Is expandable storage being killed off?

Associate
Joined
21 Sep 2010
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1,215
As a user with a lot of music and pictures kept on my phone, I'm extremely keen on handsets with a decent amount of storage on them. I muddle by on 32gb at the moment but I could really do with 64gb or even more. I know the industry is pushing the cloud hard at the moment but I have a relatively small data allowance and (more importantly) a pretty poor connection in my area so I am not thrilled about that approach.

There are 64gb phones on the market of course (iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 to name a couple) and a number of devices with SD card storage, but they are relatively few and far between in the market. I would gladly have bought a Lumia 920 for example were it not for the fact it was capped at 32gb.

Now I came to accept a while ago that the likes of Apple would charge massive premiums for phones with larger storage capacities, but of late there seems to be an even more worrying trend emerging for me. The elimination of larger phones altogether. The latest flagship Nokia, HTC and Nexus phones are all launching with modest storage capacity and no expandable storage. That a phone like the new Nexus only felt the need to have a max of 16gb space pretty much blew my mind, and I fear that is where the industry as a whole is heading. I know Samsung are the biggest players and still give expandable storage, but I wonder how long they will hold out if they see the rest of the market being successful without needing to offer this.

I appreciate I am in the minority requiring so much space. Most of my friends have phones that are half empty, but I am not in that position. So am I just going to have to change my ways and not hold so much on my phone in future or is this just a bit of paranoia?
 
Associate
OP
Joined
21 Sep 2010
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1,215
Well that is odd in that the One SV appears to be a mid range handset, whereas the One X and the newer One X+ do not have that option. Nokia pulled the same thing by launching the 920 with no expandable storage but the 820 does have an SD card slot. I don't get it.
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Aug 2007
Posts
4,096
As much as the cloud route seems like a nice idea, mobile operators seem to want to charge more and more for less and less data. If we go back a few years most people had unlimited data, but it’s quite the opposite now which seems to conflict with the idea of using cloud storage to me.

I just don’t see a good reason not to include expandable storage, apart from being able to charge extra for larger built in storage like Apple do, but it’s a bit rubbish if you don’t even give the option of decent in built storage as with the Nexus 4.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
90,806
Yeah it sucks - there many and perfectly valid reasons to use an SD card not the least that the data on it can be accessed by plugged into a PC or another phone whereas internal storage is very hard to get to if the phone dies.

Also one of the largest amounts of time I spend accessing the files stored on my phone internally is when I'm in areas with no signal or poor signal which makes cloud storage worse than useless.
 
Associate
Joined
2 Oct 2006
Posts
2,240
If android locked it down so only music/video could go on them then I could live with that. But not having them as an option at all does really annoy me and why the nexus phones always put me off.
 
Associate
Joined
2 Oct 2006
Posts
2,240
With a tablet you can happily use a flash drive and an otg cable but I agree with phones this is not really an option.

I was a biot annoyed with my S3 that I hate to root my phone to be able to move my games across to the SD card!
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Apr 2007
Posts
11,786
My car CD player is broke but the stereo is too good to replace, so storage options are essential on phones for me.

I would not consider buying a phone with no storage options. 32GB sd cards are good value
 
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