Hugo Barra, currently Xiamoi’s vice president of international and formerly VP of Google’s Android vision, on SD cards in an interview with Engadget:
“For high performance devices, we are fundamentally against an SD card slot.”
Barra backed up his statement by pointing out that his team didn’t want to sacrifice battery capacity, ergonomics, appearance and, in the case of the new Mi 4i, the second Micro SIM slot for the sake of letting users add a storage card. More importantly, microSD cards “are incredibly prone to failure and malfunctioning of various different sorts,” and the fact that there are a lot of fake cards out there – and we’ve seen it ourselves – doesn’t help, either.
In case you disagree with him, The Verge’s review of the LG G4 states it’s a pretty decent phone.
Right… Cuz microsd slots are so huge, ugly, and power consuming. And I’m sure charging people outrageous prices for more on-board storage, better aligned with their actual needs, have nothing to do with it.
I don’t really care if there’s an SD card slot or not, as long as there’s enough internal storage to make up the difference. Yeah, I realize it costs a little more, but to me it’s worth it not having to have two different mount points to keep track of.
As for the G4, it’s not a phone… it’s a phablet, and therefore useless to me. Still waiting for something in the 5-5.2″ range that has a great camera AND great battery life. Seems like I’ll be waiting til hell freezes over, as nobody wants to make a phone like that.
Perhaps the next Sony Xperia Mini…
you do know that the G4 is the same size as a 5″ phone yet has a 5.5″ screen
I agree
µSD cards are crap.
Full size SD cards are better.
Full sized USB port too.
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Edited 2015-05-07 16:58 UTC
I have to disagree with needing the larger physical size with the newest micro-SD cards.
Thru the years and up to the time that the largest SD card you could get was 32GB I was a firm believer in using only full size SD cards. They were easier to keep track of and way far more easier to remove/insert/exchange in any devices.
However, I now have 128GB micro-SD cards. Because of the capacity, I no longer have to change cards around to get to the files/pictures/videos that I want. I just keep them all on the same device at the same time.
Once installed I don’t find micro-SD cards to caused any problems, it the moving/handling of the micro-SDs that is what seems to cause problems.
What the manufacturers don’t want is for me buying the cheapest model they have and then adding a 128 GB card and then never needing an upgrade for the next couple of years.
I still find hard to believe the density of current µSD cards.
128GB µSD, volume = 165mm3, gives around 6 billion bits per cubic millimeter.
6 billion bits, all addressable and programmable !
With that line of thinking:
“There are malware and some apps are confusing so let´s remove the ability to install third party apps”.
“There are premium SMS scams so let´s remove the ability to send SMS”.
“There are phone call scams so let´s remove the ability to make calls”.
I don´t need you to protect me from everything.
Edited 2015-05-07 00:34 UTC
To start with — removing carrier services is up to the carriers, not the phone makers. It is orthogonal to hardware design.
Also: Xiaomi, Samsung, Huawei, Lenovorola, etc., aren’t protecting you. Nanny-engineering is the last thing on their minds.
They are trying to manage functional and design details to keep their market share or grow it. Your ‘loss’ would be their gain as less technically inclined consumers go for thinner phones that last longer between charges and need less attention from them while being used. More of an appliance and less of a hobby device.
They won’t even know they have alienated you, much less care.
“More importantly, batteries are incredibly prone to failure and malfunctioning of various different sorts”
Yeah, let’s get rid of batteries too.
And those huge screen could break anytime, back to 240×240 OLED.
Seriously, shoving down consumers’ throat such arguments would deserve a boycott just to show him how wrong this guy is, playing a-la Apple.
Simple solution to mSD failures, stop buying from the cheapest Ebay vendor you can find!
Yeah, no kidding! I’ve installed several systems on sdhc cards (and usb flash drives for that matter). I’ve yet to have a single one of them fail. The most recent install is probably 4+ years old now. The key is most definitely not buying cheap crap. That doesn’t mean buy the most expensive stuff, just not the cheapest crap you find.
