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The time had come, you could peel off the back cover of your phone and easily replace a new battery and microSD card. As well as feeling like a double agent in a spy movie, that added flexibility has given Android phone fans welcome ammo to congratulate their Apple rivals. However, things have changed.
Phones today are thinner, sleeker and more powerful than ever before, but we are also losing more and more functionality over the years. Replaceable batteries are a distant memory, and even the powerful, seemingly immortal headphone jack is all but extinct from modern flagships.
The latest feature in the smartphone evolution reticle? Expandable storage.
That’s right – the microSD slot, popular with power users and media accumulators, is likely to join the graveyard of smartphone functionality. While expandable storage options have become less common in recent years, it is the latest version of Samsung’s Galaxy S21 series that could signal the beginning of the end.
Avant-garde
It is safe to say that Samsung is considered by many to be the “Apple” of the Android world. Its handsets are widely regarded as offering one of the most premium smartphone experiences on the market, both in terms of hardware and features, as well as price. Not only that, but the South Korean tech giant also tends to follow the trends set by Apple.
Yes, we know it is blasphemy in the hallowed halls of the Android Temple, but it is true.
“It’s increasingly clear that expandable storage is disappearing as an option on smartphones,” says Ben Wood, chief analyst, CCS Insight.
“Apple has always taken this approach, forcing customers to buy more expensive and larger memory variants rather than a cheap aftermarket memory card. As market leader Samsung ditches expandable memory on its latest S21 smartphones, it looks like this option will follow the forgotten 3.5mm headphone jack.
Ah, the sorely missed headphone jack. Do you remember when Apple killed him? Samsung posted video ads poking fun at Apple for this, only to later remove them by ditching wearing its own flagship Galaxy line.
The same happened when removing the previously included Galaxy S21 charging socket. While the company has shown it can reverse its decisions – it removed the microSD slot from the Galaxy S6 and brought it back to the Galaxy S7 in 2016 – we can’t really see it rebooting the expandable storage franchise.
We are focusing specifically on Samsung, as the company is a fairly reliable indicator of trends in the Android world. While we can’t guarantee that other manufacturers will follow suit, it’s quite likely, especially when looking at the trend of headphone jack removal.
At the time of writing, major flagship level phones with microSD slots include last year’s Galaxy S20 and Note 20 Ultra, Sony Xperia 1 II and Xperia 5 II, LG V60 ThinQ, and Xiaomi Mi 10i, to name just a few major examples.
Backlash or acceptance?
Humans are fickle, and you could argue that thanks to the 24/7 memes bombardment, rotting TikTok videos, and constant news cycles, our memories have never been shorter.
Remember when the idea of removing the headphone jack seemed ridiculous? Ask the average person on the street about it today, and they’ll probably barely record the Before Times, happily trotting around with their AirPods or AirPods clones firmly plugged into their ears. The more cynical among us might think that the death of the headphone jack was primarily driven by the sale of wireless headphones, but that’s a whole different story.
“It will be interesting to see how this trend evolves over the long term,” said Bill Nagy, TMT independent analyst and consultant.
“Apple faced backlash from consumers for removing the headphone jack, but it didn’t have an immediate effect on iPhone sales in the two years after the move. However, Android based phones are known for their flexibility, a feature well regarded by Android users. The growing removal of the ability to use microSD cards, especially replacing it with cloud storage, is likely to spark an increase in Android consumers.
“Other Android makers would be wise to assess the market reaction to Samsung’s decision to inform their future development cycles.”
So it’s likely that die-hard Android users – the kind of people who delve into the world of unlockable bootstraps, custom ROMs, and plenty of frequent Android forums – will choose to boycott Samsung phones without microSDs, but they only make up for it. ‘a tiny percentage of sales. .
Not only that, but OnePlus (a company widely considered to cater to Android enthusiasts), has never offered expandable storage, and still seems to have a positive following. This remains true for the brand new OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro.
Do you even need expandable storage?
Today, you can say quite convincingly that most people don’t need expandable storage. With the wide availability of cloud storage solutions like Google Drive and Photos, you can easily store your files and media online, saving space on your phone for apps and any media files you want. want to access immediately (such as episodes of your favorite show. to binge watch on a long flight).
Beyond that, there’s also the fact that despite advancements in technology, microSD transfer speeds remain much slower than the NVMe storage built into your phone, which delivers much faster and smoother performance. Yes, it’s a bit geeky and won’t really interest the casual user, but it’s a point worth mentioning.
The problem, however, is that we are seeing things like 8K video recording become more common in newer handsets. If you’re an avid videographer, you’ll be munching on onboard storage in no time. Plus, services like Google Drive and Google Photos are no longer completely free – you’ll have to shell out a monthly fee once you go over your 15GB free storage limit.
You could (convincingly) argue that removing expandable storage options is a way for businesses to push their own cloud storage solutions in the future, like Samsung cloud services and OnePlus, to name a few examples. If you haven’t spotted it already, it could lead to a headphone / headphone jack upselling situation again.
On a much less subtle level, it also allows companies to follow Apple’s method of offering higher capacity devices at higher prices.
“At the end of the day, that means if you want a smartphone with a large capacity, you have to go for a more expensive model rather than increasing the memory at a later date with a memory card,” says Wood.
This is all guesswork, of course. Maybe Samsung will bring back expandable storage with the headphone jack in a nostalgia-laden retro product comeback.
Maybe the manufacturers will make the phones a bit thicker to give us bigger batteries, which can also be replaced again. Hell, we might even see phones with removable covers like the good old days of Nokia.
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