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Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

Serious question - do you really use more than 128GB on your phone? If so, at what point would internal storage be good enough for you to not require extendable storage?

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128 GB would be enough, but I resent having to pay an extra $150 for it as internal storage when I can find a 128gb memory card for about $60 on Amazon.

The internal memory is much faster than SD cards, and potentially more reliable. I think Google and Samsung have decided to ditch sd cards to prevent the user having a shitty experience.

Also, Google is offering 128GB, which is pretty decent. And their pricing is much less than Samsung's for 64gb vs 32gb.

It may be, but you only have to buy one high-speed (U3?) microSD card once (every 4-6 years), while if you need 128GB storage in your phone but it only comes as internal, then with every phone you buy you'll have to pay that extra premium.

If you have a microsd card that is not failing after 6 years, i'd be super-duper impressed :) I have never gotten one past 3 with normal usage.

How fast is internal storage?

When has an SD card failed before every other part of the phone, including USB port and screen?

It depends on the device, but I'm working with the Qualcomm DragonBoard 410c (similar to a phone in some respects), and eMMC memory is WAY faster than SD cards.

It can be pretty fast. Apple's new iPhone gets storage speeds in line with a low end SSD [1].

[1] http://anandtech.com/show/9662/iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-...

I have tried two different 128GB cards on my Note 3. The first one died after a few months, the second one is currently having problems. My next phone will have at least 128GB internal storage (iPhone or 6P).

Speed does not matter too much for music / video / photos storage.

> I think Google and Samsung have decided to ditch sd cards to prevent the user having a shitty experience.

I think Google has decided to ditch SD cards to encourage users to keep more of their data on Google's servers.

Right, because they makes more sense than ditching them because they are an unreliable mess that cause more problems than they solve, and are not necessary for the vast majority of users.

Do you think apple never supported SD cards because they wanted more people to put stuff in icloud?

What makes them an "unreliable mess that cause more problems than they solve"? I've never had a single problem with an SD card. I put files on it, sometimes I read those files.

> Do you think apple never supported SD cards because they wanted more people to put stuff in icloud?

Uhh... of course? Both companies charge extra for more space — Apple past 5GB and Google past 15GB. They make money by forcing you to upgrade your online storage.

Not iCloud: Apple would prefer you buy all your storage (NAND) from Apple rather than Kingston, Samsung or SanDisk. Soldered, with an Apple-sized margin.

this and M$ NTFS/xFAT patent extortion

Then amend the parent and instead say "I feel ripped off paying $150 premium for a 128GB model when I could buy a desktop 512GB 850 Evo for that much".

And I guarantee you Samsungs SSD options are faster than their phone flash, because they go for performance way more on desktop parts.

Aren't you paying for the size the storage has been compressed down to at these prices?

Itty bitty little tiny chips? Your desktop 512GB 850 EVO isn't going to fit into the space a smartphone has for storage.

The SD cards are a better price comparison because they will use a similar stacking technology to get the small form factor. The main difference is SD cards need a controller which adds cost.

> I think Google and Samsung have decided to ditch sd cards to prevent the user having a shitty experience.

This line of reasoning makes absolutely no sense. How could having the option to use an SD card with your device make for a shittier UX. The use of an SD expansion slot is completely optional, if you don't have the desire to use an SD card it has absolutely no bearing on the UX, and if you do, no matter how shitty the UX, it will always be preferable to the absence of removable media capabilities altogether.

Because there is an opportunity cost to having an SD slot. Remember it takes up physical space inside the device, which could be used for more internal memory, battery space etc. they would have opted for something everyone wants over a smaller subset of users

That sounds more like an engineering challenge than a UX compromise. Also, as these heated threads show, what "everyone wants" is a bit elusive. I think they could overcome these "costs" if they wanted, but they don't -- the actual UX "cost" of complicating how the user interacts with storage is probably one reason why.

> Because there is an opportunity cost to having an SD slot. Remember it takes up physical space inside the device, which could be used for more internal memory, battery space et

There are opportunity costs for everything, but microsd readers are a cheap, mature, commodity technology that's been in top-end phones for ages, its impact on the phone's available real-estate for battery and memory is nearly negligible.

The more storage someone has available, the more they might use. I could see carrying around a phone with 4 TB of storage, holding all my operating systems, data, HD movies and video games, for instance, and simply plugging it into terminals and booting on more powerful hardware.

Yeah but this one comes with 32gb max.

music photos videos

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