3 ms·

Everyone complaining about your phones no longer having headphone jacks or SD card slots: I remember when the first iMac came out and had the audacity not to h

Everyone complaining about your phones no longer having headphone jacks or SD card slots: I remember when the first iMac came out and had the audacity not to have a floppy disk. I was appalled. Everyone was. Just sayin'.

CameronNemo 4y ago
With UFS sizes where they are at, I can get quite a bit of media on my device these days even without an SD card. Back in the day when eMMC was topping out at 64 GB, with a hefty premium, it was a bit different. Expandable storage is definitely a nice longevity / future proofing feature, though.
TheRealNGenius 4y ago
I agree. HackerNews as a whole lacks vision.
phatfish 4y ago
Mine has both and it is from 2021. Removing the ability to expand your phones storage locally is just a way to justify the cost structure Apple and others created around "more storage = more cost". When you can add 128GB via a card slot for $30 but Apple charge you many multiples of that to get the same as embedded storage it just looks stupid. It is also to get you to pay for iCloud when you run out of space on the cheaper iPhones. All my other electronic devices have a audio jack and it works perfectly fine, so why not a phone? Analog headphones are also cheaper and guaranteed to work so avoid the vendor lock-in and licensing scams Apple and others try to set up. I can also (shock) charge my phone AND have headphones connected without a stupid dongle. Floppy disks were worse in every way than a USB stick or CD. The headphone jack and SDcard slot are always a benefit (to the consumer at least, not to Apple/Google trying to sell you Cloud storage and overpriced accessories).
- tj_h 4y ago
  the worst thing to me about the push to replace sdcard based storage with cloud based one (as expandable and "sharable" storage) is how incredibly US-centric (or..."rich country" centric?) that is. Forget places like India even in the US there is a huge section of the population that live in places with very poor cell reception and are just starting to see post dial up speeds. Yea, cloud storage is cool if you're like me - i live in a major metro, never really venture outside of downtown and my wifi and internet could easily get me >1Gbps speeds if i really wanted but it's a REAL pain when i'm on vacation somewhere and have taken a bunch of photos and need to share it with people, or running low on storage so need to upload it to clear some space...you ever tried to upload 200 photos taken by an iphone 11 or whatever at a random resort in mexico somewhere? And those cloud data charges, yikes. I mean the lowest priced tier on both google and apple are $0.99/mth which is not gonna break the bank for most people but like, apple for example the free tier is only 5GB, that is absolutely nothing.
tj_h 4y ago
imo it's all about good alternatives for enough use cases. when floppy disks were going away it was being quickly replaced with things like CD, and while the latter had it's growing pains if i recall, it basically still covered most use cases (at least as far as I remember, though feel free to correct me on this). SDCards: it's similar here, the first few generations that did this did it too early even in places like UK, Canada and USA while the internet was mostly ubiquitous enough to replace sdcard for quick sharing of files it wasn't until sometime later that we really started getting 64GB and 128GB storage on phones. Nowadays ofc, 128GB and more is super common so there's less need for expandable storage. However, SDCard isn't just about expandable storage, it's also about data transfer. It's ok if you're like me, I live in a city with 5g data and >1Gbps wifi and internet everywhere, jsut upload everything to google drive or whatever. But this is much more of an issue when i was in india for example and needed to switch phones. Transferring all those photos, videos, pdfs etc via a usb cable was really slow and annoying, back in the sdcard days i'd just pop out the card and pop it in into my new phone. This is crucial - in general we need to keep in mind as many use cases as is reasonable (forget india, there are plenty of places in USA that have bad data connections and poor internet what do you do if you live somewhere with poor wifi and data and need to switch phones?). That being said, it wasn't bad, especially these days, fast internet and "everywhere fast data" is becoming more and more common and the sizes of the built in storage is large enough. (Note: I could go on about Apple/Google etc shift to force people into using cloud services more and how INCREDIBLY US-centric that is). Headphone jack: As i said, the important thing is to keep in mind different use cases. Yea bluetooth is great and things like square payment has quickly replaced their headphone jack based connection with bluetooth but there are too many uses cases here from people who rent cars to people for whom bluetooth simply isn't reliable enough yet. Bluetooth is not a simple drop in replacement like CD was or even built in storage to a large extent - bluetooth devices need to be able to power themselves for example. Honestly to me, removing the headphone jack so you can sell more bluetooth headphones (which is usually cited as a possible reason?) seems silly - but that's just me maybe. Bluetooth is ubiquitous and convenient enough that those who are up for it will already be using it, or looking to use it. But you're not going to convert too many people into using bluetooth just by removing the headphone jack - worst case you're gonna get a lot of people buying those little dongles. Do those little dongles really make that much money? Is it just about shaving whatever you can, i can't imagine a headphone jack adds to much to the BOM but maybe every little bit counts? Ultimately with any of these things it's all about thinking about other people in other situations. Yea for me, i don't really take a lot of photos to begin with and was lucky that for the most part i lived in places with good data and internet so the switch away from sdcard was a no brainer. I've been using standalone music players since before ipods were a thing so, again, no headphone jack doesn't bother me. I didn't really rent cars or use any of the many myriad of devices that used the headphone jack to connect either so again, meh. The problem is, there are entirely too many people for whom these things are crucial. And as much as I hate to say it, this is a bit of a "check your privilege" moment as well (I am about as big a google fanboy as you can get, but YIKES, that company - i'm positive, has NO IDEA that other countries exist).

