's something you don't do that often. There's a design for six sigma name for it I can't come up with right now. There are a couple categories that features fall into. One is a feature that's a must have, which is how you're describing 1. Another is a feature that's better the more of it there is (storage, CPU power). Another is one that's cool to have, but not a deal breaker. I'm saying 1 will go from the first category to the third as transfer rates increase.
If you look at computing history you'll see the exact same thing happened with PC's. We went from almost exclusively removable storage, to removable storage being good for the same reasons we gave above, to only being useful because it's mobile for most people. With mobile computing, the mobile part is built in so that isn't an advantage anymore. There were people that said all the exact same things I read here about uSD cards about floppy discs when the iMac came out and didn't have a floppy drive. It was about 3 years later that people stopped "needing" floppy drives in their computers.
If it were trivial to implement I might agree that it will stick around because there are advantages but it is not. It takes up physical space, it now requires additional software development and support and people are still having problems with it. The only advantage the design team sees in the uSD slot is a lower BOM cost. Once that advantage goes away then they'll look for reasons not to include them. Plus, you guys have seen how many threads there are about SD problems. I haven't owned an Android phone that didn't have SD problems or one that did have internal memory problems. The advantages to internal memory will eventually outweigh the advantages and demand so it's a feature that will be dropped. There will always be people who demand more storage (some weird misconception that I'm arguing that those people won't exist anymore somehow appeared here, but if that were the case who would be the "disappointed" ones in my prediction?), but once that group is so small that they have almost no buying power the OEM's won't listen to them, especially if listening to them costs more money than it makes.
Think of the decision on whether or not to include removable memory by an OEM in a phone as a scale, with "include it" on one side and "not include" it on the other. People are stacking reasons on the "not include" it side and removing reasons from the "include it" side. While the "include it" side may be lower now, and remain that way for a couple years, unless someone can find reasons to add to the "include it" side (which no one has been able to do yet), the scale will eventually tip the other way.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram