large onboard storage is no replacement for being able to swap out cards.
especially in the case of a phone failure to boot.
especially in the case of a phone failure to boot.
So consider that this niche feature you find useful is of almost no consequence to anybody.
Additionally, iPhones and Samsung devices have really durable internal storage. Almost always the battery craps out first.
The ability to do offline salvaging does not seem like such a big selling point to me.
As for offline salvaging, do you realize how many phones have had bugs that resulted in boot problems in the last 10 years?
As for privacy, I would disable cloud sync and backups as well. But eventually came to the sad conclusion that I have a lot more going on in my life and I cannot sacrifice even more of my preciously little free time to self-manage all my data -- not to mention this would require a moderate investment in my own NAS / 10Gbps switch / 10Gbps router and end-to-end encrypted backups to 1-2 VPS-es.
I get where you are coming from, I do. But I had to make a choice between an actual life and paranoia. I settled for a "mostly ok" solution and a bit more of a personal life and free time.
If privacy and offline-first own personal data get commoditised, I'll be the first to switch away from cloud (and thus Apple).