Why I think no removable batter/MicroSD is a good thing.

[npaladin-2000]

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung withheld announcing a Samsung Galaxy S6 Active to build up hype. That model may have a removable battery and micro SD in addition to the standard resistance to water and dust that the Active line normally has.

I can't possibly imagine why you'd think that. Doing those things makes it much harder to make a device compliant with IP67 and MIL-SPEC-810G, which the Active line usually targets (it's not just water-resistant). More likely is that it would NOT have them. I would lean towards the Note line keeping removable storage and batteries instead.

 

[Scott7217]

I can't possibly imagine why you'd think that. Doing those things makes it much harder to make a device compliant with IP67 and MIL-SPEC-810G, which the Active line usually targets (it's not just water-resistant). More likely is that it would NOT have them. I would lean towards the Note line keeping removable storage and batteries instead.

I'm just looking at what the current S5 Active has: removable storage and a removable battery. At this point, who knows what Samsung will release?

 

[prodigeek]

I love the removable battery. I know how it feels to run out of juice while your commuting. I don't like the dongling wire of the powerbank as it is no better to have nothing dongling. Your battery will be healthier as it won't get strain compared to charging while using it.

 

[prodigeek]

Well yeah, if a person is not really a hardcore user of his/her phone then maybe they don't really need extra battery.

 

[npaladin-2000]

I'm just looking at what the current S5 Active has: removable storage and a removable battery. At this point, who knows what Samsung will release?

The Active version tends to mirror it's associated flagship. The S5 Active had removables because the S5 did. The S6 does not, so I doubt the S6 Active will.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-T707A using Tapatalk

 

[slave]

It is good that you know how we all should use our phones and can tell us that batteries and SD slots are not needed. Thank god for you.

The Note 4 is doing quite well for me. While you are right that there are options to having a removable battery, such as having a portable charge pack, it is more convenient to have a battery I can put in and not have an extra large case or cord dangling from the phone when I need to charge it. As others have pointed out, when a phone reaches the 2 year mark, the battery starts to lose effective charging. A new battery solves that. If you have a sealed case, you either take it in and pay a fee to replace the battery ($80 for an iPhone for example) or buy a new phone. These are examples of why I like having a removable battery.

SD card...you make fun of someone for having a lot of stuff on his SD card. First, he bever said that is the only place it is stored, and I would tend to doubt that is the case. I have a lot of music and videos on my SD card. They are also on the cloud and on my computer. Having it on an SD card means I can access it without using any data or wi-fi and it does not take space on the phone itself. Perhaps there were problems with SD cards at one time. I have not experienced any since the GS2. You say you had all these issues with every type of galaxy device you ever owned and yet you kept using the SD card. How come?

In the end, to me, taking away options is not a good thing. If you do not want to use the SD card no one is forcing you to. If you never want to change out your battery no one is forcing you to. Some of us want that option and will use devices that offer it to us. If the Note line does not have the option in the future, I myself would need to weigh which is more important, these options or the S Pen since that would become the only differentiator for the Note line of phones.

I never, EVER, not one time told you, or anyone else, how to use your phones. go drama queen somewhere else.

EDIT: I also never made fun of anyone. What post did you read, exactly?

 

[slave]

hahahah come on man, you know how much sprint upcharges their accessories. buying retail from them is for suckers and you know it; aint no one got time for buying accy's from the sprint store.

You would not believe how many accessories Sprint sells! It's crazy!

 

[Scott7217]

The Active version tends to mirror it's associated flagship. The S5 Active had removables because the S5 did. The S6 does not, so I doubt the S6 Active will.

It's possible, which is why it is important to let Samsung know what customers value in their devices.

For example, LG released the international version of the G2 with a fixed battery and no removable storage. People weren't happy with that, which is why the G3 has a removable battery and a micro SD card slot.

The same thing will probably happen with Samsung.

 

[clevin]

If they gain 3 customers for every one that they lose, then it is a good situation.

now thats a big "IF", nobody can guarantee that. Frankly, thats the debate from the start.

