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It's a mystery to me that I keep reading online how it's such a big problem that phones don't offer SD cards or rootability, but literally never heard that in r

It's a mystery to me that I keep reading online how it's such a big problem that phones don't offer SD cards or rootability, but literally never heard that in real life.

Gualdrapo 3y ago
The "rootability" thing can be due to the own efforts from OEMs to lock their bootloaders and stuff, and electronic payments not being possible with a rooted phone - which is a major issue for places where people no longer use cash. And maybe the SD cards thing is because people just don't care anymore about running out of storage (they'd delete their stuff or store it on a cloud service somehow). One of the reasons I wanted a Sony Xperia 1ii (and could get ahold of one of them) was it, but since I do not listen to music from my phone anymore I replaced the SD card with a second SIM card. Whereas the "rootability" thing is actually great in my case, since Sony just gave two years of major Android releases to it - I can use Android 13 thanks to LineageOS and its battery life is even better than with the stock firmware. And with my previous phone, a Sony Xperia Z1, I could make it to go with me for +7 years. But yep, I do wish Android OEMs offered more major releases to their phones.
cykros 3y ago
The removal of SD cards always just felt petty, but at the end of the day, you can either plug in external media, use a wireless hard drive/SD reader, or just access your content remotely on self hosted servers (or use "the cloud" if you must). Rootability is easy -- the real issue these days is how many things stop working with a rooted phone which makes it much less desirable than it used to be. Though, it's also a lot less important than it used to be, as many of the old functions that required root just don't any more, either because of changes to the system design, or because of workarounds.
- AndroidKitKat 3y ago
  I was watching clips of LinusTechTips' podcast, and he said that speaking to people who he trusts in the mobile phone space, that SD removal was primarily because SD flash is worse than the onboard stuff and they lose more customers who complain/think the phone is bad because of the SD card being worse, than customers who wouldn't buy the phone in the first place because it lacked it. Personally, I think it's a little of both. It probably helps that less customers complain about the SD card not working, but being able charge an arm and leg for extra storage is icing on the cake.

It's a mystery to me that I keep reading online how it's such a big problem that phones don't offer SD cards or rootability, but literally never heard that in real life.

Gualdrapo 3y ago

The "rootability" thing can be due to the own efforts from OEMs to lock their bootloaders and stuff, and electronic payments not being possible with a rooted phone - which is a major issue for places where people no longer use cash. And maybe the SD cards thing is because people just don't care anymore about running out of storage (they'd delete their stuff or store it on a cloud service somehow). One of the reasons I wanted a Sony Xperia 1ii (and could get ahold of one of them) was it, but since I do not listen to music from my phone anymore I replaced the SD card with a second SIM card. Whereas the "rootability" thing is actually great in my case, since Sony just gave two years of major Android releases to it - I can use Android 13 thanks to LineageOS and its battery life is even better than with the stock firmware. And with my previous phone, a Sony Xperia Z1, I could make it to go with me for +7 years. But yep, I do wish Android OEMs offered more major releases to their phones.

cykros 3y ago

The removal of SD cards always just felt petty, but at the end of the day, you can either plug in external media, use a wireless hard drive/SD reader, or just access your content remotely on self hosted servers (or use "the cloud" if you must). Rootability is easy -- the real issue these days is how many things stop working with a rooted phone which makes it much less desirable than it used to be. Though, it's also a lot less important than it used to be, as many of the old functions that required root just don't any more, either because of changes to the system design, or because of workarounds.

AndroidKitKat 3y ago
I was watching clips of LinusTechTips' podcast, and he said that speaking to people who he trusts in the mobile phone space, that SD removal was primarily because SD flash is worse than the onboard stuff and they lose more customers who complain/think the phone is bad because of the SD card being worse, than customers who wouldn't buy the phone in the first place because it lacked it. Personally, I think it's a little of both. It probably helps that less customers complain about the SD card not working, but being able charge an arm and leg for extra storage is icing on the cake.