Your phone is a computer.

A computer is always more useful when you can expand on its functionality.

Either through better battery managements and repair, dedicated ports for data and audio, or the ability to increase a computer’s storage, these are all ways we can use a computer longer before it falls into obsolescence.

Unfortunately for phone “reviewers”, it’s more important to validate the bias of an audience, and make more money on content by keeping positive relationships with manufacturers, than to ever criticize the cynical money grabbing schemes of said manufacturers.

It’s hilarious that even now, with most phones abandoning the ability to increase device storage, we still see hacks defend the removal of this useful feature. Me thinks they doth protest too much?

Since these defensive articles and videos CONTINUE to crop up defending bad takes on tech, let’s pick a few of those points apart.

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Phones Have Enough Storage?

Well this one is just silly.

We live in an age where phones are increasingly the main solutions for a number of daily uses. Photography, music, videos, or gaming, phones have cut significant chunks out of EVERY standalone gadget market. It’s highly likely someone reaches for a phone first to accomplish one of those above activities.

We started normalizing 128GB of storage as the built-in default roughly six years ago. Phones like the Galaxy S10 and LG G8 arrived with 128GB of storage built in, but both included the ability to add more storage with a memory card. This was a terrific balance, where you had plenty of storage for apps and games, but you could offload your music, photos, videos, and other media to a card.

Buying more internal storage was a nice perk, but it didn’t feel necessary when you could add a big memory card for a lot less than the price of built in storage.

Flash forward to 2024, and the base tier of storage for a Galaxy S24 or a Pixel 9 Pro or iPhone 16 was still 128GB.

The Vivo X100 Pro, Xiaomi 14, Galaxy S24 Ultra, and the iPhone 16 Pro had the good sense to move up to 256GB of built in storage, but often this was reserved for the more expensive devices on the market. Many more phones still launched with the 128GB we’ve had for the five years prior.

The main difference between six years ago and today, very few phones still include MicroSD expansion (beyond some budget devices).

Apps have gotten bigger, photos are getting higher resolution, video is bigger, music is going hi-res. Consumer storage needs have all grown, but the starting storage remains lean.

Today, for the most expensive devices, 256GB is starting to feel claustrophobic. It’s all in service of forcing people to buy more expensive internal storage upgrades, and to invest in ever increasing cloud subscriptions. There’s no consumer benefit to losing the SD Card, and it costs more and more to replace the immediate functionality of a card.

If people don’t fully understand their storage needs, and under-buy what they really need, the only solution is to scrap their phone and buy another. That’s the most miserably stupid situation to be in with any computer. We should always be able to tack on a couple hundred GB as a stop gap before replacing a device.

Internal Storage is Faster?

Often, a boot-licker will act like it’s a BENEFIT for consumers to lose SD Card expansion, BECAUSE internal storage is faster than using a card. It’s one of those “truthy” comments that completely misrepresents the reality of what that storage is for.

It might be an accurate point, but it’s still kind of a “lie” in how it’s presented.

Performance improves when you use that internal storage. This is most noticeable when loading up software that has a LOT of data that needs to be managed. The hacks phrase this in a way where people might expect performance degradation of ANY app, but specifically, we’re talking about games. Moving game data from storage, through the rest of your phone, it certainly benefits the user to use faster storage.

And I’m not talking about 16-bit console emulation, solitaire, or simple phone gacha games, we’re talking about modern, graphics intense, PC-grade gaming experiences. Me playing Farkle on my phone storage wont feel any different than playing Farkle installed on a memory card.

If we could install a game like Alien Isolation to a memory card, it would take longer to load, but once in RAM, the game play would be perfectly fine. Levels would load a little slower. Action would be solid.

However, the content eating up more storage these days is media.

We’re shooting more photos and video, and saving higher quality media. Dividing our storage between applications and media has always been a handy way to focus on the specific needs that best suit each kind of storage. We might do the same in a desktop PC, use a fast solid state drive for programs, and a slower spinning disk drive for movies, photos, and music.

We can be concerned about the bus speeds on a phone, but there’s nothing holding back the actual memory cards from storing content quickly.

How do we know this? Because standalone cameras still exist.

I’ve taken to using MicroSD cards in my Lumix G9, so I can easily flip that card to a smaller memory card reader, and those MicroSD cards have no issues recording 150Mbps 4K video files.

People might buy garbage SD cards, but that’s an education issue, not a practical use issue. The tech works. Do you need the fastest storage in your phone to scroll your vacation photos? Of course you don’t. Don’t be stupid.

Using a card for photos and videos doesn’t slow down the experience of viewing photos and videos on the phone. Even if we were to rely on cards for heavier applications or games, the consumer should be able to make a choice to compromise on speed for less expensive storage.

Some of you are already getting ready to cluck down in my comments, but before you scurry away let me ask something directly. Please answer this question in my comments:

If MicroSD cards are “so garbage” why do most laptops, portable gaming consoles, and the Nintendo Switch still rely on them for gaming?

Cards can fail?

Yup. Every storage solution you buy will eventually fail. Spinning disk hard drives, solid state drives, portable drives, and memory cards, they all fail at some point.

There’s little point in arguing about this, as again, this is a consumer education issue. I’ve always purchased quality cards from reputable brands (and avoided Amazon as a retailer), and I’ve had no major failures that lost important information. I’ve had no poorer experiences with SD Cards than I have with USB Flash drives or solid-state drives. My cards have each lasted longer than any individual phone I’ve ever owned. I expect a good card to last about three phone generations.

The person making this point is basically saying “we cant have nice things because some ignorant people complained about buying cheap gear”.

For the person whinging on about constantly having cards fail, one has to wonder at some point if the issue might be with that individual and less on the quality of SD Cards.

Poor Security?