I have not had an SD card or removable battery in a while. With quick charging I have not had any issues with batteries. If there is 64GB of internal storage available, I am good to go.

Battery issue will not arise in short experience, it's more of a problem when the sealed one lose its capacity, a year down the road.

 

[monsieurms]

If they gain 3 customers for every one that they lose, then it is a good situation. For them. They frankly don't care about you in particular, they care about the majority of the market.

Sent from my Sony Xperia Z3 using Tapatalk.

You keep saying this "if they gain 3 and lose 1 thing...." No one "doesn't" buy the phone because it has removable batteries and SD cards. You are confusing causation and gains caused by other issues and setting up an "either-or" straw man that doesn't exactly exist. No one walks into a store and goes "Wow. They got rid of removable batteries! Way to go! I never wanted a Sammie phone, but now that the removable batteries are gone, I'll take 6 now for the whole family."

If they gain customers, it sure won't be BECAUSE of eliminating what are deal-breaker features for many. They might gain in spite of that, but that's not a causal link. It's not an either-or situation. The actual reality here, contrasted with the causal link you keep implying, is is that they could do both. They could gain customers with other, new features AND keep all the ones they have by not getting rid of deal-breaker features. It's not an either-or. As the phone market becomes more and more competitive, every edge counts. You shouldn't be throwing any customers away. And if I decide Samsung in fact doesn't care about me, well, I won't be caring about them, either.

 

[Haalcyon]

Battery issue will not arise in short experience, it's more of a problem when the sealed one lose its capacity, a year down the road.

IME its quite a bit more than one year. The only phone I've had long enough to notice battery degradation was my iPhone 4. ... I had the battery replaced in the mall, while I waited, for $90.

from the Note 4✒

 

[Aquila]

You keep saying this "if they gain 3 and lose 1 thing...." No one "doesn't" buy the phone because it has removable batteries and SD cards. You are confusing causation and gains caused by other issues and setting up an "either-or" straw man that doesn't exactly exist. No one walks into a store and goes "Wow. They got rid of removable batteries! I never wanted one, but I'll take 6 now for the whole family."

If they gain customers, it sure won't be BECAUSE of eliminating what are deal-breaker features for many. They might gain in spite of that, but that's not a causal link. It's not an either-or situation. The actual reality here, contrasted with the causal link you keep implying, is is that they could do both. They could gain customers with other, new features AND keep all the ones they have by not getting rid of deal-breaker features. It's not an either-or. As the phone market becomes more and more competitive, every edge counts. You shouldn't be throwing any away. And if I decide Samsung in fact doesn't care about me, well, I won't be caring about them, either.

This argument is too general. There are 4 things that Samsung was "doing wrong" in my opinion, according to what I want to see in devices, and this eliminated two of them. The other two (physical button and software) will still prevent me from buying a Samsung phone, but this decision made me regain some respect for their design philosophy.

Removable battery is an engineering and resource mistake - removing this "option" opens the door to many more benefits and goes one step further to eliminating the "drain it all the way" mistake that many users make more often when they can just hot swap - an action alone which wreaks havoc on Android's ability to anticipate usage and manage background tasks. I understand that some people want this option and have no issue with that - for me, it is smarter to close this thing off.

MicroSD card slot is an engineering and resource mistake that allows for security and performance risks not otherwise introduced. Every second spent coding for this option, not to mention the materials and engineering compromises necessary to have it present, falls into the opportunity cost category - time and money not spent on improving the device or software or health of the company (which allows for it to become more creative, etc).

Physical home buttons, etc require materials, engineering compromises, consume physical space and require software resources to enable them. This "feature" was made obsolete in 2011 and seeing devices still released with it is somewhat disappointing. Again, I realize some users prefer this - I just simply disagree. It speaks to a design that detracts from design evolution and utility, rather than helping move the cause forward.

