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Any comments on this article from a major publication? I personally think someone should make a case with a Bluetooth attached memory module with an SD card and battery, this would solve 2 major problems and add little to the bulk of protective cases already in wide use. It's time to stop paying up for memory:
Do you know what’s great about the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge? Almost everything. Samsung has married the style of the Galaxy S6 with the substance of the Galaxy S5. But 24 hours after launch two nasty (and potentially deal breaking) surprises have been discovered…
Nasty Surprise #1
One of the most lauded features of the new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge is the return of microSD expandable storage. Its omission from the Galaxy S6 was derided by many and Samsung has been rightly praised this time for listening to customers and making a U-turn.
What’s more, the Galaxy S7 ships with Android Marshmallow which is the perfect companion to microSD. This is because Marshmallow can treat expandable storage just like internal storage. For example, if your 32GB Galaxy S7 adds a 200GB microSD card Marshmallow will report you now have 232GB of space for install apps, store photos and video – anything you want.
But here comes the nasty surprise: Samsung hasn’t implemented this.
My (cheap) Android phone allows to manually move most of the apps to SD making most of the Forbes article points moot. Or did Samsung disable this standard Android feature ?
Yes in Galaxy S7 - Expandable storage, just like what has always been there in Android. A microSD card can be pulled out of a phone and used somewhere else.
No in Galaxy S7 - Android 6.0 introduces adoptable storage so the microSD card can look exactly like internal memory, but it can't be pulled out and used (among other issues, it's encrypted).
This is one reason the Nexus 6P is marketed as a "pure Android phone" - it does support adoptable in Android 6.0.
LG G5 doesn't support adoptable, either, so this isn't a Samsung plot.
Never send a biz mag to do a job that tech bloggers should handle.
I think for those vendors who try to make the SD expansion slot to have less features or just not to provide the SD slot at all are for one single reason: profit.
The SD memory card is becoming faster and cheaper while the capacity is getting bigger and bigger every year. The market price difference between a Samsung S6 32GB version and 128GB version is about $200. But the additional cost for Samsung to place a 128GB memory instead of 32Gb into a S6 is probably less than $20. In the mean time, a typical name-brand 128GB micro SD card is selling less than $50. A customer can easily buy a 32GB version of Galaxy and install a 128GB SD card, instead of buying a 128GB version of Galaxy. Assume the SD expansion slot is available on the Galaxy, then this can potentially save the consumer about $150 per phone. Or you can say it's $200 less revenue and $180 less profit for Samsung.
As Android (Samsung) phone owner I do not think adoptable memory is important for most customers. As is, card memory is just fine for storing music, videos and photos (and in this form it is easily transferable to the next phone). 32/64 GB of main storage is plenty enough for applications. I suspect gamers might want to have adoptable memory if they install a lot of games.
I think 64 GB is now the sweet spot in terms of smartphone storage capacity. The Forbes article seems to suggest that Samsung will only bring the 32 GB model to the US. That's rather unfortunate.
As someone who hates Samsung (due to their policies/behavior; but will acknowledge their cutting-edge tech)...I'm hoping more people will choose to buy a competitor (HTC, LG, Huawei, Motorola, OnePlus, Google, etc) phone .
I think for those vendors who try to make the SD expansion slot to have less features or just not to provide the SD slot at all are for one single reason: profit.
The SD memory card is becoming faster and cheaper while the capacity is getting bigger and bigger every year. The market price difference between a Samsung S6 32GB version and 128GB version is about $200. But the additional cost for Samsung to place a 128GB memory instead of 32Gb into a S6 is probably less than $20. In the mean time, a typical name-brand 128GB micro SD card is selling less than $50. A customer can easily buy a 32GB version of Galaxy and install a 128GB SD card, instead of buying a 128GB version of Galaxy. Assume the SD expansion slot is available on the Galaxy, then this can potentially save the consumer about $150 per phone. Or you can say it's $200 less revenue and $180 less profit for Samsung.
It's not as clear cut. For example, in US Samsung is going to sell only 32GB version (which goes against the profit theory). Many people suggested that one of the reasons for such decision is to avoid customer service confusion/headaches which would be inevitable for a couple of reasons: crashes/bad performance when people use poor quality cards in adopted mode, the risk of accidentally losing photos/data when enabling adopted mode on a card with data or trying to move the card to another phone.