Someone hit me with this one last week, and I laughed pretty hard.

Oh no! What if someone steals your phone, and they rip out your memory card, and they get ALL YOUR DATA?!?!?

Which I’m sure happens, and it’s a bummer for something like a standalone camera too. I don’t shoot anything so sensitive or personal, that I would be embarrassed by what’s on my camera’s card, but I’m sure that could be a concern for some folks.

The cool thing about a phone though (as opposed to a camera), and I might not have mentioned this ever before, but…

YOUR PHONE IS A COMPUTER!

The nifty thing about computers, they have security features on them.

Android has long had options to protect your storage. It would be nice if “reviewers” didn’t have pathetic goldfish memories, and could recall these features existed. Since no one wants to remember though, here’s a photo of my LG G4 (FROM TEN YEARS AGO), which has this handy little settings option to encrypt the SD card.

Maybe instead of continuing to dumb down “average consumers” you could take a minute to use your platforms to better educate consumers on what their tech can do, but I digress…

Cloud Storage?

But why EVEN have cards when you can use the CLOUD?!?!?!

There’s a special flavor of willfully stupid that continues to offer this option as a comparable solution. With completely earned disrespect, you have to be REAL bad at tech to think this is a witty retort.

The Cloud sucks. It just does.

“Cloud” storage is only useful when you have great data, and even then, we can be certain that your storage transfer and access speeds certainly wont be as fast as the built in card reader on a phone. If card speeds are “too slow” (see previous section on internal storage speeds), then cloud speeds should be an absolute deal breaker.

When I spend money on cloud storage, I get to LEASE some space on a company’s computer. When I stop paying for cloud storage, I get nothing for the money I’ve spent on that lease. My cloud storage disappears.

[More accurately, my cloud account is locked until I delete all the uploaded content and get back under my free tier of storage, often between 5GB and 15GB.]

I can buy a solid high speed 1TB MicroSD card for under $100. I can jump to a 2TB card for around $200.

Google has a HUGE gap in their current cloud pricing. 200GB costs $3 a month. 2TB costs $10 a month. I’m not including the stupid AI Pro plans, we’re only comparing storage.

Increasing storage on a Pixel 10 Pro XL to 1TB of storage built in adds $350 to the price of the phone. If I could add a card, I could buy a 256GB Pixel 10 Pro XL, and then spend another $100, to have a phone with 1.25TB of storage. I would save $250, and I would have MORE storage to play with.

Google of course, wants you to spend more money every month, and if you start to run low on built in storage, you can always lease more cloud space. You might only need the 200GB plan to start, but once you fill that, you have to jump to the 2TB plan. Every dollar you spend generates revenue for Google, but you get nothing when you stop paying.

In roughly two years, you would break even on a 2TB MicroSD card, and you own that card. You bought it. It’s yours.

Your card is always there for you. Your card does not depend on a data connection. Your card is faster for media and acceptable for loading apps and games. You’ll only need to spend more when you want another card.

We NEED the Space Inside the Phone?

Consumers have been so poorly educated on tech, and so abused by manufacturers, we start to adopt this tone of being “grateful” for any consideration we might receive.

Another insidious point taking root in tech commentary, we HAVE to get rid of useful features like headphone jacks, or SD cards (or SIM cards) because they take up so much space inside the phone.

“You see, Apple and Samsung and Google are actually doing us a FAVOR by getting rid of useful tech, so we can have MORE battery! When Google copies Apple in making a SUPER skinny phone, would you want even LESS battery?”

Unfortunately for the folks making this weak argument, it’s easy to see how manufacturers are creating this problem to sell us an inferior “solution”. Thin phones have never proven so popular in the market that they’ve ever outpaced more feature complete devices.

Google, Apple, and Samsung are stalling on newer battery technologies.

The smaller Vivo phone in the above picture has a battery roughly 25% larger than the Pixel 10 Pro XL next to it, and the little phone still has room for a SIM card tray (while being able to charge from empty to full significantly faster than Google can with a SMALLER capacity battery). I would happily trade some of that battery to get a bigger tray that also had a MicroSD card slot.

Instead of acting like this stupid design fad is inevitable, and that we all need to suffer tiny battery devices, why not highlight the international phones making progress on charging tech?

There’s no reason we couldn’t have it all, except to rig the conversation in favor of the brands that spend the most on marketing (who coincidentally are working hardest to slow down smartphone feature improvements).

Boot Heels Must Taste Delicious

It’s galling to see “techies” still defending this move today. We largely lost this feature roughly four years ago, and precious few manufacturers have maintained it. Yet tech blogs love trotting this topic out today to rub salt in our collective wounds.

“Hey NERDS! Isn’t it GREAT that your phone is more expensive and DOES LESS than it used to? WE LOVE IT AND STILL LOVE IT AND WHATEVER THE MOST POPULAR BRANDS DO IS ALWAYS CORRECT FOR US TO MAKE MORE MONEY ON OUR LAZY TECH CONTENT!”

There’s really no excuse though. It’s a hack editorial effort, which only serves to help people feel good that their favorite brands are actively ratcheting their wallets. It’s like saying, I like Samsung or Google or Apple, so I have to defend those companies when they make dumb decisions. We should be more critical of our favorite brands, and hold those brands to a higher standard.

I have a collection of MicroSD cards, and they’re great.

I move a card from my mirrorless camera to my action cameras, and it works great. I can swap cards from my Steam Deck to my Laptop, and it works a treat. My daughter has a fancy FLAC player, her music is stored locally, and she loves it.

More storage benefits every computer and camera, and media player I own, and the only daily driver gadget that doesn’t get to play along is my phone.

It was always ruthlessly cynical and greedy. You don’t need to keep reminding us.

We know you’re defending the indefensible, and it’s really obnoxious.