Software - Samsung's TouchWiz comes rich with many, many features. None of them are quite as useful as what Moto brings and in fact many of them are system resource intensive messes with very little value add to most users. Throw everything on the wall and see what sticks is a poor substitute for understanding your market and designing software that meets their needs and raises their expectations of how their devices should/could interact with them. Android as a system is moving towards a concept that resembles getting the software out of the way of content, people, etc. Samsung is one of the biggest offenders when it comes to resisting the more modern perspectives and all three of the above are physical manifestations of this apparent belligerence.

Now, obviously "Samsung" doesn't have an attitude, it responds to market forces in whatever way it believes it can best capitalize - so in fact, Samsung's failings of aspiration are more in fact reflections of the poor atmosphere of their consumer base - many of which were making decisions based on very old software versions running on very cheap (in price and quality) devices. These signals must have been hard to overcome, but I for one am glad that Samsung has taken this tiny step towards rejoining the present course of the platform.

 

[Haalcyon]

I think of it like this: the design and build of the Note 4/Edge is great, aesthetically pleasing, and yet, retains the removables. I don't know why Samsung could not have used this design language on a smaller scale for the S6. For some reason, they really felt like they needed to completely start over and make an iPhone-esk design and I can only imagine that's because of how phenomenonally the iPhone sales are. They want a piece of that to gain market share and this is the only way they thought they could get it. Again, it'll be interesting to see if this method pays off for them.

♻from the Note 4✒

 

[Carrtman]

The consent I'm starting to get from some replies is 2 fold:

1. Some of the "I don't care people" are using Nexus, Motorola etc. nothing wrong with that mind you but I stand to question why people who are obviously happy with sealed batteries and no sd card can't understand why Samsung customers want those features? If I wouldn't care about stuff like physical home buttons, at least capacitive ones and removable battery or micro sd I would have bought one of the many customer unfriendly phones I.e Nexus, Motorola...

Samsung is one of the biggest offenders when it comes to resisting the more modern perspectives and all three of the above are physical manifestations of this apparent belligerence.

Wow being customer friendly friendly and not creating a toy is seen as an offense lol..wonder if some people understand the power of choice? TW obviously has it's shortcomings but it also has benefits like multi-window which as of now is not present on stock Android.

If modern design means releasing crappy, overpriced toys then I'm glad to refuse to even look at what's modern but I guess some users would prefer if all Android devices were the same which would make it basically as closed as Apple...

2. The s5 didn't sell because it wasn't a large enough upgrade, period. Going from full hd to full hd is not an upgrade, sd 800 to sd 801 is a marginal at best upgrade...so while the design wasn't great the Note 4, galaxy alpha showed that Samsung can release premium quality and still keep all the features their customers seem to love. I couldn't care less if customers from other brands like or hate them..Samsung should care about the stuff they are doing best and improve upon it if they want to capture the unsatisfied Apple user offer stuff that Apple doesn't have and don't **** of your existing customer base because it's harder to re-gain an once lost lots customer than to keep them.

I'm just shocked that some people are acting like choice haters in the name of "progression, design" this arrogant line of thinking is one of the reasons why I'd never consider some brands even if I didn't have to pay for them. Especially the Nexus comes to mind.

 

[Haalcyon]

The consent I'm starting to get from some replies is 2 fold:

1. Some of the "I don't care people" are using Nexus, Motorola etc. nothing wrong with that mind you but I stand to question why people who are obviously happy with sealed batteries and no sd card can't understand why Samsung customers want those features? If I wouldn't care about stuff like physical home buttons, at least capacitive ones and removable battery or micro sd I would have bought one of the many customer unfriendly phones I.e Nexus, Motorola...



Wow being customer friendly friendly and not creating a toy is seen as an offense lol..wonder if some people understand the power of choice? TW obviously has it's shortcomings but it also has benefits like multi-window which as of now is not present on stock Android.

If modern design means releasing crappy, overpriced toys then I'm glad to refuse to even look at what's modern but I guess some users would prefer if all Android devices were the same which would make it basically as closed as Apple...

