NamelessPFG
Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2016
- Messages
- 893
The most insulting thing about removing the microSD card slot is that Samsung sells UFS cards now, so if they wanted to justify it by saying that eMMC (which is fundamentally what SD cards are) doesn't have the performance of the built-in UFS for things like high-res video or burst photos, then having literal UFS memory cards negates that excuse. Too bad you can't really find anything that USES them, other than maybe a few Samsung laptops and tablets that aren't as likely to need them in the first place when you've got plenty of USB ports to jam Mass Storage devices into.Yeah, I really have not heard a single good reason to have eliminated the SD card. It's pretty obvious based on their pricing that they simply seized upon the opportunity to use storage as another price tier. They can advertise the phone at a lower price, but that model only comes with such a small amount of storage that a large percentage of people will end up paying hundreds more for extra storage. Except that extra storage isn't worth hundreds of dollars. You can buy SD cards with 4 times as much storage for 1/4th the price, but they simply eliminated that option and forced users to pay extra directly to Samsung if they want it. It's a deliberate money grab and nothing else. Any nonsense about maintaining their water-proof rating or not wanting users to have to deal with slow SD cards is pure BS. Phones still have slots for SIM cards, and all phones have at least some internal storage that is used for system functions.
Since phones have become most people's main cameras, it makes sense that people need storage for all of those pictures and videos. It's not rocket science. I usually take 10-15 pictures every time I take a picture and then pick out the best one later. I like to take long videos at max resolution and scale it down later if necessary. I don't want to have to compromise just because of a limitation of the phone.
The one thing that does not bug me as much as I thought it would was the removal of the headphone jack. The USB-C dongles work pretty good. The one I got is pretty small, and even allows pass-through USB-C charging while I listen to my headphones. So essentially 100% equivalent functionality compared to if my phone had a real headphone jack, using nothing but the USB-C port. I was actually impressed.
I also limit my battery to 85% charge unless I'm going on a trip, at which time I'll disable battery protection. It does seem to have helped maintain battery health over time. If my battery actually starts to go bad, and I'm not ready to give up the phone yet, I might try one of those battery-cases. I used one with my old Note 2 and it was pretty nice having 10,000+ mah of battery.
I'm still upset about the loss of the headphone jack, but I'd be less upset if they added a second USB-C port to make up for it; after all, like you said, the dongles work pretty well. Instead, they take away another feature and give you nothing in return.
I wouldn't mind knowing which USB-C headphone jack dongle you're using that has a passthrough, seeing as my current one doesn't and one of my main gripes is that I can't use wired audio and charge at the same time. In fact, I need a wireless charging phone mount in my car because of this. (Why not Bluetooth? Cassette adapters have finite battery life, and switching to a standard double-DIN head unit in my vehicle is an abnormally expensive pain in the ass due to sourcing the non-nav HVAC control panel.)