...Because Samsung is powerful enough to tell Google or anybody else "out there" to go straight to hell when it comes to how their product interfaces with the entire networked world...
Okay, I understand that it was not Samsung's idea to cripple the SD in ICS. And I understand that Google maintains that the additional revenue this will produce for Google Drive was just a happy, serendipitous accident. I still feel that Google, Samsung and the carriers are acting arrogant and avaricious in making this change.
Samsung, stop hiding behind Google. You knew what they were doing and you neither publicly resisted the move, nor made sure your customers were aware. Okay, there are clear advantages of single-layer storage. But they only can be realized if customers are able to buy a phone whose initial internal storage is big enough to meet their needs for the life of the phone. You could have acted responsibly by making your publicity for the affected phones clear as to the limit on internal storage FOR SYSTEM DATA AND ALL APPLICATIONS. Your publicity consistently trumpets the expandability of storage and seldom mentions that it's only for media. You make versions of the GN2 with adequate storage but don't offer them through any of the US carriers, why is that? Is it because the higher price would make some of your competitors phones look good? You achieved your prominence in mobiles by giving people phones that worked and worked well at a fair price. Now you are making decisions that protect your revenue while hurting your customers. That's something market-dominating companies usually do just before discovering that some upstart is eating their lunch. Watch out, Samsung.
Google: you have shown yourself extremely skillful at monetizing the revenue opportunities that serendipity sends your way, so enough already with your innocent geek routine. The advantages of single layer storage are only realized if people buy a phone with adequate main storage. If a change like this is made for whatever reasons and then is underpublicized, the result will ber increasing demand for cloud storage. You had to know that and then you went ahead with both the change and the underpublicity, all while selling increasing amounts of cloud storage. Your whole pretense that this is an accident is really nauseating. Stand up to your decisions, take responsibility, and help the phone buying public understand and get what they need.
Carriers, (in the US, anyhow) you know that some consumers need a phone with more main storage. Samsung makes it, why don't you offer it? When you sell micro SD cards for expanding the memory of phones like the GN2 why don't you clearly warn that this is not for app storage. Let me guess, you make more money in the short term by misleading your customers. You all make me sick.
By the way, I just want to be clear that I am eligible for an upgrade with my carrier (AT&T) and I expected to use it for a GN2 but because of the memory issue I am waiting. When a phone comes to market that can hold all of my apps and data, either in main or expanded memory, then I will move. Meanwhile, AT&T, Samsung and Google are missing their shares of the revenue that is not coming in. Could not happen to a more deserving bunch of dishonest and greedy companies.