And since, underneath, it becomes a standard PCI-E NVME with standard lanes, there is no inherent speed limit from the bus itself, only from the fact that SD cards are tiny and any real controller is going to cook.
If I imported one, the majority of the handsets released before this year wouldn't be able to register on a network, given that the networks have gone and blocked the IMEI TAC associated with most of Sony's handsets.[1]
This is due to Sony not having the correct carrier settings in order to roam onto them for emergency calls, and a ham-fisted direction to have working emergency calls post-3G shutdown.
Their support is garbage: 1 Android version and only 3 years of security updates for a phone that cost nearly $1000. Google and Samsung offer 5+ years on their flagship phones.
The cameras are held back by incompetent software; the camera app does not even rotate for a left handed mode (they only need to rotate text and icons). Their camera app behaves like a point and shoot camera from 2004, and you have to treat it like that or your photos will be a blurry, underexposed mess. The cameras are technically fine, but the software implementation is truly terrible.
Yes, the phone has a headphone jack and micro SD slot, but those aren't worth it when everything else sucks. Sony is far, far behind other major Android manufacturers when it comes to software quality and support.
I gleefully gave Sony money for the 5 IV in late 2022. The phone stops receiving all updates next month (September 2025). Custom ROMs (e.g. LineageOS) are nonexistent because Sony has such an insignificant market share.
I won't be giving Sony any money for a new phone.
Most of the frustrations can be resolved by liberal use of third-party apps from F-Droid. Lawnchair and the Fossify suite make the basic experience quite reasonable, because the system UI components are thankfully not too heavily modified, only the system apps. With apps such as DAVx⁵ and Fennec it's really very useable.
Unfortunately the locked bootloader (which is completely illegal of course) is a big frustration and the main reason why you can't get custom ROMs running on it. I don't think it's about market share; some less popular brands have better community support because their manufacturers don't build artificial barriers to modifications. For security, this puts Sony's phones right down in my estimation and I too would not recommend them for this reason alone.
The other phone manufacturers slavishly imitating them is what destroyed "all the funky phones".
There was no particular reason other manufacturers needed to copy absolutely everything Apple did.
I know this because I used to try to help. I used to think that, for whatever reason, people just didn't know about all of the options out there.
I was wrong.
"I want a smaller phone" here's a smaller phone "yeah but I don't like that one".
"I want a thicker phone with a huge battery" here's a thicker phone with a huge battery "yeah but I don't like that one".
"I want a dumber phone" here's a dumber phone "yeah but I don't like that one".
"I want a privacy-focused phone" here's a privacy-focused phone "yeah but I don't like that one".
People will make up an infinite variety of excuses why a product that meets their chief stated requirement isn't for them.
"Oh the camera is only 24.9999 megapixels instead of 25. Oh that's 9mm thick I really can only do 8.9mm at maximum. Oh that's only IP68 rated I want IP69. Oh that screen is 5.4 inches-- TOO BIG-- I want a 5.25 inch screen."
The best was when someone wanted a rugged phone with long battery life and they rejected an option because its ARM cores ran at like 525MHz less than the latest shiny Samsung joint so they bought the skinny non-rugged non-gigundo-battery Samsung instead. They didn't understand that the only distance between the two would be in benchmarks, and only by small margins, and that to human perception there would be no difference.
What I think they want, instead of a phone that meets their requirements, is a POPULAR phone that they consider to be an aspiration goal or status symbol to be specifically designed to meet their personal requirements and that everyone else should have those same requirements too.
It's almost impossible to compete with Apple and Google. Samsung is managing to hang on, but not many others can.
I think the level of software control that Apple and Google wield alone is cause for regulatory scrutiny and possible antitrust action. Maybe something like that can oxygenate the field for better competition.
Smartphones shouldn't be this stagnant. It should be a highly competitive market. But it isn't.
> I was wrong.
You were wrong because you misunderstood the comment. When people say "I want a smaller phone" what they mean is "I want this phone, but smaller".
So when you tell them a smaller phone exists but it's also different in 20 other parameters, now there's a new problem, as you encountered. It's not because those people are disingenuous, it's because you misunderstood them.
iPhone killed them all. Yeah I personally kind of want iMessage. Doesn't change the fact that iPhone killed them all.
Here's a phone with "a completely square display": https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rotatable-Phone-i19-Pro-Mini-Fold...
It even rotates but only the one screen.
I even found a phone with integrated barcode scanner, the UNIWA V9S.
Laying is transitive and requires an object.
But I digress.
> When I moved to the US in my teens, I was surprised at the sheer disregard of English grammar rules in common vernacular here, to the point that some folks (though not my English teachers) think their incorrect use is correct.
You noted a common feature of incorrect Americanisms, which is that many of its speakers proudly and ignorantly proclaim their usage is correct. Disregarding descriptive linguistics, all it takes is one second of logic to realize why an incorrect saying doesn't make sense at all, but even that is asking for too much without getting into an argument sometimes.
It's *couldn't care less my dude
Maybe you should care less about it then.
The idea that there is only one correct way to use a language and that it is determined in academic circles and should be enforced on the masses is inherently based in illegitimate authority and social exclusion and is not a social force for good.
That's entirely a function of NAND quality and controller sophistication. Why would a different form factor make a difference here?
Also, for an apples to apples comparison, you'd have to compare this new standard to microSD Express cards, not regular ones.
> I feel like the connector is not reliable enough.