2. The s5 didn't sell because it wasn't a large enough upgrade, period. Going from full hd to full hd is not an upgrade, sd 800 to sd 801 is a marginal at best upgrade...so while the design wasn't great the Note 4, galaxy alpha showed that Samsung can release premium quality and still keep all the features their customers seem to love. I couldn't care less if customers from other brands like or hate them..Samsung should care about the stuff they are doing best and improve upon it if they want to capture the unsatisfied Apple user offer stuff that Apple doesn't have and don't **** of your existing customer base because it's harder to re-gain an once lost lots customer than to keep them.

I'm just shocked that some people are acting like choice haters in the name of "progression, design" this arrogant line of thinking is one of the reasons why I'd never consider some brands even if I didn't have to pay for them.

But the decision had been made. The only thing that is going to affect Samsung's future thinking is if the S6 doesn't sell well and it is going to sell very well because it's what the MAJORITY of people want. There simply is no denying that logic. I understand that a minority of folks are unhappy and need to vent. That's human nature. ... but it doesn't change reality.

♻from the Note 4✒

 

[mrsmumbles]

I've been a iPhone user for years and currently with a iPhone 6 so I'm used to not having a removable battery and SD card. That being said when I was looking to make the move to Android expandable memory was one of the reasons. But I also don't see it as a deal breaker since they raised the internal storage. 32gb is enough..im not one of those ppl that keeps every single song or video I ever had on my phone. I dont know who these ppl are that needs 128gb of storage on a phone.

As far as no removable battery I have a charger at work and in my car so I dont need to carry a spare and swap out. Even if I didnt have chargers available I still wouldn't carry spares.I think most of the general public are the same way. The phone geeks in these types of forums make up a very small percentage of phone purchases. Samsung gave the ppl what they wanted with the new design and a more premium look and feel. The S6 will sell like crazy.

People always say this but I think a majority of phone buyers do know what they want. Plus, for the rest of the world microsd continues to be essential - it's not going to disappear and it shouldn't. You may not use it but plenty of us do want it and use it.

 

[Carrtman]

But the decision had been made. The only thing that is going to affect Samsung's future thinking is if the S6 doesn't sell well and it is going to sell very well because it's what the MAJORITY of people want. There simply is no denying that logic. I understand that a minority of folks are unhappy and need to vent. That's human nature. ... but it doesn't change reality.

♻from the Note 4✒

Oh the memories, kept hearing the same about the s5 and btw. all this minority vs majority line of thinking doesn't help either because nobody can really say which camp is which. But judging by the backslash so far and the lame almost iq insulting excuses from Samsung I've got a pretty good idea on what to expect.

 

[npaladin-2000]

You keep saying this "if they gain 3 and lose 1 thing...." No one "doesn't" buy the phone because it has removable batteries and SD cards. You are confusing causation and gains caused by other issues and setting up an "either-or" straw man that doesn't exactly exist. No one walks into a store and goes "Wow. They got rid of removable batteries! Way to go! I never wanted a Sammie phone, but now that the removable batteries are gone, I'll take 6 now for the whole family."

If they gain customers, it sure won't be BECAUSE of eliminating what are deal-breaker features for many. They might gain in spite of that, but that's not a causal link. It's not an either-or situation. The actual reality here, contrasted with the causal link you keep implying, is is that they could do both. They could gain customers with other, new features AND keep all the ones they have by not getting rid of deal-breaker features. It's not an either-or. As the phone market becomes more and more competitive, every edge counts. You shouldn't be throwing any customers away. And if I decide Samsung in fact doesn't care about me, well, I won't be caring about them, either.

They could if their market research showed that enough of the market cared about those features for them to invest the time and money and resources to implement them. Clearly that is not the case, their research must have showed that there was more of a benefit to adding things like MST and premium design, and that a removable battery and microSD would not generate enough additional sales to justify the R&D and implementation costs.

Bottom line, it would have cost them too much to please you, your money isn't worth the effort involved. That's harsh, I know, but that's how it ended up. Good news is HTC is willing to give you removable storage, and Saygus and LG are willing to give you both.

