Xiaomi is against microSD cards in phones .. Here's why!

That is the problem. a phone's performance depends a lot on the storage. but instead of saying sd card vs inbuilt nand storage. we should start talking about the read/write speeds and iops of different types of storage and then start talking.

for me I think SDCard is usually placed on the USB bus rather than the PCI bus in cell phones. for this reason the SD cards are limited to the speed of USB. further more, the actual performance of the card comes into picture.

for a manufacturer like samsung/apple not having sd card helps them tune the os to utilize the storage to the max as there are no variables and everything is fixed.
 
With prices of NAND falling continously, it would soon become a non issue because manufacturers would (hopefully) bundle in a decent amount of storage.
 
booo said:
for a manufacturer like samsung/apple not having sd card helps them tune the os to utilize the storage to the max as there are no variables and everything is fixed.
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As I said before, that is a lousy argument to be coming from a manufacturer. If I were to believe it to be true and sensible even for a moment, then none of these manufacturers would be bothered with providing cloud storage either. It uses internet and its performance is largely dependent on the speed of your internet which often results in it being slower than memory cards unless you are on WiFi Further there are associated security concerns as well. Cloud storage support is much more messy than memory cards for most people. So why do the manufacturers keep offering this option at all and till a while back this was even implicitly enabled.

Wasn't it Xiaomi that got into a mess after it was found that they auto create cloud accounts and enable its usage by default?

On a side note, I also don't see Apple preventing users from sticking in slower USB thumb drives or hard disks on mac books with SSD's to "ensure consistent performance and utilizing SSD to the max".

There is no reason for not having expandable storage in phones. If they are so concerned about performance in consistency, why haven't they provided a option to expand memory with the same kind of storage that they use in the phone?

Not having memory card support is IMO a decision taken with purely business ramifications in mind and not technical ones. The technical ones are just made up excuses.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
none of these manufacturers would be bothered with providing cloud storage either.
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cloud storage and the regular storage fall into two completely different tiers. both have different purposes. for example, you do not want to use your cloud stoage for installing a game.

The comparision here is between onboard storage vs microsd card and their use cases. Even for example, If I were to use a micro sd card internally, I would chose a single brand with particular set of IO throughputs then I would tune the system based on those. if I were to allow the user to chose the type of sd card and its brand, then there is no way I can make the system fastest for all types of sd cards.

now as I already mentioned. its better to keep the storage on pci bus(read SATA) rather than USB bus to get the peroformance. in this case, the internal storage clearly is superior.
 
Meh no performance problems with memory cards. Its mostly for media and such that require pretty less read speeds. Example videos etc.
Id rather have cheap expandable memory, rather than be restricted or use hight priced high bandwidth memory for which im dependent on the company's mercy and will probably never use to full potential.
 
booo said:
cloud storage and the regular storage fall into two completely different tiers. both have different purposes. for example, you do not want to use your cloud stoage for installing a game.

The comparision here is between onboard storage vs microsd card and their use cases. Even for example, If I were to use a micro sd card internally, I would chose a single brand with particular set of IO throughputs then I would tune the system based on those. if I were to allow the user to chose the type of sd card and its brand, then there is no way I can make the system fastest for all types of sd cards.

now as I already mentioned. its better to keep the storage on pci bus(read SATA) rather than USB bus to get the peroformance. in this case, the internal storage clearly is superior.
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nor we are comparing memory card speed to internal memory speed
we are talking about why they don't provide expandable support
i completely agree with every point of Lord Nemesis
they can give 16/32/64GB internal with expandable option like in samsung s5
providing this option won't slow down the internal memory
now-a-days fast memory card are much cheaper than the price difference between higher and lower memory phone of same model eg sandisk extreme, strontium nitro, samsung evo etc, so it isn't the memory card who are limiting performance

if cliud storage is not in the same teir of memory card then why compare optimized internal memory speed with memory cards ? cloud storage and memory card are meant for expandable storage and they have their benifit but better is memory card, we can get cloud storage in any phine with internet
providing memory card support is much better option than providing cloud storage
 
Memory cards are to be used and in all practicality used just as expandable storage for content. There is no need to make apps and games installable on memory cards and compromise user experience. In phones where such a feature is really a necessity, the UX is already compromised because of poor specs and small amount of internal storage making the entire argument moot. So not allowing apps is a reasonable and acceptable limitation. Even android did not have the ability to install/move apps on SD card from the get go and it was hacked in later and even to this day, many phones do no support moving apps to SD.

