Not exactly “news” but the recent Samsung Galaxy Ax6 phones (A26, A36, A56) all does not have the MicroSD card slot, only the Galaxy A16 still has it.
I fucking hate this. I love having a mini-TV with me. I can load up a Terabyte of TV shows I love rewatching. You know, maybe you travel or something. Also, good for recording like a lot of videos. Now, new Samsung phones cannot do that anymore.
Sorry for the rant, but honestly, I have to vent: Fuck Samsung. Fuck this capitalist bullshit.
I’m thinking of stop buying Samsung for the future, but honestly, other manufacturers might follow suit, so it ultimately might not matter. I hate this bullshit. I will carry a portable SSD if I have to, I ain’t buying your stupid cloud. I’m broke AF and I don’t got no money for subscriptions. (Also, they could hold your data hostage and refuse access for random “ToS” violations)
What are your thoughts? What’s the future of MicroSD card slots in phones?
(future looks so bleak)
My pixel also does not have it. I don’t like it. The only slot is usc c.
If there is no expandable storage, you have to buy the 2x expensive phone with more internal storage. That’s the game they are playing.
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Not sure what the need to be a dick about this it, but I don’t agree that just because they are a “sliver of phone users” doesn’t mean what they’re talking about isn’t still important. It’s good for users to try and think of ways to keep things the least expensive for themselves, while increasing their technical knowledge. I’m seeing a lot of younger people without any basic knowledge of technology who are going to be at the whim of changes made by tech giants because they don’t know how to modify their own systems.
The more people work together and ask questions to try and grow as well as try and share their discontent with design decisions of those tech giants in hope others might take note and stop, the better. It’s a small effort by one person, but it’s more than just throwing up their hands and saying “just get a thumb drive and stop crying”.
I think it’s also pushing subscription based cloud services. To me, the SD card slot is a convenient backup target when away from home. It fits my 3-2-1 backup strategy. Without it, more people will consider backing up to paid cloud services, like how Apple does it.
For the record, I hate this trend. Hands off my sd slot and my 3.5mm jack. But I also want GrapheneOS or something similar. Can’t have it all…
Nintendo Switch 2 just got it’s 1tb MicroSD Express (1gbps write / 3 gbps read) card announced so I see a bright future for MicroSD technology.
Yeah, but I see it as a “premium” product going forward.
I use syncthing to a second drive on my pc in case my phone gets lost or stolen. It just syncs when I connect to wifi. This sucks for people who take or store a lot of videos.
How does Syncthing solve OP’s problem?
You can move and store excess files and it will remove them from the phone.
I mean you can do that by plugging it into the computer and dragging and dropping files. The problem is they’re no longer on the phone…
Syncthing is automatic, so you don’t have to remeber to do that. If you’re taking a lot of videos I’m sure you wouldn’t need them all the time. I guess op could get a seed box.
I wish syncthing would work for me. Spent a week testing and trying to get it to work.
I’m using syncthing - fork on android and linux on my pc.
Cool. More phones I won’t buy.
I haven’t really thought about extra storage in awhile, when most phones are 256GB or more it’s hard to fill up that much space. At most I keep my music (maybe 30GB or so), some offline shows when traveling, photos, etc… I’m barely at 60GB of usage on mine.
All I ever remember with SD cards in phones was how slow they are, how often they would randomly break and corrupt the data somehow, and how annoying it was to get stuff to properly work with content on an SD card.
I just bought a 1TB SD card and cloned the 512GB card that was in my phone over to it because I was running out of space. My phone is rooted which does make forcing or tricking apps to use the SD card for storage much easier.
That’s fair, the downside of rooting for me is the struggle with updates and it significantly compromises the security of my phone.
Yeah my buddies all buy the biggest phone capacity they can get, and I barely thought about my last phones 128gb. I had to check my current phones capacity just now, thought it was 256 but I guess it’s 512.
I’m using 180 ish, but I could easily be under a hundred again if I deleted a bunch of crap that’s built up 🤷♂️
I do remember losing a months worth of photos years ago when my SD card died, and my Dropbox had gotten full. That was the day I upgraded my Dropbox. I’m on a yearly subscription, it’s due to renew next month, I hope to be on immich by then. Just gotta find time.
