Opinion – Is microSD dead?
With more and more smartphones and tablets dropping expandable storage, the trusty microSD card could very well be going the way of the Dodo. Resident Stuffers Paddy Smith and Esat Dedezade fight out its future in the Stuff debate arena.
Es: microSD is dying. It got the sniffles after being shunned by the iPhone, and now it's bedridden, counting down its last days and cursing the cloud with each rattling breath. Its former Android supporters have abandoned it in droves, with HTC and Google both omitting expandable storage from their flagship products, the Droid DNA and Nexus 4. The cloud is the future, they tell us, but I don't think we're ready for it.
Paddy: The cloud isn't the future – it's the present: we keep our photos on Facebook, stream music and movies, and share files online. Good riddance to microSD and the poorly designed slot it rode into town on. You sound like the guy who won't buy a MacBook because it doesn't have a DVD drive. You'd rather have a USB thumb drive than a Dropbox account. Physical media apologists are an anachronism in the connected world, and the sooner they accept the future we're already living in – as Google and HTC have already seen fit to do – the better.
Es: Thumb drives and SD cards aren't thwarted by the mere sight of a train tunnel however. Don't get me wrong – I look forward to streaming music and movies instantly from the great hard drive in the sky without dreaded buffering pauses and data cap worries, but that day has yet to arrive. The UK has only just dipped its toes into untested 4G waters and there are no unlimited 4G data plans on offer. Streaming a full HD movie to my Samsung Galaxy S4's 1080p screen will chew through more data than Skynet on steroids. It's just not practical. Yet.
Paddy: You're right. Plus when you're in the tunnel, it'll be much easier to read the message on screen telling you your microSD is wrongly formatted or corrupted. I do see the sense in local storage, but with most apps offering offline buffering or downloads, I don't see why you need more than 32GB of the stuff. If you do, buy a phone that offers more storage out of the box, rather than one with a horrible rubber microSD hatchway or a slot buried under the battery. Great design should look to the future. And that's what Apple, HTC and Google are doing.
Es: I agree that 32GB is plenty for most users, including myself. It's just a shame that phones like the Nexus 4 don't come in 32GB flavours at this time – and this is something that needs to change, fast. Manufacturers should ease the transition by releasing more phones with 32/64GB of storage instead of abruptly cutting down our options in one fell swoop. That'll give the cloud and 4G networks a little more time to shape up, by which point the only thing I'll be complaining about is my battery life. But that's another matter altogether…
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Comments
banditmeerkat
26 weeks ago
Apple, Google and HTC are not leading the way. Google limits offline storage to squeeze you online to expose you to its main revenue stream - advertising. Apple deign for the cleanest lines possible and restrict options for the sake of simplification. I can't understand why HTC are included in this group. The Lumia 820 and Galaxy S3 both support microSD, as do the most advanced mobile OS's - ICS and Windows Phone 8. Even when mobile data will be cheap and limitless (a very long time in some parts of the world) some such as myself will insist on keeping their personal, valuable data out of the cloud
Mark Korchak
26 weeks ago
Apple didn't drop a micro sd slot. They never had it. Google Nexus never had them either. Main player Samsung has it and Galaxy S4 will have it. Nokia dropped it, thats why their sales are falling. Same as HTC. They are losing sales because people aren't dumb. All the sales are going over to Samsung and Motorola.
I would never buy a phone without an expendable memory slot or removable battery. Privacy is one reason. And I really hate to be restricted on how much stuff I can put on my phone. My Samsung GS3 has 90GB now, via the 64gb card. When I sell it next year, I can rest assured that my files stay with me. I won't sell the memory card. Just the phone. I don't want some creep or thief go over my deleted files. Why do you think used iPhones are so expensive? Because they contain a ton of deleted data that can be restored with free programs. They can get your email, passwords, pictures, call history and whatever else you had on it.
Joe Baxter
26 weeks ago
This is always an interesting subject. At one moment we discuss the slow broadband speeds in the UK and lack of 4G (though clearly much of the world still suffers from this). Then we take 'the cloud' pill and expect it to work the way it's advertised!
The tech industry is trying to run before it can fully walk with formats at the moment. We pay similar prices for what are relatively low quality music downloads to old-fashioned higher quality hardcopy CD/DVD/Blu-ray versions. Then we introduce 8K TV and film, something that won't be able to come though our cables anytime soon so we'll have to go back to hard copies once again.
Things are just moving too fast for their own good.
The real debate isn't whether microSD is dead (it clearly is and has been for a while) but to whether the cloud is an empty promise.
Draughtsman
26 weeks ago
I have around 100gB of music stored on various HDD, my mobile has inadequate storage facilities and will take me at least a week to upload to the Cloud so I can listen to my music via my mobile but then the issue of battery life, if I am streaming music that is using a data connection which drains the battery AND an application - how long until my battery dies? 30 minutes if I am lucky!
I feel we still need microSD cards for the ability to store data, especially photos, as a lot mobiles don't have adequate internal storage - just like any operating system they take up space.