At Mobile World Congress yesterday, HTC stole the day with their new line of devices. They are all highly spec’d phones, but the thing that got a lot of the fan boys and girls upset was the lack of expandiable storage and removeable battery. Let’s take a look at some comments:
– I will not buy any phone that doesn’t have a descent battery and expandable memory. The drop box storage does not count IMO.
– Make the phone a little bit thicker and give us the sd card and larger battery.
– and no “SD card slot” for expandable storage. Dropbox doesn’t count.[1]
– No microSD slot = big disappointment. The cloud is worthless when I’m at work and when I’m flying… oh, and when the network is down or choked or you’re getting throttled because you keep using the cloud and go over your monthly data allotment. No, the cloud sucks.
– I don’t understand why these companies make these high end phones and forget to put in an MicroSD Card slot.
– Why do the manufacturers and carriers want me to live in the cloud with no option out? No microSD slot just means I won’t buy your product. Ever.
There’s more, but I believe the point has been made. People “like” microSD cards…or do they?
I work in the telecommunications industry and people are hardly purchasing new media cards for devices. A majority of people don’t even realize their phones even come with microSD cards. Cloud storage is where the industry is moving to for various reasons.
- devices can be thinner
- less moving parts that can be broken
- manufacturers can optimize devices better without having to worry about unknow factors
- if your phone is stolen then all of your data is gone. If it is backed up via cloud storage you will still have access to it
I know personally I’ve been going away from using memory cards. With Google+ Instant Upload [2] and the new Dropbox[3], my photos and videos are automatically uploaded so I don’t have to worry about storage on my phone. Which is a great thing because in the past 2 weeks, I’ve had 2 memory cards crash on me and all of their information was lost. Now that’s pictures, what about music? Personally I stream my music using a combination of Pandora, Google Music, and Rdio. Two of those services (Google Music and Rdio) allow me to cache/pin/store music on my internal memory so I won’t have to worry about losing signal. A majority of people that I deal with hardly have music stored locally and generally stream music from Pandora. Again no need for a large amount of internal storage or a microSD card.
So do people like microSD cards? People have used microSD cards because there was little to know storage on the actual device itself. Those days have changed. Phones are equipped with adequate storage for the everyday user. If you truly feel that you need more storage then I’d become well accustomed to looking into the cloud.
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[PS] – I can’t believe those comments. Especially the 1st and last ones. Sure those people may not buy a phone without a microSD card but there are plenty of people who will. There’s this one, it’s the number 1 selling phone in the world…and that does not have a removable battery or expandable memory and people could careless because the phone is great. That is the thing that HTC is aiming for. World wide appeal.
[1] – The Dropbox cloud storage that is being referenced is with every HTC One device, Dropbox is giving user access of 25GB of cloud storage for 2 years. Android Central: HTC and Dropbox Team Up to Offer 25GB Storage…
[2] – Read my post on Google+ Instant Upload, Is Instant Upload A Plus?
[3] – Dropbox updated their Android application to allow automatic updates of pictures. iOS support should be coming soon
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