Yes, I have seen 64 Gb ones at 8$ and I clearly knew they were a scam.
I had two fail. One in an MP3 that sweat permeated into the sd card slot and something must have shorted. The MP3 player still works fine.
And one in a phone that had a lithium ion battery swell and overheat while in use. The SF card contents were erased, but the card itself works.
Another issue with SD cards (especially microSD) is that they are slower compared to built-in flash memory. I could easily reach 20MB/s transfer rates on a ZTE v5 Max with built-in 16GB of flash, but only 10MB/s on a Kingston UHS-1 32GB.
Then there is the issue of insufficient storage for apps due to hard partition limits imposed by including a FAT partition. Phones that have a SD slot must have a FAT partition to match situations where the SD card is removed or to support mass storage mode. Apps cannot be installed on FAT partitions, only their data and cache can be transferred there.
I use a Meizu M1 Note 32GB now that has no FAT partitions (this is the factory default), but allows me to utilize full available storage to store anything including apps. Access to the device storage via a PC/Mac is abstracted via the MTP interface, so the underlying filesystem is not an issue. I have apps totaling 8-9GB of occupied storage (largely due to games occupying 1-2GB each). This is impossible on a phone with a SD slot (even if it has 16/32GB of built in storage). The only work around to this situation is to use a custom ROM with a larger app and smaller FAT partition.
Edited 2015-05-07 06:11 UTC
How often is speed vital to the performance on a phone? Video recording is all I can think of. And an easier solution would simply be forcing recording onto internal memory by default. Or possibly a message that yells “hey, if you care so much about video quality try using something better than your phone”
You are wrong in many ways. First the speed of the external sdcard is only of lower importance as it just has to be fast enough to play my stored media like mp3 music or videos i throw at it to take with me so i dont have to abuse my network data for streaming while on the train or plain. Second, you can have a so called data/media build setup where internal “sdcard” and appdata is on the same partition AND have an additional external sdcard slot.
Also for me the ext-sd holds my system backups so if i break my phone, i just have to get the same and can restore a nandroid backup and just continue to use my phone like before, or get a different one, root it as i would always do, because it finally is my device and i have the right to use it in any way that i want and restore my apps from titanium backup and use them on the new phone.
And next point is the use of external sdcard for game data or photos, if the camera app you use doesnt support changing storage. There is an app called mount manager, sure, it requires root, but i already made my possution on that clear, that can link any folder on the external storage to any folder on internal and gives an easy way to just extend your storage as needed.
You are blatantly ignoring the fact I’ve stated on compatibility with FAT (which is what SD cards come with default). You must maintain an internal FAT partition if you want to support external SD cards, due to the use cases I’ve already mentioned.
The fat partition has largely gone away with the intro of MTP, though there are some holdouts still.
It may still look like a FAT at first glance because Android now use what is known as a union mount.
This is system that allows multiple mounts to stack. You can for instance mount the content of a dir on top of another dir, so that the content of the dir looks like the one mounted on top but any writes done to those files (or the dir) will pass through to the one underneath.
On more recent Android versions that support multi-user, the mount will point to /storage/emulated/0-9 (or how ever many users you have) based on the currently active user.
Not to say that storage on Android is not a mess, but it is less of a mess than when we had actual FAT partitions on flagship models.
BTW, a year or two ago i got my hands on a Huawei phone. And there the SD slot came to good use. In essence i could to a full system update using just the phone even though i had to do it without a OTA option.
This by downloading the zip archive from their site, putting it on the SD, extracting it, and starting their updater. I could do all this with just the phone because they included a file manager with zip support out of the box.
It really demonstrates that Android can be used as a full OS if just Google would stop shackling it for no good reason.