At the very least there is no need to support such a feature in high end high end phones which already have a reasonable amount of internal storage for apps and memory cards can be used purely as expandable storage for storing books or videos. When I open those particular apps like gallery or ebook reader, I am fine if there is a bit of slowness in showing previews (which I can say I have never really felt in my experience of using memory cards)

That's why I see no reason to treat storage expansion though memory card and cloud differently. Cloud has its own bunch of issues and if phone manufacturers were sensitive enough to exclude expandability through memory cards for these whimsical reasons, then they would have never provided their own in house cloud storage solutions. The fact remains that they go after whatever is going to get them profits. Not having expandable storage and having cloud storage can potentially bring more revenue and that is why they do it. As I said before, If they really concerned about possible hit to UX, they would just provide an option to put in additional e-MMC storage of the same variety that is embedded. I have seen such options in the ODROID boards, so, it should definitely be feasible.

Saying that they do it for the sake of better experience is just like saying Sony introduced their proprietary memory card formats for the sake of better experience for the users and I guess we all know that was never the intent of Sony.
 
On an entirely different note, I still fail to understand who really needs more than 8-10GB of user space memory on their phone - And if they do, what do they use it for

It's a genuine question and I am not trying to be sarcastic

PS: Probable exception are students who load a bunch of movies /series on the phone to do TP in class
Then there was another guy from my team who had an esoteric metal collection and for some reason he wanted his entire collection to be present on his phone
This was his hedge against a scenario where he may suddenly get an urge to listen to some funky track by Iwrestledabearonce (or some such funky band) while driving and Good forbid his data connection also went funky at the same time
 
Music, Videos, tutorials, pics, just so much content these days. I also use to download youtube videos in full hd for watching on phone. Those use to be pretty big,
 
I need 10-12gb coz I capture lots of moments both HD videos and images. Then comes Music files.

Heck I dont game even if given the bestest of phones available in this world so no question of any games finding any place on my cell.

But ever since I bought my phone I just put only a 1 single song that too was just for testing audio quality, so haven't really got time for melodies.

So its just a pure camera usage. 2months of capturing sets me a good 8-12gb data which I back up every 60 days.

But till now, didn't felt the need for any memory card so for the time happy with inbuilt 12 giga user available storage.

Usage pattern is as per everybody's personal preferences.
 
ssslayer said:
... and that's why they are so successful ... ?
Perhaps we should sit back and take a look at how the majority uses the system. And then pass judgement over what customer needs and wants and what he will pay for. There has to be a reason that Apple's ecosystem is working so successfully till now (even though Android has quite matured and caught up in user friendliness and technology, and most phones also allow SD cards)
Click to expand...

Of course they are successful..? Goes they have managed to marshal a huge critical mass to fanatical following and abandonment of other products. Apple has been an extremely innovative leader and has ventured into setting a high standard. I never doubted that. But the way they create a locked environment and prevent people from upgrading devices is restrictive in nature. Of course they use that feature to create a product depth for each vertical launched. That is the only logical reasoning I see behind this function. It is stupid.
 
If anyone has noticed they're clearly following Apple model.
Say Distribution of Phones or Designing the phones. I wish after sales remains the same.
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8-10Gb space is nothing now a days, if i start storing images and HD videos recorded with my phone.

I have an 32Gb MicroSD apart from 8Gb internals.

Phone has 3.5Gb left for some apps which use only Internal memory
Memory card has
- 400 Mb of Pictures
- 9.44 Gb of music
- 7.28 Gb of Videos
- 3 Gb of Apps

Also there is no doubt that user experience is terrible for Apps installed on MicroSD.

32Gb of Intenral memory is enough for people like me. If you want to make the phones without MicroSD, make you sure sell phones with minimum 32Gb to max 128Gb at affordable costs.
 
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