Stopped buying Samsung Galaxy S phones after S20 because it no longer offered microSD expansion.
Are there any current-gen phones which have microSD slots?
same here. So frustrating that they’re phasing them out.
Purchased a miniature USB-C sdcard reader from amazon, works great for movies, documents (that may take up a lot of memory). Music as well. I leave what I want on the phone, the rest on this reader and swap out back and forth as needed. Worked well. I see this as a need since sdcard is being phased out in phones (bummer, I always liked it and preferred devices with it). Not a crapple fan. Always had Samsungs (with a few One pluses mixed in).
Wow hardly been a month and they’re on woot, serious trouble.
This and removable/replaceable batteries. For the newer phones that do have these 2 features, they seriously suffer from the lack of advanced user features found on the more expensive brands e.g. Samsung. It’s a conspiracy…
They’re the S22 (6.1 inch) with only 128gb, not the S22 Plus (6.6 inch) or Ultra (6.8 inch). It’s just too small for me in size or capacity.
I might buy an S22 Plus with 256gb for the extra real estate, but would rather buy the S22 Ultra with at least 256gb.
GSM Arena’s phone finder is pretty good for this sort of thing.
Seems phones with storage slots still exist, but when I start putting in my preferred size and carrier’s supported radio bands, the selection becomes quite limited.
A phone which has a card slot and supports ALL of T-mobile’s 5G bands apparently does not exist according to the finder.
Edit - Forgetting the card slot, the only phone which is less than 68mm (2.6") wide and supports ALL T-Mobile 5G bands is the Apple iPhone 13 mini. I have to bump the width up to 74mm (~3") before a non-Apple phone (OnePlus) shows up.
Sony. LG’s latest, but those are at least a year old. Midtangers like a53, moto power. Some phones that aren’t sold in US carriers, gaming phones.
I tend to use things like older Samsung devices like the Note 9 or S10 Plus, or LG or Sony because I like expandable storage. I can usually live without it, but I like the swappable nature of it. I’d also let you get away with getting a less expensive version of a phone at launch. That’s the problem when you don’t have expandable storage it becomes a de facto price increase often at the point of purchase.
I just like the peace of mind expendable storage provides.
For a number of folks, smartphones have gotten to the point in which it’s not necessary to keep upgrading every year or two. Faster processors and higher resolution cameras, yes, but if their current phone can still do the job, it’s not compelling enough to have to change. And sometimes newer isn’t better; compared to the 3 year old S10, some features took a step back like no 3.5mm jack, no SD slot, and a lower resolution screen.
(Note that I am not staff. I just volunteer to help out on the forums.)
I just “sidegraded” from a Note 20 to a S22 Ultra. Not having the SD Card slot was a big downer, however the Note 20 I had was a 128GB Internal with a 128GB SD Card, the S22 Ultra I got was the 256 GB. All In All I got the same space. Why did I upgrade? Better CPU. I bought the Note 20 Ultra from Woot for $800, and Samsung offered me $800 if I gave them the phone, so I got what I paid.
I use to feel the same way about the MicroSD slot, I still have an S10 Plus but my previous phone was an S7 Active which had very little disk space on it. I had a large MicroSD thinking I would be fine.
After so many Apps where installed I kept running out of space and it was a pain to manage. First off a lot of apps dont give you an option to install or save data into the MicroSD. The Ones that do let you save data to an MicroSD card will always revert back to the phones space every time they get an update. Thus every couple of weeks I was stuck out of space and had to go through all my apps reverting the ones I can back to the MicroSD, it became a real PIA.
Since then (recently to be precise) I have accepted the fact the MicroSD is pretty much useless on these phones anymore. Yeah you save a lot of picture, mp3’s and or videos to them to save space but it really does not buy you space like it used too in an age where those Apps are getting bigger and bigger. I did break down and pay for extra cloud space now that backs up my phone which comes in useful if I want to view or used files on other devices. At least I have a place to go with those space eating files but I will never let the MicroSD determine if I move to a phone or not.
I love the S10+ I got and I got it for around 200 so it was a great update for my aging s7 active, but I hate the delicate curved screen on it, this is the first phone I have ever cracked the screen on. I wish I would of just got an S20 or S21 or something like that now instead since I normally buy older generation phones.
I have an Xperia 1 III with a 1tb SD card in it. 
Crazy how 128GB of space is just too small for some people when there’s practically free space in cloud storage options 
Most apps that I’m aware of have to be downloaded to the phone itself, and many apps approach 1gb (and some even 2-3[or more]gb), so if you consider that, the space runs out pretty quickly just for apps.
I find it rather frustrating that many apps don’t have a web app anymore, making it a requirement that you use the app, and not allowing you to use it otherwise on a mobile browser (or at least making it very hard to open/use it on a mobile browser). The apps just want more of your data…
This is especially stupid for apps I only will use once or twice a year (for example, some food apps, airline apps, etc). I actually will often delete those apps and just redownload and reinstall them when I have to.
I agree and I have both S10 plus and S22 imho S10 Plus is way cooler and still holds charge compared to S22 the battery life sucks
I hate it too but at least Samsung isn’t gouging on memory upgrades like Apple does.
It’s about two things for me.
- As @eblackwo said, the apps and OS take up a lot of that space and the apps aren’t getting any more efficient in their coding either. Also, all those megapixels don’t come free either. I can only imagine how that’s increased the storage for a picture or video.
- I go on vacation for 10-18 days a year with a big chunk of that on cruises in foreign ports and I take a lot of pictures/video. They do have WiFi on the boat a lot of times, but it’s not exactly fast, so offloading to cloud isn’t really a solution, and I really don’t want to end up at the end of a cruise running out of space causing me to miss something or worse, cause the OS to have issues cause there’s no space left. (I’ve never actually gotten there on a phone, but I’ve seen what happens when a server runs out of space for the OS and it ain’t pretty)
But I hear ya, I remember my minimum hardware requirements for running a Win 98 system back in the day was a 640mb OS disk and 4-8mb of RAM. Now, we can stuff half a TB on a microSD card the size of your pinky fingernail.
Unfortunately, Sony’s overpriced flagships and Asus Zenphones are the only top tier phones left with microSD expansion. With both, software updates are spotty.
Beyond these, you’ll have to settle for MediaTek Dimensity 900 phones from Oppo and OnePlus (basically clones) that offer upper midtier performance.
I’ll be using my Galaxy S20 for a long time until I decide that Sony flagships are worth it.