Re: Get Ready - Price is going to be a shocker
Here's my perspective on the matter.
The lack of a microSD expansion isn't nearly as bad as it is made out to be. Sure, you can upgrade your storage on the cheap and have a physical backup of your data but that is essentially all the benefits of it.
Unless you hard brick the phone. No download, no recovery, no adb - recycle the phone. It can cover that hole in the wall if you get a strong picture hook.
With an SD slot, copy a boot image to the SD card, put it into the phone, turn the phone on, you're in download mode, run Odin, flash a ROM and the phone is working - in about half an hour if you're slow. (No? Send me your hard-bricked Samsungs with SD slots. If they're worth anything as working phones, I'll pay shipping. S2s, Note 2s, anything. You'll see them - guaranteed working - on Swappa in a day or two. And I'll even have to buy a few SD cards - I don't have any large spares at the moment.)
Yeah, not very useful. I have a few bridges for sale if anyone's interested.
The internal flash memory is a great deal faster in terms of read and write speeds than even the fastest microSD cards on the market.
Want to back that up with thruput numbers? Against a SanDisk U3? Didn't think so.
Granted, on-chip memory is faster than off-chip memory (which is why the L2 cache in a CPU makes sense). But if the bus is properly implemented, on-phone and off-phone storage runs at about the same speed. (In fact, if on-phone storage implements a random scatter algorithm, the SD card can be faster than internal storage. Algorithms cost time. Lack of them costs life, but SD cards can be replaced.)
I am fed up with waiting 15-20 minutes to load the contents of my microSD when connecting my S5 to the computer.
Oh, Phone loads instantly, but Card takes 15-20 minutes? With the same number and sizes of files? With a Samsung or SanDisk U3 card? Get your phone fixed.
This isn't even the last of the issues, applications can't be installed to the SD card
You ARE aware that Android was never designed to be able to do that, right?
Then, of course, we have the "watch your phone melt" option in the S6, if the battery ever goes into thermal runaway. (No? Ask Sony about thermal runaway in lithium batteries. Then duck - you'll get swung at.) S5? Pop the cover out, pry the battery out with a penny (you don't want to melt your fingertip) and watch your $15 battery die. Your phone is still intact. (Stay upwind of the battery or you'll be coughing for a week.) With an S6, your $1,000 retail (?) phone is a puddle, and a lot of insurance doesn't cover damage from batteries.
Tough decision. Like "lose my leg or don't?" Real tough.
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