 

[Premium1]

Lets talk about the MicroSD first

Like everyone I love to have a phone with MicroSD feature. It makes it easier to swap between my phones as well as to transfer data to my PC. I myself won't mind spending lots of money on a fast microSD card but I have yet to find one that is both FAST and LARGE in capacity. On my Note 4, i'm using Sandisk Extreme and my fastest bench mark test was 70mb Read and 39 Write. Now these numbers are decent but In my opinion MicroSD cards are not keeping up with the speed of phones these days which is cause bottleneck issue and is one of the reasons behind all the lag that people complain about.

Now with the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 which has 350Mb/s Read and 150Mb/s, you can rest assure it will not cause any lag from viewing pictures and videos as well as swapping from app to app. Not to mention you can always plug in your OTG cable with flash usb and do all your backups there titanium backup or simply copying your data there which is what i'm doing currently.

View attachment 165468
Samsung has ultra fast 128GB UFS 2.0 ready for smartphones


As for the Battery,

While having a removable battery is a plus, from my personal experience I have yet to use it when I want too. I have extra battery and charger for my Note 4 but i always find my self plugging it in rather than taking the cover off and restart my phone. Now with all the new features to charge wirelessily and fastcharge 2.0, I don't think anyone would have any issue. Iphone users as well as other brands from nexus 5,6 and htc didn't complain about their battery then why should we when are ahead of the game in many ways?

With all the features we are getting on the GS6, I think i can easily sacrifice on these too.

I agree. Now that being said, I can see the rare case of people putting every possible thing in their life on their phone and yelling "128gb isn't enough" yet 99% of people will be fine with that or an even smaller storage version. The only thing that really concerns me is the battery. Not that its not removable, but its on the low side. Now I am sure samsung tested it, but hope it doesn't end up like iPhone with so-so battery life. I am going to wait and see what reviewers say about battery life, but other than that it looks like a great phone.
Not to mention, those complaining are a very small minority, just like those who root and rom. If the lack of removable storage and battery were such huge concerns, people would be buying and continue buying iPhones all the time.

 

[monsieurms]

T
Now, obviously "Samsung" doesn't have an attitude, it responds to market forces in whatever way it believes it can best capitalize - so in fact, Samsung's failings of aspiration are more in fact reflections of the poor atmosphere of their consumer base - many of which were making decisions based on very old software versions running on very cheap (in price and quality) devices. These signals must have been hard to overcome, but I for one am glad that Samsung has taken this tiny step towards rejoining the present course of the platform.

You can make the same argument in favor of getting rid of anything. Lower the screen resolution. Maybe batteries will last longer. Get rid of the S pen. Hardly anyone really needs it, right? It devotes too much resources to this minor feature that could be used for other things! Who cares about the vocal minority that likes it? Just be like everyone else--be a follower instead of a leader.

But keep slicing away groups that like this or that, and you pretty much find that your customer base has suddenly eroded. This 8% won't buy because it no longer has THIS. That 11% won't buy because it no longer has THAT. And so on. People have different computing needs. Samsung has made its bones by providing lots of key features that others didn't have. If it now goes on the warpath to keep taking things away, many of us will look for companies that give us what we want. SOMEONE will. It's a marketing advantage. It gives the company an identity.

If you're the one who won't them buy them simply because they have,say, removable batteries, I suspect you're vastly outnumbered by those of us who consider it important as a feature and/or a deal-breaker. (Actually, for me the SD card is even more important.) There are 3 groups: those that gotta have, those that won't buy with it, and those in the middle who don't care either way. I imagine the middle is by far the largest group. Conceded. But I also would assert that the number of people who refuse to buy the phone simply BECAUSE it has sd card slots and removable batteries is somewhere between slim and none. It may not be a turn-on, but it is hardly a turn-off. Thus, Samsung has a net loss if it goes this way.

As this market keeps getting more and more competitive and more and more mature, it's not so easy to distinguish oneself from competitors. These are increasingly mature products with only incremental advances. Making yourself look like everyone else is a really big mistake. And once people leave, they may never come back.