CameronNemo 4y ago

With UFS sizes where they are at, I can get quite a bit of media on my device these days even without an SD card. Back in the day when eMMC was topping out at 64 GB, with a hefty premium, it was a bit different. Expandable storage is definitely a nice longevity / future proofing feature, though.

TheRealNGenius 4y ago

I agree. HackerNews as a whole lacks vision.

phatfish 4y ago

Mine has both and it is from 2021. Removing the ability to expand your phones storage locally is just a way to justify the cost structure Apple and others created around "more storage = more cost". When you can add 128GB via a card slot for $30 but Apple charge you many multiples of that to get the same as embedded storage it just looks stupid. It is also to get you to pay for iCloud when you run out of space on the cheaper iPhones. All my other electronic devices have a audio jack and it works perfectly fine, so why not a phone? Analog headphones are also cheaper and guaranteed to work so avoid the vendor lock-in and licensing scams Apple and others try to set up. I can also (shock) charge my phone AND have headphones connected without a stupid dongle. Floppy disks were worse in every way than a USB stick or CD. The headphone jack and SDcard slot are always a benefit (to the consumer at least, not to Apple/Google trying to sell you Cloud storage and overpriced accessories).

tj_h 4y ago
the worst thing to me about the push to replace sdcard based storage with cloud based one (as expandable and "sharable" storage) is how incredibly US-centric (or..."rich country" centric?) that is. Forget places like India even in the US there is a huge section of the population that live in places with very poor cell reception and are just starting to see post dial up speeds. Yea, cloud storage is cool if you're like me - i live in a major metro, never really venture outside of downtown and my wifi and internet could easily get me >1Gbps speeds if i really wanted but it's a REAL pain when i'm on vacation somewhere and have taken a bunch of photos and need to share it with people, or running low on storage so need to upload it to clear some space...you ever tried to upload 200 photos taken by an iphone 11 or whatever at a random resort in mexico somewhere? And those cloud data charges, yikes. I mean the lowest priced tier on both google and apple are $0.99/mth which is not gonna break the bank for most people but like, apple for example the free tier is only 5GB, that is absolutely nothing.

tj_h 4y ago

imo it's all about good alternatives for enough use cases. when floppy disks were going away it was being quickly replaced with things like CD, and while the latter had it's growing pains if i recall, it basically still covered most use cases (at least as far as I remember, though feel free to correct me on this). SDCards: it's similar here, the first few generations that did this did it too early even in places like UK, Canada and USA while the internet was mostly ubiquitous enough to replace sdcard for quick sharing of files it wasn't until sometime later that we really started getting 64GB and 128GB storage on phones. Nowadays ofc, 128GB and more is super common so there's less need for expandable storage. However, SDCard isn't just about expandable storage, it's also about data transfer. It's ok if you're like me, I live in a city with 5g data and >1Gbps wifi and internet everywhere, jsut upload everything to google drive or whatever. But this is much more of an issue when i was in india for example and needed to switch phones. Transferring all those photos, videos, pdfs etc via a usb cable was really slow and annoying, back in the sdcard days i'd just pop out the card and pop it in into my new phone. This is crucial - in general we need to keep in mind as many use cases as is reasonable (forget india, there are plenty of places in USA that have bad data connections and poor internet what do you do if you live somewhere with poor wifi and data and need to switch phones?). That being said, it wasn't bad, especially these days, fast internet and "everywhere fast data" is becoming more and more common and the sizes of the built in storage is large enough. (Note: I could go on about Apple/Google etc shift to force people into using cloud services more and how INCREDIBLY US-centric that is). Headphone jack: As i said, the important thing is to keep in mind different use cases. Yea bluetooth is great and things like square payment has quickly replaced their headphone jack based connection with bluetooth but there are too many uses cases here from people who rent cars to people for whom bluetooth simply isn't reliable enough yet. Bluetooth is not a simple drop in replacement like CD was or even built in storage to a large extent - bluetooth devices need to be able to power themselves for example. Honestly to me, removing the headphone jack so you can sell more bluetooth headphones (which is usually cited as a possible reason?) seems silly - but that's just me maybe. Bluetooth is ubiquitous and convenient enough that those who are up for it will already be using it, or looking to use it. But you're not going to convert too many people into using bluetooth just by removing the headphone jack - worst case you're gonna get a lot of people buying those little dongles. Do those little dongles really make that much money? Is it just about shaving whatever you can, i can't imagine a headphone jack adds to much to the BOM but maybe every little bit counts? Ultimately with any of these things it's all about thinking about other people in other situations. Yea for me, i don't really take a lot of photos to begin with and was lucky that for the most part i lived in places with good data and internet so the switch away from sdcard was a no brainer. I've been using standalone music players since before ipods were a thing so, again, no headphone jack doesn't bother me. I didn't really rent cars or use any of the many myriad of devices that used the headphone jack to connect either so again, meh. The problem is, there are entirely too many people for whom these things are crucial. And as much as I hate to say it, this is a bit of a "check your privilege" moment as well (I am about as big a google fanboy as you can get, but YIKES, that company - i'm positive, has NO IDEA that other countries exist).