Have you actually had a connector wear out? I'm not the biggest fan of the spring loading myself (I've had devices catapult microSD cards into the next room in the past!), but it seems pretty reliable in terms of actually making and keeping a connection to me.
Same applies to SSD drives, there are consumer drives that have colorful boxes with claims like speed or size, and there are specialized SSD drives based on MLC chips that are still available here and there
I don't know the specifics but SD express might be patent/license encumbered so why pay when you can make your own for free?
I'm guessing this drive will eventually percolate down in the form of an SD Express card, and SD express is now in the Switch 2. The Biwin drive is currently too big to fit the SD spec, but that might not be true in the future.
I think Nintendo just sealed the deal against any SD Express competitors. This article is (probably) planted PR to promote this drive to Western buyers interested in maximizing their SD Express slots in a "Hey, why do these Chinese gamers get this amazing card and I'm stuck with this junk?" Now that lights a fire under a lot of people and Biwin can start licensing the technology or selling directly to the Western market.
Storage upgrades in handhelds seems to be a real problem. I was surprised my Steam Deck didn't have an easy to access M2 slot because of Valve's "pro-gamer" reputation. You have to take the entire thing apart to get to the SSD and the plain-jane SD slot you do get will never feel fast enough, especially since its hardware capped at 104 MB/s. Gabe didn't become a billionaire by not being ruthless I suppose, but it is disappointing.
I'm guessing a lot of these devices are sold at a premium for more storage so they don't want to make it easy to upgrade fast storage on your own. Instead we're just forced into the SD card ghetto. Maybe Biwin can change that, or the handheld makers will push against that if it means hurting their margins because the higher storage models are more profitable. Nintendo at least seems to signaling, "Do whatever you want with this fast SD slot," which is a breath of fresh air. What a time in gaming, where Nintendo is more progressive and pro-consumer than Valve.
It's a really weak claim when you frame it properly. If you have a good controller you can use either form factor just fine, at PCIe gen 4 x2 speed.
> maximizing their SD Express slots [...] Now that lights a fire under a lot of people and Biwin can start licensing the technology or selling directly to the Western market.
That would be nice!
Lets say its a brand new 4.0 card that implements x2 lanes, that is 3.93GB/s maximum speed (there aren't any 5.0 cards yet, afaik, but double that for 5.0).
Want to know where that 900MB/s figure came from? A 3.0 x1 card is 984MB/s. That is the first gen SD Express cards when the spec was launched, but not the currently available ones.
In other words, this is a PR release, this isn't news. It's marketing. They chose the worst case of their competitors, the best case of their own, and lied by omission.
Also, re: Valve's position on M2: they didn't support even swapping them when it first came out, although obviously allowed and expected, because you can put M2s in the device that are outside of the thermal parameters allowed by the design due to proximity to the battery and other heat producing items. This is also why they specifically used a 2230, as those are usually the lower power models meant for ultrathin laptops.
That said, Valve has worked with a few companies to get some officially blessed 2230s that actually do fit the intended use case and are also performant.
Like, if you think the Steam Deck sucks for actually doing the swap job, a) the new OLED replacement internally is a lot saner, with both construction and PCB layout, b) go try dealing with the really nasty designed laptops that don't have an externally accessible panel covering the drive bay; they're worse.
The entry level deck is $399 but the 1TB one is $649. Almost $800 with tax and shipping for something that can't even play Unreal 5 games and has no proper expansion is inexcusable, not to mention the bizarre and shortsighted decision to have only one USB-C port on the device, and being locked onto the 15-watt mode of the chipset.
Some of that cost is the OLED update but frankly its deceptive and dishonest customer hostile pricing. The storage limitations are intentional to sell the higher tier Deck. Gabe didn't get 5 super yachts by being a "good guy." He's just maximizing his profit. There are no "good guys" in capitalism, instead its purely transactional and game theory dictated from top to bottom.
I do find it a little depressing that Chinese and Japanese companies are eating US companies lunches because they somehow are more open, more pro-consumer, and more affordable the US offerings. When in the past the US products were the more open and hackable ones and the imports were the proprietary and locked down customer-hostile messes. Not just this but a lot of electronics now. The hackable, learnable, fun, etc ones are foreign while the US domestic ones are overly 'not repairable' and 'not hackable' and by design to maximize profit. What a shame. How far we've fallen.
Also, how is the SD Card limitation on the Deck consumer hostile? The Steam Deck is an AMD platform PC. PCs typically do not even have SD card slots, and when they do, they are generic controllers plugged into the USB port.
To do SD Express, it requires a more expensive controller that can do PCI-E lane passthrough, and then you have to route those lanes somewhere and do it correctly. I am not aware of any laptop that opted to include an SD Express controller, and all of the Steam Deck competitors do not either.
The Steam Deck is advertised to implement a standard UHS-I card reader, and uses a better one that actually does do the full 104MB/s instead of the more frequently supported 52MB/s. UHS-I is common for 4k60fps cameras, such as Canon or Nikon bodies, or the GoPro, extremely few devices support UHS-II.
Like, I understand what you're trying to say, but nothing of that generation implements it, and the AMD SoC Valve uses afaik does not have the spare external PCI-E lanes to actually implement it anyways.
They've released hardware before.
The controller was kinda cool, I didn't get one with mine, but making a controller is an entirely different set of skills than making a computer.
Its not like Apple or other popular companies are any better in this regard.
And yes, Apple design is kind of shit, but in a consumer hostile sort of way, not in an incompetence kind of way.