Edited 2015-05-07 22:24 UTC
My Meizu M1 Note supports this as well, even though it does not have an SD slot. I could just connect it through MTP mode and copy the update.zip firmware into it. The firmware updater on the phone would detect it on boot and request to update if it is newer than what is installed. The update.zip file is signed, so if the signature verification fails, it won’t perform the update. This addresses the likelihood of corrupt downloads or malicious firmware that the user might have downloaded from unauthorized sites.
I agree, after not one, but 2 genuine SanDisk 64go go failure after only 1 month of use, micro sd are crap. And NO, they were no Chinese rip off, genuine SanDisk. They even take it in warranty.
64go in my n9 and PlayBook are fine, and reliable.
BS. Huge BS. Following this line of thought most device features should be dropped, since they might all malfunction or might cause trouble (batteries, sdcards, simcards, buttons, apps, etc.). Unfortunately this is happening for a while (Apple devices leading the way, but Android devices cozying up nicely), I just hope we don’t end up with no local storage at all (forcing cloud exclusivity).
Yep, i find myself calling it the “Apple approach”.
And one i see cropping up even in open source circles.
Users are to be protected from themselves by the almighty developers.
And you are either a user or a developers, there is no room for “power-users” or sysadmins in the developers grand utopia.
My view of how companies must see SD cards comes down to the kindle. I have a first gen kindle. It was the first and last to allow one use of SD cards. It’s also lasted me around eight years now. If I’d been limited to the built in memory I’d have needed to upgrade within the first year or two.
I’d be shocked if people aren’t looking at this the same way in every platform. From ebooks to phones to everything else where memory can be bought and sold.
I keep thinking that in the end it comes down to DRM.
If the user can unplug the storage media, there is no way to make effective DRM.
By making all file interactions be mediated by systems that the user can’t manipulate or replace (hello MTP), DRM can be made “effective” in the eyes of big media.
I think that is a big part of it too.
I just read the WIKI page on MTP, you are only allowed to read or write entire media files, not editing or random access is allowed. Perfect for controlling what users can do with a file.
Why do you think your experiences with SD cards disproves what Xiaomi experiences given that they probably have data from both testing and repairs?
Furthermore, have any of you considered that, Xiaomi being a Chinese brand primarily sold in China, that the SD cards sold in China are probably of worse average quality than what you have available in your country?
Yeah, Hugo is obviously talking about the Chinese market. Dual sim cards would make no sense here in the states.
so, in his view the solution to things that can fail is to limit those things to better parts soldered ones that, gosh, one day will fail for sure with no easy path to fix.
That is appalling.
What is more shocking is that companies that follow this route like to pretend they are “environment friendly”.
We are even at the point of seeing notebooks with soldered memory (no upgrade, fail kills them), no replaceable batteries and no internal storage exchange. What fu..ing, greedy lot of self-serving a..holes bunch.
Edited 2015-05-07 11:47 UTC
I’m re-ripping my entire CD music library at 16/44 FLAC to live on 10 or so 64gb MicroSD.
I haven’t heard of them failing any more than other static ram, but I do plan on keeping a backup on a hard drive somewhere in case I lose the tiny little things.
Unless your phone comes with a decent DAC, you are pretty much wasting your time and effort. I too use FLAC for portable music, but have a dedicated player for that. I use a NWZ-A17 with UE900S for my music needs, what do you use?
I use an external DAC/AMP with my phone. No issues there.
BTW, I use a Blackberry. Works flawlessly with my USB DAC/AMP out of the box. A µSD card slot is a must for my phone to carry my FLAC ripped music on.
You are correct sir, no point in playing FLAC through a phone with all that cheap hardware, sounds almost as bad as MP3.
Here’s my player in action:
https://flic.kr/s/aHskanX5vA
or long link if short is not allowed:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fluxadel/sets/72157652056361356/
I am using 128 GB micro-sd cards now, and I understand micro-sd can support 256 GB which should be out next year.
Maybe you should wait before transferring the entire 1 TB of files. IE. 16 cards vs 4 cards.
Marketing is, among many things, the art of convincing your customers why getting less product for more money is good for them.