Immich has been great, I started using it like 2 years ago now I think.
I use an A15 and don’t use the SD card slot, but I have a home server and handheld gaming devices. I don’t use my phone to store much of anything.
I’m an outlier. I know a lot of users live in their phones without hardly any backup devices. Those are the ones who will be hit hardest by a decision like this.
I like SD slots for all kinds of reasons, never had a single one die on me… As for subscription based stuff, even/especially apps, etc, they’re just a money drain and, let’s face it, a lot are not worth what they demand and are plain exploitative…
Forcing you on to “The Cloud” (i.e. other peoples disk space) so your data can be rummaged through. I don’t like it.
That and they get unlimited money and/or force you to a more expensive model of a phone.
I bought a S22 Ultra 3 years ago and just went with the 128GB variant since I was planning on continuing using my microSD from my old phone. It was a huge surprise seeing that the slot is missing and I was stuck with a low storage phone. Sure I could have send it back but my prior phone was starting to falling apart and I didn’t want to pay more so I kept it and hate being back in the storage grind… Thanks Samsung!
I agree not having micro SD cards is pretty frustrating. The way I have worked around it is to “self-host” the things that take up lots of storage space on a separate PC, and connect to that with my phone when I want to access it.
For example, instead of loading a bunch of movies onto my phone, all my movies/tv are on my plex server. When I want to watch something I just open the Plex app and go. The videos don’t take up any space on my phone (unless i will be out of service, then I can download them via the app for offline viewing).
I do the same thing for music, pictures, and other things. A benefit of this is all my stuff is accessible from all my devices (phone, tablet/pc/laptop/tv) without me having to manually load it on each device.
It takes work to get setup, and it’s important to make sure you have good data backup practices incase you have drives that fail. But once you have it setup it’s quite liberating not having to rely on all the BS cloud services that big tech tries to sell us.
While I would still prefer to have a micro sd card slot, this setup makes me miss them less.
Welcome to dongle hell! (I have an iPhone) seriously though, my jaw has dropped a bit in empathy for Android users, that’s wild they’re taking that away. I don’t see how they think it’s a good idea for any other reason than money
Not having microSD isn’t a trend I like, since expandable storage with less reliance on cloud services and not being upcharged to move up a tier on internal storage is ideal. It is sad to see it is mostly dead over the years.
But, one good thing I do look forward to is the EU requiring user-replaceable batteries by 2027 that will hopefully make replacing batteries much easier than it is now. I miss the days when batteries could be popped out and swapped on the spot.
Might be expensive for the specs but there are a lot of pluses. On-the-go replaceable battery, no 3.5 jack though…
I’m quite happy with mine. Bought when the promotion was the extra battery.
I’m looking to switch from using Pixel phones to a more open alternate, I don’t know who I should order through to get these in Canada
Check with Fairphone if the phone is compatible with your carrier, and then order directly. Just a warning, check also about the warranty.
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I’m in the US and while Fairphone doesn’t sell the 5 here I was able to “import” it via Clover Technology.
Its beyond bleak – dead.
Samsung A series were the last hope. Now, that they are dead – and stuck on 256gb. Your only options are portable SSD/micosdcard with type C support, buying a phone with 512gb/1TB storage.
Honestly, the A56 makes literally no sense. You could just get the S24fe since it lost the one defining feature which would’ve made it worth Samsung’s asking price.
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For the foreseeable future, Sony is holding on to both the microSD card slot and the 3.5mm headphone jack.
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Indeed it’s not great, tho recently it’s been upgraded to 3 major OS upgrades and 4 years of security updates. For a flagship phone that is still not much, but for me the minimum I’d be happy to invest in.
Of course they also have cheaper phones, which may cover your needs.
Lack of updates isn’t a killer as much as you think. I’m intentionally running a 5 year old version of Android (11) and never once have any security issues. The best defense is being smart about your usage no matter how old your software is.
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Does it still say “hello moto” when you turn it on?
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But not the market share, availability, or brand recognition 😔
They also seem to have no marketing. I only see ads for Apple, Samsung and the big Chinese manufacturers in public, despite the fact that Sony also has phones available here. Online I have no idea, I don’t view ads online.
